Glory days of funding may be over

It isn't often that defense research and development becomes an issue in a presidential campaign, but this year it has. Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush has promised that if elected, he will spend an extra $20 billion on defense R&D to facilitate a leap ahead in military technology

The vanguard of that revolution is already visible on the horizon. Last year, for instance, U.S.-led NATO forces for the first time defeated a land army in Kosovo with precision-guided air power alone. The components of that lopsided defeat included unmanned aerial vehicles, stealth aircraft, satellite- and laser-guided munitions, and advanced information systems supplying unmatched command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I). The synergistic result of those technologies is a U.S. military whose "situational awareness" and ability to influence the battlefield from afar is far superior even to that of our closest and richest allies, leading some NATO allies to worry about a rapidly widening "technology gap."