In his inaugural address, President Donald Trump cast a bold vision for a moonshot that received too little attention: ending global conflict. He said America will achieve “peace through strength” via deterrence, making the U.S. military the strongest and most capable fighting force in the world. He also made clear that our primary object of deterrence is China.

Certainly, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are already on a winning trajectory when it comes to personnel readiness. Recruiting numbers in January hit a 15-year high, proof that their “warrior over woke” cultural transition is working. But when it comes to realigning our capabilities to our adversaries’ threats and overhauling the defense industrial base, we are dangerously behind. We are losing the economics of conflict.

With rare exceptions, history rewards nations that master the economics of conflict and punishes those that do not. A clear example of this is the contrast between our 1980s intervention in Afghanistan against the Soviets and our involvement in the global war on terror.

In the 1980s, we sent $8,500 Stinger missiles to the Mujahadeen, who used them to destroy Soviet aircraft worth millions. This was an incredible return on investment, one Congress gladly made again and again. Over time, the Soviets lost their Afghan war. Shortly thereafter, they lost their country.

In contrast, during the global war on terror, the United States deployed exquisite million-dollar armored vehicles across the Middle East, only to see our adversaries defeat them with repurposed explosives and $20 worth of farm supplies. Throughout the last year in the Red Sea, the U.S. Navy has fired $2 million missiles at $50,000 drones launched by the Houthis. The math is broken, and our ability to sustain these costs rests solely on the United States’ control over the world’s reserve currency.

Despite this advantage, our adversaries see the United States losing the economics of future conflict. Our country is $36.3 trillion in debt and runs a $1.8 trillion annual deficit. Our interest payments alone match the entire defense budget, and our annual deficit is double it. While our debt to gross domestic product ratio has hit a historic high of 123%, we only spend 2.9% of GDP on defense, the lowest since World War II. We find ourselves in a historic defense squeeze amid unprecedented fiscal constraints.

At the same time, our capabilities are getting more expensive while our enemies’ threats are getting cheaper. And history reminds us that cheap and capable beats exquisite and expensive — every time, over time. As technology gaps shrink, our ability to win short-term conflict decisively is eroding.

The United States needs a fundamental shift in how we think about defense. Our adversaries do not need aircraft carriers and battleships to sink ours. Cheap drones can cripple $100 million aircraft sitting on our tarmacs, sink the ships in our harbors or at sea, and even take down our electrical grid and pipeline infrastructure. Let us not forget that Ukraine crippled Russia’s entire Black Sea fleet without a navy of its own.

Americans have always looked at aircraft carriers in their harbors as a source of national pride and strength — unparalleled capabilities to project force in times of need. In this new era, they may be liabilities. The United States has never operated in such a paradigm.

If we fail to adjust, we risk spending ourselves into the oblivion of the Soviet Union that President Ronald Reagan so meticulously orchestrated, but now presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia orchestrate against us. Today, we are spending billions to sustain and purchase equipment that has not helped us win the last 30 years of war and will not help us deter or win the next one. So, how do we achieve Trump’s objective of modern deterrence through winning the economics of war? 

First, we must recognize that we can either continue to fund the military we have today or invest in the military we need to deter and defeat China tomorrow. We cannot do both. The military’s budget is bleeding from the operational and maintenance costs of outdated platforms and real estate, and that means we need to be ruthless in deciding which capabilities and platforms remain operational. Many in Congress will resist these cuts, but our national security demands honest assessment and hard action. We must butcher military pork like the conservative welfare that it is.

Second, we must focus on exquisite capabilities that deliver decisive dominance. If a weapon provides an overwhelming strategic advantage against China, we keep it. If it falls short, we stop buying it and return to the drawing board. For exquisite capabilities in development, contracts must guarantee real battlefield supremacy, not just incremental improvement. We cannot afford to spend billions simply keeping up with China. We must unleash the full potential of American ingenuity to deter it.

MISSION-CAPABILITY RATES FOR AIR FORCE FLEETS AT ‘LOWEST LEVELS’ IN OVER TWO DECADES

Third, we must mass-produce our low-cost, high-impact capabilities that construct the foundation of both conventional and future asymmetric warfare. This includes energetics and explosives, munitions, artillery, surface-to-air and anti-tank missiles, rocket motors, and jet engines. We must fund new technologies and software at the speed of innovation and invest heavily in the military’s organic capability to produce small drones at a significant scale.

A general rule: Unless it achieves strategic dominance, if the cost to produce our capability exceeds what our enemies spend to produce their threat, we shouldn’t buy it. Follow this rule, and we’ll drive innovation, increase competition, and cut costs and Trump will keep us out of war with China. Ending global conflict? That could be a bonus.

Pat Harrigan represents North Carolina’s 10th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives and serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.