Ten years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Pentagon confronts a new enemy that will require it to embrace an unfamiliar strategy: spending less money.Buckling beneath $14.3 trillion in IOUs, the U.S. now is pivoting from the whatever-it-takes philosophy employed against Osama bin Laden to a whatever-we-can-afford defense posture.
Like the rest of the country, the U.S. military has a problem with out-of-control health-care costs. The Pentagon has requested $52.5 billion in the next fiscal year for its Tricare health insurance program, which cost $19 billion in 2001. Military retirees are eligible for Tricare for life. Even after taking post-retirement jobs in the private sector, an increasing number of ex-military personnel opt to stick with the taxpayer-paid insurance. "When the budget declines, that's going to cause a train wreck," says Todd Harrison, an analyst at CSBA.