Good read.
There are a couple of disconnects, however, that the article doesn't go into.
First is, how do you think we get upgrades in future technologies, if not by putting the IR&D money into it now? How do you think that those MRAPs got invented? He said himself that the only place they'd really work is in Iraq, in urban fighting. Who had "urban fighting" on their planning profile on 9/10/2001? Maybe the Marines did. But they weren't buying MRAPs.
Yeah, maybe you don't want a 747 with a frickin' laser beam on it. But someone pretty high up in the DoD has been telling airplane manufacturers (with Congress' consent and pocketbook) that one of the ways they're planning to shoot down incoming missiles is with an airborne laser. And since there isn't a plane right now that meets that requirement, they need to develop one. And the science and engineering behind doing that isn't something that's easy (or cheap). But it's good.
Secondly, I get that you don't want to buy F-22's because they're super-expensive. But the Air Force (and Congress, with its previous funding profiles) has put all of its eggs in the F-22 basket in terms of end-of-life for F-15's. Pretty soon, you won't have a stable of Air Force fighters, since they'll either a) be too old to fly, b) a brand-new Program is started (with all the associated non-recurring engineering cost and time that has to go into that), or c) they'll eventually start buying F-22's again, but only after they've laid off the people who've been designing it for 10 years and replacing it with new hires who've never seen the plans. Which "war we're fighting now" are we going to design the next fighter program around? Or are we just scrapping fighter planes?
A submarine of any navy hasn't attacked a ship (other the Falklands war) since WWII. Should we cut all submarine production, research and training funding? There have been 2 nuclear bombs in history that have been dropped in combat...why are we still making/maintaining/researching them? Why aren't we just putting our money into desert cammies, M16's and Predator drones? Mr. Gates (with the picture this article paints) doesn't seem to be reading his history books, especially what happened after the US drew down its military after WWII and was unprepared for Korea.
We're not "generations ahead" of the Russians or Chinese in fighters, submarines, tanks, rifles, etc. And we're already at a disadvantage in that, since we don't normally throw the first punch on our neighbors, we'll be fighting a reactive war against entrenched forces a heckuva long way from home. And you need a technology advantage to overcome that.
I'm all for the military research side making some budget cuts along with everyone else. And if you want to cut the airborne laser program now in order to get some body armor (that we seem to be procuring outside of the normal channels without operational test and eval), that's a decision that should be investigated and made. But I'm not sure that "fighting the war you have" justifies "forgetting about science projects for the future". What Gates is really saying is that the department he's running now didn't do a good job planning for the future (a potential invasion of Iraq/Afghanistan), and now in the scramble to make up for that mistake they want to compound that by not planning for a more conventional future war (like, say, with 3 countries on the Asian landmass who are spending billions of dollars on military upgrades in a down economy--one of whom already invaded a neighbor of theirs last year). The problem with that is: while it takes only a relatively short time (in budget cycles) to upgrade a Humvee into a MRAP, or give better plates to put into body armor, it takes a decade or more to put out a new fighter, or submarine, or class of surface ships. And that timeline is the reason that you have to keep doing cutting-edge research based upon future plans.
