Unrivaled Military Feels Strains of Unending War
For U.S. Forces, a Technological Revolution and a Constant Call to Do More

"At no time in the history of modern warfare has a force been as well-trained, well-equipped and highly motivated as our Air Force is today," Gen. John P. Jumper, the Air Force chief of staff, said last month. Indeed, one of the Air Force's slogans is "Global Reach, Global Power."

That reach, say military commanders and other experts, may also prove to be an Achilles' heel: The more capable the U.S. military has become, the more it has been asked to do, and now strains are beginning to show. As the Bush administration prepares for war with Iraq, it is also sustaining peacekeeping missions in the Balkans, protecting South Korea from a newly aggressive North Korea and pursuing a war against terrorism that stretches from Afghanistan and the Caucasus to the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.

This is a period characterized by what seems like continuous warfare, likened by military analyst Ralph Peters to the Thirty Years War that decimated Western Europe in the 17th century, and the effects are beginning to tell on the military's manpower, on its budget, on the nation's treasury, and on a conflict of priorities - - between the need to fight today's wars and the pursuit of means to dominate tomorrow's.
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  thanks to Tapped