The Soviet Union has built a war machine far beyond any reasonable requirements for their own defense and security.  In contrast, our own defense spending declined in real terms every year from 1968 through 1976.

We have reversed this decline in our own effort.  Every year since 1976 there has been a real increase in our defense spending, and our lead has encouraged increases by our allies.  With the support of the Congress, we must and will make an even greater effort in the years ahead.

The Fiscal Year 1982 budget would increase funding authority for defense to more than $196 billion.  This amount, together with a supplemental request for FY 1981 of about $6 billion, will more than meet my Administration’s pledge for a sustained growth of 3 percent in real expenditures, and provides for 5 percent in program growth in FY 1982 and beyond.

The trends we mean to correct cannot be remedied overnight; we must be willing to see this program through.  To ensure that we do so I am setting a growth rate for defense that we can sustain over the long haul.

The defense program I have proposed for the next five years will require some sacrifice, but sacrifice we can well afford.

The defense program emphasizes four areas: 

1.  It ensures that our strategic nuclear forces will be equivalent to those of the Soviet Union and that deterrence against nuclear war will be maintained; 2.  It upgrades our forces so that the military balance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact will continue to deter the outbreak of war, conventional or nuclear, in Europe; 3.  It provides us the ability to come quickly to the aid of friends and allies around the globe; 4.  And it ensures that our Navy will continue to be the most powerful on the seas.

STRATEGIC FORCES

We are strengthening each of the three legs of our strategic forces.  The cruise missile production which will begin next year will modernize our strategic air deterrent.  B-52 capabilities will also be improved.  These steps will maintain and enhance the B-52 fleet by improving its ability to deliver weapons against increasingly heavily defended targets.

We are also modernizing our strategic submarine force.  Four more Poseidon submarines backfitted with new, 4,000 mile Trident I missiles began deployments in 1980.  Nine Trident submarines have been authorized through 1981, and we propose one more each year.

The new M-X missile program to enhance our land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force continues to make progress.  Technical refinements in the basing design over the last year will result in operational benefits, lower costs, and reduced environmental impact.  The M-X program continues to be an essential ingredient in our strategic posture, providing survivability, endurance, secure command and control and the capability to threaten targets the Soviets hold dear.