Ted Cruz’s Military Plan: ‘More Tooth, Less Tail’

Presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) unveiled his plan Tuesday to revitalize the military in what his campaign is billing as a “Reagan-style” build-up.

He said his plan will ensure the U.S. military has the resources it needs to protect the nation and maintain its status as a “beacon of freedom and opportunity across the world.” America needs a strong military to protect the nation and the freedoms we hold dear, he added.

The goal is simple, Cruz said: “More tooth, less tail.”

“Rebuilding the American military will be one of the most serious tasks facing the next commander in chief,” he said. “Our goal should not be to simply pour back into the Department of Defense the trillion of dollars President Obama so irresponsibly drained out, but rather to seize this opportunity to make a generational investment in our defenses that will keep not only us but also our children and grandchildren safe—and that we do so in a way that also maintains a commitment to fiscal responsibility.”

The Cruz military plan focuses on both conventional and strategic forces, with an emphasis on rebuilding what has been torn down during the current Obama administration. The full plan is available at the Republican’s campaign website.

In a speech Tuesday at the U.S.S. Yorktown museum in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, he provided an outline of his plan.

To rebuild our conventional forces, he will:

• Build up our Army to consist of at least 525,000 trained and fully equipped soldiers
• Establish a total active-duty force of at least 1.4 million soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines
• Rebuild our Air Force to at least 6,000 airplanes, with a minimum of 1,500 tactical fighter aircraft 
• Increase our number of ships to at least 350, with an appropriate mix of large and small, surface and subsurface combatants

To rebuild our strategic forces, he will:

• Prioritize the construction of 12 new ballistic missile submarines in the defense budget
• Upgrade the Minuteman missiles that have been deployed since the late 1960s 
• Reinvest in the ground-based Midcourse Defense program after seven years of neglect under Obama—the program counters the threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles and is vital to our future survival 
• Review and promulgate a new cyberspace strategy—instead of remaining on the defensive against aggressive state and non-state cyber adversaries, we must anticipate and thwart cyber-attacks on American private and public institutions

In his remarks, Cruz also established a clear contrast to how a Cruz administration would operate differently from the last seven years. He identified government policies that will never be implemented under his watch:

• We will not admit refugees into the United States who may have been infiltrated by terrorists;
• We will not grant American citizenship to individuals who are here illegally;
• We will not draft American women into military combat;
• We will not tolerate incompetence in the VA—we will fix it.

Cruz then addressed libertarian concerns that his policy was too militaristic.

“The purpose of this rebuilt military is not to intervene in every conflict and engage in expensive and protracted exercises in nation-building in countries who have scant interests in the institutions we want to impose on them,” he said. “The purpose of this military will be to defend and advance the interests of the United States of America.”