I still have difficulty in understanding, in peace time, how Congressional funding is directly (specifically through lack of funding) responsible for equipment not getting maintenance it requires. If a mechanism fails, the serviceman is dead: that is not acceptable. We send our young citizens to risk death in our defense; not just to die. So how does lack of funding determine what the Service maintains rather than determining the amount of equipment that can be maintained? Or how can they allow the use of equipment that is not ready to be used in peace time? How does this decision making effect the substance of these types of articles: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/weapons-production-munitions-shortfall-ukraine-democracy/680867/ https://thediplomat.com/2025/03/is-the-united-states-becoming-a-hollow-maritime-power/

Unfortunately, the answer is fairly simple. The amount of funds appropriated for the specific armed forces and their programs is set by Congress. The various services have limited latitude, determined by the authorization and/or appropriations language, to shift some funds within their budgets, but not to make major changes. So if Congress mandates, for example, a thousand more tanks, the Army gets a thousand tanks, even if they need APCs or ground support aircraft. In the Vietnam war, the Navy juggled funds to upgrade the H-2 from a one-engine jet helicopter to a two engine helicopter, because the original H-2 couldn’t operate effectively in the high density altitude of Southeast Asia. The Navy justified the funds juggling as necessary because Congress couldn’t or didn’t appropriate funds for the upgrade. The changes were not carried out as well as they might have been, and the number of pilots and crew lost to the problems created by malfunctions in the upgrades has never been revealed (at least to my knowledge). I have a certain familiarity with that problem, since I flew the “upgraded” H-2 for a time.