Remember that the GOP used to be very good at "wooden gun" cutbacks. During the Gilded Age, the Masters of the Universe fell in love with their tax rates (high protective tariffs that the gomers and plowboys paid, low everything else). They hated it when the 20th century drove their taxes up, for the privilege of continuing to speak English and not having to see Russian or German or Japanese battleships anchored in the Delaware River.
Every chance they've gotten, since World War I, they've tried to go back to the military establishment (and tax rates) we had when our biggest military problem was Geronimo or Pancho Villa. They did it at the end of the Great War, and the country's new tank force almost blinked out of existence as Congress made appropriations suitable for horse cavalry. The Coolidge Administration signed the Treaty of London so they could sink brand-new battlecruiser hulls and not pay for completing them (two of them were converted into USS Lexington and Saratoga).
There's a long tradition of "GibsmedatPeaceDividend!" in the Army and Navy, and until the Carter Communists moved in and started stripping military budgeting for GibsmedatSocialGoodies, the principal perps were always Republicans.
At least Republicans did and do not fear the military. they did not purge out all the competent officers and NCOs. They just trimmed the whole thing. The Democrats shrink it and cripple what is left.