There's a simpler reason for this than decline. Modern airplains are fearsomely expensive and complex creatures to build. The higher tech a system becomes, the longer it takes to build. For a B-29, you basically needed what amounted to a riveter and welder to produce it. For an F-22, you need an electrical engineer and a programmer. It's all about price and the complexity of the thing being produced. It takes longer to produce fewer planes today because the planes being produced are much, much more complex and expensive. I don't know for certain, but I suspect if you were to take a look at the man-hours necessary for the production of a P-51, an F-4, an F-16, and a YF-22, you would see that it steadily increaces. So too would the price of all of the above mentioned systems increase almost logarithmically. It's a necessary evil if you want to have the most advanced combat aircraft in the world.
We use to have an active Army for each section of the country four of them. Now we just have one active and half of it is made up of reserves. Our Navy fleet was reuduced by at least one-third in just 8 years of Clinton. I know we have good technology but most of our military planes are 30 years old and you can only recondition and update the same frames so many times.
Well, one ought remember that our military mission is no longer to stop the Soviet hordes pouring through the Fulda Gap. As such, we really don't need that big a military. The years from 1941-1968-ish (I'm using '68 as the cutoff year since that's about when the Democrats adopted anti-anti-Communism as their policy) were unique in several respects. Yes, there was a huge draftee army and a general bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, but it was due to extraordinary circumstances. Indeed, since we don't really have the threat of fighting a land power in the near future, we don't really face the need that there was to create the huge army that we had during the Cold War.
On the other hand, the area in which we face a real weakness is procurement. By the time a system has gone from the drawing board to being fielded, a young PFC will be a crusty old Sergeant Major. This is an extreme weakness brought about by excessive bureacracy, but it's hardly a harbinger of our decline as a military power.
Also, as I remember my reading, a single modern bomber can accomplish, with more accuracy and, as a result, more pin-point lethality, than a WWII bomber wing. High tech automatically results in requiring less quantity (although, as they say, quantity has a quality of its own). A modern rifle platoon can now cover the front of one or two old-style companies. Ships, planes, and armored vehicles take longer to build, are more difficult to maintain, are hideously more expensive, but are exponentially more effective and destructive than their counterparts from even the '60s and '70s.
I would much rather be buttoned up in an M1A2 Abrams than those motorized-zippo lighter Shermans or Stuarts. I would much rather have a single B-2 or A-10 overhead for fire support than a wing of Flying Fortresses or Liberators.
Certainly there are no countries present which can match our total military power and modern technology and the weakening of the russians has most certainly decreased our needs in numbers of manpower and equipment.Though a reduction of both where certainly called for and prudent I'm afraid the reduction has gone too far especially since we are talking about putting troops in Iraq.
The Gulf war proved that we still had need of a fairly strong conventional force of men and equipment. I think our up front number of men and equipment are good and of good quality. However, one of the most vital things a military needs to assure victory has always been is a good readily available reserve of men and equipment. As we are spread pretty thin around the world in some farily vital ares this is what concerns me.
We've already had in the last number of years of complaints from the backbone of military the NCO's of lack of manpower,lack of properly maintained equipment,lack of parts even to the point of large number of them retiring in frustration. We have had air force, navy and marine pilots retiring because of being overused and stretched to thin. We have the same complaints with the guys who man our aircrat carriersabut long tours at sea.
I just hope we don't get several thousand troops in a hostile country and they end up cut off and us unable to extract or re-enforce them. There are times we you are attempting to occupy by force which is what it seems we are talking about, when because of proximity of our troops we cannot use nuclear waepons. If saddam doesn't step down on his own or is not eliminated by one close to him our troops are going to be facing a madman who doesn't care who he takes with him.
I just don't like relying on kurds, republican guard deflections and allies like France and arabs for the safety of our troops if we happen to hit a rough spot. I don't want another Somalia.