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“I think that there are going to be more and more examples like that,” said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Because the military in recent years invested in many new programs, which in lots of cases have not come to fruition, it did not spend as much on large-scale repair and modernization of older equipment, Harrison added. “As a result, we still have . . . this lagging need to recapitalize large parts of our force,” he said.

The commission faces a Dec. 1 deadline for at least 14 of the 18 members to agree to send a report to Congress. Even then it is not clear if lawmakers would embrace the ideas. “If anyone needed a wake-up call that the growth in defense spending that we’ve experienced over the past decade is coming to an end, then this was it,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. Because of the approvals that would be necessary to put the proposals into action, “it’s highly unlikely that this would be adopted in its current form,” he added.

Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst with the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, said Cartwright didn’t address whether the Pentagon will actually be able to achieve the planned efficiency savings. “If history is any indicator, they won’t be able to save as much as they think,” Harrison said.

Edelman last month unveiled a counterview to the NIC study, “Understanding America’s Contested Primacy,” published by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense policy think tank in Washington, D.C. At a briefing on Capitol Hill, Edelman cautioned that much of what is in Global Trends 2025 is accurate analysis. But he questioned why the NIC in 2008 painted such a drastically different picture from the one laid out in its 2004 report, “Mapping the Global Future 2020,” which had concluded that the era of unipolarity and U.S. primacy was likely to continue for as far as the eye could see, Edelman said. “What was it that changed so dramatically between 2004 and 2008 that would lead to this radically different conclusion?” he asked.

Another example, one analyst says, of the military procurement system not adequately looking ahead when dreaming up weapons projects. “You’ve got a very complex aircraft — and there are many, many interesting technologies in this — where it’s tough enough to consider the operational and technological factors,” said Jan van Tol of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “But apparently, they’ve not looked as carefully at second- and third-order issues.”

Defense budget analysts say that rising health care costs will make less money available for new weapons, repairs to a worn-out arsenal and quality-of-life programs like schools on military bases. “In the long run, it could actually limit our ability to field a military of sufficient size,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow for defense budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.