The number of high school graduates inducted into the Army in 1979 was the lowest since the all-volunteer force began six years earlier. Reagan took over a military afflicted with racial, drug and alcohol problems and an inability to recruit even the marginally qualified. Still, some critics said Reagan's focus on building up the military's nuclear force and a missile defense system needlessly imperiled world peace and produced huge Pentagon budgets and federal deficits. It was his steady focus on the military, said supporters and analysts, that helped bring down the Soviet Union and expunge the malaise and hollowness that infected the American military during the 1970s. Reagan presided over the biggest peacetime defense buildup in history, from high-tech weapons systems to larger training ranges and military pay increases. He pushed for the Air Force's stealth technology and precision weaponry that forced Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait in 1991, and the Army's Bradley Fighting Vehicles and M-1 Abrams tanks that swept into Baghdad 12 years later to bring down Hussein's regime. WASHINGTON - The man who spent World War II in Hollywood, wearing an Army uniform and acting in training films, went on to become the commander in chief responsible for rebuilding America's military might and boosting the morale of troops dispirited by the Vietnam War and its aftermath.Īs president from 1981 to 1989, Ronald Reagan persuaded an often wary Congress to fund many of the weapons systems later used in both Persian Gulf wars, either initiating the arms programs or accelerating work on those already in development.
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