Jointness has become an altar at which all military personnel must worship even if they don't understand or believe. Defenders of the status quo argue that there is merit in duplication or redundancy and these arguments have some validity. The question becomes how much overlap or redundancy between land, sea, air, and space forces can the nation afford, and what is the opportunity cost to the core competency of the land, sea, air, or space force that builds and/or maintains the duplicative force structure. A second yet vastly different question arises when considering the unique capabilities a Service provides to support itself and the other services. For example, how much the Air Force should spend on airlift forces is not cast in terms of what the envisaged requirement is for airlift, ton miles per day, to support the mythical scenarios. The alternative sea, land, and space lift requirements can be postulated; however, if the Navy, Army, or Air Force do not satisfy those sea, land, and space lift requirement, then there is a shortfall which will in turn generate a need for more airlift! During _Desert Storm_, nearly 90 percent of the deployed equipment arrived by sea, but not in time if the Iraqis had continued their first attack in August. A majority of overland movement was provided by Saudi Arabian civilian trucks and drivers, and the Army had neither the resources nor the responsiveness to activate reserve forces needed to meet the truck and rail support requirements of our military forces. As a result, costly airlift was used to move forces that should have traveled by land and sea. If added space capabilities had been needed, there was almost no capability for the timely launch of a satellite. Would it not be wise to index spending on land, sea, air, and space launch on one and other, postulate lift requirements on what the new force needs as it innovates and slims down. The need to respond on a moment's notice adds to the value of airlift and prepositioned ships. The outcome though would be not to allow any of the Services to divert general support money into core competencies and thereby shift the jointness burden to another Service.