Welcome to Colorado Springs, President Barack Obama. Thank you for being here to address the U.S. Air Force Academy's Class of 2016. And thank you, cadets, for making the sacrifice to serve our country.

Graduates begin their officer careers as politicians and military leaders talk about the need to "right size" the armed forces and achieve more efficiencies. We hear talk of mergers, closures and alignments. Too many bases have outlived their missions. Technological advances have, in many circumstances, reduced the need for boots-on-the-ground confrontations. Drones, satellites and computers are changing the nature of national defense and warfare.

Taken out of context, these discussions might lead one to believe we need fewer military personnel today than in years gone by. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Never has the free world had more need for the bright men and women who managed to get through four rigorous years at the academy, which ranks among the country's more demanding institutions of higher education. It is the military academy most geared toward advancements in modern defense and warfare.

Just as technological advancements have created operational efficiencies in the military, they have aided the world's most hostile predators in threatening the safety and sovereignty of our country and its allies. As efficiencies in the military increase, the cost of defending against any single threat conceivably goes down. But the number of threats goes up. The United States and other advanced countries conceivably face thousands of times the number of threats they did decades ago. Attacks that used to require laboratories, warehouses and host nations can be designed and carried out by rogue entrepreneurs with laptops, smartphones and backpacks. Someday, even the Sept. 11 attacks could seem primitive.

Though the potential for chaos and mass destruction has never been greater, the future should not be one of doom and gloom. Advances in collective knowledge, combined with history's highest world population, have global poverty in an unprecedented decline. Never have so many people around the globe lived in so much comfort and peace. Obama expressed this in 2014, telling Marines in Hawaii the world "is better, it's safer, it's more peaceful, it's more prosperous" because of the sacrifices of military personnel.

To maintain a trajectory of progress, prosperity and peace — the fruits of American military might — we must maintain and enlarge our military, constantly increasing its level of education and sophistication.

Before tossing their caps in the air Thursday, Air Force Academy graduates will hear the inspiring words of their commander in chief. Then they will embark on defending freedom in an increasingly complicated world that counts on Americans maintaining peace through strength.

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE