A 60-acre expansion of Arlington National Cemetery should trigger better planning action now rather than 30 or 40 more years down the line.

The government has been remiss for some years in not setting aside more acreage in Arlington National Cemetery for our nation’s honored dead. At last, the cemetery in Virginia adjacent to the nation’s capital is adding 60 acres, and even that may prove to be insufficient.

As one federal official remarked: “There is no way to tell how many more rows of white headstones will be needed by mid-century.” Some planning and foresight might help.

After a hijacked airliner hit the Pentagon just beyond the cemetery fence on Sept. 11, 65 of the victims were added to the Arlington honor roll. “We can’t look at what may happen, whether or not there will be a war or disaster,” says Jack Metzler, in charge of finding space for the dead in the future. “We just deal with it when it happens.”

Not too sensitive or reassuring for those who believe the cemetery should be treated with considerably more dignity. Cemetery planners have used demographics and topography to predict that the 60-acre expansion will add 35 years to the life of the Arlington location. That, they say, will allow the site to accept fallen warriors and heroic and honored citizens until 2060. They say there should be room enough for 350,000 more veterans, dignitaries and heroes such as those in the Pentagon disaster. That is an average of 6,000 a year, and considering the requirements for burial there, that might sound quite sufficient.

However, World War II veterans are dying at the rate of more than 1,000 a day, and burials of some of those are due to increase sharply in the next five years or so. Most World War II veterans will not be buried in Arlington even if they meet the eligibility requirements. Families, friends and loved ones want them closer to home. But those World War II veterans who choose to be buried there would have helped fill the cemetery by 2025 if it had stayed at the unexpanded sized of 612 acres.

The current growth project is the first since the 1960s, almost 40 years ago. It does not make sense to let the Arlington Cemetery complex struggle until 2040 when forethought and caring could deal with that issue now. As the conflict against terrorism continues, and perhaps widens, heroes, heroines and Arlington-eligible people are more on our minds than they have been for some time. Why not confront this matter now rather than 30 or 40 years from now?