Defense spending: keeping the trough and the campaign coffers well-filled.

Are we safer yet?

The military will suck up every penny it can and buy lots of useless toys to experiment with – usually on other countries. I say no more and a lot less. Will start e-mailing today.

Defense spending. Just not cost effective.

It’s a loosing proposition to propose to “cut” defense spending. It provokes a knee jerk (jerk…) reaction.

It’s a better meme to demand it be “cost effective”, and have each line item focused at clearly defined threats.

can you imagine the good we could do in the world with $500 billion per year?

Why does reckless defense spending, the kind that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union, continue to come from Congress? Why is the government buying multi-billion-dollar jets that the Pentagon does not even want?

Because of bribery lobbying of Congress by Defense Contractors, who donate to election campaigns.

We need to make bribing Congress illegal again. We need Campaign Finance Reform. Before we go the way of the Soviet Union.

Barney Frank called for a 25% cut in defense spending, before last fall’s election. It may have been strategic, to enable Obama to reinforce his proposed increases, but it was a real proposal taken seriously that went nowhere:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Democrats will push for a stimulus package after the November election, and called for a package reducing defense spending by 25 percent while saying Congress will “eventually” raise taxes.

Frank told the editorial board of the SouthCoast Standard-Times that he wanted to reduce defense spending by a quarter, meaning the United States would have to withdraw from Iraq sooner.

“The people of Iraq want us out, and we want to stay over their objection,” he said. “It’s extraordinary.”

I just don’t understand this whole “increase the size of the military” mantra on both sides. We only need to increase the size of the military if we plan to pursue multiple wars in multiple theaters simultaneously. Avoid having to fight more than one discretionary war at one time, and you avoid having to increase the size of the military.

As it is, the US military is already one of the largest volunteer non-conscription militaries in the world, second only to China’s and not even by a very big margin in terms of total in uniform plus reserves. Several countries have larger militaries (Iran’s spectacular 11 million man army or North Korea’s 3 million), but these are conscription-based personnel structures.

China’s pretty much the only other major power in the world interested in creating a true blue water navy and has an overseas network of naval and airbases (their String of Pearls grand strategy), and they seem happy with a ratio of about 2 out of every one thousand of their population being in uniform (much of it civil defense and internal security), and a spending rate of about $200 billion a year ($80 billion officially). We spend $750 billion a year to put nearly 1 out of every one hundred of our population in uniform (exclusive of civil defense and internal security).. which means our military is effectively 5 times larger than China’s is, per capita.

It isn’t really a military industrial complex anymore, or even an Iron Triangle of the military, politicians, and defense contractors. It is more a political industrial alliance with the military along as props. Civilian uses are generally more stimulative than military ones. A school or clinic improves the community. A tank can never be anything more than a tank. The problem is that politicians are too lazy and comfortable with the current system to want to change it.

National defense like healthcare is overpriced and underperforming, but for politicians all they want is more of the same.

If you wanted to cut defense spending, get rid of all the big weapons. The U.S. doesn’t need them, unless it plans a war against China or Russia.

And remember, the real defense budget is approximately two times the commonly reported figures. Two of the big excluded items are nuclear, which is in the Energy Dept. (I think it still is, anyhow), and Veterans are also in a separate department and therefore not included in DOD.

In reply to Blub @ 8:
None of those facts matter. In fact, if The Rapture came and depopulated every other nation on Earth tomorrow, Congress would still call for increased Defense spending.

Defense contractors want taxpayer money for their projects, so they use some of that money from prior years (also known as ”profits”) to bribe Congress to fund more projects. Congress having been bribed (and threatened that if they are not bribable, they will be replaced with a candidate who IS) allocates funds for the projects. Our tax money, and that of our grandchildren, is then given to the defense contractors, who use part of it to bribe Congress again, ad infinitum.

The way to stop this cycle is to prevent the defense contractors from being able to threaten Congresspeople. The way to do that is to fund elections with equal amounts of public money ONLY (you can use some of the money that would have gone to defense contractors for this). Freed from having to worry about the defense contractors funding their opponents, Congresspeople can consider such radical ideas as de-funding unwanted multibillion dollar fighter jets.

Off again to other tasks.

We need to make bribing Congress illegal again. We need Campaign Finance Reform.

That is the exact root of the problem.

Without reform you’ll never put a dent into defense spending.

The dollar cost of lobbying (unwanted jets & weapon systems, the cost of repairing Wall Street, etc.) needs to be laid out vs. the cost of publicly financed elections.

When discussed as a way to save money (not to mention our democracy) the public will be all for it.

why is it bipartisian, that is th efault of us Democrats.

Force them to cut it by supporting primary candidates who advocate cutting defense.

Somehow the ideas in America’s Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress have got to be made a part of this conversation. I don’t mean this thread per se, but the whole public space dialog about how best the defense establishment can serve our interests without continuing headlong down the path to national insolvency. The book was originally published last summer on a print-to-order basis and for a time was available in its entirety for free download. That stopped once they got a “real” publisher, Stanford University Press. It is a collection of essays by eleven men who were either proteges of the late military reformer and strategist John Boyd, who was the leader of the reform movement of the late 70s and early 80s, or intellectual descendants of Boyd and his circle. The editor (and one of the contributors) is Winslow Wheeler, who AFAIK is not related to Marcy.

What follows are a few paragraphs from the Preface (Apologies for not using the “blockquote” function, but the FDL comment script doesn’t deal well with paragraph and bullet breaks):

The mere notion of a “meltdown” within the U.S. military may seem ridiculous to
many. America’s armed forces are surely the best in the world, perhaps even in history.
Democrats and Republicans, liberals, moderates and conservatives in Washington all
agree on at least that. On what basis does a bunch of lesser known, if not obscure,
analysts make such a preposterous assertion?

The vast majority, perhaps even all, of Congress, the general officer corps of the
armed forces, top management of American defense manufacturers, prominent
members of Washington’s think-tank community and nationally recognized “defense
journalists” will hate this book. They will likely also urge that it be ignored by both
parties in Congress and especially by the new president and his incoming national
security team.

It is not just that following the recommendations of this book will mean the cancellation
of numerous failing, unaffordable and ineffective defense programs, as well
as the jobs, and more importantly careers, those programs enable. The acceptance
of data and analysis presented in this book, and the conclusions and recommendations
that flow from them, would require the elite of Washington’s national security
community to acknowledge the many flaws in their analysis of weapons, Pentagon
management and leadership of the nation in a tumultuous world. In too many cases,
it would also require those elites to admit their own role in the virtual meltdown of
America’s defenses.

Our equipment is the most sophisticated and effective in the world. We easily
whipped one of the largest armies in the Middle East, not once but twice, and we have
now clearly mastered a once difficult and ugly situation in Iraq. Success in Afghanistan
will not be far away, once we devote the proper resources there. Those who take
comfort in the last three sentences are the people who need to read and consider the
contents of this book the most. Reflect on the following:

• America’s defense budget is now larger in inflation adjusted dollars than at
any point since the end of World War II, and yet our Army has fewer combat
brigades than at any point in that period, our Navy has fewer combat ships and
the Air Force has fewer combat aircraft. Our major equipment inventories for
these major forces are older on average than at any point since 1946; in some
cases they are at all-time historical highs in average age.

• The effectiveness of America’s “high-tech” weapons does not compensate for these
reduced numbers. The Air Force’s newest fighter, the F-35, can be regarded as only
a technical failure. The Navy’s newest destroyer cannot protect itself effectively
against aircraft and missiles, and the Army’s newest armored vehicle cannot stand
up against a simple anti-armor rocket that was first designed in the 1940s.

• Despite decades of acquisition reform from Washington’s best minds in Congress,
the Pentagon and the think tanks, cost overruns in weapon systems are
higher today, in inflation adjusted dollars, than any time ever before. Not a single
major weapon system has been delivered on time, on cost and as promised for
performance. The Pentagon refuses to tell Congress and the public exactly how
it spends the hundreds of billions of dollars appropriated to it each year. The
reason for this is simple; it doesn’t know how the money is spent. Technically,
it doesn’t even know if the money is spent. Even President George W. Bush’s
own Office of Management and Budget has labeled the Pentagon as one of the
worst managed agencies of the entire federal government.

• At the start of the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon’s senior
military leadership failed to warn the nation’s civilian leaders of the tremendously
difficult mission they were being asked to perform. Indeed, most of the
military hierarchy did not even comprehend the difficulties of those missions
and misperceived that the key issue was the number of military personnel sent
to invade and then occupy an alien land in the Middle East. And then, many
of them publicly complained that the civilian leadership had made a mess of
things, saying so from the comfort of a retirement pension.

• In Congress and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, there have been acrimonious
hearings and meetings, but no real oversight to appreciate just how and
where programs and policies ran off the tracks. Except for a very, very small
handful, no one has been held accountable. Indeed, it is not even apparent that
anyone in Congress knows how to perform oversight. If they do, they apparently
lack the spine to perform it in a manner Harry Truman, who carried out
superb oversight as a senator during World War II, would call competent.

• Perhaps most damning of all, America has permitted itself, and most leaders
from both political parties have aggressively pursued, a national security
strategy that has torn us apart domestically, isolated us from our allies, made
us an object of disrespect in the eyes of those uncommitted to our cause and
caused our enemies to find motivation for greater action on their own part. In
fact, it is not even clear whether our national leadership understands what an
effective national security strategy is, much less how to put one together and
exercise it effectively.

I don’t know where it stands now, but I recall reading in 2005 the US defense budget was almost equal to all the worlds countries defense budgets combined. It was 8 times larger than China.

True, but even that’s too modest.

Because it’s the Republican’s jobs and stimulus program, it’s the only pork expenditures that Democrats can count on reliably passing. And just watch the Democratic Congresscritters and governors crow in their campaign ads about how many jobs they “saved” by not permitting a base closure or by gaining a new defense contractor’s offices or plant.

And that’s all before you even talk about lobbyists and PACs and the more direct bribes.

We should demand cuts in the defense budget until we have the single largest defense budget in the world.

Versus any other country.

Instead of all of them combined.

Its not quite that much of a gap, since China classifies things like base construction and operating expenses with local infrastructure budgets and other accounting differences, from what I recollect from back when I actually knew followed such things closely – apples to apples, their budget is probably $200 billion to our $750 billion. But as I said above, their budget includes a lot of civil defense (Sichuan earthquake relief was in the military budget, for example). Total manpower, apples-to-apple, isn’t much of a difference – they probably have about 300-400,000 more total personnel than we do, and their population is much bigger than ours.

All told, in terms of raw people, our military is roughly FIVE TIMES larger than China’s per capita. And they’re still diligently cutting down total personnel, while increasingly both their budget (they aim to match their budget increases with GDP growth) and their overseas (Indian Ocean and Southern Pacific) bases. China’s actually a fairly good comparison given that they and us have the only two really large all-volunteer professional militaries, with an emphasis on combat-ready active divisions instead of massive reserve and militia units.

Other countries have much bigger militaries, per capita, such as Russia, the EU and ridiculous places like Vietnam, Iran, Burma, North Korea that each have total armies reportedly larger in absolute terms than the US or China’s. But these are generally conscription- and militia-based models, with consequently much much lower costs per soldier (the EU, collectively, spends a mere $300 billion for roughly 7 to 11 million in uniform, depending on whether you count militia).

So basically, the land of the free, is an extremely militarized society, in both absolute numbers of troops and budget, by world standards.

An actually reasonable proposal would be to cut the US defense budget by 2/3 which would still leave us with the largest in the world by a wide margin. Will never happen, but should.

The Congressional defense dysfunction is fully bipartisan. When Rumsfeld killed the Army’s Crusader 155 mm artillery system (arguably the only intelligent large procurement decision he made) Minnesota’s then-senator Mark Dayton, as skeptical as anyone regarding defense expenditures, saw fit to bloviate about the cancellation would place the country at risk because of the gun’s vital role in America’s future defense needs. Of course it was just coincidence that the ammunition supplier was located in the state.

“Veterans are also in a separate department and therefore not included in DOD.”

Nor should they be.

One big problem in the US is that entire cities (and regions) seem to be dependent on military-welfare. Imagine San Diego without the Navy and Marine Corps, the Mountain and High Plains states without the Air Force, eastern Virginia without the Navy, etc. When the populace of a country becomes this dependent on miltiary spending to fill stomachs, you basically have Brezhnev’s Russia. Altogether, its kind of a scary place to be for a democracy.

They are closing the Navy School a couple of blocks away here in Athens.

Christy LiveChat is upstairs!
SCOTUS: Selecting Justice, A Live Chat With CAC’s Doug Kendall

Nice citation. A lot of defense spending is just pork wrapped in the flag. What gripes me is all these politicians who style themselves as super-patriots spending and wasting vast sums of money on the Pentagon in ways that often degrade our national security.

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How is the view of the ocean from Athens, Georgia?

It’s the Navy Supply Corps School & those guys don’t have much to do with maritime events, anyway. But they must have heard you since the are moving it to Newport, RI.

hehe. I was just going to say… I’d think that naval supply and logistics tend to occur when there is a body of water present, but maybe I’m jusing being my usual clueless self.

President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, famously spoke of the danger of the Military-Industrial complex. Early drafts of the speech purportedly referred to the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex, however his political advisers won the battle to get the third term of the expression removed. Truth-telling, after all, has its downsides.

As for America’s Defense Meltdown, I’ve been spreading the word about it on every comment thread where it’s appropriate. Chapter 7, an evisceration of the air power dogma of the preeminence of strategic bombing by USAF Col. Robert Dilger (Ret.) and Pierre Sprey, is worth the price of the book all by itself.

The contributors to the book are all either retired career officers, retired DoD civil servants, or former staffers of committees or defense-focused Congress critters on the Hill.

Ike said it back in the day. It was true then, it has become a monster today. What? The military industrial complex. The corps that feed on the military. Then we have this great big military, then we need a war. You can’t have something like that without using it.
We have more Aircraft Carriers than the entire rest of the world combined.
We spend more on “defense” than the entire rest of the world combined.

You wonder why the world sees the US as a bully, as a war lover, as an empire builder? Wonder no more. gwb stated back before he became prez that one thing a US prez has to do is start a small war that can be easily won. He was talking about Iraq.

Why do you think thyat the rest of the world hates and fears us? Not only because we have the most tecnological military or the biggest or the most war toys. It is because we are always so eagar to use it. Dem or rethug it does not matter. We built the biggest military in the world for WWII. Then we quickly got rid of it, only to have Korea come up and bite us on the ass 5 years later. Ever since then we have become the most militaristic country in the world, while at the same time we profess that we love peace. We are militaristic and we got tons of war toys that our leaders, since we got rid of the draft, love to play with. After all, only idiots volunteer for the military. The smart guys, the sons of wealth and power, since we dumped the draft we don’t have to care about starting a war. Sure, all of you out there profess to care for the people in military service. Right. Pull the other one. The only thing is that you all feel a little guilt because your sons/daughters don’t have to join. Otherwise you all don’t give a s**t about the military. Really. The rethugs don’t care about the loss of life or the disabled due to wounds, they do care about multimillion $$ weapons systems being built in their districts. Dems are exactly the same. Vets are just a demographic that the pols want to stay on the right side of. Hey, I have spent the last 40 years in and out of VA hospitals, I know how much the US cares about “the troops” The answer. Not very much. The only way to really put a stop to the militazation of the US is to reinstate the draft. With zero exemptions, both men and women when they turn 18 must serve at least 2 years in the military. Only when it becomes “your” kid, and when the kids of wealth and power have to join in will the wars of choice stop. The only way. Vietnam came to an end because the parents of the dead stood up and voted to end it. The kids who protested accomplished nothing. It stopped when the children of wealth and power were put in danger, when the parents of all the small towns had to go to funerals, that is why it stopped.
Now, all the guilt is showing, all the praise for the troops. But that praise means nothing. It took a Dem several years to get a new GI bill passed, the rethugs fought it-but they are always for the troops, no?-the current disability payments from the VA are a joke. But no one tries to raise them. A soldier who spends 20 years and retires can not collect VA disability payments alongside his pension, why? The VA hospital system is not quite as pathetic as it was 15 years ago, but it still is piss poor as VA docs tend to overmedicate rather than attempt to discover the real cause
Here in San Antonio we have a state of the art Rehab center along with apts for family members. The VA did not pay for it. The people of San Antonio, Texas raised the money to build and staff it. The VA should have paid. A C-leg costs $65K. The VA-read the US govt-resisted giving them to Iraq vets until people in the hospitals forced the question.
Most of the time over the last 40 years I have had the impression-along with a very large majority of Vets-that the american people just wished we would all go away. Or die. I go to funerals every day. Most have only family members. Meanwhile, the local Cemetery at Fort Sam Houston, keeps getting bigger and bigger. And unless it is shoved right in your face, you all ignore us. 25,000 + wounded so far. 10 years ago we would have had not 4,000 dead but closer to 20,000 dead. We see the survivors here daily. no legs, 1 arm, burns over most of the body. Young people. These are the results of our military madness. And yet it continues, you say cut the military budget by 2/3. Riiiight. The military industrial complex has a stranglehold on the US. This will continue IMHO until the children of the rich and powerful have as good a chance to die as the poor kids with no other choice do. Only then will things change. Lets have a total draft. Boys and girls. Zero exemptions. No way out. Then and only then will things change. Until then, the poor whites and minorities will continue to bear the burden that those children with money and power will distain. And yes, even now, with all the patriotic fervor in the US, most still look down on soldiers or turn away when a maimed vet walks by. Do you? Try and be truthful. What do you really think of our soldiers? Of their sacrifice? Of their families sacrifice? Really.

http://www.defenselink.mil/spe…..eechid=430

“The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it’s stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.”
- Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, The Pentagon, Monday, September 10, 2001

EU, collectively, spends a mere $300 billion for roughly 7 to 11 million in uniform

7 to 11 million in uniform? Were did you get that number?

Active troops are around 2 million.
Add maybe 150% reserves and you get 5 million.

We could have 100 million in uniform…

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Got a gun? You are in the militia.

Defense spending is not about defense. It is about corruption–coordinated, mutually reinforcing corruption in the uniformed services, in the Congress, in parts of the Civil Service, and in industry. Defense spending feds the machine that does the spending, and many have come to depend on the process.

I’ve read some about Boyd. The “only” thing about his ideas that is radical is the “revolutionary” notion that you start with requirements and THEN move on to force structures, appropriations, contracts, and purchase orders.

A rational defense policy would start by determining our national objectives, identifying risks, calculating cost/benefit ratios, and then deciding what kind of military would best meet the stated requrements. Only then would we look at buying hardware, setting manning levels, keeping or closing bases, and maintaining any given set of units and commands.

It never works this way in America. So runaway defense budgets are inevitable.

Cost containment and cost/benefit analysis only make sense in the context of requirements, of finite problems and determinate solutions. Purposeless spending can’t be contained because there is nothing to judge it against. And we can’t set sensible requirements while we are plugging away at a senseless, pointless pair of wars.

Stopping the wars is the key.

why call it “defense” and when did barney frank become non-prominent?