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Op-Ed: $402 Billion for What? |
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(Source: defense-aerospace.com; published Feb. 6, 2004)
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by Giovanni de Briganti
PARIS --- Throwing money at a problem in the hope it will go away is a well-known management ploy, and it is what springs to mind when looking at the Pentagon’s $402 billion budget request for fiscal 2005.
The Pentagon’s Feb. 2 budget statement claims these funds will maintain “implementation of the Bush Administration defense strategy and continues the transformation of the U.S. military to ensure that it has the capabilities needed to counter 21st century security threats most effectively and efficiently.”
Assuming that the Bush Administration has a defense strategy other than invading sovereign states on the basis of faulty intelligence, the central problem with the budget statement is that countering “21st century security threats most effectively and efficiently” is a police and counter-intelligence mission, not a military one.
The Sept. 11 terrorists used knives and cutters to hijack the aircraft, while the most effective weapons used against American soldiers in the “War on Terror” are the rocket-propelled grenade and shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles. In the past two years, the biggest disruptions of U.S. public life have been caused by white powder found in envelopes, while the “dirty bomb in a suitcase” is often identified as the greatest potential threat. It is doubtful that $402 billion – or even $4,020 billion – would effectively neutralize such weapons, or defend against such security threats.
Some spending increases are long overdue, however. The Pentagon asks for a 3.5 percent military base pay raise, and plans to increase housing benefits and military health care. This is the least it can do: many US military families are surviving thanks to food stamps, and last March the Pentagon issued a press release noting that “More than ever, average Americans are jumping in to help military families with donated services, money -- and now groceries, through the "Gift of Groceries" program” to military charities. Should career soldiers or called-up reservists have to rely on charity to feed their families?
But many other Pentagon spending programs are flawed. One prime example is the US Air Force plan to lease 100 KC-767 tankers from Boeing – fiercely defended by the Bush Administration for two years, but which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has now discovered was tainted by "wrongdoing" and requires fresh investigation.
Overall, DoD wants to increase FY 05 weapon spending by $42.8 billion – a 45% increase year-on-year. And further increases are planned, bringing weapons spending to $674 billion in FY06 to FY09. How does the Pentagon plan to spend these gigantic amounts of cash? The FY05 budget request gives some clear indications.
A hefty share will go to missile defense, which many reputable scientists believe will be ineffective. And, even if it guaranteed 100% protection, Al Queda or similar terrorist organizations are unlikely to get their hands on an intercontinental ballistic missile. In fact, Libya and Iran, two leading members of Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” have now opened their doors to U.N. inspectors. Pakistan -- recently revealed as the source of proliferation of nuclear and missile technology -- is now a good ally of the US in the “War on Terrors,” so future missile threats should be lower, rather than higher.
Another $4 billion are to be spent on providing new armored vehicles to the Army – the Stryker, originally designed decades ago, which requires extra armor to withstand heavy machine-gun fire – and the Future Combat System that will not be much better suited to future, overseas operations. It is a simple law of physics: if a vehicle is light enough to be air-transportable, it is too light to protect against most battlefield weapons, and vice versa.
Hundreds of billions of dollars will go to develop and procure an entire new generation of combat aircraft, like the F-22, F-18E Super Hornet and Strike Fighter, even though the current force of F-16s and F-15s will retain a qualitative edge over all other air forces for at least a decade or two. By then, the Pentagon hopes to have developed Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (on which it is spending billions) in service, making today’s investments in the F-22/F-18E/JSF generation pointless.
The Pentagon’s shipbuilding plans, and its large investment in communications, intelligence and related systems, are the only ones that make some sense: the former because ships provide autonomously-deployable military force, and the latter because they allow quick, accurate and inexpensive military action.
But does the U.S. Navy need a new generation of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and attack submarines, as well as entire new classes of destroyers and frigates, including a new cruiser with anti-missile capabilities, when the navies of most non-NATO countries are barely capable of operating their fleets of near-obsolete warships? Admittedly, the new generation of diesel-electric submarines being bought by many developing countries is a potential threat, but what good will the Pentagon’s new aircraft carriers or air-defense cruisers do against them?
Transformation has been the Pentagon’s mantra for several years, and has now been taken up by industry, which sticks the “transformational” label on any weapon it can. There are many bigger, better, more capable and more expensive weapons in the FY05 budget, but very few are “transformational,” even in the broadest sense of the word.
In fact, the Pentagon’s widely publicized claims to “Transformation” will, in the final analysis, prove as credible as its past claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, or the cost-effectiveness of the tanker lease.
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