The New Pentagon Budget

[Joanne98]

By WINSLOW T. WHEELER

The new budget now being trotted out for the Pentagon is a tired old document, bereft of the many significant changes needed to revive our decaying defenses. Worse, the Pentagon's masters and its peanut galleries in Congress, the press, and think tanks opine delusions that anything significant is changing.

Much will be made of a few reluctant acknowledgements of reality and old news painted as noteworthy. The Navy won't plan on, for now, a new cruiser it can't afford even under the wildest budget growth assumptions. The Army will continue redesigning the vehicles for its "system of system" target hunting technologies that we now know can't find even primitive enemies. The Air Force will press on for a new bomber to try, yet again, to attack what it called decades ago "critical nodes." The Marine Corps will declare a return to its amphibious warfare heritage: to fight its way onto hostile shores - something it has not done since 1945.

The new spending level for the Pentagon reinforces the non-change. At $708 billion, we will witness yet another year of "real growth:" a trajectory we have been on since 1999. As usual, we will be told that the increases are because we live in a dangerous world, as evidenced by the continuing, if not expanding, wars President Obama wants to fight directly or indirectly in at least five countries. We will also be told of the "austere" nature of the Pentagon budget for its spending back home; although it is the largest DOD money plan since 1946.

A dangerous world it may be, but significantly less so than the one we saw in the Cold War when we faced hundreds of Soviet divisions in Europe and tried to address unending brushfire - or worse -- wars all over the world, least some new communist regime tip the scales of perceived balance against us. The relative calm we witness today, nonetheless results in an American defense budget that is today about $200 billion higher than the average Pentagon Cold War budget.

A new report from the Congressional Research Service now tells us that the Bush/Obama wars have cost just over $1 Trillion, but that is just 19 percent of the $5.3 Trillion spent by the Pentagon in the same period. The conflicts that impel the growth in the budget actually comprise only a fifth of its size.

Excluding the cost of the wars, the "base" Pentagon budget has also gone up dramatically: 25 percent, or over another Trillion dollars. What we have gotten for that huge increase illuminates the disturbing nature of our decay. The Navy and Air Force are both smaller and equipped with major hardware that is, on average, older than at any point since the end of World War II. The Army and Marine Corps have seen increases to a few combat formations but are only marginally above their post-World War II lows. A gargantuan increase in spending has brought forth major decay in two military services and insignificant up-ticks in two others.

Where did the added money go? According to the Government Accountability Office almost $300 billion went into mismanagement in the form of cost overruns for hardware. (Expect a new GAO report this spring finding the cost overruns have grown.) Much of the rest of the money for acquisition went into "successful" hardware programs that were so much more expensive to buy and maintain than what they were replacing that we literally shrunk the force with more money, while simultaneously spending more to support this new equipment at lower operating and training levels.

Continued>>>
http://www.counterpunch.org/wheeler01292010.html

[Kolesar]

1. Weapons makers funding Congressional elections is the real problem

Congress members are too uninformed to make proper decisions about where money/resources should be allocated. The "defense contractors" fund their campaigns in return for votes for ridiculous weapons systems.

Many of the "spy satellites" are not needed. They are a horribly expensive item in the CIA budget*.

*and other "intelligence services" outside of the Pentagon like NSA, etc.

[ronatchig]

2. Redirection of DOD budget

is the preeminent issue of our time. The funding of american infrastructure, education, health care
and basic research have been decimated by the money pit with 5 sides.

Sadly,the rest of society is now on the block to feed this racket.

[hay rick]

3. Bloated defense budget in a time of economic decline.

The lack of critical public discussion of our defense expenditures and their relationship to what we need, what we can afford, what we get for our expenditures, and what other countries spend on defense- is a marker of a deeply dysfunctional society.

Another good article, which describes and puts our military spending in perspective here: http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending

[classysassy]

4. Our security

the buzz word,what a crock of crap.The weapon systems we buy are a joke,we can't or want use them so why spend our tax money on toys for the generals and big bucks for the contractors,its sheer madness.?