Defense Chief Urges Big Cuts In Military Spending 449
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says the Pentagon is wasting money it will no longer get, and focused on targets as diverse as the large number of generals and admirals, the layers of bureaucracy in the Pentagon, and the cost of military health care. 'The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, opened a gusher of defense spending that nearly doubled the base budget over the last decade,' Gates says. 'Military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny. The gusher has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time.' Gates, a Republican who was carried over as Defense Secretary from the Bush administration, has already canceled or trimmed 30 weapons programs with long-term savings predicted at $330 billion, but is now seeking to convert as much as 3% of spending from 'tail' to 'tooth' — military slang for converting spending from support services to combat forces. While this may not seem like a significant savings in the Pentagon's base budget, cuts of any size are certain to run hard against entrenched constituencies. Gates's critique of top-heavy headquarters overseas was underscored by the location of the speech — the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. President Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander in Europe during World War II, warned the nation of the menacing influence of an emerging 'military-industrial complex' in his farewell address as president in 1960. 'Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals,' said Eisenhower, 'so that security and liberty may prosper together.'"
Woo, maybe I could get a real job (Score:5, Interesting)
Does this mean major cutbacks on corporate welfare and job security clearances for US Persons?
I'd love to get an engineering job outside of the defense/military industrial complex, maybe this will finally make the other jobs on the market relatively more competitive! And maybe I could get to apply some of the mechanical/aerospace skills I learned in college finally?
Corporate welfare through defense spending has been an awfully good way of keeping the educated middle class too busy doing busywork to try to enact any kind of social change. But maybe mass entertainment has finally caught up with keeping those minds preoccupied with inane things.
However, one suggestion for him (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Military healthcare (Score:3, Interesting)
The alternative is that the soldier's enroll their family into a healthcare program and pay for it then? Ok, cool. So they will remove the benefit from the soldier and pay him the value of the lost benefit so he can then pay for healthcare. It's not like it's the whole family, only spouse and children under 18. No parents or other family, just dependants.
Besides, have you been to the military hospital? Trust me, it's cheaper to leave the military healthcare as it is.
Re:Military healthcare (Score:2, Interesting)
Your comment makes me rage. If you were close enough I kick you in the junk so hard your grandchildren would still be feeling it...if you were still capable of having them.
The military is NOT the "largest entitlement program in the country." It's not even fucking CLOSE.
Maybe you should take your ignorant self over to http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258 [cbpp.org] and read the very simple article that breaks out the spending. The U.S. Military budget is about 20%, Social Spending is about 55%!
So no, I'm not kicking you in the junk for slagging the military although that irritates me as well. I'm kicking you in the junk for being ignorant of the real budget numbers.
Should have been done long ago... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Military-Industrial Complex (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, you have made a select group of people very rich and very powerful. Was it worth it?
Well, since they also happen to be the ones in charge of almost everything, I think they'd say yes. The lower classes are too busy drugging up and watching TV, and the middle classes are kept busy with B.S. distractions like "gay marriage" and federal vs state control of abortion. When Bush/Haliburton said "mission accomplished" they meant it literally. Just not the mission the gullible thought it was.
I doubt we'll bring home troops from anywhere (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In the same speech (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sure Obama could figure out how to use an iPod. I'm also sure he's far more intelligent than the majority of Americans -- and judging from the knee-jerk right-wing stupidity of the comments regarding Obama, I think he's probably more intelligent than most of the readers of /. After all, he's the President, and you're goofing off on company time.
But unlike his predecessor, he doesn't seem to be spending most of his time goofing off such that he would HAVE time to learn how to use a trivial device that plays music. Instead, he's got his hands full with, you know, running the country.
Bang For the Buck (Score:3, Interesting)
There will always be terrorists--does that mean that we must always have war? If we do have war, does this mean that we always have to fight in in the quintessential American way--throwing massive amounts of expensive resources at our enemies at an overwhelming rate?
That strategy is great for WWII and for duking it out with the Soviet Army at the Fulda Gap, but it isn't very sensible for a long term war against a loose coalition of poor, ideologically committed killers.
We're spending tens of thousands of dollars per terrorist kill. If we're going to fight terrorists successfully we need to do it on a budget. Our irresponsible spendthrift congresspeople can only see as far as the money that defense industries bring to their regions. Military spending can easily become just welfare for the upper classes. Gates' point about the military being topheavy with generals and admirals is important. The military leadership is committed to propagating itself and will never act to make its command structure more "lean and mean."
We've remained in Iraq and Afghanistan all these years because our military is a $700 hammer and those countries happen to be the nails that our country's warhammer is adapted to. That approach isn't working and we can't afford it forever.
Re:In the same speech (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because it hasn't happened yet in the US does not mean it is not a possibility. It's a continuation of the tension between the state and intellectuals that has been going on forever. To put it another way, it's the tension between those who have power and those who have knowledge.
In the olden days it was royalty and clergy and nowadays its military-industrial and scientific-technological. In both cases the relationship is mostly mutually beneficial (the state's power is derived from the intellectuals and in exchange the intellectuals get benefits such as funding from the state), but there is some antagonism because both wield immense power and often compete for control.
By the way, although it might sound like a great idea to put the modern intellectual group in control (after all they are using science instead of the religion and philosophy of the past), there are some major pitfalls with this idea. A major one is that power would end up being concentrated in the hands of an elite few, the scientific-technological elite Eisenhower mentioned. It would also likely lead to the formation of a formal hierarchical system for scientists, much like the ranks of priests or soldiers. Think of the present day academic system of rank except extended with positions of immense power on the national scale. Another huge problem is the potential for corruption, and particularly intellectual corruption. If the policies of the elite relied on specific ideas, how do you think they might react to opposing ideas? Might they decide to use their power to enforce intellectual orthodoxy? It is up to the elite few at the top to decide such things.
We'll be better off. (Score:2, Interesting)
Contrary to the posts above, our military might has other ramifications outside of defense.
On a similar note; when Britain ceased being a, if not THE World Power in their time, because of the reduced military spending the average British citizen's standard of living went up. (I think I read that in the Economist and I'm too lazy to find the cite.)p/>I for one hope to see the day when we, the USA, are not the World Power.
Re:This is why Obama kept Gates (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a lot easier to find waste in the military. The military knows where it is. The hard thing, is that you can't cut it. It's not because of the normal turf wars, it's because all too often you're legally forbidden to cut it. There are numerous weapon systems that the military doesn't want, yet, they have forced on them. Let me give an example I found last night. Since the late 80s the Air Force wanted to replace the A-10 close air support attack craft. Their first plan was to create a F-16 variant, the A-16 [wikipedia.org]. What happened? In 1990 Congress passed a law mandating that it maintain two wings of the A-10. Why? Well as Ike said, no one knows how to spread the pork around like the Military-Industrial Complex.
So what's going to replace the A-10 now? The F-35, the same plane that was supposed to be "cheap" (especialy compared to the F-22, which last I heard has not been deployed in combat) that's now experiencing huge cost overruns [pbs.org].
Re: Military-Industrial Complex (Score:4, Interesting)
It will be the entitlement programs that bankrupt the U.S.
You refer, of course, to the entitlement programs for the rich and powerful, such as Gates is saying we need to cut out?
We'll go bankrupt because of the unwritten amendment to our constitution that says "The Congress shall make no law that cuts into anyone's profits or share prices."
That and the fact that we've offshored all our industry, so that what passes for an economy these days is just a giant pyramid scheme called "Wall Street".
Re:Military healthcare (Score:3, Interesting)
The military is NOT the "largest entitlement program in the country." It's not even fucking CLOSE.
Maybe you should take your ignorant self over to http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258 [cbpp.org] and read the very simple article that breaks out the spending. The U.S. Military budget is about 20%
Except those numbers are a bit misleading. Why are benefits paid to veterans NOT included in the defense spending part of that chart? That money is certainly part of what we spend on defense. It's just a game to make it sound like less than it really is.
Re:Sad but true (Score:1, Interesting)
Why do you consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan failed wars? Iraq is pretty clearly decisively won, and Afghanistan is still very much in play.
I'm honestly curious. I hear that a lot; but Iraq is
Trim Base Budgets or Base Closure? (Score:2, Interesting)
It would be difficult for the administration to come out and say that they wanted to close bases without being labeled anti-military. However, trimming the "base budget" may not be the only thing that needs to be considered... Have they ever looked at some of the costs associated with operating stateside bases? I wonder what the costs are to operate the bases in Hawaii compared to operating the ones in Florida? Not just facility costs, but associated costs with shipping stuff out there, pay, etc. Same with some bases in California. Granted, congresscritters will have a cow if the military shut down large bases in "their" state.
I'm still trying to figure out some things about the military. For instance, the Air Force should be the aviation specialists, however, each branch has it's own planes. The Military Occupational Specialities cross all the branches: for instance every branch has a cook, admin personnel, police, etc. Why can't money be better spent cross training? Instead of having different cooks dependant upon the base, why not have one branch provide cooks? Or admin? Or intel? Or pilots? That might help clean things up a little. There could also be less bases if there then potentially less budget required.
Re:In the same speech (Score:4, Interesting)
or someone with many years of education, who tries to rely on handed down wisdom from people much smarter than him?
This would be preferable to the former. Unfortunately, in reality it usually denotes someone who receives all of his "wisdom" from a filtered academic environment that is more concerned with making reality fit a particular system than handling it as-is, in all of its shifting complexity. Remember, just about everybody involved in the financial meltdown was college-educated--their models told them there would be no crash.
I don't want either one of those types in charge of things. What happened to the well-rounded individual who used to reside between the extremes and could think for himself?
Gates and the defense contractors (Score:5, Interesting)
While I agree that we're spending too much on some weapons systems... there's absolutely no excuse to pay 7 billion dollars for a DDG-1000 destroyer...Gates is fiercely protective of the biggest, most expensive military boondoggle of all time, the Joint Strike Fighter. He will absolutely tolerate no talk of canceling it.
It was supposed to be the "cheap" supplement to the F-22, much the same way the F-16 was the cheap supplement to the F-15. But now the F-35 costs as much, or possibly even more than the F-22 (CBO estimate: $122 million a copy and climbing), while being a substantially less capable airplane. And this has happened under Gates' watch.
And yet, he balks at buying more Super Hornets for the Navy instead, at what is a bargain price in the fighter world... $45 million apiece. There's no logic here.
I'm as big a hawk as you'll find, but I think the primary problem is with two parties here... defense contractors, and Congress. Congress sees defense as a jobs program, and defense contractors are ripping off the taxpayer. I've come to the reluctant conclusion perhaps we should abandon private suppliers for the military, and go back to in-house supply solutions. For instance, the Navy used to build their own ships in their own shipyards. It was seen as a way to not be too reliant on private yards, and to keep them honest. God knows we need that again. I'm a big capitalist, and all for competition in truly free, private markets. But defense contracting isn't really a free market. You're serving one customer... the government. Maybe it's time to open up our own shipyards again, and revive the old Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia. Maybe that's the only way to put firms like Lockheed on notice that the gravy train is over.
Re:This is why Obama kept Gates (Score:2, Interesting)
And as to F-22, it will not be seeing action in any of these wars. It was not designed for these. These are designed to defend against China.
Try again. It was designed for a war against the Soviet Union, and the Su-27 in particular. We're talking about a plane, whose first flight was in 1990. Also, you're argument is doubly untenably weak since both the F-117 and the B-2 have been deployed against adversaries that lack radar. It's a weapon, that needs to be tested in actual combat conditions. Now is the best time to do that.
All of the studies show that our next major war will be China unless we stay far enough ahead of them that they will chose to not get into it.
Actually, while China is the most likely major state threat, an actual shooting war is just a remote, if not more remote than ever, given the close economic ties between the countries.
Re:In the same speech (Score:2, Interesting)
You're right, that would take some sort of crazy happenstance, like some former has-been politician understanding that his way back into the limelight was to find some fringe ecological theory and spin it up to 'potential catastrophe' proportions.
Of course, he'd need a whole host of political fellow-travelers who would cheerfully manipulate data in all sorts of arcane ways to generate the sort of results he needs. But that's ok, they wouldn't have to be quite as careful as you'd think, since the academics who would be reviewing this arcana are probably going to be sympathetic, and anyone who DOES disagree, well, he could find something to taint them, couldn't he?
He'd probably have to find an institution that would stand behind this data, to give it credibility.
Nah, that's impossible. It would take some sort of collusion of the bulk of the mainstream media to get away with a scam that big; there's no way that journalists would swallow something like that comepletely.... ...is there?
Re:This is why Obama kept Gates (Score:3, Interesting)
I have seen some of his actions lately that seem to show he is making smarter decisions, but that being said, Gates is one of the last people I think we would want in the presidency, much less in the position he is in now. Under his watch since 2006 there have been some of the biggest travesties, both strategically and tactically, that could have been made. He is not only one of the "good ol boys" who basically got into his position because of his tenure at A&M and previous work at CIA (while being heavily involved in the Iran Contra affair), but he is one of what Micheal Scheuer calls the Cold War men. He studies the soviets in school, and Scheuer argues in his book "Marching toward Hell, America and Islam after Iraq" the cold war mindset is one of the key issues with our modern strategic failures.
Let me explain a bit if I may, leaders during the cold war developed a mindset that they have yet to grow out of, in many ways it was an required, but currently among the things they still grasp to and in doing so lose grip on reality are:
a fixation on the nation-state as opposed to international groups,
forgetting the rule by example of soft power and public diplomacy many founders intended,
the use of proxies for war,
a good sense of time (that tactical and precise action should be taken sooner rather than later, the opportunities we had to kill Bin Laden in the 90's for example),
ahistorical thinking - the process in which many leaders who championed war in Afghanistan and Iraq without even being slightly informed on the history and culture of the middle east, where they even to this day continue to view history with some sort of contempt, like they are too good to learn the lessons of the British or Alexander the Great.
The use of exiles and expatriates as a source of information and strategy, when often these same expats havent been in their own countries for over decades. It may have worked in the cold war, but not anymore (cough Chalabi cough).
The mission creep of rebuilding nation-states before a war was even over is also just as ridiculous.
But above all, the fixation with the RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs) that to this day is taught in war schools, but is fundamentally flawed in its replacing of flesh and bone on the ground with technology, making leaders imagine "bloodless" wars that are impossible.
Basically what I'm saying is Gates is exactly the type of leader who got us in the mess we are in in the first place, just because he has a couple of good ideas now doesn't change that.
Re:Military healthcare (Score:4, Interesting)
> Because some people want to ensure a future for their children? Is that really that hard to
> understand?
>
> I'll grant you though that the need to do so may or may not exist today.
No not at all, though, what IS hard to understand, for me, is how anyone, who hasn't had their head in the sand for their entire life, equates signing up to fight whoever congress and/or the president says to fight with ensuring a future for their children.
So far, they have a piss poor track record when it comes to picking the fights that we need to (or even should) fight. So far they have shown absolutely no shame whatsoever when its come to provoking the start of conflicts for political ends (a tradition going back far enough that Lincoln himself was nicknamed "Spotty Lincoln", long before he was president).
Aside from the revolution (which wasn't fought under the current government), the war of 1812, WWI, and WWII, I am having trouble thinking of a conflict that Americans needed to fight to ensure the future for their children.
-Steve
Re:Woo, maybe I could get a real job (Score:3, Interesting)
My complaint is that it says something somewhat rotten about us as a society if the definition of success for a half-decent STEM grad is to join the ranks of the military-industrial complex and live off of tax dollars divided among the constituency.
As for my personal story, I started off in the civil sector doing something very interesting, but a few years after 9/11 our group was dissolved and absorbed by the defense division. I left that company after it looked like that wasn't going to be temporary, and joined yet another defense firm, but at least it was close to home, a lot more efficient, and a lot less Dilbert-esque than the first job.
But long term plan is to put as much distance between me and the regulation-and-politicking-mired DC area as practical. I mean, I know I can't escape politics and gluttonous administrative overhead, but I don't really have to live on the precipice of the seething pit of it.
Someday once I cut the family loose I'd love to go independent and pursue the technical goals that I think are important. But I've got all the cutthroat business acumen of a jelly donut. Mmmmm, donuts...
Re:About time (Score:4, Interesting)
The one the UK is building, the Queen Elizabeth Class is one quarter the tonnage of the Gerald R Ford class of which the US is building three.
The fleet carrier is going the way of the battleship, with more advanced S/VTOL aircraft and increased reliance on UAV/UCAV's smaller, cheaper ships perform the same duties. Much in the same way that guided missile cruisers and Aircraft carriers saw the end of the Battleship, drone armed destroyers and assault (light) carriers will see the end of the fleet carrier.
Throwing money at something will not make it work. The US needs to get out of this mindset. You need more brilliant people having good ideas, like back in the 50's and 60's.
I believe that George W Bush is symptomatic of US governmental problems, he promised to "run the government like a businesses" and that part he did, he ran the government like a business straight into the ground. Governments are fundamentally different to businesses and not readily interchangeable and the US needs to eliminate this mindset.