Cutting the Budget vs. Long Term National Defense

I hate big government. I love aircraft carriers. 

No Cylons in sight

These two at first seem to be rather contradictory: small government, big military. However, I don't yet have to hand over my hat to Aristotle (at least on this anyway). I believe that long term military security is one of the fundamental purposes of a government, but that it can be done better.

The use of military force against a nation, or against a nation's interests, leads inevitable to the infringement of the rights of the citizens of that nation. And the protection of rights is why we have a government in the first place: protect us against each other, protect those who cannot protect themselves (no Obama, that is not "everyone but me"), and protect citizens from non-citizens. 

Any nation which is incapable of defending itself or its legitimate interests is violating the basic contract with its citizens. There are some nations which simply cheat, relying on other nations to protect them and their interests.... *cough* CANADA *cough*, but this only works because someone else is willing to pick up the tab. And usually, that someone else is the US.

But that kind of military spending, the ability to project power and establish superiority in a conflict, is incredibly valuable. There are many people out there who think this kind of military spending is outdated, unneeded in a world where terrorism and regional 3rd world conflicts are the main cause of concern.... but they are wrong, plain and simple.  Major conflicts could easily erupt in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent or, of course, Taiwan. And China is preparing for a 1 vs. 1 conflict with the US, let there be no doubt about it. Most importantly, preparing for the conflict, and being sure that we will win it, is the best way to stop that conflict from happening. Well, other than market liberalization and economic development. 

In my opinion, there are three large chunks to military spending. 

1) Spending on current operations and operational readiness. This is the spending which is because we are on the ground, in the air, on the water, and we need to run the military. In times of war, this spending goes up. Whether you agree with the current wars or not does not really matter. This spending has a basic preparedness level (there has been no "peacetime" for the US military since the 1930's) and then a political motivated component of spending on actual conflict. 

2) Procurement of proven systems. This is pretty damn common. A lot of the basic military hardware just does not change that much. A lot of the nuts and bolts that we use to run the military now are the same nuts and bolts from 30, 40 or even 60+ years ago, depending on the platform and the technology involved. 

3) R&D and new system procurement. This is where the US spends billions of dollars a year trying to come up with new and better systems for the military. A lot of the spending in recent years has been on just that: systems. The military is a beast of technology at this point, and trying to get everyone working together has become a central focus. 

The problem with the way the US military is run is the way money is allocated. We spend too little on operations and basic procurement - many servicemen are forced to go into combat with inferior gear because there is not the money in the budget for improved bulletproof vests or MRAP vehicles. Instead, we throw hundreds of billions of dollars a year down R&D rat holes. 

On his way out the door at the Pentagon, Robert Gates leveled with the military. A staggering $700 billion in defense R&D and gear since 9/11 led to only "relatively modest gains in actual military capability," Gates said on June 2. No giant robots, jet packs or sharks with lasers, this was mostly blown on systems which never worked and platforms where were never going anywhere. Need I remind you, $700 billion is a huge sum of money: it is equivalent to 10 years of military spending in China.

Rank		Country	Military expenditure, 2010[2]	% of GDP, 2009
1		United States	687,105,000,000	4.7%
2		People's Republic of China	114,300,000,000	2.2%
3		France	61,285,000,000	2.5%
4		United Kingdom	57,424,000,000	2.7%
5		Russia	52,586,000,000	4.3%
6		Japan	51,420,000,000	1.0%
7		Germany	46,848,000,000	1.4%
8		Saudi Arabia	42,917,000,000	11.2%
9		Italy	38,198,000,000	1.8%
10		India	34,816,000,000	2.8%

Where the hell does all that money, and possibly $100 billion or more a year on other questionable progras, go? Mostly it is wasted on cost-plus contract with the big defense firms. Delivering years behind schedule and over-budget is simply the norm. And why wouldn't it be, when you are paid for your cost plus a certain percentage. If cars were built that way, it would take $150,000 to put together a Camry. You end up with projects like the $1 trillion procurement for 2,500 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (which, while not bad, are no where near as good for the Air Force as the F-22). 

Or you get the Future Combat Systems for the Army, where we spent $200 billion developing... light electric powered combat vehicles. Long story short, they sucked royally and none ever went into production. Yeah, $200 billion and we ended up getting... pretty much nothing out of it. Alternately, the military could have just bought 200 more B-2s, and that would have pretty much scared the living shit out of anyone else on the planet. 

You should most likely surrender if you see this

The list of shitty projects and cost overruns goes on. The V-22 Osprey entered service in the mid-2000s at more than twice its originally estimated cost while the amphibious Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle was canceled in January due to massive cost overruns. The Navy has canceled its next-generation CG(X) cruiser and limited its acquisition of DDG-1000 (Zumwalt) class destroyers to three ships at a total cost of about $3 billion per ship (and no, the toilets were not gold plated). The smaller Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) has more than doubled in cost, and the lead ship of one of the two LCS classes developed a six-inch crack in its hull during sea trials, which is considered "not good". The Coast Guard’s “Deepwater” fleet overhaul has also encountered numerous technical difficulties and cost overruns, including major cracks in refitted ships that then had to be removed from service.

And don't even get me started on the Air Force tanker program. That one is such a stinker that it has been in and out of court for the past 7 years, until the Air Force gave up and is buying 1/2 from Boeing and 1/2 from EADS/Airbus - which makes no freaking sense at all. 

The problem is that we award these massive development contracts on a cost plus basis to a handful of military contractors. Why do we keep going back to the same inefficient, ineffectual and often questionable contractors? Because the big contracts are approved by Congress - not just the military. So when Lockheed went to build the F-22, they made sure they had sub-contractors in 44 states, even though that turned out to be completely inefficient and costly. The more senators you can buy, the more likely you are to get your program funded. 

So what is to be done? First, the government should impose strict schedule cutoffs and/or cost ceilings at various steps in the development, testing, and production of military hardware that would either automatically cancel the project or require contractors to bear 100 percent of additional costs.

Second, we should spend money on what works. Yes, the couple trillion we have spent in the last 10 years on R&D has produced some results. But at that price, you would be much better off with many, many more of the old platform than a handful of the new. More than that, often times the new is not really much better than the old. 

Finally, instead of focusing on huge and unbelievably complex, we should focus on the cost effective. One of the advantages our enemies have is that of the "Assassin's Mace" or shashoujian. The basic concept is a simple cheap weapon which is capable of taking out a much more expensive, complex one. It is one of the central strategies to China's buildup of its military. We build an incredibly large and expensive blue-water navy (11 carrier groups), they build hundreds of small, cheap, 70's era diesel-electric submarines which can sit in littoral waters and take out carriers. They are developing missiles to take down our satellites, jammers to block our anti-SAM missiles from finding their targets, and fire-and-forget air-to-air missiles which can be loaded onto cheap and plentiful generation 4.5 aircraft (think F-16s, not F-22s) and ballistic and cruise missiles designed to be "carrier killers." Considering that no other nation on earth has more than 1 operational aircraft carrier, I wonder who those missiles are made to target... 

There is no reason that the US can't focus on cost effective also - we just don't. Instead, we spend trillions developing systems which fail and then complain that our military costs too much and all the hardware is getting old.

So, in the end, I believe that the US should be spending heavily on its military. I just don't think we need to be spending stupidly.