Let us first dispel the official claim, blithely recited by most news reports, that this budget amounts to $439.3 billion—in itself a staggering sum, but by any proper measure, it really totals $513 billion, and, if looked at from a certain angle, it comes to over $580 billion.
[...]The DoD budget for fiscal year 2007 is indeed $439.3 billion (though more about that computation in a moment). But look at the Office of Management and Budget's "Analytical Perspectives" documents, specifically Table 27-1, "Budget Authority and Outlays by Function, Category and Program." The category called "National Defense" includes not only the Defense Department's budget but also the "defense activities" of the Department of Energy (mainly nuclear warheads and the national weapons labs, totaling $16 billion) and several other federal agencies ($4.4 billion), as well as $3.3 billion in various "mandatory" programs (mainly accrual payments to the military retirement fund).
Add them up, and you reach $463 billion.
But that's not all. The OMB analysts also include the $50 billion that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says he will request in "supplemental" funds for FY 2007, sometime this year, to cover anticipated expenses of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That brings the total to $513 billion.
And there's more. The Pentagon also announced Monday that it would ask Congress for $70 billion as a supplemental to fund war costs for the rest of FY 2006 (which lasts until this coming October). Strictly speaking, this $70 billion doesn't count in a toting up of military appropriations for FY 2007. But if you view the whole budget package simply as a request for more new money, whether for next year or slipped in through the back door of this year, then that takes us to $583 billion.
Then he goes on to detail some of the more ridiculous programs that we're funding. Although I don't know his point of view, I'm surely not saying that we won't need newer weapons in the future. The issue is whether we need them now. For example:
The CVN-21 aircraft carrier ($1.1 billion) and the DD(X) destroyer ($3.4 billion). What's the rush? We have 12 aircraft-carrier strike groups (the carrier and its escort combat ships), capable of projecting power worldwide. The CVN-21, which has been in development for several years, will replace the USS Enterprise, scheduled for retirement eight years from now. The $1.1 billion to be allocated next year covers only a fraction of the ship's total cost (about $12 billion). Some of that money is also earmarked for two more carriers. Do we need 12? 11? 10? The United States has twice as many carriers, with five times the deck space, as the rest of the world's navies combined. (China, whose global ambitions several military analysts fear, has one aircraft carrier, and it's a stretch to call it that.)
Keep in mind that naval ships carry not only the price tag for their initial outlay for construction, but a substantial annual operation fee. Aircraft carriers cost about a billion dollars a year to operate. Apiece.
And for the piece de resistance: the missile defense system.
Missile Defense ($10.4 billion). Tests keep failing (or they're designed to be so easy, or the standards of "success" are so meager, that failure is nearly impossible). There's no concept yet of a "system architecture." Many scientific panels have questioned missile defense's feasibility. The Pentagon's own testing office has reported that no element of the complex program is anywhere near "operational." (For details, click here.) Yet Bush and Rumsfeld treat it as if the system is a reality. It receives more money by far than any other weapons program. The request for FY07 amounts to twice as much money as the stepped-up funding for special-operations forces and $1 billion more than the Marine Corps' entire personnel budget.
And his last sentence is exactly how we need to be thinking about defense budget expenditures.
Someone who looked just at the dollars might think that the one sub was more vital to security than all those drones and smart bombs. No one who looked at the specific programs (except maybe a Navy submarine captain) would believe that for a minute. The point is, it's time to take a more tangible approach to the entire defense budget, line by line—to assess military security not according to how much we spend but what we buy.
Exactly.
3 comments:
And this while at the same time I read we're cutting back on the number of active and reserve divisions? Correct me if I'm wrong, but how exactly will a non-function yet highly expensive missile defense system protects our soldiers from getting blown up in their Hummers in Iraq? How exactly does that prepare us for assymetric battlefield engagements of the future? How exactly does that deter Iran or North Korea or anybody else from getting nukes? What the hell are they planning for up there? If you ask me it sounds like we're getting ready for another Pacific campaign against the Japanese, space warfare, or battles with robots!
Well that's pretty much the point. Our military is basically deciding what its own future is going to be, so much so that Don Rumsfeld has met total defeat in his "total transformation" efforts. Fred Kaplan wrote about that recently too.
Well, I wrote about Rummy's defense plan jokingly ("Multiple Wargasms",because thats how I express outrage,via snark) but really its not a funny matter, his expectations of projected troop levels are absurd.
I had no idea that it cost that much to operate these carriers. We often look at initial costs (well, lets face it, nobody looks much at that either)But the maintenance, fuel, staffing... one wonders why we need to do it.
Post a Comment