Matthew Yglesias » Public Opinion on Defense Spending

Nov 21st, 2008 at 9:29 am

Public Opinion on Defense Spending

Chris Bowers has an interesting post on growing public willingness to reduce defense spending that really needs a chart to summarize Gallup’s polling on the question. They’ve asked each February for a number of years how people feel about the Pentagon budget:

As Chris says, it’s interesting to see that the public was in a pretty strongly militaristic mood before 9/11, back in February of 2001. That helps explain some of the reaction.

Beyond that, insofar as people want to use this data to urge politicians to show some sense on defense spending, I applaud their efforts. But I would also caution that this is one of many issues where I think the polling is pretty much irrelevant. The Bush administration has overseen a stead defense buildup throughout its term in office, and public opinion has been nominally hostile to this since at least February of 2003 and it would be hard to argue that they’ve paid a price for it. This is just simply the sort of thing that’s not a voting issue to anyone. Or, rather, defense spending surely is a voting (and campaign contributing) issue to people who make their living on defense contracts. Meanwhile, no matter how much Obama spends on defense, it’s inevitable that the GOP will criticize him for not spending enough. And that alone should guarantee that the “too little” numbers will tick back up in the direction of at least 30 percent.

The serious point, politically, would be that on this issue — like many others — politicians actually have an enormous amount of leeway. A decision to pare back the defense budget would meet a lot of criticism, but the public seems perfectly open to it. And at the end of the day, an administration is going to be judged on its results, not on what people thought of the FY 2010 budget back in 2009.

Comments
45

Filed under: Budget, National Security, Public Opinion

45 Responses to “Public Opinion on Defense Spending”

Preston Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 9:34 am
In 2000 and 2001 Bush and the GOP had been talking up how Clinton had let the military go to seed.
Joel Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 9:50 am
“Meanwhile, no matter how much Obama spends on defense, it’s inevitable that the GOP will criticize him for not spending enough.”

This should motivate the Obama administration to do whatever they think best: they’ll be criticized either way. Not sure that’s how it works, though.
Don Williams Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 10:02 am
1) Part of the problem is that the News Media goes out of its way to mislead the American public about the true level and costs of defense spending.

2) I bet if you polled the average citizens, 95 percent of them would think that we spend the same as the Russians and Chinese. They have NO idea how high US defense spending is because no one tells them!! You need Ross Perot to come back on TV with his colored charts. The 4 foot high graph is the Pentagon — the two inch high graphs is everyone else.

3) There is a bright side however. The New York Times –which, in my opinion, is dedicated to lying to America — is heading down the toilet.

Its stock was around $48 per share back in 2002 when Judith Miller was telling us about Saddam’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Yesterday, Times stock was around $5 per share — and they cut their dividend by 74 percent.

See http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=NYT#chart1:symbol=nyt;range=5y;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined

I can’t wait until it crashes –so I can piss on the fucking ashes.
yoyo Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 10:04 am
Perhaps in the 90s defense actions were generally seen as good things, where as now our imperialism is quite a lot less successful, so americans want less ‘defense’
Charlie Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 10:16 am
A dramatic reduction in defense spending and the size of the military would have three benefits. 1) It would free up money for health care and other needed social projects. 2) It would force other countries to assume a greater share of their own defense. They would have to assess threats and respond accordingly. If they did not increase their defense expenditures and forces, one could conclude they did not share our perception of threats. 3) It should force greater prudence and thoughtfulness in the use of our forces. We would not charge off willy nilly as we did in Irag and threaten to do so in Iran. We would rely on diplomacy more, and would try to create coalitions when we had to sue force.
CParis Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 10:24 am
The increase in support for reducing defense spending has tracked with the increased awareness among the taxpaying public of how much money is being stolen through crony no-bid “reconstruction” contracts.
Once people realized the $billions awarded to HalliburtonKBR and their Iraqi shills were going into Cayman Island accounts instead of actual projects or troop support, they decided it was time to stop funding the gravy train.
FearItself Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 10:27 am
Interesting that they do this poll in February. I think the poll would give a more accurate read on public attitudes if it were not conducted so soon after a major yearly Presidential address to the nation (either inagurual or state of the union) devoted largely to Federal spending priorities.
Argus Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 10:31 am
And your plan to deal with the massive layoffs in the defense sector? Many of which are union jobs. Perhaps another bailout? Think this thing through.
Becca Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 11:01 am
Even McCain and Lindsay Graham spoke of cutting the DoD budget pre-Palin. And there are many ways to cut the budget without laying off thousands of workers- that’s how bloated the budget is.
Steve LaBonne Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 11:09 am
And there are many ways to cut the budget without laying off thousands of workers- that’s how bloated the budget is.

Regardless, expect that to become a major wingnut talking point if and when serious defense cuts finally make it to the table. Irony died long ago in the wingnutosphere, if indeed it ever lived.
zic Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 11:12 am
Okay, there are untold billions gone missing in Iraq, and we’re not spending too much on defense?

I can’t remember the number, but $42 or was it %47 billion spent on spying last year? How much was to listen to US service members calls home? And we’re not spending too on defense spending?

When Obama talked about the line-by-line review of spending, my heart soared, and I hoped he meant the defense budget, where Cheney and his fat-cat friends at companies like Blackwater, GE, etc., have had an open door into the tax-payer pocket. I cannot help feeling the continued economic panic gives them cover to shift their ill-gotten gains from defense companies to other places for the investigations that may come.

Yes, we spend too much on the arts of war, and not enough on the necessities of living. People need health care, they need health food, they need education. We need clean water, air, and fertile soil. These are as important to our security as 50-caliber machine guns and listening to cell phone conversations.
Kolohe Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 11:28 am
I’m in favor of cutting defense spending even though it’s my current employer. And just by cutting out Iraq, you eliminate close to 200B a year off the top.

It’s easy for me to say this, because I don’t think I’ll be personally affected. Also, you won’t have much sucess. Among the obstacles to cutting defense spending is what @9. Argus said – at least for the navy, there’s a lot of big contracts (in procurement, operations, and repairs) in blue states that provide a lot union jobs. Also, there’s the fact that Obama wants to raise the army and marine corps by about 90K people – so any cuts are almost necessarily going to be in navy & air force procurement and operations. With Virginia (navy) and Colorado (air force) being blue states ‘on the bubble’ – in the NCAA tourney sense – cutters have their work cut out for them. You could put FL and NH(esp w/ frosh senator) in this ‘bubble blue’ as well. (and among the more reliably blue, there’s HI with new appropriations chair Inoye, California with two pretty powerful senators, Conn with Dodd)

It’s also sorta ironic that a certain person calls for anti-Neo-Hooverism, but decreased defense spending, when Hoover probably decreased defense spending (toward the bottom of the page), while Roosevelt of course, raised defense spending – eventually to the point where we finally ended the depression.
Greg Scoblete Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 11:45 am
I would caution Democrats that any effort to make a headlong charge at the defense budget absent a broader critique of America’s international responsibilities is going to run aground fast.

The defense budget is symptomatic of a larger issue – America’s international responsibilities and self-described interests around the world. You can attempt to cut the budget all you want (and good luck with that) but doing so in the absence of a coherent and well-articulated strategy to delegate more responsibilities to allies (or a professed willingness to accept more short-term instability in certain regions of the world) is going to look scatter-shot and irresponsible.
Don Williams Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 11:58 am
1) There are probably some very good defense programs that should continue to receive funding–although this requires indepth analysis of tradeoffs.

2) TSAT, for example. The program to set up a constellation of geo-synch relay satellites with high-bandwidth laser crosslinks (not much dispersion in space vacuum) which can carry a huge amount of info –far more than our current microwave architecture.

That big increase in comms lets you handle video uplinks from lots more Predators (Predators can NOT transmit very far line-of-sight to ground stations because of earth curvature.)

Increased comms also lets spies in the Islamic world send uplinks to low earth orbit sats which can’t be detected/triangulated by Third World security forces. First requirement of the Humint spy biz is secure, undetectable comms.

Greatly increased comms lets you keep a closer eye on everyone in ways I don’t care to describe and it lets your overseas commanders get rich, indepth info on what’s in their areas of interest.

If you need to fight, you have sight and the enemy is blind — which is a nice way to fight.

Plus, if you are sending in stealth bombers to blow the shit out of something Iranian (or Chinese, heh heh ) , you don’t want the bombers emitting radar pulses –defeats whole purpose. You want something very high overhead (beyond reach) emitting the radar pulses and then downlinking the screen info to the stealth bombers who can simply listen –not emit.

Point is, to discuss this defense planning intelligently, you need smart people with indepth technical knowledge of the systems and strategies who also are not trying to con you.

Good luck finding them.
robert aylward Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 12:06 pm
What the polling data reflect is a perception that we don’t get value equal to the expenditures. Nobody can accurately assess the right defense expenditures in absolute terms. What is enough? Enough is the amount necessary to protect us from attack, to vanquish those who attack us, and to deter those who would attack us in the future. By that measure, we have been spending too little, for we did not prevent the 9/11 attack, we have not vanquished those who attacked us notwithstanding a trillion dollars of expenditures in an effort to do so, and most believe we will be attacked again by the same enemy. My point is that you cannot measure “enough” in absolute terms, but rather in results. We aren’t getting the results desired because our defense spending is highly inefficient, as we continue to spend on defense systems that are in appropriate for today’s threats. Obama plans to reassess our defense spending in light of today’s threats. Good. But who exactly will make the assessment for tomorrow’s threats.
Don Williams Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Re Greg Scoblete’s comment “any effort to make a headlong charge at the defense budget absent a broader critique of America’s international responsibilities is going to run aground fast.”
————-
I concur. But you need to distinguish between “national interests” that are just some Rich Man’s investment from REAL national interests.

The Oil Business is destroying the United States. They have asshole puppets like George Bush and Cheney spending close to $38 on military operations for every gallon of gasoline we get from the Middle East. That’s stupid and it’s bankrupting us. What’s worse, It’s consumption that has to be renewed year after year or else the Bush economy collapses. There are fucking heroin dealers with better ethics.

In the meantime, Bush/Cheney spent NOTHING of INVESTMENT in finding new energy sources. On INVESTMENT that would yield a profit for years to come.

But you can’t do rational analysis when your national discourse is totally controlled by a pack of lying shitheads in the News Media and a pack of lying whores in the US COngress who only care about where their next $100,000 campaign donation is coming from.
cdc Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 12:23 pm
@9 –

And your plan to deal with the massive layoffs in the defense sector? Many of which are union jobs. Perhaps another bailout? Think this thing through.

So let’s transition a portion of that massive government spending to buying stuff that we actually want – really fancy high-speed trains, better power plants, or whatever. The defense contractors and the smart people that work for them can follow the money. If this priority shift happens at the typically glacial government pace, this transition to building new, less deadly toys might not even be very painful.
El Cid Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 1:02 pm
This reminds me of the peace dividend we got from the fall of the Soviet Union, when Bush Sr. approved moves to decommission older and useless bases etc. to save some funds, and when Clinton followed him and continued the same, the lunatic right wing once again worked hard to destroy this country by screaming for a decade about how Bill Clinton destroyed the U.S. military, when then of course manly soldier George Bush Jr. rebuilt and everyone was happy ever after The End.

Also, conservatives are for smaller government and controlling government spending.
Richard Cownie Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
“it would be a bad idea to cut defense spending too drastically too fast.”

Up to a point. Cutting anything quickly causes disruption and
inefficiency. However, the effect of a recession is to cause
a lot of businesses and state/local governments to make quick
and drastic cuts. If you can avoid that by taking $150B of
the Pentagon budget and spending it on more cost-effective
stimulus measures – aid to state governments, food stamps,
unemployment benefits, GDP-enhancing infrastructure spending -
then I for one would view that as a good thing. Military
spending is not a very efficient stimulus, and why should the
military sector be shielded from the pain that the rest of the
economy is suffering ?

In particular, I think it’s misleading to compare the effects
of WW2 defense spending with the current situation. Back
then the military took a huge number of people, out of a
much smaller population, and put them to work. With the modern
military and defense industries, the number of people involved
is a much smaller proportion of the total (the uniform military is only 1.2M out of total population of 300M – back
in WW2 it was 7M+). And war production for the mass armies
of WW2 was a big deal too, in a way that current military stuff just isn’t: the civilian economy is much much bigger,
and the military is much much smaller. To take a quick example, you could buy an SUV for each of the 1.2M people
in the military, and it wouldn’t cure GM’s overcapacity.

From an economic standpoint, military spending is a terrible way to do stimulus these days. Though I realize the politics
of defense cuts are very difficult to manage, especially for
industries in the swing states.
Mixner Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 1:19 pm
But I would also caution that this is one of many issues where I think the polling is pretty much irrelevant.

Yes. The chart most likely reflects opposition to the Iraq War, not to defense spending in general. I doubt most people have any better idea of how much we spend on defense than of how much we spend on foreign aid. Obama won the election on a platform that included an increase in military personnel that the CBO estimates will cost more than $100 billion over five years, plus additional unspecified spending increases on equipment and training.
Just Dropping By Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 2:14 pm
To take a quick example, you could buy an SUV for each of the 1.2M people in the military, and it wouldn’t cure GM’s overcapacity.

Don’t give them ideas!
El Cid Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 2:28 pm
The previous maximum in the actual data linked showed an even higher peak of poll respondents saying “Too Much” military spending in January of 1990 (50%).

This particular question was apparently only asked in (or data only presented for) 1990, 1993, then 1998 and 1999.

By 1993 the percentage responding “Too Much” had dropped to 42%.
Duncan Kinder Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Serious defense experts are now advocating the military be reconfigured to work better at only a fraction of its present cost.

Read America’s Defense Meltdown

Blurb:

Executive Summary:
Chapter Summaries and Recommendations

Chapter 1

Introduction and Historic Overview: The Overburden of America’s Outdated Defenses

Lt. Col. John Sayen (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.)

Our military forces have become high-cost dinosaurs that are insufficiently lethal against most of the enemies we are likely to face. Our forces have also broken free of their constitutional controls to the point where they have essentially become a presidential military. Congress exerts meaningful control neither in peacetime nor in wartime – and has lost all control over going to war. The large peacetime standing army established just before World War II (and maintained ever since) has become a vehicle for misuse by presidents, and multiple other parties both internal and external to the Pentagon.

The large standing forces were supposed to facilitate professional preparation for war, but the essential officer corps never truly professionalized itself. Thus, we were almost invariably unprepared, in mind set and in doctrine, for the conflicts we faced. In both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam, America hurriedly threw together unprofessionally led armies to fight – too often ineffectively. The result, especially today, has been notably mediocre senior military leadership – with only the rarest exceptions. At the same time, our armed forces have become ruinously expensive, as they simultaneously shrink, age, and become remarkably less capable. In Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, the Army and Marine Corps have been stretched to the limits of their strength to fight enemies not even a tenth as numerous as those they faced in Vietnam. We have become a pampered, sluggish, weak-muscled elephant that can not even deal effectively with mice.

Chapter 2

Shattering Illusions: A National Security Strategy for 2009 – 2017

Col. Chet Richards (U.S. Air Force, ret.)

Decisions by the last two Democratic and Republican administrations have left the country deeply in debt, depleted our military strength, lowered our national standard of living, and strengthened those around the world whose goals conflict with ours. Much of this can be traced to the initially politically-popular use of military force to attempt to solve problems that are inherently social, economic or political and therefore do not admit of military solutions. Chief among the examples are Iraq and Afghanistan, where the initial successes against third-rate military opponents have dragged on into separate occupations of a bewildering array of religious, political, and ethnic groups, few of which wish to be dominated by Americans. The solution requires the next administration to explicitly restrict the use of our military forces to those problems that only military forces can solve and that the nation can rally to, and to eschew the use of our forces to serve hubris, propaganda, or dogma.

The advent of nuclear weapons has limited the utility of military force against other major powers: there will be no replays of World War II. For smaller conflicts, history has shown that military occupations of developing countries or alien cultures will be expensive and very unlikely to succeed. Furthermore, the continuing epidemics of crime and political instability in areas where force was initially successful, as in the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East, show that the West still has no solution to the problem of rebuilding destroyed states.

Recommendations:

The new president needs to

* formally assess the policy objectives for which military force still has utility in today’s world, and
* propose a program of revamping our force sizes and missions, shaped by the essential requirement to act in concert with America’s national ethic and our allies on each of those missions.

In parallel with this presidential revamping, Congress and the president need to

* fundamentally change the preparation and presentation of intelligence so that misuse of force based on false pretext becomes far more difficult, and
* dramatically strengthen regulation of private contractors in the public sector, particularly in the military and intelligence services.

Chapter 3

Leading the Human Dimension Out of a Legacy of Failure

Col. G.I. Wilson (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.) and Maj. Donald Vandergriff (U.S. Army, ret.)

Institutional failures pervade the current management of military men and women, by far our most important defense resource. The end of the Cold War necessitated fundamental change, yet we remain hobbled by an archaic and dysfunctional personnel system in each of the active military services and their all-important reserves. That archaic system fails to recognize and benefit from the new realities of leading human resources in the 21st century. Without fundamental changes in how we nurture and lead our people, there can be no real military reform.

The military’s legacy system is built on flawed constructs: a centralized “beer-can” personnel system, lack of imagination in nurturing leaders, and faulty assumptions about human beings and warfare itself. This concoction is worsened by ingrained behaviors: adversity to risk, preference for the status quo and “group think,” preoccupation with bureaucratic “turf battles,” and valuing contracts above winning wars.

Recommendations:

* The fundamental reform requirement is to learn to lead people first and manage things second. Instead, today we administer people as a subset of managing things.
* The primary route to valuing people is to learn to nurture highly innovative, unshakably ethical thinkers. Sadly, in today’s armed forces such people, those who lead by virtue of their courage, creativity, boldness, vision, honesty and sometimes irreverence, are known as mavericks. The military services must learn it is admirable to disagree with, change, and improve the institution the individual serves and remains loyal to. Such change-seeking individuals are the ones who best adapt and prevail in humankind’s most stressful circumstance: war. They are the war-winning leaders.

Specific recommendations for bringing such people and such values to the fore are articulated in the chapter.

Chapter 4

Maneuver Forces: The Army and Marine Corps after Iraq

Col. Douglas Macgregor (U.S. Army, ret.) and Col. G.I. Wilson (U.S. Marine Corps, ret.)

Today’s Army and Marine warfighting structures have reached block obsolescence. The strategic conditions that created them no longer exist. The problematic structures are characterized by antiquated, inappropriate World War II-style organizations for combat, inventories of aging and broken equipment thanks to unaffordable and mismanaged modernization programs, heavy operational dependence on large, fixed foreign bases, disjointed unit rotational and readiness policies, and a very troubling exodus of young talent out of the ground combat formations.

Compensating for these deficiencies by binding ground forces more tightly within “networked” systems, such as the Army’s misguided Future Combat Systems, does not work and is prohibitively expensive.

Reform lies in changes that promise both huge dollar savings and powerful synergies with proven – not hypothetical – technologies and concepts fielded by the air and naval services. This means a laser-like focus on people, ideas, and things in that order.

Recommendations:

* Because defined, continuous fronts on the hypothetical World War II model do not exist today and because ubiquitous strike capabilities and proliferating weapons of mass destruction make the concentration of ground forces very dangerous, mobile dispersed warfare is the dominant form of combat we must be prepared to conduct.
* Needed organizational change means new, integrated, more fundamentally “joint” command and control structures for the nation’s ground maneuver forces. This approach expands the nation’s range of strategic options in modern warfare operations against a spectrum of opponents with both conventional and unconventional capabilities.
* Because Marines are now much more likely to conduct Army-like operations far from the sea than they are to re-enact Inchon-style amphibious landings, it is time to harmonize Army and Marine deployments within a predictable joint rotational readiness schedule.
* The authors focus on ways to reorient thinking, organization, and modernization in the ground maneuver force to:

* reshape today’s force for new strategic conditions (mobile dispersed warfare);
* exploit new technology, new operational concepts, new organizations, and new approaches to readiness, training and leadership; and
* fundamental reorganization and reform.

The authors do not pretend that the changes outlined in the chapter will gain easy acceptance. New strategies, tactics and technologies promising more victories and fewer casualties are typically viewed as threatening by general officers and senior civilians who are comfortable with the status quo.

Chapter 5

A Traveler’s Perspective on Third and Fourth Generation War

William S. Lind

While the United States Marine Corps espouses a doctrine of Third Generation (maneuver) War, it is organized and mentally prepared only for Second Generation (attrition) Warfare. The chapter proposes an alternative structure that reflects Third Generation doctrine.

Recommendations:

* Most Marines should again become “trigger pullers.”
* The size of the officer corps above company grades should be drastically reduced.
* A “regimental” system – based on the battalion – would provide mentally and morally cohesive units through unprecedented personnel stability.
* Reserve units should become as capable as active-duty battalions.
* Marines need to convert from line infantry to highly mentally and physically agile, true light (”Jaeger”) infantry.
* Marine aviation should be restructured and re-equipped to reflect the “Jaeger Air” close air support concept with far less costly and inestimably more effective task-designed, single purpose aircraft.

The chapter concludes with a brief look at Fourth Generation War concepts, for which the proposed Marine Corps force structure would also be suitable.

Chapter 6

The Navy

William S. Lind

America’s geography dictates that it must remain a maritime power, but today’s U.S. Navy remains structured to fight the aircraft carrier navy of Imperial Japan. Reform can only proceed from a fundamental understanding that people are most important, ideas come second, and hardware, including ships, is only third.

Recommendations:

* The main personnel deficiency of the Navy is an officer corps dominated by technicians. That reinforces the Navy’s Second Generation institutional culture. Reform requires adopting a Third Generation culture and putting the engineers back in the engine room.
* Fourth Generation War demands the Navy shift its focus from Mahanian battles for sea control to controlling coastal and inland waters in places where the state is disintegrating.
* Submarines are today’s capital ships, and the U.S. Navy must remain a dominant submarine force while exploring alternative submarine designs.
* Aircraft carriers remain useful “big boxes.” However, they should be decoupled from standardized air wings and thought of as general purpose carriers, transporting whatever is useful in a specific crisis or conflict.
* The Navy should acquire an aircraft similar to the Air Force’s A-10 so it can begin to effectively support troops on the ground.
* Cruisers, destroyers and frigates are obsolescent as warship types and should be retired; their functions assumed by small carriers or converted merchant ships.
* The Navy should build a new flotilla of small warships suited to green and brown waters and deployable as self-sustaining “packages” in Fourth Generation conflicts. (The Navy’s current “Littoral Combat Ship” is an apparently failed attempt at this design.)

Chapter 7

Reversing the Decay of American Air Power

Col. Robert Dilger (U.S. Air Force, ret.) and Pierre M. Sprey

The Air Force’s resource allocations and tactical/strategic decisions from the 1930s until today have been dominated by airpower theoretician Giulio Douhet’s 1921 assertion that strategic bombardment of an enemy’s heartland can win wars independently of ground forces.

The authors’ analysis of combat results and spending since 1936 shows the unchanging dominance of that strategic bombardment paradigm has caused the Air Force to:

a) leave close air support capabilities, which have proven far more effective than strategic bombing in determining the outcome of conflicts, essentially unfunded over the last 70 years;

b) habitually underfund effective air-to-air capabilities; and

c) engender serious U.S. military setbacks and unnecessary loss of American lives in each modern conflict America has fought.

The actual combat results of strategic bombardment campaigns in each conflict since 1936 show a consistent pattern of failure to accomplish the assigned military objectives – and often, no noticeable military results at all. Supporting these bombardment campaigns always entailed very high budget costs, far higher than the costs of close support or air-to-air. There were also consistently high losses of aircrew lives in pursuing strategic bombardment – far higher than the losses in close support or air-to-air. In every theater with sustained air opposition, neither strategic bombardment nor close support proved possible without large forces of air-to-air fighters.

Wherever we mounted significant close support efforts (invariably opposed by bombardment-minded senior Air Force leaders) in mobile battle situations-no matter whether we were retreating or advancing-the military gains proved to be remarkable, out of all proportion to the resources expended.

The implications of the last 70 years of combat results for future Air Force aircraft procurement are not hard to grasp.

Recommendations:

* First and foremost, we must abandon a business-as-usual procurement process hopelessly centered on aircraft specifically designed for-or compromised for – strategic bombardment.
* For the first time in U.S. history, we need to provide in peacetime for real, single-purpose close air support forces of substantial size. The only aircraft to succeed in real world close support have been ones that are highly maneuverable at slow speeds and highly resistant to anti-aircraft artillery impacts. High speed jets have consistently failed in close support.
* We must provide adequate air-to-air fighter forces to make close support (and perhaps some small amount of deeper “interdiction” bombing) viable in the face of air-to-air opposition.

To actually implement such forces,

* we must abandon wish-list planning that comes up with outrageously expensive, unimplementable procurement plans.
* Instead, we must fit our aircraft development and procurement plans within fixed, real world budgets – and make sure we develop and buy aircraft so austerely designed for single missions (and therefore much more effective than multi-mission “gold-platers”) that we can procure large, adequate forces.
* The authors present a radically new procurement plan, based on new close support, air-to-air, “Forward Air Control,” and “dirt-strip” airlift aircraft designs of greatly superior effectiveness and vastly lower unit cost. These will make possible buying over 9,000 new, highly effective airframes over the next 20 years – all within current U.S. Air Force budget levels.

Air forces based on these concepts will have unprecedented effectiveness in either conventional or counterinsurgency warfare.

Chapter 8

Air Mobility Alternatives for a New Administration

James P. Stevenson

The Pentagon’s current plans for air mobility should not continue; they are not plausible. The United States has the best air mobility capability in the world. Nevertheless, it comes at excessive cost. Even with record-level defense spending, current plans for air mobility are impossible to achieve without huge budget increases – increases which are unnecessary and even counter-productive.

Recommendations:

* To reduce the cost of the tanker fleet, the U.S. Air Force should start work on a smaller, cheaper, more tactically effective tanker (KC-Y) as quickly as possible. The Air Force should also stop the currently contemplated buy of large, too expensive KC-X tankers at about 100 aircraft. There exist other innovative ideas to provide more capability at lower cost.
* For strategic air- and sea-lift, the Pentagon should reduce the number of strategic airlifters to approximately 260, which implies retiring C-5As and stopping the buy of C-17s at about 205 aircraft. The Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) should be increased by at least ten percent. The capacity for fast strategic sealift should be doubled since it dominates the actual fast deployment capabilities of U.S. forces.
* Tactical airlift capability should be about 400 aircraft. The mix of aircraft should include faster retirement of older C-130s, stopping the egregiously high cost C-130J buy at about 100 aircraft, buying more of the smaller, cheaper, more useful-to-the-Army C-27Js, and pursuing a new commercial-derivative airlifter that is more cost-effective than anything in current Air Force plans. The Army’s Joint Heavy Lift program should be cancelled.
* For Special Operations air capabilities, the CV-22 should be stopped immediately, replacing them with one or more new, cost-effective helicopters. New variants of the C-130Js and C-27J should replace MC-130s and AC-130s. A new irregular warfare wing of small, manned aircraft should be started instead of less effective unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The chapter advocates a strategic focus on aerial refueling and special operations air warfare, with less emphasis on strategic and tactical airlift. In all cases, innovative solutions that run counter to conventional wisdom allow us to lower costs without loss of overall capability.

Chapter 9

The Army National Guard, the Army Reserve, and the Marine Corps Reserve

Bruce I. Gudmundsson

The chapter lays out the broad outlines of a new approach to the recruitment, organization, and training of reserve forces. Essentially, it would mean a reserve component much more closely tied in outlook and mission to the citizenry it defends.

Recommendations:

* A somewhat smaller National Guard should focus on homeland security missions
* Most units of the Army Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve should be organized as “lifecycle units,” organizations in which members remain together for the entire course of their initial terms of service. As such, these units should receive much more training than they currently receive.
* Training schedules and benefits packages should be custom tailored to the civilian occupations of their individual members. For example, units composed of college students – of which there would be many based on the recreated incentives packages – will have longer periods of initial training as well two-month periods of training each summer. Similarly, units composed of people with seasonal occupations would train in their “off-season.”

Chapter 10

Long in Coming, the Acquisition Train Wreck Is Here

Thomas Christie

After more than four decades of supposedly well-structured defense planning and programming, as well numerous studies aimed at reforming its multi-billion dollar acquisition system, the Pentagon’s decision process governing our defense establishment is clearly broken. We need far-reaching, even radical, remedial initiatives. The evidence supporting the need for drastic action abounds.

Despite the largest defense budgets in real terms in more than sixty years, we have a smaller military force structure than at any time during that period, one that is equipped to a great extent with worn-out, aging equipment.

Granted, the employment of our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has contributed to the wear and tear on our combat and support equipment, particularly for our ground forces. The bill for repairing and replacing that equipment (reported to be in the hundreds of billions) is mostly yet to be faced. And, more to the point, this only exacerbates the already severe modernization problems faced by all three services. Those problems have been on the horizon for decades and would have plagued our forces even if the war on terror had not evolved as ruinously as it has since 2001.

A fundamental source of DOD’s problems is the historically long pattern of unrealistically high defense budget projections combined with equally unrealistic low estimates of the costs of new programs. The net effect is for DOD’s leaders to claim that they can afford the weapons they want to buy. Thus, there is no urgency to face up to the needed hard choices on new weapon systems. In addition, there are other looming demands on the budget, such as health care for both active and retired personnel and planned increases in ground forces manpower. Any confidence that DOD’s in-house goals can be achieved in the future (even with increased spending) is sorely mistaken.

Recommendations: See below for Chapter 11.

Chapter 11

Understand, Then Contain America’s Out-of-Control Defense Budget

Winslow T. Wheeler

As Thomas Christie and Franklin C. “Chuck” Spinney have argued, major U.S. defense components are now smaller, older, and less operationally ready than at any time in recent history. This collapse has occurred in the face of the highest levels of defense spending since the end of World War II. This is not compensated by the (false) illusion that our smaller military forces are more effective due to their “high tech,” sophisticated nature. In fact, what many proclaim to be “high tech” is merely high complexity – at extraordinarily high budgetary and operational cost. The armed forces, Congress, and many others seek to solve the problems with still more money, which will only accelerate the shrinking, the aging, and the diminishing of combat effectiveness. In fact, if existing ways of thinking and current processes are employed, more money will guarantee failure. Decades of data make this counter intuitive conclusion unavoidable.

Recommendations:

* There can be no recovery without being able to track how DOD spends its money, which is not now done. The first order of priority is to force DOD to comply with federal laws and regulations that require financial accountability – without permitting the exercise of the many loopholes Congress and DOD managers have created and exploited.
* Analytical integrity based on real world combat history must be applied to the rigorous evaluation of DOD programs and policies, now riddled with bias and advocacy. In the absence of objective, independent assessment of weapons program cost, performance, and schedule (especially at the beginning of any program), DOD decision-makers have no ability to manage programs with any competence whatsoever.

* A new panel of independent, objective professionals (with no contemporaneous or future ties whatsoever with industry or other sources of bias and self-interest) should be convened by the president to assess

* the extent to which DOD programs and policies do or do not fit with current world conditions
* the president’s national security strategy, and – very importantly -
* a realistic assessment of the reduced budget that will be available for the Department of Defense.

* This panel should provide the secretary of defense his primary advice on how to proceed with DOD program acquisition and management until such time as the military services and the regular civilian bureaucracy have demonstrated sufficient competence and objectivity to re-assert primary control.
* The president should expect strong protest from the advocates of business-as-usual in the military services, the civilian Pentagon bureaucracy, Congress, industry, and “think tanks.” Many such individuals cannot now conceive of a U.S. national security apparatus run outside the boundaries of what they have grown accustomed to and what they have advocated. Most will refuse to adapt. Those who can adapt, especially in the military services, should be brought back into the decision-making structure. Those who cannot should anticipate a career outside the Department of Defense.
Don Williams Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Thanks for the info, Duncan Kinder.
Glaivester Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 9:05 pm
The Bush administration has overseen a steady defense buildup throughout its term in office, and public opinion has been nominally hostile to this since at least February of 2003 and it would be hard to argue that they’ve paid a price for it. This is just simply the sort of thing that’s not a voting issue to anyone.

You don’t think that part of the reason for the 2006 and 2008 defeats ws the disgust at the GOP for constantly arguing for “smaller government” and that “government can’t do anything right” and that we need more “free market” while at the same time exempting one ofthe largest, most bloated departments that the government spends money on from the criticism?

You don’t think that the fact that the supposed fiscal conservatives were constantly clamoring that we should spend oodles more on occupying a hostile foreign country had anything to do with their defeat?????

By the way, I agree with Harry Browne. It’s not that spend too much on defense. We probably don’t spend enough on defense. We do, however, spend way too much on keeping the strongest national offense in the world.

As Chris says, it’s interesting to see that the public was in a pretty strongly militaristic mood before 9/11, back in February of 2001. That helps explain some of the reaction.

But we had an objectively smaller military in budget terms back then, there was a budget surplus, and many were worried (correctly or not) that Clinton had reduced the military in size and effectiveness too much. To suggest that the difference here is simply in the public’s perception of the military, and not due to actual differences in the military, shows, I think, a little bit of a blind spot.

An obvious point is that it is possible people’s opinions about the absolute level of defense spending have remained constant, and that the change in their responses is due to the change in the absolute level of defense spending.

Exactly (except for the fact that “defense” should be considered a euphemism for “the military”).

This interpretation probably gives the American people way too much credit, in terms of even knowing that defense spending has increased.

I think that most people have the sense that it has, even if they don’t have any idea what the absolute numbers are, because there is the obvious fact that fighting a war will require an increase in military spending.
Lasik Fan Says:
February 28th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
I had wanted to get laser eye surgery for the past year but was always worried about the risks (you know the Kathy Griffin story) but I finally got it done and have to say I am very happy with the results. No more glasses/contacts for me and the recovery period was a hassle but definitely worth it!!!
viagra Says:
March 11th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
AssodeEasessy Says:
March 11th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Very good site! Thanks! faithbase
Buy cheap alprazolam online
http://www.faithbase.com/alprazolamonline_tbh Cheap Alprazolam
zyban Says:
March 12th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Great site. Good info
xanax Says:
March 14th, 2009 at 5:05 am
I want to say – thank you for this!
xanax
tramadol Says:
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:00 am
tramadol
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
brand viagra Says:
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:04 am
Excellent site. It was pleasant to me.
buy cheap viagra
cheap viagra Says:
April 9th, 2009 at 5:07 am
It is the coolest site,keep so! viagra

Matt Yglesias

Public Opinion on Defense Spending

45 Responses to “Public Opinion on Defense Spending”

Blogroll