The Coming Ambush
Via David Kurtz, Defense News on the Pentagon’s looming ambush of Barack Obama:
The uniformed services are trying to lock in the next administration by creating a political cost for holding the line on defense spending. Conservative groups are hoping to ramp up defense spending as a tool to limit options for a Democratic Congress and president to pass new, and potentially costly, social programs, including health care reform.
They also like the idea of creating an unrealistically high baseline of expectations for defense spending that will allow them to claim President Obama has cut defense spending.
I’ve written about this previously for The American Prospect so you can find detailed thoughts at that link. But suffice it to say that I think it’s absolutely crucial for the larger progressive agenda that we find a way to hold the line on this. Ever since the 1994 midterms, Democrats have shown no real interest in pushing back against DOD spending requests. And the short-term cost of that wasn’t high during a time when there was no real legislative prospect of big progressive change anyway. But the situation is different now, and we need to ensure that military spending is being weighed seriously against other options.
39 Responses to “The Coming Ambush”
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November 17th, 2008 at 9:33 am
But the real conservatives are against government spending and socialism and increasing bureaucracy, right?
November 17th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Yup, this is going to be a big fight. My only excuse for cautious optimism is that Obama doesn’t strike me as a guy who’s easy to roll. I hope I’m right.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Since the DoD’s budget is on a multi-year cycle, the only way to begin to cut the DoD’s budget to say that the DoD will be expected to do less in the future than it can now.
The real question is whether anyone in the Obama Administration is willing to do the hard work of figuring out what the U.S. can live without. Until the missions are cut back, the DoD has the upper hand on budget cuts.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:50 am
if obama’s smart, he’ll punch back with a lot of dirt about procurement scandals and mismanagement.
if he can start a media firestorm about, e.g., how much money the coast guard wasted on its “national security cutter”, then he’ll be able to argue that the military should not be given a blank check and that its wish-lists cannot be trusted.
there are military people who are smart about procurement and hate the waste. not all military types are in bed with the big contractors–some of them actually want money used to help troops, not just to line the pockets of northrop and united tech executives. obama should use them as the front people for this.
let’s hope he can get out in front of this.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Jim W. beat me here on the A-10.
For those not familiar with the issue, the A-10 Warthog, shown in the picture, is a super-effective ground support aircraft. Ground support is the Air Force’s most important mission, but the AF leadership has never ever agreed and has always treated it as a stepchild. (Ground support is more dangerous and less glamorous than zooming around in the stratosphere; even more important, it means giving Army commanders operational control over Air Force assets.) I’m not familiar with the details, but at one point an effort was actually made to kill the A-10 altogether.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:00 am
i noticed the a-10 myself, but i figured that matt was thinking it would make a great plane with which to execute an ambush, e.g. of a tank column. get that column blocked at the front end, bring in the warthogs, and it’s all over.
so the picture is not illustrating “waste and fraud!”
but rather “ambush!”
November 17th, 2008 at 10:19 am
The way I heard it, the Air Force proposed to kill the A-10, the Marines said, “Great– we’ll take ‘em all off your hands!” and the Air Force decided it was a trick and they’d better hold on to them.
You’ll notice that since the A-10 the Air Force hasn’t proposed a single dedicated attack plane; they’re all “F/A” plains so they can claim to be doing ground support while still getting to be fighter jocks zipping around in their supersonic penis extensions.
No, battlefield air superiority is the most important mission. Thing is, for every conflict in the last 35 years we’ve been able to own the airspace with ease, and then the real work is done in close air support.
If I were SecDef I’d commission a study on returning the Air Force to its Army Air Corps origins, just as a warning shot to their current brass.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:22 am
This seems to be an example of how Obama could use Youtube and his email list for pushback. He could do a presentation including charts detailing defense spending. He then posts it on Youtube and tells his email list to forward it. A Youtube would also give tv media something to show, so they could actually cover the story in a way that is easier than a radio address.
In addition, the video would be an easily accessible way to refute mischaracterizations of Obama’s plan.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Why only as a warning? It should be done, period.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I’m not familiar with the details, but at one point an effort was actually made to kill the A-10 altogether.
The A-10 has proven to be very hard to kill, in more ways that one.
If I were SecDef I’d commission a study on returning the Air Force to its Army Air Corps origins, just as a warning shot to their current brass.
Or, at least, leave the Air Force with space, cyberspace, and missiles, and give fixed-wing ground support back to the Army, like the Marines.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:10 am
This is one thing I’m not worried about. Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq War and obtaining savings from that, so he can just respond to complaints by saying this is the Iraq War dividend. It doesn’t even matter what the actual figures are since nobody knows exactly what the war costs or how it’s paid. It’s pretty much an unassailable argument.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:21 am
if obama’s smart, he’ll punch back with a lot of dirt about procurement scandals and mismanagement.
And if he’s really smart, he’ll launder this dirt through John McCain who’ll dish this out to the press.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:27 am
I’ve said this before every time you’ve written about this. There is no ‘ambush.’ This is the standard end of term jockeying. Conservatives do not matter; Democrats have a lock on every branch of government that has a say in defense spending. If the Obama administration lacks the political skill and fortitude to do whatever the heck they want, why did they get elected?
As I’ve also said, the real challenge is all those blue state senators (and representatives) where a bulk of the Navy procurement and operation budget is spent. Especially since cuts from the navy and air force are the main and really only way to pay for the proposed increases in the Army and Marine Corps.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Easy enough: Obama should cancel any weapons systems manufactured in Red states/districts.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:39 am
This “percentage of GDP” trick is nonsense. GDP normally grows over time, but the world doesn’t get any bigger and it actually isn’t anywhere near as dangerous as it was during the Cold War.
And you think the people talking about “percentage of GDP” are going to volunteer to cut defense spending just because there’s a recession (= falling GDP) ? Hell no.
On top of that, in most fields the amazing advance of technology means you get more bang for the buck over time. Cars, for example, are more efficient, cleaner, more comfortable, safer,
and easier to drive than they were in 1980, but sell for about
the same nominal price. So in a notoriously technology-intensive field like the military, you’d expect to get more capability per dollar now than in the past. And that’s very clearly true for specific weapons systems: it’s massively cheaper to destroy a target in hostile airspace by sending a couple of small stealth fighter/bombers armed with highly accurate GPS-guided bombs than it used to be to send a whole load of planes with dedicated ACM, stuff to take out the anti-aircraft missiles, and finally a whole pile of dumb bombs. So in some sense, the “productivity” of the military is vastly higher than it used to be. But does that ever lead to a *cut* in spending ? Again, hell no.
Then we’ve got the issue of balance between the three
services. At a time when we face no threat at all from the air, does it make sense for the USAF budget to be roughly the same as that of the Army and Navy/Marines ? For the third time, hell no. But if one service gets more than the others, there’ll be a ruckus.
And that’s really what gives us a chance to fix all this stupidity. For the moment the services are sticking together and gambling that they can roll the Democrats into preserving their bloated budget. But if and when it becomes clear that there are going to be cuts, then it’s every man for himself.
The new SecDef should ask the Army to propose cuts in the Navy and Air Force; the Navy to propose cuts in the Army and Air Force; and the Air Force to propose cuts in the Army and Navy.
Once you set them all at each other’s throats, you can actually get something done.
And much as I detest Bush, he’s shown us pretty clearly how to maintain civilian control of the military: you figure out what you want, then you fire the generals who disagree and promote the ones who agree with you. And once you’ve picked the top generals who’ll give the advice you want to hear, you make a big show of agreeing with their advice.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:57 am
If the Obama administration lacks the political skill and fortitude to do whatever the heck they want, why did they get elected?
“Chill. I got this.”
Good point, Kolohe. Are we really sitting here, fretting about whether Barack Obama and his team have the organizational skills, strategic foresight, and persuasive ability to accomplish his goals in the face of an entrenched political organization?
Because there are probably better uses of our energy.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
As a Chicano from the Sonoran Desert, and proponent of the Chicano Veterans Organization’s view that universal health care should be rolled into the VA’s Medical and Hospital Systemic. Thus, even military health care would be delivered via the VA, would put an insurmountable barrier to the DOD’s accustomed behavior for spending in large measure, and consequently, requiring the DOD to exercise a tad of self-restraint on their excessive spending and belief on military systems that are much unneeded.
Having our national population, from the military, military veterans, seniors, the low-income, and ultimately, the middle class, standing in the same line to receive medical care would do wonders for our national spirit of ‘compromise’. Of course, Conservatives would oppose such a decision given that ‘market forces’ would not apply and this opposition would brook any ‘reality’ that applies to the rest of us.
I have long argued that the Admirals and Generals sought out their self-aggrandizement when it came to Bush’s War of Choice, and today, that behavior continues. Shifting this debate to universal health care in which our men and women in uniform would participate, along with the rest of us, would intimidate these admirals and generals to no end. And calling these admirals and generals out for the purity for self-aggrandizement, would do wonders for the body politic.
Needless to say but I will, I am a Vietnam War vet and somewhat long in the tooth, but reality must be addressed, and with a semblance for some truth-telling by everybody.
Jaango
November 17th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I think the times are sufficiently unusual now that Obama can hold the line without serious damage.
A Republican/military industrial argument that “Democrats are weak on Defense” because Obama is cutting weapons programs is going to be a hard sell in the middle of an economic crisis, massive budget deficits and with health care reform as a leading agenda item for the majority.
November 17th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
An on our Oldies but Goldies program this evening, I present to you:
General Eisenhower warning Americans of the military-industrial complex in 1961. Enjoy!
November 17th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
This is WHY it would be moronic to let Robert Gates stay on as Secretary of Defense.
It’s hard enough to fight the Pentagon when you have your own Secretary of Defense on your side.
When he’s sleeping with the enemy, you get hit with 50 leaks in the Washington Post every morning before you’ve had breakfast.
November 17th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
“Well, one thing you might note is that those those advanced systems are often far more expensive on a per unit basis than their predecessors,”
Yes, they’re more expensive. But you need a *lot* fewer of them.
And the cost of the more-effective technology can come down over
time as well: e.g. compare the $1M-a-shot cruise missiles with
radar terrain-matching against the $20K GPS-guided smart bombs
used now to achieve similar accuracy.
If we go back to 1945 (and hey, the graphs given for the
“percentage-of-GDP” arguments usually go way back, so why not ?), then compare the notorious inaccuracy of bombing back then, which required raids with many hundreds of airplanes,
against the modern send-a-couple-of-planes, drop-a-couple-of-
smart-bombs approach, then it’s pretty clear that even though
B2s are fabulously expensive, they’re a lot more cost-effective in both lives and dollars than the older
approach. Even in the 1991 Gulf War, the vast majority of
bombs were unguided. There has been a big improvement in
effectiveness since then, at rather modest cost, and yet
we keep spending more and more in a much less threatening
world.
“But generally there is also a noneconomic bias toward spending a little more if it means we can achieve the same results at less cost in terms of casualties.”
I’m not opposed to “spending a little more” to
“achieve the same results”. But what has happened over the
last seven years is that we’re spending vastly more (somewhere
around $600B/year instead of $300B/year) on a big pile of
stuff, some of which does nothing useful (F-22), and some of
which does vastly more than we could do before and also
vastly more than we need. There’s no Cold War, there’s no
USSR, the enemies we have are strikingly poorly armed, and
we shouldn’t have a Cold War-scale budget.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
If we weren’t so full of ourselves, we would have gone the Soviet route ages ago:
Army Air Corps for close air support
Voyska PVO-clone for air superiority
Strategic Rocket Forces for the Air Force’s real reason for existence, those fields in Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
The way Hap Arnold and Curtis LeMay got an independent air force was by making themselves the strategic deterrent.
November 17th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Couldn’t we cut back defense spending and use the money to pay back China rather than use it for costly new social programs?
November 17th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
“It isn’t clear to me that at $2B a piece, the B-2 actually is cheaper per bomb on target than say a fleet of B-52s. I think the B-52 cost about $40M in equivalent dollars, which means you could buy around 50 of them for every one B-2.”
You need to look back upstream to figure the costs. It’s like
putting 2 men on the summit of Everest: you need 10 people hauling loads to the camp below the summit; and to do that youneed 50 people to haul loads to the lower camp; and to do that you need 250 sherpas hauling from base camp. I exaggerate, but not much.
Similarly, to destroy a particular target in, say, Baghdad with B-52s you need maybe 20 B-52 flights each with maybe 20 bombs. Actually first you need to fly missions to detect and attack any radar sites and anti-aircraft missiles. Then you have to fly dedicated ECM airplanes (Prowlers ?) with the B-52s just in case. And maybe also fighter cover because if the enemy has any fighters left, B-52s would be easy prey. And each of those many B-52’s and fighters and ECM planes needs fuel, and a stock of spares, and bunch of support crew, and hangar space, and repair workshops. And unless you’re flying from US soil, all that stuff, and probably most of the food for the support crew, has to be shipped from the US to a nearby port, and then flown or trucked to the airbase. And
if it’s trucked through possibly hostile territory, it needs
to be in a convoy with a suitable escort.
And pretty soon it turns out that dropping a couple of hundred
bombs to destroy that one target actually needed thousands of
people each just in the right place at the right time, with
massive amounts of fuels and thousands of tons of supplies.
Conversely, the B-2 or F-117 gets straight to the point: you
fly a couple of stealthy planes with smart bombs. Because the
bombs are smart, you don’t need many. Because the planes are
stealthy, you don’t need to painstakingly degrade the enemy’s air defenses. And the whole enormous logistical tail is
vastly less. Except that’s not quite what we do: because we
have the B-2s *and* we still keep the B-52’s around as well;
but we put cheap smart bombs on the B52’s. So we effectively
have far far more capability to deliver bombs on target than
we used to in, say, 1990. Do we need that ? What for ?
Do we need it more than an extended S-CHIP ? Or bridges that
don’t fall down ? Or better schools ? Or rail subsidies ?
Or solar thermal power generation ?
November 17th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
How is Obama going to fight the Pentagon on this when he needs them to run wars in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Obama is JUST as owned by the military-industrial complex as ever other President before him.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
“First, the fact that we do keep both B-2s and B-52s operational indicates to me the operational costs of B-52s may not make them a poor deal in every circumstance.”
Sure. If we ever need to carpet-bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail
again, they’ll be just the ticket … But more seriously,
your answer suggests that you’ve accepted the basic premise
that decisions about military spending, and especially weapons
procurement, are genuinely driven by cost-benefit analysis.
And I think that’s bunk: it’s all massively political (mostly
in the sense of inter-branch and inter-service politics,
but wrapped up in an unhealthy way with pork-barrel issues
in Congress, and partisan posturing), and
rather transparently immune to the kind of cost pressures
that affect all other businesses and sectors of government.
Heck, whenever Pentagon spending gets audited there are
literally billions of dollars unaccounted for.
The craziness is most apparent in the nuclear stockpile.
Regardless of what any other country does, the USA would be
safer with a 500-nuke stockpile than with the current
6000-nuke stockpile. But almost 20 years after the Soviet
Empire collapsed, we can’t get out shit together to make
that happen. It’s crazy. It wasn’t crazy in 1945; but it
has been crazy since about 1955, and it’s still crazy.
If we can’t take any sensible decisions about nukes, why
would anyone think we’re taking sensible decisions about other
less-critical weapons systems ? We aren’t: it’s just a big
incoherent mess. From time to time a few honest folk do
something good – the A-10 Warthog is a good example, an
unglamorous weapon designed for an unglamorous job, that
does it really well and doesn’t cost a fortune. And then
what happens ? The Air Force tries to scrap it, because
nobody gets ahead in the USAF by doing ground support
missions for the Army.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
“How is Obama going to fight the Pentagon on this when he needs them to run wars in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan?”
It’s easy, as Bush showed. If the top generals don’t agree with
your plans, you pick some other generals with friendlier views
(and I really don’t think there’s any shortage of 2-star and
3-star generals prepared to find themselves in agreement with
the Commander-in-Chief if they think there might be a promotion
in it) and promote them. Then you “follow” their advice.
The career of Gen Petraeus under President Bush shows that
you can even find very intelligent generals willing to
present themselves in agreement with the views of a total
incompetent.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:23 am
“Incidentally, as I understand it, the Air Force rationale for keeping B-52s operationa”
There’s always a “rationale”, or a post-hoc justification, for
keeping each weapon and each component and each dollar. But
it’s naive to think that the “rationale” is the actual reason.
Look at the big picture, and it’s clear that the technological
revolution has been used to greatly increase the military’s
capability, rather than to maintain the same level of capability
at a lower cost. And there’s no strategic logic behind that
choice, at a time when there’s no plausible substantial threat:
the capability that was enough in 1985 to keep the USSR at
bay is sure as hell enough right now. It’s just about keeping
and even growing the military-industrial complex and the
narrow interests of people inside that complex.
November 18th, 2008 at 11:01 am
“As an aside, if you have a substantive answer to the stated rationale for continued B-52 use, I would be interested in hearing it”
B-52s are a good, and cheap, way of dropping a lot of bombs.
Under what circumstances do we need to drop a lot of bombs ?
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the answer was obvious: only a
small percentage of bombs land near the aiming point, so you
have to drop a lot to have a good chance of actually getting
a hit near the aiming point. And there are also some spread-out
targets – maybe airfield runways, or rail marshalling yards,
or large factory complexes, where you actually *want* to
destroy a whole area.
But now, with the ability to put accurate GPS guidance on
every bomb at modest cost (I believe the JDAM costs about
$20K per bomb, which is cheap in relation to other mission
costs), you can hit what you’re aiming at, with a circular
error probability of just a few yards. So you don’t need
mass bombing to destroy small targets (especially hardened
targets which require a direct hit).
So then there are still wide-area targets. But we have new
munitions which deal with those: cluster bombs, air-fuel
explosives. And anyhow the accurate-bombing capability
really means that you can fight a campaign very differently:
if you can hit what you’re aiming at, then you can quickly
cripple an enemy’s logistics and supply lines by destroying
bridges, tunnels, and supply depots. And without a constant
supply of fuel and weapons, the enemy forces can be isolated
and defeated in detail. If you take out the radar and
command-and-control part of the air defenses, then low-level
air attacks by A-10s and Apaches can be devastating.
Dropping tens of thousand of tons of bombs from B-52s in the
stratosphere just isn’t necessary any more, and also obviously
tends to lead to more collateral damage than other tactics.
So the question is not whether B-52s are a cheap way of dropping lots of bombs: they are. The question is, why do
you still need to drop lots of bombs ? What are you going to
drop them on ? What kind of conflict is best fought by
dropping lots of bombs rather than a few accurate-targeted
bombs ? And ultimately, what policy objective is furthered
by the continuing existence of a mass-bombing capability ?
“the strategic logic is that by taking and maintaining an overwhelming lead in capabilities, the United States can deter a new Cold War-style arms races from occuring with emerging powers such as China, thus saving us money in the long run.”
But it’s foolish to treat military “capabilities” as being
a simple one-dimensional measurement. In what possible way
would the existence of a 1960s-era mass-bombing B52 fleet
serve to deter China from developing its military capability ?
If anything, the converse is true: those B52’s are just right
for flattening Beijing. They aren’t much use for anything
else. They’re certainly not helpful for low-intensity
conflicts. The obvious response from China is to develop
capable air-superiority fighters so that they have a chance
of protecting their airspace. And guess what ? That’s
exactly what China is doing.
When the USSR crashed, we actually got a modest “peace
dividend”. Over 1995-2005 technology gave us vast
improvements in military effectiveness. That could have
given us a “technology dividend”. Why didn’t that happen ?
My best guess is that while the technology gave a big win
quickly for the Air Force and Navy, it wasn’t so directly
relevant to the ground forces. So there was a fairly
reasonable argument for continued high spending on the Army
and Marines. But there’s an informal agreement that the
USAF, Navy, and Army each get roughly the same budget. So
we didn’t shrink the USAF and Navy spending.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
I find it pretty thoroughly implausible that a plane designed
in the early 1950s is the right solution for the current threat
environment. We had a huge number of B52s; now we have a
smaller number. But in the era of the JDAM I’m pretty confident
“that we could get by with a heck of a lot fewer still.
“But again, looking back we actually wouldn’t have these capabilities if we hadn’t made those very expensive investments in the past.”
Well, we made a big investment putting up the GPS satellites -
though that has proved to be massively valuable for civilian
purposes. But once you’ve got GPS, the JDAM seems like a
rather simple gizmo: strap on fins and a GPS guidance system.
The product is cheap, as far as I know the development of JDAM
was also pretty cheap. And that’s just what I’m talking about: technology per se is not expensive. Especially not if
you can exploit technology already developed for civilian
markets. It was different back in the 50s and 60s when
the military R&D budget was large compared to civilian R&D;
but probably since the early 1980s the shoe has been on the
other foot, with PCs, cellphones, and the internet driving
civilian technology ahead of the military stuff.
“so there is going to be a limit to this “technology dividend” if other countries are continually increasing their capabilities–as the emerging countries surely will be”
I’d be more sympathetic to this argument if we were spending
on novel technologies to combat the likely future threats -
my own nightmare scenario is a swarm of 200 cheap mass-produced
autonomous robots (planes, wheeled vehicles, or small boats)
convergin simultaneously from all directions. But we don’t
seem to worry about that stuff, instead we spend a fortune
preparing to fight WW2, Vietnam, and Desert Storm all over
again. And we keep building those great big surface ships
which are a lovely target for anti-ship cruise missiles.
“I will just summarize again that it would be irrational for China to fear that we would actually attack mainline China with conventional weapons, since our military isn’t really suited for doing that in a meaningful way (for that we would need a much, much larger Army).”
Well, it wasn’t suited for occupying Iraq either, but we did
that. If I was China, I’d assume that the US is perfectly
capable of electing leaders who are both stupid and aggressive. Because that’s what we did 4 and 8 years ago.
And there’s still a strong faction of the US national-security
apparatus trying to present China as a plausible enemy and
arm accordingly.
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