A Defense Budget for the Real World
As Spencer Ackerman puts it, while Tom Donnelly and Gary Schmitt don’t much like the Gates/Obama defense budget they do seem to love KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest:
More often it rewards those who arrive on the battlefield “the fustest with the mostest,” as Civil War Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest once put it. If Mr. Gates has his way, U.S. forces will find it increasingly hard to meet the Forrest standard.
This is just insane. Let’s look once again at U.S. defense spending in context:
There’s no reason at all to think that the United States will have any problem arriving anywhere “with the mostest” any time soon. There is, however, still a question of how to allocate resources. The Gates/Obama proposal is to shift resources away from the kind of Cold War-style systems designed to fight a big adversary and toward greater investment in flexible equipment and the military’s human capital. Donnelly and Schmitt say that without the F-22 we’ll be going to war with “the 660 F-15s flying today, but which are literally falling apart at the seams from age and use.” In fact, we’ll be going to war with F-35s. It’s a cheaper and more flexible product as well as higher in quality than even a brand-new F-15. And the F-15 is a pretty solid plane in the first place.
But rather than get bogged down in the details, it’s worth looking at the big picture. The problem with the F-22, or the DDG-1000, or the FCS is that for systems with a limited range of practical applications they’re terrifyingly expensive. Buying them would force us to choose between starving the military of other resources—adequate manpower, for example—or letting the defense budget just endlessly explode.
The latter is, I think, the Donnelly/Schmitt agenda. With the U.S. military already accounting for half of global defense spending, it’s clear that any inability to meet our core needs stems from bad priorities rather than inadequate funds. Donnelly and Schmitt both come to us from the American Enterprise Institute, though, so they get to make their budget decisions in the wacky world of conservaland. In this thrilling universe, tax revenues don’t need to relate to spending levels at all, and spending on defense doesn’t count as “spending.” Consequently, there’s no need to put the utility of given weapons systems in context or set any kind of priorities. Secretary Gates and President Obama, by contrast, are trying to outline a defense budget for the real world—one which recognizes the need to get the most national security bang for our Pentagon buck, and that therefore prioritizes the programs that combatant commanders say they need most and lets the desires of big defense contractors take a back seat.
38 Responses to “A Defense Budget for the Real World”
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April 8th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
In between France and North Korea on that chart are about another 20 countries, including South Korea (which spends at least 5-6 times more than North Korea on this stuff) and even Singapore and Greece. That’s right, Singapore spends more on its military than North Korea or Iran.
April 8th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I’d like to see a stat on just how much of that very very high bar of our spending is on stuff that doesn’t work or that we don’t need.
How can it be that we spend so much, yet two conflicts barely large enough to be called wars can totally stretch our military capability?
I’m pretty sure it’s HAS the mostest, not SPENDS BLINDLY the mostest which is most effective.
And don’t forget, the lowly, cheap, ever-evolving IED threw a heck of a tragic monkey wrench into the works in Iraq.
Goliath? Achilles? These ring a bell for anyone?
April 8th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Not to mention that-
a) Forrest never said that.
b) Forrest lost the war, and
c) Forrest then endorsed terrorist tactics that had no point beyond lashing out at encroaching modernity.
Yes, it’s all part of Conservoland, that wacky place where up is down, in is out, and the South didn’t win the war, but won the peace when Social Security made it possible for old geezers to move south and whine about the government.
April 8th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Matt/Serial catowner-
Forrest was an extremely successful commander in small-scale cavalry battles throughout the Civil War. He may still have tactical lessons to teach us despite his despicable politics, just as Leonhardt argued that the Nazi stimulus may have implications for our current economic policy, despite the obviously odious character of Hitler’s regime.
The real argument is about global strategy-if you think we need to be able to fight (and win) simultaneous major conventional wars in the Middle East and with China, then you’d think like Donnelly that we need even more conventional military capabilities. If you don’t think that, then, well, we could get by with a substantially smaller conventional military.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Well if we decide to invade another country, I’m pretty sure that the current inhabitants will be the fustest no matter what we spend on new toys.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
@ 4 Who is Leonhardt, Jamie. Do you have a link?
I totally agree. You can learn lessons from anybody. How did the Reich turn around Germany’s economy so quickly?
I watched Niall Ferguson on Glenn Beck last night. Ferguson was complaining that the rate of current spending and debt has not been seen since 1942. 1942? Wasn’t that year that we can, looking back historically, say the depression finally ended?
Didn’t Hitler do the same thing? He just got a jump on us, is all.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Then there’s this from D&S:
I don’t know much about this incident aside from what’s presented here, but: It’s plainly ludicrous that the U.S. wanted to use expensive manned fighters to clear the skies for relatively inexpensive unmanned planes. A big reason drones were created was to provide inexpensive, low-risk methods of observing (and attacking) enemy movements. The idea that F-22s were needed to protect them sounds like make-work efforts by Air Force chiefs determined to show off the usefulness of their favored toy.
In any case, Donnelly and Schmitt correctly point out that the reason the U.S. didn’t use the F-22s was not because there weren’t enough to ensure air supremacy, but because the U.S. didn’t want to provoke Moscow. Despite the big talk at the time about how “we’re all Georgians now,” the fact of the matter is that almost nobody in the mainstream of American politics — including President Bush — thought we should go to war over the matter.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Dictatorships never have a problem making the trains run on time Max424.
No more nettlesome trade unions nor oppo politics, that sort of thing.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Ferguson was complaining that the rate of current spending and debt has not been seen since 1942.
Since Ferguson, in his previous incarnation for the American bullshit circuit, was cheering on neo-imperialism, he can fuck right off.
Glenn Beck, you say? I hope someone sends a copy of his appearance to his old colleagues at Oxford, along with instances of Beck at his most lunatic. Fergie has always been something of an academic rent boy, but that’s some cheap whoring.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
There’s no reason at all to think that the United States will have any problem arriving anywhere “with the mostest” any time soon.
Actually, we would (even with our current massive budget) have trouble fielding a winning conventioanl force in any number of possible hypothetical engagements (vs. North Korea, China, or Pakistan just to name three). That’s because we live on a large planet, where transporting million-man armies to the other side is hard. I think your phrasing here dodges the real issue, which is that the goal of being able to win anywhere, anytime is basically megalomaniacal. Some hawks may actually believe it’s realistic, but more usually I’d say it’s just a rationale that the defense contracting lobby uses.
April 8th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
The F-35 is not a good substitute for the F-22, and arguably it doesn’t offer much worth having beyond what you’d find in the latest version of the F-15, F-16, or F/A-18. Within a couple of years, you’re going to be back arguing that the F-35 has become a white elephant due to cost overruns and production delays. The entire case for the F-35 revolves around ‘affordability,’ and that depends on the services buying huge numbers of the aircraft. A better, more efficient idea would be a mixed fleet of F-22s and new procurements of F-15s and F-16s. But that’s not going to happen.
April 8th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
We need to spend more than eveyone else combined because EVERYONE IS OUR ENEMY!!!!
April 8th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
$138 mil/copy (or more a third of a billion each, per the GAO) and we’ve already crashed two, one a fatality. Too many eggs in too few baskets. Gates seems quite correct in closing down the program. I also wonder whether time may have caught up to the program, since it had first flight twelve years ago already. How much have radar, SAM and pilotless aircraft technology advanced in that time?
April 8th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
But as we all know – in Conservaland if you need more revenue you can always cut those same taxes and that should do the trick. Works every time.
April 8th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Uh, that’s the F22 program I neglected to mention above.
April 8th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
You see, our allies do NOT pay for a military or a defense the way the United States does. We kind of don’t want them to. That said, if Germany, France and Japan all had to support armies – they wouldn’t have their nice little Health Care plans and 25% Unemployment (in Europe anyway).
No one listened to IKE, and now this is the system we have – it’s American version of Socialist policy.
April 8th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
STO/VL, stealth ? (oh, and FireWire!)
April 8th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I seem to remember that the reason given for rapidly and exponentially increasing defense spending in the 1980’s was to force the Soviets to do the same, under the theory that their economy couldn’t handle the strain.
Which it didn’t, and their economy broke down, which brought down the Soviet State.
What’s the excuse for continuing massive military spending, besides stressing our own economy to the point of a Soviet-style collapse?
Seems to me that we should easily be able to cut military spending in half and still be way ahead of the rest of the world, even if China’s spending double or triple the “official” figure.
And how many billions of the pentagon budget goes down the blackhole of waste, graft, and corruption? Every other agency and unit of government has been forced to control costs and make due with less and less for the past 30 years, but the Pentagon keeps getting more.
How many generals are approving massive contracts and change-orders knowing full-well that there’s a huge payday upon retirement from the the military?
April 8th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Wasn’t Nathan Bedford Forest the founder of the KKK?
April 8th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Comparing defense spending across countries without taking into account massive differences in personnel spending is pointless. North Korea fields a larger army than we do for maybe 1% of the price.
April 8th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
“STO/VL, stealth ? (oh, and FireWire!)”
STOVL is only going to be used by the Marine Corps in this country. It’s not worth the extra cost (the marines would disagree, obviously) Stealth on the F-35 isn’t ‘all aspect’ like the F-22 or B-2, so the F-35 is more likely to be spotted by the enemy’s air defense system or enemy fighters. The big selling point about the F-35 is “affordability.”
April 8th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
it would seem that by the graph we have very good insight or trust into the spending of closed nations,i.e. russia, china and n. korea espescially. then consider that the others arm their militaries thru socialism, gov’t owned companies, to which they don’t have company profits to worry with, but thats ok, because it appears thats the direction our countries headed in.
i would think that a start for the cure to our problem would start with the politicians in congress and the senate. their main concern for leading our country is to make sure that they get relected, they vote with an open pocketbook, reelection money has the deciding vote. i’m sure with more scutiny and oversight in our bidding and building of our weapons, elimination of blank checks on cost overruns would cut the cost on some weapon systems. but it most likely would also eliminate large contributions to the politicians reelection campaigns. For instance, look at all the companies that we’re bailing out now, companies that are being blamed for our economic problems, then look at who those companies campaign contributions went to. if people can’t make the correllation between bad policy, bad decisions and money being funneled to our leaders in congress and get those supposed leaders replaced, it won’t matter what weapon systems we buy, what we can afford or ????, we’ll cease to exist as a model for the free world, the world already is looking down on this nation for its greed.
with a change of leadership some of these systems might be more affordable, either way as a nation we’ll definitly be headed in a better direction.
April 8th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
I thought Carl von Clausewitz was the one that said something like get there first with superior forces- or something like it?
April 8th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I was going to say this but Steve D said it much better and it bears repeating:
April 8th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Does anyone know if the $420.7 includes military aid to other countries? As I recall, Israel gets the most per annum in foreign aid, but practically all of it is for military ends.
April 8th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
That is what you get when you have an all volunteer force! Anyone interested in bringing back the draft
April 8th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
This is from the last Bush Budget and I suspect it is about the same for this one
April 8th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Did you forget that the F-35 is still in the development process, as well as being an inferior air-superiority fighter? Not to mention that the “lower cost” figure will probably end up being a joke by the time the plane actually gets produced, probably for the same reason the F-22 got so expensive; the idiotic congresscritters cut the total order, then when the per-unit cost went up and delays mounted from the need to re-orient the production line, they then went “Gosh! That unit price is so expensive!” and cut the order quantity again – over and over.
As for the F-15s, aside from the fact that they are freaking old, there’s also the fact that the increasingly widespread Sukhoi Su-27s are very close to a match for them. Can you imagine if either China or Russia sold them to, say, Iran?
Not really. What’s the whole cost of the F-22 order over several years – $70 billion over several years? That’s peanuts compared to what we’re effectively burning in Iraq and Afghanistan – and unlike those situations, we get to keep the F-22s for decades.
April 8th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
@ 11 Yea, it was pretty shocking. The only thing I can say in Ferguson’s defense is he looked extremely uncomfortable. He also was a little annoyed that Beck had never read a single book he’s written. Beck closed the interview holding up Ferguson’s rather large book, the hardcover version of Colossus(2004), and said something like “by the next time your back I’ll have read this.” You got the sense that Fergie was never coming back.
April 8th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Oh, sure, the Russians and Chinese sell their latest fighters to Iran. Hey, maybe they’ll even GIVE them away!
And then the Iranian pilots match our pilots in ability.
Right.
When, in reality, if the US ever attacked Iran, ninety percent of those planes would be cooked on the runway by cruise missiles from our ATOMIC SUBS THAT IRAN DOESN’T HAVE ANY WAY TO DEAL WITH!
Get serious.
April 8th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
I agree with you generally on this point, but what qualifies you to say the F-15 is a “solid plane”?
April 8th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
The chart is partly misleading.
In Europe, “the adversary” is basically Russia, one could add Serbia and Belorus. Russia spends 62.5 G$, Serbia and Belorus may increase it by 5-10%. Our allies, European NATO countries, spend roughly 200 G$. They also have much larger population in aggregate. They should be able to handle Russia without our help (and if they cannot, they should do something about the way they waste 200 G$.
In Far East the situation is similar. Our allies spend more than China. Perhaps it is not particularly lopsided, but China does not have easy time projecting its forces across the seas. There is also North Korea, with 1/2 the population, 1/20 GDP and perhaps 1/5 of military budget of South Korea. If South Korea cannot militarily handle North Korea, they should serious re-examine what they are doing. Actually, they seem to be doing all right, a lot of trained manpower besides decent weapons.
Then we have Iran. Iran spends much less then are allies on the other side of the Persian Gulf. And as it is the case with China, Iran does not really have capability to project forces across a substantial body of water.
Our forces could vanish in a puff of smokes (or go to the ships and sail home) and our allies would manage. With their current budgets and forces.
And if we reduced our forces by factor of 10, could Russia, China and Iran project their forces to our hemisphere? I do not think so.
Perhaps as a matter of national dignity we should spend, say, as much as Russia, China, North Korea and Iran combined. And have allies that spend the same amount. And we should be able to reduce spending if our adversaries do so.
April 8th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
In the real world, it’s called the military budget, not the “Defense” budget.
In the real world, getting to the other side of the world with “the mostest” to deal with what some other country is doing within a few hundred miles of its own border is called “imperial policing,” not “defense.”
In the real world, “defense” means, you know, DEFENDING your own actual country.
April 8th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
It should be noted that the Chinese number on the chart is the “official” number provided by the PRC. Almost all experts, including fairly dovish ones, suggest that the real number for Chinese defense spending is at least double that:
http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/China_Military_Power_Report_2009.pdf