Slate: The United States Doesn’t Spend Enough on Its Military

[nonniey]

Not a short article but makes some compelling comparisons and arguments imo.

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/military_spending_the_case_for_spending_more_not_less.single.html

 

At Tuesday’s GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee, Rand Paul railed against Marco Rubio for calling for increases to the military budget: “How is it conservative to add a trillion dollars in military expenditures? You can not be a conservative if you’re going to keep promoting programs that you’re not paying for.” Rubio replied by arguing that “we can’t even have an economy if we’re not safe,” and that “the world is a safer place when America is the strongest military power in the world.” This brief exchange captures a debate that’s been dividing America's political class for years. Paul is standing in for those, on the left and the right, who believe that the time has come for the U.S. to stop pretending it can be the world’s policeman, and to start shifting money from our military to needs closer to home. Rubio speaks for those in both parties who see U.S. global leadership as more important than ever, and who worry about the erosion of U.S. military power. Both sides make compelling arguments. But in the end, Rubio is right. The United States does not spend enough on its military, and the longer we go without increasing military expenditures, the more dangerous the world is likely to become.

 

Granted, Rand Paul makes a fair point about at least one thing. The U.S. defense budget is already quite large. In 2015, the U.S. spent $610 billion on the military, making its defense budget the largest in the world by a wide margin. The U.S. spent more on defense than the $601 billion that China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Britain, and India—the countries with the next seven largest military budgets—spent combined. If we limit our comparison to America’s NATO allies, the numbers still look quite stark. The U.S. alone accounts for a whopping 75 percent of the military spending by all of NATO’s 28 current members. Under the two-year budget agreement that the Obama administration hammered out with the Republican leadership in Congress, baseline defense spending will be $548 billion while spending on Overseas Contingency Operations will be $59 billion, for a grand total of $607 billion. That’s hardly chump change. But it’s not enough........

 

Click link for explaination and rest of article.

 

http://es.redskins.com/index.php?app=forums&module=post&section=post&do=new_post&f=12

 

 

[Burgold]

Ummm... I can see an argument that we don't spend wisely when it comes to defense, but not enough???

[Predicto]

We spend plenty on our military.   But we spend way, way too much of it making the executives and stockholders of General Dynamics, Lockheed and so on richer than hell.  Our procurement practices are totally wack, and do not reflect real military needs and priorities at all.

[Kosher Ham]

Agreed Predicto.

Geez, this was over 20 years ago when I worked at IBM.

Lockheed/Martin was right down the same street (Where Marriott headquarters is)...seemingly every car in the lot was luxury (at the time).

[Predicto]

Agreed Predicto.

Geez, this was over 20 years ago when I worked at IBM.

Lockheed/Martin was right down the same street (Where Marriott headquarters is)...seemingly every car in the lot was luxury (at the time).

 

 

My mom worked for General Dynamics.   Their entire business model was this:

 

1) if a general or admiral sends a big contract their way, be sure to hire the general to a huge salary on they day they retire from the military

2) other generals and admirals see this and kick more contracts your way so that they will get rewarded when their time comes

3) rinse and repeat forever

 

She was the secretary for 3 retired generals making huge, huge bank.   I mean absolutely obscene salaries.  The three of them only needed one secretary between then because none of them ever did anything except go out to lunch and golf.  They were just collecting their reward for their prior service to the company bottom line err.... their nation's security.    

 

Goddamn disgrace.

[Kosher Ham]

Disgrace is a mild way of putting it.

 

I recall reading many years ago that the first Stealth B-2 Bombers were 500M each...we ordered 20 of them. Recently I read it was even more expensive.

 

I understand being prepared, I do not understand why we would order 20.

The politics that go on within these companies and then the kickbacks they give as a smiley face to hire so and so are absolutely insane.

[PF Chang]

My mom worked for General Dynamics.   Their entire business model was this:

 

1) if a general or admiral sends a big contract their way, be sure to hire the general to a huge salary on they day they retire from the military

2) other generals and admirals see this and kick more contracts your way so that they will get rewarded when their time comes

3) rinse and repeat forever

 

She was the secretary for 3 retired generals making huge, huge bank.   I mean absolutely obscene salaries.  The three of them only needed one secretary between then because none of them ever did anything except go out to lunch and golf.  They were just collecting their reward for their prior service to the company bottom line err.... their nation's security.    

 

Goddamn disgrace.

 

It is absolutely a disgrace. Your post reminded me of the SpaceX article from "Wait But Why?" 

 

Long story short ULA is a joint venture between Lockheed and Boeing and it seems to have a lot in common with what you described. From the article:

 

 

"ULA, the Boeing and Lockheed joint venture, charges more than anyone for a space launch. But it doesn’t matter what they charge. ULA doesn’t have to compete with the rest of the world’s launch market—because ULA gets a constant flow of automatic business from the US military. Here’s how it works:

 

1) The US military needs to launch a lot of things into space, so there’s plenty of business.

 

2) Because military equipment is tied to national security, the US wants the launches done by an American company.

 

3) Because space launching, like auto repair, is an opaque process to the public and to politicians, no one knows that ULA’s launch price tag is much higher than it needs to be.

 

4) ULA works with the government on a “cost plus basis,” meaning their payment for a launch is a percentage of whatever the launch costs them—i.e. they’re incentivized to make it cost more, not less.

 

5) There’s ample money to go around because of the US’s astronomical military budget.

 

6) Most infuriatingly, many of the decision-makers in the US Department of Defense are friends with the leadership of ULA, and ULA is a common place for DoD officials to work when they retire from government. So ULA is more likely to get a nod and a wink from the DoD than an audit into how they spend their money.

 

What that all adds up to is at best, a flawed system that puts zero pressure on lowering costs and at worst, a grand-scale government scandal—all paid for by the US taxpayer.

 

And do you know what a ULA-DoD circle jerk really doesn’t want around? A company like SpaceX. SpaceX had succeeded in winning much of NASA’s business, but in order to be awarded a military launch contract, a company needs special certification, and curiously, SpaceX had a very hard time becoming certified. Calling bull**** on the process, and knowing that the law requires there to be fair competition for the military’s launching needs, in 2014 Musk brought the issue to Congress, making the case that “SpaceX is not seeking to be awarded contracts for these launches. We are simply seeking the right to compete.”

 

But he received a lot of pushback. Despite clear evidence that ULA charges six times SpaceX’s rate per pound of payload, politicians like Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama (one of whose biggest donors is the aerospace industry) argued that it was a national security issue—an odd line of argument, considering that ULA pours money into Russia, buying their engines and other parts, while SpaceX does all of their business in the US. In an interview a few months ago, Musk vented about the situation: “ULA has decided that they’re afraid even of an unfair competition. They don’t want a fair competition. They don’t even want an unfair competition. They want no competition at all…they’re afraid that we’ll take some of the huge gravy train they have exclusive access to, or that it’s not going to be as big.”

 

SpaceX has made some progress in the last year and has been awarded a small number of military launches, but only a tiny fraction—this is a battle SpaceX will be fighting for a while. I asked Musk about the difficulty of competing against ULA. His response: “These are not pushovers, it’s the military-industrial complex. You know in movies, how they do terrible things? Well yeah, those guys.”

[Riggo-toni]

I've seen the price of B2s posted at up to 2 billion a pop. The airforce actually tried to drop them from the budget, but Congress put them back in, led by Feinstein and Inouye. Too many local jobs to lose.

Hypocrisy at its finest. GOPers who rail against government jobs programs and Dems who denounce military spending will stand arm in arm to preserve wasteful military spending to create jobs.

25 years after the wall came down we're still blowing megabucks on Cold War strategic weapons systems while not spending nearly enough to prepare for the asymmetrical warfare we will be facing for decades now against Islamofacism. Billions for shock and awe, while our troops out on the ground couldn't get armor plating for their transport vehicles.

[Springfield]

Just on the thread title alone...

What the literal ****?

[Riggo-toni]

Likewise Congress has been forcing the army to buy more tanks than it wants, which then end up collecting dust in warehouses until we can sell them off to the Saudis or some other less desirable regime. The Daily Show had a very funny report on that once.

Also,the B2s aren't invisible to many conventional radar systems - they actually sneak by hi tech radar more easily, but failed stealth tests on older equipment. Even after those reports came in, Congress ordered more.

[skinfan2k]

my buddy in the army told me that they destroy brand new SUV and Trucks when they were in IRAQ because it was too costly to bring them back to the US. what a joke