Sunday, March 21, 2010

A Truly Offensive Offense

The US military budget is obscene. If you look at the numbers from this Wikipedia article, you can see that the US numbers swamp everybody else:
  • US $668B

  • UK $58B

  • France $55B

  • Japan $47B

  • China $33B

  • Russia $13B
But "big" is never "big enough" for the US. The poor taxpayers keep shoveling more dollars into the maw of an insatiable military-industrial complex.

Here is a bit from Tom Englehardt from his blog TomDispatch.com:
When was the last time you saw the headline, “Cost of [Pentagon-weapons-system-of-your-choice] halved”? Probably never. Still, the thought came to mind when this recent Associated Press headline caught my eye: “Pentagon: F-35 fighter jet cost doubles.”

Here’s the story behind it: Since 2001, when an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter was expected to cost an already hefty $50 million, the plane’s cost has soared into the stratosphere (despite the fact that the aircraft itself has barely left the ground). The estimated cost today is $113 million per plane. Yes, that’s per plane. This supposed future workhorse of the U.S. military is now priced like the planet’s most precious gem. It’s also 2 ½ years behind schedule. Keep in mind that the Marines, the Air Force, and the Navy are planning to buy a combined 2,450 of them for what’s now an eye-popping $323 billion. And if you think the costs are likely to stay in the $113 million range, given the history of Pentagon cost overruns, then I have a nice little national security bridge to Brooklyn I think the U.S. public might love.

In other words, if all goes well from here (an unlikely possibility), a single future weapons system is now estimated to cost the American taxpayer almost one-third of what the Obama administration’s health-care plan is expected to cost over a decade. You could even think of the Pentagon’s weapons procurement process as the health-care system of the national security state. Its costs just never stop rising. In fact, the Government Accountability Office pegs major weapons systems cost overruns since 2001 at $295 billion, another near third of the cost of the health-care bill supposedly coming to a vote this week.

And here’s what’s remarkable: You barely hear about such overruns. They’re almost never front-page headline news, even though the money’s being taken from not-so-deep taxpayer pockets.
It is really sad to see how the US wracked itself over spending money to assist the sick and dying, but spends no time wondering why it is spending so much on the implements of war. Don't get me wrong. I think it important for the US be militarily strong. But as the above blog posting makes clear, an incredibly large amount of "waste" is included in military spending. This is gravy for the military-industrial complex.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Kanna did a little study of defense spending a while back it was quite interesting and disgusting to read about. I saw the post by TomDispatch a few days ago and did not read it very closely with so many other things going on, but now I realize that I should have paid more attention. Thank you for the second chance at reading it..

RYviewpoint said...

Thomas: It does take a good nudge once in a while to stop and take a good look. We all get bombarded by so much that we simply push it into the background. That's the nice thing about blogs. You get to see other people's perspective and it sometimes make you stop and think.

I find it sad/funny to read Tom Englehardt's posting because I can remember many years ago the argument that doing a "multi-service" fighter would lower the cost. There were voices in the wilderness saying "no it won't! the contradictory requirements will push the plane from pillar to post and drive the price up!" And now, many years later, those prophets of doom have been shown to be right.

My own experience working inside a high tech company that did some military work was that corporations see governments as a "patsy". Everybody works hard to lowball the price because they know that if they get the contract then they can use ECR (Engineering Change Requests) to tack on lots of expensive "changes" that will move the overall price up and make the thing profitable.

Sitting in a Canadian high tech firm I watch how -- despite a "joint defense agreement" -- which supposedly meant a level playing field in which the US and Canadian firms could compete, it wasn't "level". Many times the firm I was with was used by a big US defense corporation as a bidding partner because they knew my firm was honest and hard working and would get the demonstration contract to develop an initial version of the system, but when the follow-on contract to operational development (the final touches and deployment of the systems) the Canadian company was always cut out. It cost American taxpayers a lot of money, but that was the game as it was played. (I'm willing to admit that Canadian military contracting plays the same silly rules which ends up costing Canadian taxpayers more than truly open bidding would).

I was happy to see my firm lose these big military contracts. From working with big US partners I saw all the waste and corruption and how those "practices" effectively destroyed those company's ability to compete in a truly open market.

The bottom line: the huge cost overruns are all "part of the game" where governments hand out lots of gravy to corporations. Those companies with their hooks deeply into the government end up being incredibly wasteful because they have lost all knowledge of how to run a competitive business. What these companies are skilled at is playing their political connections (a lot of senior military "retire" into lucrative careers in military contracting companies).