Jon Basil Utley / The American Conservative & Rep. Mike Coffman / The Denver Post & Al Jazeera – 2013-02-23 01:40:07
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/16-ways-to-cut-defense-spending-7/
16 Ways to Cut Defense Spending
Jon Basil Utley / The American Conservative
(February 22, 2013) — Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “the greatest threat to our national security is our debt.” Senator Coburn said on “Morning Joe” on Feb 13 that “$100 billion could be cut.” Ron Paul says that only about half the defense budget is for defense, the other half is for militarism abroad.
So here are 16 ways to cut its waste, fraud, and abuse of American taxpayers.
1) The military is top-heavy with officers and generals compared to enlisted men, with far more proportionately today than during World War II. The military is still trained and designed mostly for mass mobilization to refight World War II: tanks, aircraft-carrier strike groups, and fighter planes for dogfights and to shoot down bombers only Russia has. Yet Russia’s military is a shadow of its former self, plagued and demoralized by Putin-era corruption. China is dynamic, defensive, and prospers with peace.
Basing one’s military on past wars’ lessons is nothing new. British generals entered World War I with horse cavalry and the strategy of Napoleon. It’s common to start wars with the strategy of 75 years before.
2) If every missile and bomb hits its target — unlike in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam — why do we need so many planes, tanks, and warships? Drones now can replace many pilots. In the Korean War it took 4 months of trying to bomb the Yalu River bridge by which most Chinese supplies arrived. Now a single missile from hundreds of miles away can do it. No aircraft carrier was used during the recent war in Libya because of fear of medium-range anti-ship missiles.
Carriers today are very vulnerable against modern nations, although useful for attacking mostly helpless Third World ones. Do we need as many as the 12 strike groups we have? The whole way we fight wars needs to be re-examined. We can’t go on like in Iraq, shooting a quarter million bullets for each dead insurgent. The waste in our war-fighting is beyond comprehension.
Rep. Mike Coffman details 15 ways some $50 billion per year could be saved — for example, some $100 billion over 10 years by adopting “sea swap” policies for cruisers, destroyers, and amphibious ships by flying crews out to ships instead of changing crews at home ports. [See story below.] Think of all the waste in fuel and wear-and-tear sailing thousands of miles each way back home to port.
3) Combine military medical services. Each of the armed forces has its own medical corps. An excessive number of Army colonels are doctors. The Navy and Air Force presumably have similar overstaffing, usually based on World War II models. Yet it’s the infantry and Marines who suffer nearly all the casualties. Other services face fewer risks to their lives and health.
4) Former Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England urged cutting 100,000 civilian employees from the Defense Department when it had 700,000 employees, the same number as during World War 2. Now the number has grown to 800,000.
5) Tricare costs the Pentagon budget over $50 billion per year to provide almost free healthcare to all military retirees and their families for life, even if they are working in other jobs with health insurance. Former Secretary of Defense Gates tried in vain to establish reasonable co-pays and reforms.
6) Senator Coburn complained that the military schools were costing $50,000 per student. He urged reforms such as using more local civilian schools near military bases.
7) The military maintains some 4,000 bases inside the US and 1,000 overseas with personnel in 140 nations; many installations have fewer than 100 troops. Many are simply tripwires filled with potential hostages so as to get America involved in new conflicts and wars. Vast cutbacks are possible. We need a new base closing commission to take the matter out of the hands of our corrupted Congress (see The Hidden Cost of Empire).
8) The military is paid vastly more than civilians. Officers and enlisted men earn an average cash income some 80 percent higher than civilians with similar skills and education. Their pension and medical benefits put them far beyond what any worker in the private sector earns. For details see the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation.
9) Retirement ages were set well over a hundred years ago when life spans were under 60 years. Surely noncombat personnel could retire with pensions after, say, 25 years instead of 20. The risk to their lives and health is marginal in most military occupations; Northern Virginia is not a combat zone, even if personnel wear combat uniforms and boots to work. Civilians now often must work well into their seventies.
10) Retired generals and admirals should be prohibited for five years from working for the military-industrial complex so that they will use their skills elsewhere to help the civilian economy. Remember the CNN and Fox News generals promoting more war who were outed by the New York Times for profiting from Pentagon suppliers.
11) It’s not just Pentagon waste. The CIA and other intelligence agencies have virtual blank checks without oversight. The Washington Post ran a series about their infighting and duplication of efforts with 50,000 yearly reports, many unread and unnecessary. When Leon Paneta went to the Pentagon, it was reported that he flew back to California at government expense every weekend. When he did the same while running the CIA, the information was classified secret.
12) It cost half a million in Iraq and nearly a million dollars in Afghanistan to maintain each soldier per year. Obviously fewer foreign interventions would save hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars.
13) Weaponry is the greatest money sink of all. Weapons are designed to be built in key congressional districts, not to be the most efficient or cost effective, as during the Second World War. The F-22 had 1,000 suppliers in 44 states. The F-35 has 1,300 suppliers in 45 states in key congressional districts and is now estimated to cost up to $300 million per plane.
Weapons manufacturing is started before finalized testing so as to build a constituency for programs’ continuation. Military contractors then get cost-plus contracts to modify the weapons, which won’t work properly because insufficient initial testing was done before manufacturing them. Congressmen stick the Pentagon with suppliers at extra-high cost (see this report on oil pans for $17,000 each) from their congressional districts and then (often) get donations from the same companies for their campaign funds.
Other Congressmen put in spending for projects the Pentagon does not even want. The whole process contributes vastly to corruption in Washington and undermining America. The Wall Street Journal ran an article pondering what fighter planes would cost if Apple manufactured them like it makes iPhones.
14) Half of defense manufacturing workers are unionized, many with outdated work rules and few of the efficiencies instituted by competitive private industry, e.g., cutting out much middle management and using labor to maximum efficiency.
15) America maintains duplicate forces: two armies (i.e., Army and Marine Corps.) and four air forces (the Air Force, Marine Corps aviation, Naval Air Forces, and the CIA’s fleet of aircraft and drones). The Marines should be maintained for their special skills as an elite, smaller force, not as an auxiliary army. The air forces should cut out duplication. We still maintain some 50 nuclear submarines. Do we really need so many when a single one can bottle up a whole Third World navy, as England did with Argentina in the Falklands War?
16) Rand Paul has demanded that the Pentagon be audited, something Congress has so far been unable to do. The Defense Department does not even know all the cash, supplies, foreign bases, and inventory it has. Much more vast and incredible waste remains to be discovered.
These are some of the possible savings in military costs. They don’t include the largest benefit of all: the value many of the highly skilled and motivated men and women in the military could bring to the civilian workforce. The mostly wasted talent pool is incredible. All American strategy should be re-examined. Indeed, Washington now violates most of the precepts of the greatest military strategist in history.
<>Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative.
There Are Smarter Ways to Cut Defense Spending
Rep. Mike Coffman / The Denver Post
DENVER (February 19, 2013) — Significant threats to our national security loom on the horizon, including the nuclear menace from North Korea and the threats posed by global terrorism. But one particular threat is of our own making.
Our government has failed to reach an agreement on managing the national debt, and as a result America’s military faces more than $500 billion in new defense spending reductions over the next 10 years. The Pentagon faces the first round of cuts next month: “sequestration,” an across-the-board cut of $43 billion.
These cuts were written into law as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, and are on top of $487 billion in cuts already being implemented. They are an approach to reducing the national budget that was designed to force responsible action, not to be implemented as policy. I believe we must reduce waste and inappropriate spending in the Pentagon’s budget, but we can do better than the dangerous sequestration.
My first priority is to ensure we do not look for savings from the pockets of military personnel, their families, and retirees. We must keep the faith with those who have sacrificed for our nation. Congress already made changes to benefits last year, and I don’t believe we need to go any further.
My second priority is to avoid cuts that harm our strategic posture. We are transitioning from a long period of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan toward an uncertain future; I don’t want to commit our armed forces to a stance that in five or 10 years might not match global realities.
Looking at defense budgets and consulting with like-minded experts, I believe we can save hundreds of billions of dollars without harming our national security or our servicemen and women and their dependents.
The problem with sequester is that the same weight is given to vital programs as to ones that are unnecessary. My alternative plan cancels the haphazard cuts scheduled to begin next month and reduces spending in a smarter and safer way by more than $500 billion during the next decade:
1. $150 billion. Require annual reductions in defense spending by the Department of Defense through reducing programs and activities which do not contribute significantly to military capability, allowing leaders of Defense to use their expertise to combat wasteful earmarks and respond to changing environments.
2. $100 billion. Adopt “sea swap” policies for cruisers, destroyers, and amphibious ships by flying crews out to ships instead of changing crews at home ports.
3. $53 billion. Use local civilian contractors instead of military personnel to perform commercial-type activities at military bases.
4. $52.5 billion. Shift Army and Marine Corps troops to Reserves, preserving ground combat strength but returning active duty forces to pre-9/11 levels.
5. $52 billion. Reduce spending for the Pentagon’s “Other Procurement,” which covers non-major equipment replacement. Our overseas deployments are ramping down, and everyday equipment will last longer now than in wartime.
6. $36.7 billion. Cut the number of Department of Defense civilian bureaucrat positions through attrition.
7. $20 billion. Cut US troops stationed in Europe.
8. $15 billion. Cut the number of consultants and contractors at headquarters.
9. $9 billion. Cap experimental fuel procurement.
10. $7.1 billion. Consolidate the management of retail stores on military bases.
11. $7 billion. Postpone procurement of the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle.
12. $4.6 billion. Unify the military medical system.
13. $3 billion. Delay refurbishment of the Abrams tank.
14. $1.8 billion. Spend less on military bands.
15. $800 million. Reduce the top-heavy number of Pentagon generals and admirals.
All that would make for $512.5 billion saved over 10 years.
Accepting $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade means we must be wise about how America employs our Armed Forces. While these targeted proposals are not painless, they provide a reasonable road map for avoiding the national security and fiscal disaster that would follow from not responsibly reducing our debt.
US Grounds F-35 Fighter Fleet
Al Jazeera
(February 22, 2013) — The US military has suspended all test flights for its F-35 fighter jet over potential engine problems, officials said.
Friday’s decision was described as a “precautionary measure” after a crack was discovered on a turbine blade in one F-35 engine at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
“It is too early to know the fleet-wide impact of this finding, however as a precautionary measure, all F-35 flight operations have been suspended until the investigation is complete and the cause of the blade crack is fully understood,” programme spokeswoman Kyra Hawn said in a statement.
The suspension applies to all 51 jets in the F-35 fleet.
“We have to find out if this is an isolated incident or if it has design implications,” Hawn said.
The cracked turbine blade was being shipped to manufacturer Pratt and Whitney’s engine plant in Middletown, Connecticut for evaluation.
The Pentagon has high hopes for the radar-evading F-35 fighter, which is supposed to replace most of the combat aircraft fleet of the US air force, navy and Marine Corps by the end of the decade.
The defence department plans to produce 2,443 aircraft for the US military and several hundred others for eight international partners who have invested in the project, as well as at least two customers, Japan and Israel.
But countries taking part in the programme are anxious about spiraling costs and incessant production delays, with some postponing or cutting investments.
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