The Black Hole that is defense spending

larsv8 · Apr 28, 2015

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/flawed-f-35-why-pentagon-153300333.html

The F-35 fighter plane, whose troubled road to deployment will cost taxpayers almost $400 billion, took another hit yesterday when the Defense Dept.’s Inspector General criticized the management and oversight of engine development by Pratt & Whitney.

That came hard on the heels of a General Accounting Office report last month that called the reliability of the engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter “poor.”

“Improving the F-35 engine reliability to achieve established goals will likely require more time and resources than originally planned," GAO auditors said.

How much more time and resources probably doesn’t really matter. After about 20 years of political battles, massive cost overruns, major missteps and almost a decade of delays, nobody – not the Pentagon, not the President, not the Congress – is going to cry uncle and stow the F-35s in secret hangars at Edwards Air Force Base in Nevada. That would mean having to tell the American public that buried alongside perhaps the most controversial program in the history of advanced weaponry will be billions of hard-earned dollars.

Citibank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and other behemoths of the financial crisis were too big to fail. The F-35 has cost so much already that the program is too big to bail out of.

The price tag on this weapons system over its estimated 55-year life – originally said to be $1.1 trillion – is now pegged at $850 billion by Air Force Lt. General Christopher Bogdan, the officer with the thankless task of eventually getting three versions of the plane – one for the Air Force, one for the Navy and one for the Marines – safely airborne.

Last February, Bogan told David Martin of 60 Minutes: “I don't see any scenario where we're walking back away from this program.”

“So the American taxpayer is going to buy this airplane?” Martin asked.

“I would tell you we're going to buy a lot of these airplanes,” Bogdan said.

But there is another reason the F-35, built by Lockheed Martin, will survive. And it goes beyond the reluctance of generals and politicians to admit that the plane has been a spending sinkhole and a management disaster. The plane’s stealth and technological prowess hold the promise of air supremacy for America.

As Marine Lt. General Robert E. Schmidle Jr. told 60 Minutes: “I shouldn't get into the exact ranges because those ranges are classified, but what I can tell you is that the range at which you can detect the enemy as opposed to when he can detect you can be as much as 10 times further when you'll see him before he'll ever see you….”

Since the name of the game in aerial combat is detection, the military is never going to walk away from that kind of advantage no matter what the cost.
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This bull**** makes me so furious.

ApolloRLB · Apr 29, 2015

larsv8 said: ↑

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/flawed-f-35-why-pentagon-153300333.html

This bull**** makes me so furious.
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Let's be real, the military's core competency isn't managing projects and subcontractors. Should we really be surprised that Lt. General Christopher Bogdan is a poor project manager?

ApolloRLB · Apr 29, 2015

Remii said: ↑

The defense budget/military spending is also a form of foreign aid... The US gives military assistance of some kind to over 150 countries. Take the middle east for example. Mostly all of those countries (and I'm willing to bet all of them) over there received or is receiving some type of military aid from the US. The US is also in the business of selling military equipment as well.
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How much is enough? Can't we shift some of those hundreds of billions into U.S. infrastructure, police body cams, etc.?

glynch · Apr 30, 2015

Remii said: ↑

Interesting how we pump trillions of dollars into the defense budget and have to throw in extra tax dollars so military families can get food stamps. Brave men and women risk their lives to defend this country and their families have to get food stamps to survive... Guess those trillions of dollars the defense budget gets isn't enough to pay the employees who actually put their lives on the line.
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Decent wages paid to the armed forces is just using government money for other people's children i.e "welfare". No high priced lobbyists for VA benefits. Now a nice juicy new weapon system on a cost plus basis, now we're talking.

Remii · May 1, 2015

ApolloRLB said: ↑

How much is enough? Can't we shift some of those hundreds of billions into U.S. infrastructure, police body cams, etc.?
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I'm sure they could... But they need military equipment to invade places like Afghanistan so they can grow heroin... Which is protecting the freedoms of American citizens

glynch said: ↑

Decent wages paid to the armed forces is just using government money for other people's children i.e "welfare". No high priced lobbyists for VA benefits. Now a nice juicy new weapon system on a cost plus basis, now we're talking.
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Well, at least they give veterans a holiday... Great treatment for serving your country.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/23/health/veterans-dying-health-care-delays/index.html

larsv8 · Jun 10, 2015

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/post-9-11-spending-troops-120000945.html

So, the Republicans are now trying to circumvent budgeting and make a slush fund for defense spending. How typical of them.

John Ams, vice president of the National Society of Accountants, says the games Congress is playing with the defense budget this year wouldn’t pass the sniff test in the private sector.

Ams, a lawyer and former tax accountant, becomes agitated when discussing congressional Republicans latest gimmick for bypassing the legal caps on Department of Defense spending in the coming fiscal year by funneling an extra $38 billion through a special Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account originally set up to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although those funds are being treated as a “contingency” for accounting purposes, in fact there is no doubt that they will migrate into the Pentagon’s base budget for readiness and general operations.

And because the additional funding is being funneled through the special OCO account, Congress will not be obliged to find offsetting cuts in other programs. It will simply add it to the budget deficit next year.

“They’re saying this is a contingency, we’re just putting it there on the off chance [we will need it],” Ams said in an interview on Tuesday. “There’s no off chance. It’s close to 100 percent they’re going to use it. Congress just doesn’t want to make the hard decisions. If we put it directly into the defense budget then we have to have some offsets or tax increases, heaven forbid. This way you subvert the definition of a contingency and you create a loophole. And certainly in the private sector this wouldn’t stand scrutiny.”

Ams isn’t the only one displeased with this latest accounting gimmick embedded in the Republican’s fiscal 2016 budget, which cleared the House and Senate earlier this year. Democrats and budget watchdogs have howled over the budgetary sleight of hand that allowed the GOP to circumvent a $523 billion defense cap imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act, while President Obama has vowed to veto the defense appropriations bill unless the provision is removed.

The Overseas Contingency Operations fund was meant to exclusively cover the cost of personnel, weaponry, supplies and logistical support to the roughly 2.5 million troops sent to war beginning shortly after the 9/11 attacks. But gradually, OCO evolved into an all-purpose slush fund for the military, members of Congress and the Bush and Obama administrations. Policy makers found it convenient to use the account not only for fighting overseas but to fund routine costs of Department of Defense personnel and benefits or to purchase weapons system still in the production stage.

In the latest skirmish over OCO, Senate Republicans yesterday beat back a Democratic effort led by Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island to freeze the extra $38 billion in the OCO account until the two parties can strike a budget compromise later this year to breach the caps and increase spending for both defense and domestic programs.

Reed offered his plan as an amendment to a new defense authorization bill pending on the Senate floor. Reed argued that the Republicans’ back-door funding of the Pentagon could become a precedent for future attempts to shatter budget discipline.

“If this were a one-year, temporary fix you might justify it,” he said. “But what we’re seeing is a pathway that [Congress is] going to take every year – more OCO, more OCO, more OCO – and more remote use of OCO funds. That’s the way, unfortunately, it tends to be around here. You go where the money is, and right now the money is in OCO.”

Senate Armed Services Chair John McCain (R-AZ) conceded that funding national defense through the OCO account is not ideal, “but it’s far better than the alternative, which is to deny the men and women in uniform $38 billion that they desperately need now.”

Reed’s amendment went down, 51 to 46, on a straight party line vote.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government watchdog, says that OCO is a “slush fund,” pure and simple.

“It’s an extra place to stuff cash to evade the budget caps…,” Ellis said yesterday.
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ipaman · Jun 10, 2015

Traditional large scale military conflicts are history. The world is shrinking with global trade, technology, internet, social media, etc... It's economic and technology wars that are here now indefinitely. I wonder if we start to see budgets move to recognize that.

Dubious · Jun 10, 2015

Senate Armed Services Chair John McCain (R-AZ) conceded that funding national defense through the OCO account is not ideal, “but it’s far better than the alternative, which is to deny the men and women in uniform $38 billion that they desperately need now.”

desperately? are we fighting and losing a war somewhere?

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The Black Hole that is defense spending

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