Rick,

I have to disagree that our military leaders are out of touch with the state of the economy. All of the most senior uniformed officials I know have a very deep understanding of the economy and the stress it's putting on the federal budget. The bottom line, though, is that as long as the American people ask their military to provide homeland defense, the ability to make military strikes at a moment's notice anywhere in the world, transport huge amounts of man and materiel over vast distances, maintain a roubust nuclear deterrent and fight two hybrid/counterinsurgency wars at the same time, we owe it to our military forces to equip them with the best money can buy.

I would argue that, despite spending $600B+ over the past few years, the state of military readiness, to include equipment, is declining. Manpower costs increase every year while equipment is rapidly wearing out due to wartime usage rates.

Running a world class military is expensive. If we, the American people, don't want to pay for it--let's ask LESS of our military forces.

Mr. Ricks, "[t]his list makes [you] wonder just how out of touch with the country's economy our military leaders are." I have to ask: is it the military leaders or our legislative branch who needs to be asked about spending priorities right now. I'm not being cheeky; I actually want to know. Who is driving the purchases that seem silly, the generals or the senators/representatives?

Tom, I concur on your thoughts about billion dollar destroyers and especially on the V-22, but the GI Bill and other education benefits are unbeatable today. Between ROTC scholarships, in-service tuition assistance and the post 9-11 GI Bill my wife (Soldier of 8 years) and myself (Army Officer for 14+ years) have been able to complete the following degrees on the Army dollar:
2.5 Bachelors Degrees
2 Masters Degrees
1 Doctorate

I'm not saying this to brag, but to demonstrate what is possible. Far from being CONUS bound, I've spent multiple tours in OIF/OEF, Kosovo and Korea.

The Post 9-11 GI Bill enables Soldiers to transfer their benefits to their spouses and children. This is a HUGE motivational factor to many of my troopers who may not use the funds for their own education after the Army. It will be interesting to see in the future whether this benefit will have the same impact on this generation as it did on your fathers.

Most of the writing has urged reform of military spending, but it won't happen for years at best. Why? Because there's lots of money involved. A president who tried to cut spending or push for more competitive spending would meet the opposition of a powerful industry, a military with many high ranking officers looking to retire into the industry, lots of money donated to campaigns for pertinent (and shortsighted) members of Congress and Senators, and money spent attacking a president who 'isn't supporting our military' and who 'cuts jobs' without ever looking at the facts. We'll have to wait until some embarrassing defeat before the system really is reformed.
Incidentally I still support the basics of the GI bill because I prefer soldiers to have access to higher education.

It's nice to know they're throwing the citizens of America 'a bone' in the form of a two month unemployment benefits.extension.

That'll give us all time (and the bus fare) to get down to the recruiter's office.

Cf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTW0y6kazWM

Don't the traits of a despotism include the fact that, aside from the country's power elite, only the soldiers and police/suppression apparatus are well fed, clothed, and housed?

"In an attempt to disguise the true size of the American military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4 billion for the Department of Energy goes toward developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3 billion in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt, and Pakistan). Another $1.03 billion outside the official Department of Defense budget is now needed for recruitment and reenlistment incentives for the overstretched U.S. military itself, up from a mere $174 million in 2003, the year the war in Iraq began. The Department of Veterans Affairs currently gets at least $75.7 billion, 50% of which goes for the long-term care of the grievously injured among the at least 28,870 soldiers so far wounded in Iraq and another 1,708 in Afghanistan. The amount is universally derided as inadequate. Another $46.4 billion goes to the Department of Homeland Security.

Missing as well from this compilation is $1.9 billion to the Department of Justice for the paramilitary activities of the FBI; $38.5 billion to the Department of the Treasury for the Military Retirement Fund; $7.6 billion for the military-related activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and well over $200 billion in interest for past debt-financed defense outlays. This brings U.S. spending for its military establishment during the current fiscal year (2008), conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion. "

Chalmers Johnson January, 2008.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174884

We probably need to added 20% to the above numbers, since Mr. Johnsom wrote this two years ago.

would be an interesting event to be held at Luce Hall, Naval Academy. It is their ethics and leadership department funded by the foundation which receives money from many of the DoD Budget's big beneficiaries.

what character we have among the admirals and general who will accept the pay check to continue to direct the hotel management responsibilities of this torturers brothel.

What "balls" they have to not resign when given the orders to maintain their forces there!

This unfortunately is "America's Game" and not the recent circus act in Philadelphia.

I could not believe how naive Mr. Ricks' post was.

The $1.2 billion in CERP is treated like a strategic--not operational or tactical--resource by commanders. Mr. Ricks may think it is too much money, but it barely covers the multitude of projects those commanders are using to conduct Security, Stability, Transition and Reconstruction operations. I recommend witnessing the process for getting a portion of those monies. When I saw it in Afghanistan, it wasn't just thrown around.

The $4.4 billion for three warships? Thank the multitude of 'downsizings' which forced the closure of ship yards. We were once a mighty maritime nation, building ships and sailing a massive Navy. Today, we're limited to around 300 ships which must be capable of so many different missions. In addition, given the volunteer force, the Navy constantly seeks to improve the crew living conditions...which require more money.

The Marines cannot just adopt a US Army helicopter for its use. Last time I checked, Marines operate from the sea; there are significant differences between the Navy and Army variants of the H-60 platform.

If the DoD did not have to appease the Congress (the US Army's guide to its weapon systems has a map of the US showing in which states components of weapon systems are built...I doubt for the education of its soldiers), the budget could be much less. The DoD is told from whom to purchase, where they must be constructed, etc. Both parties use defense appropriations as pork.

The combination of sunk-cost thinking, program inertia, Service greed, inter- and intra-Service competition, and the malign operation of the Iron Triangle make a big chunk of defense spending irrational. It takes one focused and tough SecDef with backing from the White House to alter this in a significant way.

Rumsfeld started to do this under the rubric of transformation, but he blinked when it came time to kill Cold War legacy programs and then he got caught up in the Iraq folly and change went off the table. Gates has the smarts and the White House backing, but he too is bogged down in our two wars and - though with some progress - has not really taken on the structure of the defense budget. I suspect he's waiting for the results of the Quadrennial Defense Review, in which I would guess he's making substantial input. It's a good sign that the Service supporters (AFA etc.) are running scared of the QDR.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has a big role to play here. To be seen if Mullen is willing and able to play it.

I think the military understands the problems perfectly well. But when voters expect their Congresspersons to bring home the bacon (read: well-paying defense industry jobs), getting the actual needs of the services to match up with what is going to be purchased becomes an excursion in Wonderland....

What really frosts me is not the stuff you mentioned, Tom — at least for the most part; I agree with you about the V-22, though the H-60 might not be the right platform for them, as noted above.

No, what really p*sses me off are the items summarized in the National Priorities Project report that weren’t requested by DoD. $2.5 billion in unrequested funds for 10 C-17 aircraft. $465 million in unrequested funds to support a second source for the Joint Strike Fighter’s propulsion system. $825 million more than requested for MRAPs. $1.9 billion above request for Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation. $932 million above request for Other Defense Programs (including defense healthcare). Oh, and $2.19 billion below request for Operations and Maintenance and $1.114 billion below request for Personnel.

At least the acquisition items that you mentioned were requested and were, presumably, asked for pursuant to some sort of a plan. The items listed above don’t share that particular feature.

I would suspect that the Marines would get far more bang for the buck getting the CH-47 instead of the V-22.

While the V-22 is okay, and does offer some slight advantages over a conventional rotary-wing aircraft (particularly on ring routes, hitting lots of bases in a single day), I'm not certain it was worth the billions of dollars and the years worth of development. A combination of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft might have been better. The CH-47--which, incidentally, floats--for landing at small outposts without a runway and a light, off-the-shelf FW aircraft for taking cargo to bases with a runway might have been far more productive in the long-run.

It would be in keeping with their philosophy of buying proven designs and making them work even better.

The same voices that whine about new weapons and lionize the aging and outdated systems they are meant to replace also opposed those old systems when they were new. If we listened to the knee-jerk anti-weapons types all along, we would be spending all our money on training classes and feel-good health care, education and similar stuff for the troops, and telling them to fight with muskets and wooden ships.

The V-22 is an especially good example of a completely revolutionary and desperately needed system, with twice the speed, and far more range and cargo capability, than the systems it is replacing. It was ordered as a result of Carter's Desert One debacle, because the already-old helicopters he sent in to Iran to rescue the hostages were so slow and short-ranged they had to be refueled on the ground en route, making mission planning a nightmare and eventually resulting in disaster when dust from rotor blades reduced visibility and caused a collision with a refueling tanker on the ground.

We've been waiting ever since for the V-22, but the usual teething problems experienced by cutting edge tech were seized on by anti-military types and their useful-idiot "cheap hawk" allies, who engaged in years of bizarre, bitter trench warfare against it, including strangling its budget and constantly delaying it in order to use their own imposed delays as an excuse to call the program "troubled" and "overdue".

Also, the crucial, game-changing difference between the F-35 and the F-18 is being carefully ignored here: STEALTH. I could go on here, but that'll have to do.

The Navy requires the additional F-18E/F's as the current fleet of F-18C/D's wear out faster than planned due to ongoing operations. The proposed F-35C replacement will likely be 2x as expensive as new F-18E/F's which incidentally have some room for further systems development. The "stealthiness" of the -35 is misunderstood - it is not at all invisible to radars - it can be detected by existing defensive equipment, and loses what stealthiness it has when a useful load of stores are mounted externally. Perhaps the better way forward is to skip the single engined F-35 altogether, continue to develop and buy more F-18's, and redirect the Navy's share of F-35 development funding to the X-47B UAV.

The MV-22 is a very expensive airplane, and exposing it to ground fire is the nightmare that is on the horizon. It is an amazing aircraft that has unique capabilities, but for day to day operations, an upgraded CH-46/47 might be a better buy.

Way too much coolade drinking here--check out this General's warnings on excessive defense spending:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY