Global threats will boost spending on defense

The global defence and aerospace industry are likely to rebound after being in the "doldrums" for some time. The accounting firm Deloitte claims the growth in global threats will cause increased defense spending.

The United States still spends by far the most on defense of any country. A chart based on figures from last November show that the U.S. spends over $609 billion yearly on defense. The next highest spending was a mere $216.4 billion by China. In third place was Russia with $84.5 billion. Saudi Arabia, which buys many weapons from the US ,and has a large contract with Canada as well, comes in fourth at 80.8 billion, not far behind Russia. Even the smaller United Arab Emirates spends $22.8 billion enriching many western arms producers. Canada spends $17.5 billion and Israel $15.9 billion.

The war on terror in the Middle East, tensions in Eastern Europe and in the South China sea are expected to result in more spending on aerospace and the military. While the US scaled down military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is now picking up again in Iraq and to some extent even in Afghanistan. The Islamic State and its actions may provide a bonanza for the arms industry as countries become more and more concerned about security and intervene in Syria and Iraq and possibly soon in Libya to fight against it. Many countries in eastern Europe bordering Russia will also boost military spending to counter Russian influence in the Ukraine.

As well as increased demand for armored vehicles, munitions, maritime patrol ships and aircraft, cyber-threats will increase markets for companies selling monitoring equipment and security protection. In the US programs likely to start soon or reach full production include the Ohio Class Submarine replacement, the F-35 fighter jet, and Long Range Strike Bomber.

Mike Rogers, former House Intelligence Committee chair, formed a new pressure group "Americans for Peace, Prosperity and Security." The group is already active in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. It hopes to serve as " the premiere national security and foreign policy organization during the 2016 debate". It also wants to help elect a US president who favors more engagement globally and a strong foreign policy. The group hosts candidate events and later this year hopes to host a candidates forum. Business executives with ties to defense contractors are supporting the group. At candidate events the group pushes candidates on national security issues. Apparently they have already convinced many of the more libertarian Republicans to take a more hawkish stance on foreign policy. The United States appears ready to continue its role as global cop with the American taxpayer apparently unable or unwilling to put up much resistance.

U.S. House approves indefinite detention and 8 billion increase in defense budget

A bill approving indefinite detention of terror suspects passed the House of Represenatives today. The detention applies even to U.S. citizens and even if they are captured in the U.S. The right of habeas corpus is by now ancient history.

An amendment that would bar indefinite detention sponsored by Adam Smith a Democrat and Justin Amash a Republican was defeated by a vote of 238 to 182. Amash noted:“The frightening thing here is that the government is claiming the power under the Afghanistan authorization for use of military force as a justification for entering American homes to grab people, indefinitely detain them and not give them a charge or trial,” Apparently this does not matter to a majority in the House.

A defense bill totaling a huge 642 billion was also passed by a vote of 299-120. The deficit cutting agreement reached by Obama and the Republicans was simply ignored. Instead of cuts 8 billion was added to the budget. The legislators simply ignored their own earlier legislative agreements.

To add insult to injury the bill as well calls for a missile defense system on the East Coast a system the military itself officially opposes. The bill also will prevent the scheduled reduction of nuclear weapons that is legally required under the terms of a treaty with Russia. No doubt this is part of a stimulus package for the military industrial complex. For more see this article.

Revamped U.S. military budget cuts troops and benefits

The pensions and health plans will be reduced under Obama's new budget proposals for a revamped military. Withdrawal of troops from Iraq and many from Afghanistan means that fewer troops will be needed in future.


This does not mean that the U.S. will abandon its bases around the world but just that it will depend more on high-tech weapons and special forces. Having many boots on the ground trying to occupy a country is expensive both in dollars and politically.


Drones will no doubt be used even more both for attacks and surveillance. Drones are almost costless politically since they do not result in loss of U.S. lives except the odd U.S. citizen turned suspected terrorist.


Even with reductions the U.S. will spend far more than any other country. In fact the U.S. will continue to spend as much almost as the rest of the world altogether. As Obama put it:"Yes, our military will be leaner, but the world must know that the United States will maintain its military superiority," The Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta also noted that certain areas of the defense budget will actually increase:"As we reduce the overall defense budget, we will protect and in some cases increase our investments in special operation forces in new technologies, like . . . unmanned systems, in space and in particular in cyberspace,"


Panetta also squelched the rumour that the U.S. will no longer be ready to fight more than one war at a time. Panetta claimed that the U.S. will still be able to fight multiple wars at one time and will be ready to deploy to any country at any time. He stressed that as the power constellation ranged against the U.S. changes so will military deployment. Panetta mentioned south-east Asia specifically. For more details see this article.

The True Cost of U.S. defense spending

This is from the Bulletin. Add this article to my recent post on the GAO and weapons procurement and a clear picture emerges of the U.S. taxpayer being robbed blind by the military-industrial complex. Of course many are also inevitably dependent on that same complex for jobs and income. The housing bubble has burst but the military spending balloon seems never to run out of gas or hot air from politicians whose careers rise with and depend upon the continued flight of the balloon. If the war on terror did not exist, some other threat would have to be invented. This is already starting with Russia being provoked recently. The warmongers want to hedge their bets.

The true cost of U.S. defense spending

By Gordon Adams | 27 March 2008

With the likelihood of significant political change in January 2009, the Pentagon has been thinking a lot about next year's defense budget request (fiscal year 2010), which the new president will inherit when it's sent to Congress in February 2009. Budget planners and senior leaders in the Defense Department and armed forces face four possible options:

Prepare a basic defense budget that sets aside any plan for funding the war on terror (namely the Iraq War and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan) for the new administration and Congress to figure out;
Prepare a basic defense budget and a separate emergency supplemental request for the war on terror--a strategy they've employed for the last nine budgets at a total cost of more than $710 billion;
Prepare a basic defense budget that includes the cost of the war on terror, trading off war costs with other defense priorities to stay within projected budget ceilings for the next five years--the way the Pentagon handled the defense budget during the Korean and Vietnam wars;
Or prepare a much larger defense budget that simply adds all war on terror funding to the basic defense budget, making no trade-offs and demanding that the White House and Congress suck it up.
This final option would raise the Pentagon budget baseline by roughly $170 billion from now well into the future. Basic budgets/war budgets would be lumped together and, even if the war ended, nobody would dare return to the pre-war funding levels.

Guess which road the Pentagon intends to travel?

It's increasingly clear that Defense leadership and the armed services have moved into a totally unconstrained view of military spending. They refuse to make choices or set priorities, maintaining that they need it all and then some. Nor do they offer strategic justification for such a historically unprecedented level of defense spending. Already for fiscal year 2009, the services have announced that they don't think the $710 billion defense budget they want from Congress is enough--despite the fact that this is more than double the fiscal year 2002 defense budget. Responding to an open invitation from House Armed Services Committee member and former Republican presidential nominee Duncan Hunter to supply Congress with "unfunded requirements" that weren't included in the president's budget (a 15-year tradition), the service chiefs identified another $28.5 billion worth of programs and funding they would love to be given.

Army Chief of Staff George W. Casey Jr. asked for $3.9 billion beyond the $140.7 billion the army had already requested. His letter was replete with appealing capitalizations ("sustain our Soldiers, Families, and Civilians," "sustain the All-Volunteer Force the Nation requires") and a list of 37 projects and programs omitted from the regular budget. The biggest request was for hardware--$1.6 billion for an unidentified number of high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles and nearly $500 million for heavy mobility trucks.

Not to be outdone, the navy and marines identified another $7 billion and 64 projects and programs on top of their $149.3 billion basic budget request. Chief of Naval Operations Gary Roughead asked for funding to make up for "difficult fiscal choices [that] required the delay or inadequate funding of a number of important programs." These "important programs" also emphasized hardware-- $1.7 billion for another LPD-17 amphibious transport dock ship; more than $900 million for a T-AKE dry cargo carrier ship; more than $500 million to install new kits in the Navy's P3C patrol aircraft that would presumably look for terrorist boats and submarines sneaking into U.S. waters; and nearly $400 million for three new C-130 transport planes for the Navy reserve, one of which would support the Blue Angels flying team.

Interestingly, the marines also identified a need for a "Family of Mountain Cold Weather Clothing and Equipment" to "support the warfighter in austere environments that have been identified in the Global War on Terrorism." Presumably this is to confront terrorists in the Arctic, Alps, or during the winter in Afghanistan.

Yet, believe it or not, the air force asked for more additional funding than the other three services combined, identifying another $18 billion in "unfunded requirements"--13 percent above their $143.9 billion basic budget request. Air Force Chief of Staff Mike Moseley didn't even bother sending a letter to Hunter justifying the request, instead transmitting an 11-page document that listed 52 projects. Once again, hardware dominated--$3.9 billion to keep the C-17 cargo plane production line at Boeing from closing down; nearly $1.1 billion to accelerate current F-22 production plans, an aircraft the air force wants more than the defense secretary; more than $400 million to accelerate F-15 modifications; $370 million for three C-40s; and $167 million to hasten F-16 modifications.

The appetite for an enormous fiscal year 2010 defense budget builds on this lack of discipline. This month, Army Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Speakes told the Association of the U.S. Army that the army would need $260 billion annually to maintain its forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, repair and modernize its equipment, and increase its size, which the administration has proposed and Congress has endorsed. He made the army's budgetary strategy clear: "Everybody wants their program nested comfortably in the base and not our in the supplementals." That $260 billion figure fits nicely with what the army has recently received in both its basic budget and supplemental requests and requires no discernment.

The Defense Department as a whole is taking a similar approach. Reportedly, "Guidance for the Development of the Force," a paper authored by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England and circulated in December 2007, has called for a robust fiscal year 2010 defense budget that adds supplemental funding levels to the basic budget. If successful, this would achieve the goal publicly announced by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullens--a defense budget that represents 4 percent of the U.S. gross national product.

Overall, this push has three major implications:

Defense's vaunted programming, planning, and budgeting system is seriously broken. As such, beyond the tedious declaration of the desire for global military dominance and flag waving for the war on terror, little strategic justification has been, or is likely to be, offered for unprecedented defense budget requests.
Defense wants to continue to grow the U.S. military, making it a principle instrument in implementing Washington’s national security strategy, with no concern about the balance in statecraft between the military and our foreign policy and foreign assistance programs. Moreover, the Pentagon seems unaware and unconcerned about the negative impact an overmilitarized national security policy is already having on Washington's international reputation.
Defense is deeply afraid that as we withdraw from Iraq, the next administration, the new Congress and the U.S. people will want to rebalance the country's statecraft and demand accountability in defense planning and spending. To buffer itself against such a change, the Pentagon is loading up the budget beforehand, daring a new administration, Congress, and the U.S. public to bring order and reason to defense budgets. Because once loaded up, any cuts can be called an unwillingness to "support the brave men and women on the battlefield."
Sadly, in the long term, the Pentagon's current budget strategy will only sap the nation's resources, eliminate any incentive for sound strategic planning, further unbalance the nation's national security toolkit, and damage the country's strategic purpose and global reputation.