Hooray! A voice of reason at last. Has the right wing ever met a weapon system it didn't love? We entered the war in Iraq with a dominant main battle tank, but no vehicle suitable to patrol Damascus neighbor hoods (the tracks on a Bradley fighting vehicle only last a few thousand miles). It seems real generals have to command main battle tanks, not MRV's. Similarly real pilots have to fly F22's, not A10's, and real Admirals have to command carriers, not minesweepers.

Any cuts in particular defense programs will have to be matched with increases in the overall defense budget. Or something like that...

My #1 hope is that these decisions are better thought-out than was Base Closure and Realignment (BRAC). In that case, many of the decisions were made on a purely political basis: concentrating bases in the south, which is thought to be more pro-military, and closing historic + important bases in the northeast, like the Philadelphia Naval Yard.

-Z

Major reform of defense projects lines up a million bargaining chips to be traded about in Congress for other budget priorities.

Major reform of defense projects lines up a million bargaining chips to be traded about in Congress for other budget priorities.

Posted by: Jon on April 6, 2009 at 3:38 PM | PERMALINK

Good call.

I would really, really, really like to see general publication of some kind of "atomic clock" like spending formula that shows just what each cut in defense spending could produce for every other part of our social network. There was some widget going around for a while that told you what the cost of the Iraq war was per state. I'd love to see Defense cuts mapped out in terms of their "teacher dollars" or "health care dollars" or, better yet "child mortality dollars" or something easily digested by the populace. I'd also like to see states where big defence dollars *aren't* spent roped into the discussion--Senators are pressured to keep expensive things in their states, but under no pressure to fight back against featherbedding of military stuff when its not seen as affecting their states.

aimai

Small detail, but nicely handled Steve. The AP wrote:

he plans to cut programs ranging from a new helicopter for the president to ending production of the $140 billion F-22 fighter jet

That sentence makes it sound like each aircraft costs $140 billion. Steve more clearly wrote:

the $140 billion production project of the F-22s

Nicely done.

The f-22 is an Edsel. it was a cold war fighter designed for ATA combat.

the A-10 Warthog, which has been around for decades is far more utilitarian than an F22 and is 1/10th the pricetag.

@remembernovember
Actually the Zoomie (USAF) brass wanted no part of it post Gulf War (1991) because the A-10 wasn't glamorous and didn't match with their dreams of winning War thru the Air. They nearly retired it in the mid 90s.

That was till the USMC and US Army started sniffing around and kicking the tires of the A-10. Suddenly the USAF kept the A-10.

One has to remember the greatest enemy of each service is the other services within the US Military.

Not mentioned in Steve Benen's post, or in almost all the so-called "mainstream" media coverage of this news, is that the Obama administration is proposing to INCREASE military spending (which is routinely misrepresented as "defense" spending). They may not be increasing it as much as the Pentagon wishes they would, and they may be spending it on different priorities than the Pentagon would prefer, and they may be imposing some improvements in accountability in the spending process.

But make no mistake, the Obama administration is committed to militarism, and to the corporate military-industrial complex, and is INCREASING, not reducing, spending on the military.

Under the Obama administration, the USA will continue to spend more on the military than the entire rest of the world combined.

Gates' goal is to not only apply some much needed budget discipline to the Pentagon -- defense spending has gone up 72% over the last nine years -- but also to make better use of the money.

This is a misreading. They're not cutting spending, they're simply shifting it -- primarily to counterinsurgency. And let's be clear about the fact that counterinsurgency takes a very long time, and it takes boatloads of money. It is, in a word, nationbuilding. And, of course, it requires our inserting ourselves in global hotspots, primarily failed states. Have Iraq & Afghanistan really been that much fun?

Just because Obama is doing it doesn't necessarily make it all sweetness and light. There's more here.

junebug wrote: "And let's be clear about the fact that counterinsurgency takes a very long time, and it takes boatloads of money. It is, in a word, nationbuilding."

Or in two words, neo-imperialist colonialism.

"Under the Obama administration, the USA will continue to spend more on the military than the entire rest of the world combined."-SecularAnimist

Well, yes; that's a given. In the reality of politics you have to buy votes, and stuff built in your district does just that- both in campaign contributions and jobs.

Since we all agree that spending will remain at obscene levels, we can only hope that a kinder, gentler, saner government will see the wisdom of spending all that money on people. Pay raises and more education for human soldiers, and health benefits for them when they get injured on the job.

Instead of tossing them aside, as we have done since we kicked the Brits out of North America. Coxy's Bonus Army, Vietnam Vets with PTSD and Agent Orange, today's Traumatic Brain Injury, etc.

I'm not holding my breath. . .

The A-10 is VERY good at what it does, there's no other aircraft like it...but it's not an air superiority fighter. The comparison you're making is like comparing an F350 pickup to a Corvette. They do different things...but both have reasons to exist.

Without the F22, it's extremely likely we're going to lose the air superiority edge we've enjoyed for so long. That edge means our ground forces are able to advance under a protective umbrella of air cover; ground wars will be a lot costlier in terms of lives for us without the kill ratios and air superiority we've had in conflicts like the two gulf wars and Afghanistan.

Not saying that's necessarily an entirely bad thing or even that it's not inevitable...but when the Dubyas of the world get a hair up their arses about sending troops around the world, it's going to look different in the future without the techno edge we've had until now.

The F15 fleet is aging, and its avionics package is no longer leaps and bounds ahead of its competitors. Mark Bowden had a pretty good article about this a couple months back in the Atlantic.

And to clarify, by "not necessarily a bad thing" I mean perhaps the next idiot POTUS who wants to go on an empire building binge like Dubya did will have to hesitate and think a little beforehand instead of using "yeeeeeeeeeehaw" as a foreign policy....and not that I thought it would be ok if more soldiers get killed.