More Than One Way to Skin the Defense Budget

 by Sandra I. Erwin.  National Defense, 18 Nov 2012

In the high-stakes bargaining between the White House and Congress on how to avert the fiscal cliff — a mix of steep spending cuts and expiration of tax breaks scheduled to begin Jan. 2 — the Pentagon’s budget will be one of many chips on the table.

The president has said he would support a deal that cancels across-the-board sequestration cuts if they are offset by a mix of targeted spending reductions and tax revenues. The ultimate fate of defense funding depends on the size of the deficit-reduction package, and how it ends up being split between spending and revenues.

The administration and Congress have agreed in principle to remove $487 billion from future defense spending beginning in 2013. But it is possible that, as part of a grand bargain to tame the federal budget deficit, defense could be squeezed a percentage point or two more.

Defense sequestration cuts — projected at $55 billion for fiscal year 2013 — will not trigger massive layoffs or program cancellations, analysts have said. Congress is expected to delay those cuts as it works on a budget deal, but the underlying issue remains: The Pentagon might have to accommodate deeper cuts — beyond the $487 billion it is already programming.

“Much ambiguity remains, particularly in specifics of how sequester would be applied,” said David J. Berteau, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The automatic cuts only apply to FY13, but there are significant challenges in FY14 and beyond,” he said Nov. 16.

There is no shortage of proposals on how the Pentagon could downsize responsibly. Just this week, defense think tanks, special advisory panels and lawmakers have unleashed a torrent of studies and recommendations. They all agree on one fundamental point: The nation’s current defense apparatus will no longer be affordable, even if sequestration cuts are avoided. Following are some of the latest recommendations:

Sen. Coburn: Go Back to Basics

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, says defense costs too much because of uncontrolled mission creep. Defense has become the “Department of Everything,” which is the title of Coburn’s Nov. 15 report. He concludes that the Pentagon could save $67.9 billion over 10 years by jettisoning “non-defense” defense splurging. “Spending more on grocery stores than guns doesn’t make any sense,” Coburn said. “And using defense dollars to run microbreweries, study Twitter slang, create beef jerky, or examine Star Trek does nothing to defend our nation.”

Programs that the Pentagon funds but Coburn considers irrelevant include non-military research and development ($6 billion), education ($15.2 billion), alternative energy ($700 million), grocery stores ($9 billion) and excessive overhead support staff ($37 billion).

“Our nation’s $16 trillion debt is the new red menace, posing perhaps a greater threat to our nation than any military adversary,” the report said.

Coburn called out the Pentagon for maintaining 64 elementary and secondary schools at 16 military facilities in the United States, which support 19,000 students. The cost is more than $50,000 per student, said the report, which greatly exceed the national average of $11,000 per student. These schools are located in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina and South Carolina.

 

RAND: Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize

“Establishing a strategic direction limits the risk the cuts may impose or, at the very least, makes that risk explicit to the nation’s leaders,” said a RAND Corp. study titled, “A Strategy-Based Framework for Accommodating Reductions in the Defense Budget.”

It’s simple: Prioritize defense challenges, decide what risks to accept, and make corresponding force structure and program decisions.

The authors offer several possible paths to sizable defense reductions beyond the $487 billion already sought by the administration: Rebalance force structure and investments toward the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions while sustaining key alliances and partnerships in other regions; plan and size forces to be able to defeat a major adversary in one theater while denying aggression elsewhere or imposing unacceptable costs; protect key investments in the technologically advanced capabilities most needed for the future, including countering anti-access threats; and no longer size active forces to conduct large and protracted stability operations.

RAND also suggests the Pentagon must cut health, retirement and compensation costs. “Even cutting force structure, in some cases deeply, may not suffice,” the study says. “Constraining the cost of personnel is becoming a more pressing option.”

Stimson Center: Cut Fat, Keep Muscle

Under the auspices of the fiscally conservative Peter G. Peterson Foundation and the Stimson Center, a group of 15 policy makers, retired general officers and academics delivered a proposal that calls for a restrained military posture, but no substantive cuts to programs or force structure.

The group’s study, “A New U.S. Defense Strategy for a New Era: Military Superiority, Agility and Efficiency,” embraces the Colin Powell doctrine of a strong military that is restrained in how it’s used.

“U.S. military power is not unlimited,” the report said. “The Afghan and Iraq wars demonstrated how difficult it is to stabilize distant nations, to provide security to their populations, and to facilitate effective and honest governance.” The United States should shift from a “mind-set that emphasizes static deployments overseas, relying instead on frequent rotations of expeditionary forces home-based in the United States.” The goal should be to “exercise jointly with allies, to familiarize themselves with potential combat theaters, and to demonstrate U.S. resolve and capabilities.

The Stimson report does not recommend specific spending cuts, but estimated that the Pentagon could save from $200 billion to $400 billion over 10 years by eliminating duplicative layers of management, overlapping programs and untold other inefficient ways of doing business. Some savings could be achieved by reforming military compensation, the report said. Although it is important to take care of troops, “specific compensation policies are not inherently sacred.” The study endorses other blue-ribbon panels’ recommendations for changing retirement rules, including age eligibility, vesting schedule, calculation of benefits and retention bonuses.

Current methods for buying weapon systems also contribute to inefficiency, said the report. It dittoed proposals to streamline the system already put forth by the Defense Business Board and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Project on Defense Alternatives: Debt Is Enemy #1

The Project on Defense Alternatives, a progressive think tank, calls for a leaner military, with more strictly defined missions. In  “A Reasonable Defense,” PDA executive director Carl Conetta, offered a blueprint on how to achieve an additional $550 billion in defense savings beyond President Obama’s 2013 budget request. These savings, he said, are “appropriate to a grand fiscal bargain and avoid the institutional and economic harm that might result from sequestration.”

Contrary to election-year rhetoric, said Conetta, “There is broad bipartisan support for cutting the deficit by more than $2 trillion over the next decade. Unfortunately, the current panic about the pending sequester discourages clear thinking about the United States’ role in the world and how much it should spend on national security.”

Reasonable Defense proposes that the U.S. military focus on those missions and responsibilities for which it is best suited — traditional defense, deterrence, and crisis response — while foregoing large national-building efforts and counterinsurgency campaigns. The study advocates more and better-balanced security cooperation with other nations, but sees “preventive security” initiatives to be largely the job of the State Department. “Our military is a fabulously expensive tool,” said Conetta, “and we can no longer afford to misuse it.”

Correction: An earlier version of this post said the Stimson Center study was backed by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The correct name of the organization is the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

Pentagon Asks for $470 Billion in '08

 by David Axe

(Originally published by Military.com, 02| Feb 2007)

The 2008 defense budget, due for public release on Monday, is expected to total $470 billion, not counting wartime supplementals of perhaps $100 billion or more, likely continuing a trend of an expanding national security bill. And new expenses related to a proposed increase in land forces might mean even more spending.

For 2007, the Pentagon got $432 billion plus $170 billion in supplementals. (All figures in this article ignore around $150 billion in annual spending by the energy and homeland security departments and the Veterans Administration - spending often counted, by many observers, as contributing to national security.)

A graph of annual military spending since 1947 plods along at $360 billion (in constant 2006 dollars) but shows spikes to over $500 billion for the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. Beginning in 2002, the graph skyrockets to well above even the most expensive year of the Korean War. U.S. military spending now exceeds all other nations combined, according to Winslow Wheeler of the Security Policy Working Group. "And our rate of growth [in military spending] is far in excess of the rest of the world."

But Wheeler concedes that even today's record constant-dollar spending accounts for just 3.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product, versus nearly 11 percent at the height of the Vietnam War, 6 percent during the 1970s and 4.1 percent during the early 1990s. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Peter W. Huggins, a professor at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base, says that decline should be reversed. "Increasing the size of the pie, the overall defense budget, would allow all our nation's military services to fill pressing needs such as expanding the ranks, rebuilding and modernizing the force and preparing for the challenges that the future holds."

Others say the United States spends too much, and on the wrong priorities, with too little long-term planning. Dr. Cindy Williams, also of the Security Policy Working Group, says that expenses totaling as much as a trillion dollars over the next six years aren't included in current planning but will mean even bigger defense budgets in the future. Around $60 billion of that trillion pays for adding 92,000 soldiers and Marines, an initiative President George W. Bush announced during his January State of the Union Address.

"If the Administration were realistic about the true cost of the war … Americans would have questions about whether this war is affordable at all," Williams says.

That expense is unnecessary, according to Carl Conetta from the Project on Defense Alternatives. "What has been lacking in recent years is strategic wisdom, not military personnel. Any perceived shortfall in the latter derives from the former. It would be better to correct the error."

Conetta advises less reliance on military force for national security. Retired British Army General Rupert Smith in his new book The Utility of Force makes the same point, saying that today's "confrontations" call less for military solutions than for economic and diplomatic ones. 

Wheeler concurs. Defense spending, he says, "is not saving us."

No Good Reason to "Grow" the US Army and Marine Corps

by Carl Conetta

(Originally Published on Thursday, February 1, 2007 by CommonDreams.org)

President Bush’s proposal to add 92,000 troops to the Army and Marine Corps has a degree of bipartisan appeal. Advocates may believe that America’s troubles in Iraq provide reason enough to "grow" the Army and Marine Corps. But this view misconstrues both the lessons of that war and America’s true security needs. What has been lacking in recent years is strategic wisdom, not military personnel. Any perceived shortfall in the latter derives from the former. It would be better to correct the error, than feed it more boots. Indeed, correcting it would obviate any apparent need to boost Army and Marine Corps end strength. Certainly, boosting the Army and Marine Corps has a political utility for the President and his opponents, alike. But no one seriously contends that the initiative will relieve the stress of current Iraq deployments. Nor will it ease the strain of shipping additional troops to that country, as the President proposes. This, because any additions to Army and Marine Corps end strength must come in small increments, and it takes time to build new units. There will be no significant effect at all before 2009. Looking down the road: the proposed additions to end strength will combine with other initiatives to dramatically increase America’s capacity to sustain protracted ground operations overseas. The other relevant initiatives include the administration’s Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy and various reforms aiming to increase the proportion of military personnel available for operational duties. Taken together these efforts eventually would allow the United States to comfortably deploy on a continuous basis more than 100,000 ground troops outside Europe, Japan, and Korea – while the latter locations absorb more than another 60,000 troops. There is no manifest need for such a capability unless: (1) The United States maintains a large contingent of troops inside Iraq indefinitely, or (2) the nation aims to routinely and continuously involve 100,000 or more ground troops in regime change, foreign occupation, "nation-building", counter-insurgency, and/or stability operations. The prospect of a long-term US troop presence in Iraq is not an idle one. Although proposals for beginning withdrawal have now become commonplace in Congress, few advocates talk about total withdrawal anytime soon – if at all. Increasing Army and Marine Corps end strength will enable the United States to "stay the course" charted by the Bush administration in Iraq and elsewhere – indefinitely. Much as the proposed Iraq "troop surge" serves to counter a diplomatic solution to the Iraqi impasse, the proposed increase in Army and Marine Corps end strength serves as an alternative to setting a new course at the level of national security strategy. Is "not enough boots on the ground" the chief lesson to learn from the Iraq debacle? A more critical view is that the administration’s chief failure resides not at the level of war planning, but at the level of national security strategy. The failure involves misapplying and over-relying on military instruments. It rests on the mistaken belief that the type of enterprise represented by the Iraq war – forceful regime change and coercive nation-building – is necessary to our security and practicable. This belief is a fount of unrealistic goals and impossible missions. Minimally, the nation and its armed forces deserve an open and thorough debate on the strategic lessons of the Iraq misadventure before we start ramping up the nation’s capacity to put more boots on the ground worldwide. To foreclose this debate for reasons of political expediency is to add insult to tragedy. Carl Conetta is co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives(PDA). More details of the troop buildup and the analytical basis of this piece can be found in PDA Briefing Report #20

A Troop Surge Can’t Win a Victory from a Bad Decision for War

by Carl Conetta

(originally Published on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 by CommonDreams.org)

The impasse in Iraq is not due principally to a lack of resources, but rather to the mission and the strategy informing the war. From the outset, the US goals in Iraq have been overly ambitious and intrusive. This is the heart of the problem there. No amount of troop presence will suffice to stabilize the nation in the way the Bush administration intends. Success in counter-insurgency efforts does not principally hinge on troop numbers, nor, for that matter, does it hinge on the methods or techniques of counter-insurgency and population control – as the US Army and Marine Corps’ feverish search for an effective counter-insurgency doctrine might imply. The play of insurgency and counter-insurgency involves a three-sided relationship between government forces, anti-government ones, and the citizenry. A key aspect is the relative “rootedness” and standing of the insurgent and counter-insurgent forces vis a vis the values, culture, and aspirations of the general populace. In this contest, foreign occupiers suffer a distinct structural disadvantage – by virtue of being both “foreign” and “occupiers.” In this regard, the most disconcerting data from Iraq concerns popular attitudes toward US forces. The percentage of Iraqis, both Sunni and Shia, desiring US withdrawal within a year or less has steadily increased as has the percentage who support attacks on US troops. A foreign occupier’s presence is dependent, ultimately, on coercive power. Overcoming this disadvantage in the contest for “hearts and minds” depends on their being relatively modest in aims and discrete in methods – assuming that the mission permits it. Unfortunately, the American mission does not. What the Bush administration has sought to do, at the point of a gun, is thoroughly reinvent Iraq – its public institutions, legal system, security structures, economy, and political order. This is a revolution as profound as any but foreign in origin, design, and implementation. The desired end state is a friendly and pliable Iraq – wide open to American influence, dependent on American power, and supportive of US interests and aims in the region. It should not be surprising that our efforts – which have flooded the country with nearly 300,000 foreign handlers – have bred resentment and resistance, both active and passive. Nor should it be surprising that, when the experiment’s democratic trappings actually work, they work against us – bringing to power parties at odds with the American purpose. The strategy that led us into Iraq and that continues to guide American efforts evinces two fundamental errors. The first is a naive optimism regarding the utility of military force. The second, an underestimation of the power and dynamics of identity politics – nationalism, tribalism, and religious communalism. Together, these errors blinded the war’s architects to the likely effects of American presence and combat operations – beginning with a failure to appreciate the chaos that war would unleash. Strategically, the United States sought to leverage Iraq’s communal and tribal divisions. The ability to take and hold the country with an economy of troops depended on a condominium with fundamentalist Shia groups. Relative peace in the Shia-controlled areas was the prerequisite for rooting out the Baathists – the initial target. From the start, however, the Shia fundamentalist parties rejected essential elements of the US vision for Iraq, although they needed the cover our military could provide. The Kurdish community, while more amenable to US ends (including Iraqi detente with Israel), also has had its own agenda – independence – not to mention its own scores to settle. The war’s architects expected that the US mission could balance among Iraq’s communities and create an opening for the eventual triumph of a friendly, secular “middle” – a more or less liberal, unifying force. In the meantime, American military power was to play a suppressant role -- neutralizing or containing the most intransigent actors, especially on the Sunni side. Unfortunately, the envisioned Iraqi “middle” had no significant constituency other than American power – a circumstance that tarred it as comprador. And, despite America’s military prowess, the ethno-religious forces proved to hold the stronger hand. Indeed, the very exercise of American power served to swell their ranks and status. It is they, not we, who have controlled majority sentiment. Thus, we have never been able to truly command the situation that we unleashed. The broad brush and blunt effort to neutralize Baath party members and stamp out Baathist influences prompted a communal response from Sunnis. Not only did it feed an anti-American insurgency, it also created support for Sunni-based terrorist groups intent on targeting the Shia community, as such. And, of course, Sunnis generally could see that, despite its declared goals, Operation Iraqi Freedom was bringing to power their ethnoreligious rivals, not secular “unifiers.” The descent into communal conflict was accelerated by the actions of the Iraqi security forces, who are barely reconstituted ethnic militias. These, and clandestine Shia groups, soon began doing to Sunnis what Sunni-based terrorist groups had been doing to the Shia. And US operations aiming to contain radical Shia elements had the same effect as similar efforts in Sunni areas: they recruited citizens to radicalism. Thus, what began as an American-conceived and controlled operation to depose a dictator and his clique became, step by step, a centrifugal communal conflict that the United States could no longer control. Ironically, public opinion polls show that Iraqi Sunni and Shia do strongly agree on one thing: their disdain for Americans and their desire to have us leave. Many critics have derided the Bush national security team for incompetence in the post-invasion stability and reconstruction efforts. Still, the more consequential incompetence has to do with thinking that this enterprise was practicable in the first place. Carl Conetta is the co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, http://www.comw.org/pda/. This piece is adapted from More troops for Iraq? Time to just say "No" by Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #39, 10 January 2007. http://www.comw.org/pda/0701bm39.html

 

New Workhorse of US Military: A Bomb With Devastating Effects

By DAVID WOOD Newhouse News Service, 12 March 2003.

WASHINGTON -- It will fall silently and unseen from the distant sky, a cigar-shaped steel capsule hurtling down at 300 mph with a single deadly purpose. In the final moments, there might come a brief, chilling whir as tiny gears adjust its tail fins to nudge it closer to its target.

At home, television viewers monitoring the war with Iraq will see the familiar gun-camera footage: cross hairs on a blurred image of a building and, as a Pentagon officer narrates, the flicker of a shadow and a bright flash before the tape runs out.

On the ground, however, the work of the 2,000-pound Mark-84 JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) bomb, the new workhorse of the U.S. military, is just beginning. In nanoseconds it will release a crushing shock wave and shower jagged, white-hot metal fragments at supersonic speed, shredding flesh, crushing cells, rupturing lungs, bursting sinus cavities and ripping away limbs in a maelstrom of destruction.

These and other effects, calculated and charted by Defense Department war planners in a predictive software program called "Bug Splat," are largely obscured by smoke and debris.

But they may become a critical factor if the United States goes into a controversial war with Iraq. While the Pentagon's war plan is designed to minimize casualties, the inevitable civilian dead and wounded are sure to be seized on by opponents, particularly in the Arab world, as evidence of American perfidy.

The simple fact, says Dr. Harry W. Severance, an emergency physician and associate clinical professor at the Duke University Trauma Center, is that weapons like JDAM are designed to kill.

"People look at and calculate the effects and design those into the weapons," said Severance, a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians who advises state, federal and military agencies on blast injuries and triage.

American officials, from President Bush on down, say the United States will do its utmost to conduct the war humanely.

In a recent briefing for reporters, a senior military officer explained that "Bug Splat ... is really a mathematical process that we can go to that shows, depending on the direction the bomb is actually falling, where the effects of that fragmentation from the bomb will go.

"It's certainly not a science," said this officer, who cannot be identified under Pentagon rules. "I don't want to say there will be no casualties. But it (Bug Splat) is a very good way to try to keep the number of casualties and the damage to a minimum."

The Mark-84 JDAM, expected to star in the anticipated war, may crystallize these concerns. It is a 2,000-pound "dumb" or unguided bomb of the type used by U.S. forces for decades. What is relatively new, however, is a strap-on kit consisting of an inertial navigation system that guides the bomb toward the target, a satellite receiver, and tail fins for small final corrections in the dive toward an aim point determined by Global Positioning System satellites.

Unlike the Pentagon's new Massive Ordnance Air Burst (MOAB) bomb, which is intended to blast clear wide areas of obstructions or structures, the Mark-84 JDAM bomb is a "pinpoint" weapon designed to kill and destroy smaller targets. The Pentagon argues the precision-guided JDAM can reduce unintended casualties.

Thousands of JDAMS are stockpiled at Persian Gulf air bases. A thousand may be dropped on the war's first night, on reinforced bunkers and "soft" targets like military barracks and transportation facilities.

While the technology of the Mark-84 JDAM is proudly hailed by the Pentagon and by the manufacturer, Boeing, no one in the Defense Department nor its research labs or weapons contractors would publicly discuss the actual effects of the munition as it detonates. Privately, however, engineers and weapons designers were eager to describe the mechanism.

As the Mark-84 JDAM strikes the ground, its fuse ignites a priming charge that detonates 945 pounds of Tritonal, a silvery solid of TNT mixed with a dollop of aluminum for stability.

The ensuing chemical reaction produces an expanding nucleus of hot gas that swells the Mark-84's 14-inch-wide cast steel casing to almost twice its size before the steel shears and fractures, showering a thousand pounds of white-hot steel fragments at 6,000 feet per second and driving a shock wave of several thousand pounds per square inch.

Instantaneously, a fireball lashes out at 8,500 degrees Farenheit, and the explosion gouges a 20-foot crater and hurls off 10,000 pounds of rock and dirt debris at supersonic speed.

Trauma physicians confronting the human wreckage divide casualties into four classes. One is injury from the blast itself, mostly caused by a pressure wave a hundred times or more the injury threshold of 15 pounds per square inch (psi). By comparison, a shock wave of 12 psi will knock over a standing person.

A second class of injury is from the wind and debris that immediately follow the blast wave. A blast force of 4 psi -- far below the force of these winds -- can shatter glass and drive lethal fragments at 120 mph. Metal fragments will travel about 3,800 feet, nearly three-quarters of a mile. Bigger fragments of the bomb -- heavy pieces of the thick metal nose cone, for instance -- will sail out a mile and a half, a Defense Department engineer said.

A third set of injuries results either as bodies are picked up and thrown against something, or as part of a stationary body is ripped away. A fourth class takes in everything else, including burns from the fireball and crush injuries from falling debris.

"The key to survival with a Mark-84 is to not be behind glass and not be behind something that's going to fail, like a concrete wall," said a Defense Department official who asked not to be identified.

Almost no one survives primary blast injuries, experts say. The brutal shock wave, a force that far exceeds the pressure the atmosphere normally applies to the human body, smashes into and explodes body cavities of lesser pressure -- lungs, colon, bowels, even through the sinuses into the skull. The overpressure can burst individual cells and rupture critical blood vessels, forcing air through them and on into the heart and brain, causing instant death.

"You really don't treat consequences of primary overpressure," said Dr. Michael McCalley, a physician and professor of public health and preventive medicine at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

Third-class injuries also are almost always lethal.

"The type of force that picks you up and throws you, where you get traumatic amputations, you're pretty much already dead from the blast," Severance said.

Crush injuries, from the pressure wave or from falling rubble, can also be lethal. Crushing can break open muscle cells, dumping the contents into the capillaries and clogging critical blood vessels, McCalley said. That can cause cardiac problems, kidney failure and other complications difficult to treat in a war zone.

"In a poor country like Iraq, you don't survive a crush injury," said McCalley, who recently returned from making a survey of public health facilities there.

Surprisingly, many people who avoid the primary blast injuries of a munition like the Mark-84 survive its other effects -- severe burns from the fireball, losing chunks of flesh to flying debris, and crushed limbs.

That's when emergency triage -- sorting out the dying from those who can be saved -- becomes critical.

"You may have 85 to 95 percent of the victims of a major blast who are walking -- scared, covered with debris and dust, bleeding from lacerations, and wanting somebody to help them right now," Severance said. "Those walking you can green-tag for later medical care. Five to 10 percent, these are people who need an operating room right now, and they are red-tagged.

"Black tag? Today's your day to die," he said.

Medical care in Iraq, according to the United Nations and other organizations, is minimal and declining. Iraq does not have an operative burn unit anywhere in the country, McCalley said, and no broad system of civil defense or bomb shelters. His survey found many towns have ambulances -- but often they are not equipped with defibrillators, intubators or other common emergency medical equipment.

And with Iraq's hospital system in a shambles, McCalley said, "Where would the ambulances take people?"