Fred Kaplan: Too Big To Fail? ... largest defense budget since World War II.

[laststeamtrain]

Too Big To Fail?
President Obama has proposed the largest defense budget since World War II.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, Feb. 1, 2010, at 7:42 PM ET

The Pentagon released its budget for fiscal year 2011 this afternoon, and it is enormous—much larger, even adjusting for inflation, than any budget since World War II. What's more, some numbers buried within the budget suggest that it's set to grow larger still in the coming years—to a greater extent than the White House or the Defense Department acknowledges.

One bit of good news: Defense Secretary Robert Gates is more honest than his recent predecessors about how much money he's really requesting. The figure for FY 2011 is $708.2 billion—consisting of $548.9 billion for the "baseline" budget plus $159.3 billion to pay for "overseas contingency operations," mainly the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And, by the way, he says, tack on another $33 billion to the current year's budget, to pay for the 30,000 extra troops (and all their supplies, weapons, and so forth) that President Obama is sending to Afghanistan.

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For the most part, the big-ticket weapons programs are on the rise: $25 billion for 10 new ships, including two Virginia-class submarines and two DDG-51 destroyers (to make up for his killing the more "advanced" DDG-1000 last year, perhaps). Gates is requesting another $10 billion on missile defense (a billion more than last year). And he is requesting $11 billion for 43 more F-35 fighter planes.

One thing about the F-35, the joint Air Force-Navy fighter that Gates wants to accelerate after halting production of the more costly, somewhat more capable F-22: It's having problems. The problems are so severe, Gates announced today, that he's withholding $614 million in fees from its contractor, Lockheed-Martin (which also made the F-22), and he's fired the plane's program manager.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2243297/

[Hydra]

1. There's always money to kill people

I wonder if that's the natural form of capitalism- a machine that eats people.

[Land Shark]

2. NO way military jets ran out of fuel or money to ferry sick people out of Haiti. (mil jets) n/t