Wired: Gates: Cash Cows of War Running Dry

[laststeamtrain]

Gates: Cash Cows of War Running Dry
By Nathan Hodge

In his first appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee as a member of President Barack Obama's cabinet, Defense Secretary Robert Gates today issued more words of warning to the defense industry and Pentagon bureaucracy.

"One thing we have known for many months is that the spigot of defense funding opened by 9/11 is closing," he said. "With two major campaigns ongoing, the economic crisis and resulting budget pressures will force hard choices on this department."

This reinforces a message Gates has been telegraphing to the weaponeers for some time now. But what he really seems to be suggesting here is that the practice of lavish wartime supplemental spending needs to end. From his testimony:

"Efforts to put the bureaucracy on a war footing have, in my view, revealed underlying flaws in the institutional priorities, cultural preferences, and reward structures of America’s defense establishment – a set of institutions largely arranged to plan for future wars, to prepare for a short war, but not to wage a protracted war. The challenge we face is how well we can institutionalize the irregular capabilities gained and means to support troops in theater that have been, for the most part, developed ad hoc and funded outside the base budget."

Wartime spending needs, Gates added, "must have a home and enthusiastic constituencies in the regular budgeting and procurement process."

This gets to an important point. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been funded largely through emergency spending measures, and that firehose of money has warped the Pentagon budget process and seriously diminished oversight. While supplemental war budgeting is supposed to cover the unpredictable costs for ongoing operations, in practice it's become a way for the services to plump up spending for new equipment and avoid the pain of making sensible long-term budget decisions.

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http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/gates.html

[Earth_First]

1. Don't worry Mr. Gates...

I'm sure everyone at GE, Lockheed Martin, et. al will send their appropriate legislative lobbyists in and ensure that the war machine keeps ticking...

[gratuitous]

2. Uh oh, NOW it's getting serious

When the Defense Department has to start choosing between the gold-plated and platinum-plated budget items, you know things are getting serious. Oh, won't someone think of the defense contractors? How are they expected to keep peddling death and destruction if they're not getting a direct flow of cash from the federal treasury?

[spanone]

3. ...dwight eisenhower comes to mind

[Captain Hilts]

7. A larger percentage of defense $$ is now spent on people because there is no draft...

they're older and more likely to have families, and salaries and benefits need to be more competitive.

Add to that the much higher training costs and we spend much more per person than in the past.

That said, why we need an entire new class of aircraft carrier is beyond me. Just gin up the NIMITZ class.

[Romulox]

4. The 2009 "defense" budget is 1/2 a TRILLION dollars. But it's not enough???

:wtf:

[Mari333]

5. want to fix the economy? dump the war machine

www.costofwar.com

[Andy823]

6. Privatizing the military

Has been one of the biggest drains on their budget. We need to stop paying companies like Haliburton for doing nothing more than making billions in profits! There are so many ongoing investigations into abuse's by Haliburton and other companies in Iraq that it should be obvious that billions have been "wasted" with no real end results. The justice department needs to take those companies to court and demand they pay back the money that was not accounted for, and we need to stop outsourcing military jobs! I think what we have seen during the Bush years should prove that outsourcing was a bad idea, and one that cost this country billions!