War Coming Over Defense Spending

Pentagon spending has been shielded from cuts ever since 9/11. Amid a public numbed by economic woes and fed up with the war in Afghanistan and the non-war in Iraq, get ready for the first defense-spending showdown of the 21st Century. Such a battle royale requires arsenals, and each side is busy rolling out its weapons:

— If you believe the nation needs to keep spending, here’s your cheat sheet — Defending Defense: Setting the Record Straight on U.S. Military Requirements — released Thursday.

 

 

— If you think we’re spending too much, check out Debt, Deficits, and Defense: A Way Forward, which argues that $1 trillion — nearly 17 percent — can be cut from the Pentagon budget over the coming decade without harming national security.

There is some concern in the military-industrial complex that usually-reliable Republican support for more defense spending may fray if Tea Party supporters — some of whom have expressed isolationist views — become a major GOP force following next month’s mid-term elections. Political commentator Pat Buchanan warns that the “Warfare state” may be in for a tough fight because Tea Party folks are less likely to march in lockstep with a Pentagon that is now spending $700 billion a year and wants more.

But proposed cuts never happen in a vacuum, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates is learning anew. The poor fellow can’t even cut a couple of rinky-dink entities without setting off a nuclear war with Congress. The House Armed Services Committee complained to the defense chief this week that his unilateral move to abolish the Pentagon’s Joint Forces Command — whose 6,000 jobs makes it relatively small potatoes — could be blocked by Congress unless Gates coughs up more data to justify his decision to shutter the place. Lawmakers have learned of something called the “Joint Forces Command Disestablishment Working Group,” Rep. Ike Skelton, the panel’s chairman, told Gates in a letter. “Needless to say,” he added sadly, “the committee is deeply disappointed that it had to obtain this document from sources outside the Department.”

 

 

On Thursday, hundreds of GE employees — as well as Ohio Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, Democratic Rep. Steve Driehaus and Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt — held a rally in Evendale, Ohio, calling on the Pentagon keep funding the company’s efforts to develop a second engine for the military’s new F-35 jet. Driehaus told the crowd that White House officials have threatened to keep him off the GE-powered Air Force One if he doesn’t stop his incessant lobbying for the locally-built engines. “My response was, ‘I don’t care,'” he told the rally. “My job is fighting about your jobs.” (Hmmmm…perhaps Buchanan has a point about that “Warfare state”.)

Backers of the additional power plant have said dual suppliers are needed to assure the plane is never grounded if one engine (like that one being built by Pratt & Whitney) develops problems, and to generate savings through competition. But Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, dismissed both points this week. If GE and its Rolls-Royce partner are so sure of their engine’s ultimate merit, the Air Force’s top officer said, they shouldn’t ask taxpayers to pay nearly $2 billion to develop it. And today’s engines don’t fall apart like older models did. “These are much more reliable, much better products than they were in the ’80s,” Schwartz said.

Better be careful where you deploy that logic, sir. Someone might want to apply it to the U.S. nuclear triad. That’s our half-century-old force of submarine-launched missiles, bombers and land-based ICBMs. It’s a redundant force designed to make sure no enemy could wipe out all of our atomic weapons and leave us unable to retaliate in kind. Yet even with the big drop in nukes that has occurred because of our arms-control agreements with Russia, we still maintain the Cold War triad. Two of the triad’s three legs, General Schwartz, belong to your Air Force. Tell us which one you’re willing to give up, and we’ll start taking you seriously.