Defense Budget Corrective
Posted by Patrick Barry
There have been some excellent responses (here and here) to dishonest conservative attacks on Gates' defense budget, but Kudos to Brian Beutler for tackling the biggest fallacy of them all - that Gates and the Obama administration are cutting defense overall defense spending:
The soft-on-defense spending cuts meme is spreading today, both in the media and among Congressional Republicans--and now even a Blue Dog Democrat is picking it up.
Politico, again, reports that "Defense Secretary Robert Gates is steeling himself against blowback from Congress over his sweeping defense cuts, but he's also girding for a fight within the Pentagon's five walls."
But while there is some evidence that there is early opposition within the Pentagon to some specific cuts, Gates has, once again, proposed a budget whose bottom line is higher than last year's.
Politico, again, reports that "Defense Secretary Robert Gates is steeling himself against blowback from Congress over his sweeping defense cuts, but he's also girding for a fight within the Pentagon's five walls."
But while there is some evidence that there is early opposition within the Pentagon to some specific cuts, Gates has, once again, proposed a budget whose bottom line is higher than last year's.
To the Georgia aerospace workers expecting to assemble F-22s, this distinction means precisely nothing. It's their representatives that pose the biggest obstacle to what Sec. Gates wants to do, not the fact that the administration partially lost the spin war in one news cycle.
Posted by: Zathras | April 08, 2009 at 06:39 PM
The Wall Street Journal (surprise!) joined the idiot chorus. Extracts of their remarks with my comments follow.
WSJ: Obama and Gates Gut the Military -- The secretary's new budget will leave us weaker to pay for the president's domestic programs.
Comment: Obama's budget increases military spending four percent.
WSJ: The termination of the F-22 Raptor program at just 187 aircraft inevitably will call U.S. air supremacy -- the salient feature, since World War II, of the American way of war -- into question.
Comment: The F-22 costs around $150 million, per plane to build and the Air Force will have 187 of them, which it considers sufficient. This plane has not been used in current conflicts, and two of them have crashed, with one pilot death. CONT'D -->
Posted by: Don Bacon | April 08, 2009 at 06:46 PM
WSJ: Although Mr. Gates has rightly decided to end the massive and expensive DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer program, there will be additional reductions to the surface fleet. The number of aircraft carriers will drop eventually to 10. The next generation of cruisers will be delayed, and support-ship projects stretched out. Older Arleigh Burke destroyers will be upgraded and modernized, but at less-than-needed rates.
Comment: The Navy has not developed a maritime strategy that makes any sense or is relevant to the current world situation. Aircraft carriers are an anachronism in large-scale conflict because of their vulnerability to advanced weapons systems including quiet submarines, smart mines and cruise missiles.
WSJ: Mr. Gates has promised to "restructure" the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, arguing that the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan have called into question the need for new ground combat vehicles.
Comment: The idea of automating the battlefield flies in the face of "counterinsurgency" doctrine.
WSJ: The budget cuts Mr. Gates is recommending are not a temporary measure to get us over a fiscal bump in the road. Rather, they are the opening bid in what, if the Obama administration has its way, will be a future U.S. military that is smaller and packs less wallop.
Comment: The Pentagon will still have a larger ground force and plenty of expensive toys to move around in a world where the US is not currently threatened by any military force.
Posted by: Don Bacon | April 08, 2009 at 06:47 PM
Comment: The Pentagon will still have a larger ground force and plenty of expensive toys to move around in a world where the US is not currently threatened by any military force.
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Comment: The Pentagon will still have a larger ground force and plenty of expensive toys to move around in a world where the US is not currently threatened by any military force.
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