Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
WASHINGTON - With President Clinton's support, Congress is poised to approve a defense budget that will clear the way for the most ambitious modernization of the military since President Ronald Reagan's Cold War build-up in 1981.
Despite protests that many of the Pentagon's proposed new weapons are needlessly expensive and no longer necessary, the defense budget allows the United States to continue production and development of a technologically impressive array of jet fighters, nuclear submarines, and attack helicopters.
Each weapon would be the most expensive of its type in history. During the next 10 to 15 years, the Pentagon plans to spend $350 billion to produce three new jet fighters, $65 billion to construct 30 Virginia class fast-attack submarines, and $48 billion for the Army's RAH-66 Comanche helicopter.
The $310 billion defense bill for the fiscal year beginning next October swept through the House last Thursday by on overwhelming vote of 353-63. The Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month approved a similar bill and the full Senate is expected to pass it later this spring.
Both the Senate and House bills add $4.5 billion to Clinton's initial request, providing the Pentagon with its largest annual budget since the end of the Cold War in 1991.
"For the first time in many years, we have a real increase in defense spending,'' said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R., Va.). Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), the panel's ranking Democrat hailed the measure as a "good bipartisan bill,'' adding that "it makes sure that our forces remain the best-trained, best-equipped, and most capable fighting force in the world.''
But critics warn that Mr. Clinton and Congress are enthusiastically pouring billions of dollars into dazzling weapons at a time when the U.S. military is unmatched anywhere in the world. They insist that the U.S. is spending far more money on defense than any combination of potential adversaries. And they contend that the proposed systems are replacing the finest in the world.
The F-22, which critics complain will average $184 million a copy, replaces the Air Force's F-15, whose performance is unequaled by any other fighter. The Joint Strike Fighter will take the place of the F-16 fighter and the A-10 air-to-ground attack jet, two proven planes. The Virginia class submarine will replace the Los Angeles class of fast-attack submarines, some of which were still being built in the 1990s.
"The F-22 is a magnificent plane, but at $200 million a copy, I can buy a hell of lot of F-16s,'' said Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense under Mr. Reagan. "We're buying a new attack sub. It's better than the Los Angeles class. But there's nobody out there with submarines any more.
"What you have is a president who doesn't want to take on the military because of the baggage he brings to the office. You have a pretty robust economy and the military wanting to maximize its own image, which is pretty much a Cold War image.''
Ivan Eland, director of defense policy at the CATO Institute, a conservative think tank, said that "we have the best army, our air force is dominant, and our navy has bone-crushing dominance over any other fleet. The military says that the world is still a dangerous place, but it's a lot less dangerous than during the Cold War.''
The Joint Strike Fighter, which will be used by the Air Force, Navy, Marines, and British, is the only system provoking serious questions on Capitol Hill. The Senate is seeking to cut $150 million from Clinton's request for this year. The house budget includes all $856 million requested by Mr. Clinton.
Virtually everyone concedes that the U.S. military is the finest in the world. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the U.S. last year spent more than three times as much on defense as Russia and China combined.
Russia's once huge land army had been slashed to about 350,000 soldiers and its fleet of 70 submarines largely remains tied up at port. China has a vast army of 1.8 million soldiers, but its handful of submarines and nuclear missiles are no match for the U.S.
"We're outstripping the rest of the world in terms of what we're spending on the military,'' said Christopher Hellman, senior analyst for the Center for Defense Information. "You can justify that because we have to act anywhere in the world by ourselves at any time. But we already have that capability. [So] why are we are embarking on a modernization program that is unprecedented in peace time?''
But supporters of increased defense spending argue that as world's sole super power, the United States has unique responsibilities. U.S. forces have conducted eight major interventions abroad since 1983, including the invasion of Panama in 1989, the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and the air attacks in Kosovo and Serbia last year.
They correctly point out that in sheer numbers, the U.S. military has been dramatically slashed from a peak of 2.1 million men and women in the mid-1980s to 1.4 million. The Air Force has declined from 8,300 planes to 5,300 and the Navy has shrunk from 600 ships to barely 300.
They contend that while the F-15 and the F-16 are outstanding fighter planes, their earliest models flew in 1972. The first of the Los Angeles class submarines entered service in 1976, and the Navy is reluctant to extend the life of a submarine beyond 30 years.
"One of the keys to our military being the top military in the world is we've not ever rested on our laurels,'' said Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We need to continue to try and move ahead and stay ahead of the curve.''
The Air Force has argued that without the F-22, the U.S. "will steadily lose its edge in air superiority in the 21st century,'' warning that the F-15 cannot match proposed new Russian and French jets. "By 2005,'' the Air Force said in a written statement, "flying the F-15 into combat will be the equivalent of driving a 20-year-old car in the Indianapolis 500.''
But some fear that the replacements have become so technologically adept that they have priced themselves beyond all reason. The F-22's stealth characteristics will make it less vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles, and it will fly at supersonic speed without going to after-burners, which will increase its range.
"As much as I - as a loyal fighter pilot - would love to have an exotic fighter plane like that, there are some things you just can't afford,'' said former Sen. John Glenn (D., O.), a Marine Corps jet pilot in Korea. "This will be a great leap forward beyond the capability of the F-15. We're not inferior to anybody right now, but we do not have the margin of superiority that an F-22 would give us. But $180 million a copy for a fighter plane? Wow. If a pilot ever bends one, his career will go down the tubes.''
Last year, House lawmakers were so annoyed at the escalating costs of the F-22 that they tried to scale it back. Rep. Jerry Lewis (D., Calif.) and Rep. John Murtha (D., Pa.), the ranking members of the House subcommittee on defense appropriations, vowed to block $1.9 billion for fiscal year 2000 for continued production and testing of the jet. But faced with stout opposition from the Senate, lawmakers finally consented to provide $1.3 billion.
The Air Force has countered that the F-22's per-plane cost has been widely exaggerated. While more than $20 billion has been spent developing the jet, the Air Force contends the per-plane cost is $85 million rather than $184 million. The F-15 costs $45 million per copy, and the F-16's price tag is $25 million.
The Air Force appears to have won its way on the F-22, as has the Pentagon for the overall budget. House and Senate versions of the budget include more than $7.5 billion to continue production of the F-22, Joint Strike Fighter and F-18 Super Hornet. The bills also include $512 million to upgrade 120 M-1 tanks at the Lima tank plant and a 3.7 per cent pay raise for those in the military.
And if the Department of Defense continues to prevail, defense spending will increase throughout much of the next decade.
"One budgetary year, one submission or two submissions of real-growth increases does not a military make,'' Defense Secretary William Cohen told Congress in February. "It's going to take sustained commitment over the years.''
Ah, now the true clinton plan is out. First you give away our secrets and our technology to the enemy so they can develop a force superior to ours. Then you go back and spend a whole lot of new money to attempt to develop a new force, superior to theirs, thereby creating much profit for those who bribe you and your party, create new jobs for the voters, and new taxes and programs to keep the government growing bigger.
So this is how selling our secrets to china is good for the US, if they don't blow us away in the interim period.
The age of big government is over, and the age of bigger government is here.
Government has come to represent legal organized crime. They get to decide what is and is not legal. Like Clinton deciding that his idea of false was not the same as the laws or any half way sane persons. As soon as our rulers break the law they rewrite it and make the offense legal.
C'mon, Clinton didn't invent this problem. Eisenhower was warning against the military-industrial complex in the late 50's. If you insist about whining about Clinton on this one, you don't have a chance of getting to the core of this corporate welfare. There are 535 members of Congress and hundreds of Generals & Colonels with a vested interest in evermore complex and expensive weapon systems.
I am a little tired of Clinton being detected at the root of all our Government's problem - Clinton is a symptom, not the disease.
Take away the electronics and it all comes to a screeching halt,if I can think of that someone else will to
Sounds more like a political ploy to remove one of the main issues conservatives have; the clintonian destruction of the military. Help for Gore!
#4 C'mon, Clinton didn't invent this problem.
No he didn't, but he has accelerated the pace a fantastic amount. At least all the other presidents tried to keep our secrets secret to protect our country. Clinton has shoveled them out the door with a steam shovel.
U're right, enrico. Clinton's but a cog in the machine. What blinds people to this madness is partisanship, which is based on what color underwear the Demos/Reps like. I mean, take a close look at these two groups and you see one thing - a business party split in two. why else would the same multinationals be pumping $$$ into both (Reps/Dems) pockets? It's a game of smoke n' mirrors, with the little people bickering over trivia and the big guns getting on with the business of war (did somebody say war is not profitable?).
But supporters of increased defense spending argue that as world's sole super power, the United States has unique responsibilities. U.S. forces have conducted eight major interventions abroad since 1983, including the invasion of Panama in 1989, the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and the air attacks in Kosovo and Serbia last year.
I agree with you 100% and I'm having a dificult time finding any way that these examples work in favor of the industrial-military complex. With just a little digging, it can easily be found that U.S. involvement in each of these situations was either completely unwarranted, or actually served to help create the havoc.
These are some huge sums of money being thrown around in this new military spending. Somebody has got to be making a pretty penny here somewhere. Who serves to gain the most financially by this new spending, and how much influence do they have in deciding where U.S. troops are to be deployed?
Hey,
they are just taking care about 'budget surplus'! If it will go for plain folks good, those plain folks will get lazy. Give it to The Brass, The Elite, the High Tech Kill Machine! Those will never rest - until there is something to destroy out there. Military is the only place where the progress is to be, the true basis of democracy, freedom and peace. So pump all the budget there - under by-partisan unbrella.
The United States Navy has untold numbers of submarines powered by nuclear mills capable of powering these submersibles for extremely long periods of time.
These submarines are loaded to the hilt with multiple atomic warhead missiles that can be launched from any coastal waters anywhere in the world .
By themselves, these formidible vessles provide a very potent deterrent to any would be attacker. So potent, in fact, that if a nuclear war were to erupt, these subs and their commanders would rule over whatever was left of the Earth.
With this in mind why would anyone feel compelled to amass a huge armada of conventional weapons ? In my opinion, the United States is not stockpiling for defence but for imperialistic conquest in a conventional theatre of war against inferior adversaries for possession of their national treasures and resources.
Why else would a nation adopt military budgets that suggest they are under perpetual seige by incoming aggressors ?
Examples of military logic ;a) build a 60 million dollar missile defence system that can be vaporized by a suitcase nuke brought in over land or sea. b) Build a multimillion dollar stealth aircraft that can elude most radar systems but gets shot down because a double agent transmitted it's flight itinerary to the adversary. c) Manipulate the press into lying about this or that military operation and suffer the consequences of a disbelieving public when the day comes that they want the truth published to assist the public in a national emergency. d) Developing anti-terrorism strategies on a domestic level while inciting terrorism against Americans in their approach to foreign policy. Politics, corporations and the military have finally merged to create the most impressive vehicle for self-destruction that humanity has ever known. Civilian authority over the warlords no longer exists.
Well, lots of overblown wind on this thread in my humble opinion.
Are there some boondoggles in this mix, and an over-emphasis on buying weapons systems compared to training and readiness and recruitment? Sure. The Comanche may not be needed. The F-18 has been a poor investment, predictably so. The Joint Strike Fighter is partially trying to make up for that mistake, frankly, and is overpriced. But some R+D program on such an advance probably is needed.
Bigger boondoggles past and present are not mentioned in this article. Amphib ships the navy doesn't want that are built in the right people's districts, the V-22, the largely failed C-17.
But the newer subs and the F-22 are a different matter entirely. They are big advances to generation-old systems. They represent cases where we have already won future fights in the labs and have already done the R+D. Throwing that away would be truly foolish. And they are directed at the two key missions for the military - keeping conventional air superiority on the one hand, and ensuring control of the sea on the other. Combined those give you a lot more security and many more options than doing without them does. Missle defense is important for a similar reason.
As for one fellow's point about the nuke subs, sure we have that backstop. But they won't keep the seas open. Nor will they prevent conventional attack by nuclear-armed states, like China, on our forces or our allies. The rationale for having conventional forces, and especially for maintaining control of the seas and of the air, is quite sound, and should make sense even to isolationists.
If you want isolation, the thing that does the isolating is not your whim in the matter, but a navy that keeps other powers an ocean away and an air force that keeps that navy from being sunk. And the primary determinant of success at those two missions is the technological sophistication of the best fighter planes and the best attack submarines. It is something "fought out" in labs, designing things. When we have already won that lab-competition, throwing those successes away by not using the results is not economy, it is just dumb.
We should build those key systems, and we should keep the mostly heavy army-force made for the toughest case of large-scale fighting, rather than a light one designed for easy interventions. We should cut the politician grab-bag boondoggles to help pay for them. And we should spend more on training, readiness, and recruitment, rather than allowing the force to run down to "hollow", with shiny new weapons manned by poorly motivated and poorly trained 20-year olds.
As for the question of who is making tons of money off of this sort of spending, that is an issue in some cases but not the main issue in most. Most of our defense contractor companies are significantly less "rich" than they used to be. A lot of capital has already left the industry because of the end of the cold war and the approximate halving of the size of the overall force. Most of the top-line price of these things pays subcontractors and workers on the projects. Politicians care the most about those things - they are a sort of jobs program in this or that district. Some doubtless have their fingers in the pie at this or that subcontractor too.
Understand that the main reason an advanced fighter or sub costs so much is that the salaries of a lot of intelligent, highly trained engineers and programmers, for a lot of work time, goes into making them. Those engineers have to be paid enough to draw them from other occupations, where their skills would draw them high salaries. But the other people who live near them benefit to a lesser degree too, as the work brings money into the area, etc. It is not like the shareholders of Lockheed Martin are laughing all the way to the bank; if fact those sorts of stocks have been poorly-performing laggards in the last five years or so. The money side of the thing is mostly a matter for employees and for districts, and by extension for pols.
" But the newer subs and the F-22 are a different matter entirely. They are big advances to generation-old systems. They represent cases where we have already won future fights in the labs and have already done the R+D. Throwing that away would be truly foolish. And they are directed at the two key missions for the military - keeping conventional air superiority on the one hand, and ensuring control of the sea on the other."
With all due respect you are missing a very important point, notably, modern nuclear submarines are no longer considered a fixture of an overall oceanic defence system intended to keep the seas safe. These sea-borne ICBM launchpads are very efficient weapons for close-proximity land and air assaults. Conventional armies, no matter how massive or well armed are powerless against these silent mass-killers.
As for arguing the use of sophisticated fighter craft to defend these naval assets, well, these subs don't need aerial support. They are silent, stealthy, deadly accurate and unpredictable. Actually, the presence of fighter plane escorts will inevitably give away the presence of the sub. The heat signature of the jets will light up the screen of an adversary searching for the next-to-non-existant heat signature of the sub.
When in doubt about the overall effectiveness of a nuclear submarine as a modestly priced deterrent consider the potential danger of one of these falling under terrorrist control.
Virginia class subs, the ones being discussed in the article, are not "boomers", SSBNs. They are attack boats, SSNs. I know all about the Tridents, but they do not keep the sea lanes clear as I said. But the Virginias, and the boats they will be replacing, the LA class, do. They are fast, quiet subs carrying guided torpedos, Harpoon anti-ship missles, and multiple use Tomahawk cruise missles. They are an entirely different animal than the "boomer" type that carry the sub launched ICBMs (Trident subs, mounting D-5s).
Our SSN fleet is the most important sea-combat portion of the Navy and the most sensitive to changes in tech, especially for sensor systems. Carriers do help with that mission too, but by comparison are meant much more for "power projection" ashore than the SSNs are, and they are not nearly as well-defended because not nearly as hard to find, as the SSNs.
The confusion may stem from the N, for nuclear, in the name of both types of subs. That does not refer to the weapons they are armed with but to their own power plants for propulsion. Nuclear power aboard a sub allows it to operate underwater for long periods and to attain high underwater speeds even with a large boat. The "B" in the "boomer" class (SSBN) does refer to armament - it stands for "ballistic", just as it does in ICBM.
Next, I think you overrate the usefulness of the boomers. Yes, they can nuke things and they can hide, making them excellent nuclear deterrent systems. But short of civilization-destroying war, they are not going to be used. You don't tell someone to stop committing piracy in the South China Sea or we'll nuke you; it is not the least bit credible. Threats others know you won't carry out are like that. And carrying them out would be even more recklessly stupid.
Finally, on the importance of air superiority for isolation, your comments seemed to show some idea that subs are invunerable to aircraft. That is not true. The two truly effective ASW (anti-submarine warfare) platforms are quieter attack submarines on the one hand, and aircraft on the other.
ASW aircraft drop large numbers of sonar detectors into an area, all actively "pinging" instead of just passively listening. Unlike ships, they don't reveal the location of anything worth shooting at when they do so. The planes can then drop guided torpedos into an area in which a contact was found, able to sink submerged submarines fairly easily. If they find one, they can get it. Subs can try to hide from such planes, but have no means of striking back at them effectively. In addition, planes can search wide areas.
But ASW aircraft cannot operate in places patrolled by enemy fighter aircraft - not with any effectiveness. So having control of the air over any given piece of sea is rather important for naval control of that and surrounding pieces of sea. And air control, when the other guy can get planes there, is decided by technological sophistication of top-of-the-line fighter aircraft, and their associated systems (radars, air-to-air missles, countermeasure and search aircraft, etc). And by pilot quality and training, to be sure.
"Boomers" give second strike insurance against nuclear attack. But to kept seas open and other powers an ocean away, things even isolationists can see are vital, necessary missions for the U.S. military, the best SSNs and the best fighters are the key systems. And the Virginia class SSN and the F-22 class fighter will accomplish those missions. They deserve support.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
[
Top
|
Latest Posts
|
Latest Articles
|
Self Search
|
Add Bookmark
|
Post
|
Abuse
|
Help!
]
FreeRepublic , LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794 Forum Version 2.0a Copyright © 1999 Free Republic, LLC |