Obama & Gates vs the US military-industrial complex
Battle of Porkbarrel Hill begins
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Analysis The US Defence Secretary has signalled a serious attempt on his part and that of President Obama to reform the world's largest military machine. If the two men get their way - and that's a big if - the Pentagon will become much less a capital-intensive tech porkbarrel and much more an organisation of properly-backed combat troops.
Secretary Gates' speech yesterday - full transcript available here - sets out the plans. The axe falls on a long list of expensive hi-tech projects, many of which will be familiar to Reg readers. Among the victims are the US Army's networked ground force vehicles, which originally started out as something not far off a robot tank legion; the partly-British presidential helicopters; the orbital multikill ICBM-busters; and the fantastically expensive Raptor ultrasuperfighter, whose numbers remain capped at 187.
That said, it's far from a clean sweep in the military crazytech sector. Fans of the nuke-nobbling raygun jumbo jet, the Airborne Laser (ABL) will be relieved to note that the current prototype will continue into flight tests - but there won't be any money for more laser 747s unless those tests go unexpectedly well.
Nor is the news all bad at the controversial Missile Defence Agency. While plans for more land-based midcourse interceptors in Alaska are shelved, there's cash for more SM-3 naval interceptors - of the sort which nailed a malfunctioning US spy sat over the Pacific last summer - and ships to fire them from.
The US battle fleet, as Mr Gates notes, has a "healthy margin of dominance at sea". As a result, all big blue-water ship programmes are pushed back and plans for a future electrically-driven destroyer are replaced by increasing the production run of existing Arleigh Burke jobs. However, the new Littoral Combat Ship, handy for inshore work of the sort common in modern warfare, gets the nod.
Across the board, there are cuts in expensive, very-high-tech things which would only be useful for fighting unlikely wars against first-rate opposition, and preservation or increases for more basic stuff which is handy for day-to-day business. The only exception to this rule is that the C-17 heavy airlifter is to cease production this year, perhaps a curious move given that airlift is always overworked in modern military operations.
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COMMENTS
@Wesley Parish
I may be mistaken but I think you'll find quite a lot of the piracy going on around the Horn of Africa and the ongoing hijacking of oil tankers is originating from states with a heavily Muslim population.
You are aware that not all Muslims are of Middle Eastern origin?
Nothing to see here, move along
I can't see the point of the US maintaining the current state of overspend on the Pentagon and it's Pretty New Toys, unless it has some actual bearing on world security.
Umm, anyone remember a little maritime trade route hassle off the Horn of Africa a few months ago, because the US was so obsessed with its GWOT (Gumbo War of Terror) - largely against the Muslim world - it forgot its much more important role of maintaining the security of the trade routes? One of the major reasons why China keeps propping up the US Dollar? When, given the US near-universally vote-winning rant on the "threat" that the PRC poses to the US, it would be much cheaper for the PRC to start putting conditions on its dollar-buying spending sprees. Or simply dump the US Dollar and demand repayment in yuan.
As it stands, since most of that money goes into maintaining an obese military machine and its equally obese pork-barrellers in the US Congress and all 50 States, it hasn't affected the inefficiency of the US military machine at all.
It won't have any effect on the safety of the international maritime trade routes; it won't effect the eventual collapse of the US superpower status; and may do nothing more than accelerate its reduction to third-world beggar banana republic owned by the PRC.
Move along: nothing to see here.
Ha ha ha
I hope the US keeps wasting money on bullshit weapons and cutting it's education. I might buy somewhere over there as a summer home and I'll need servants.
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