Defense Budget: Pay Now or Pay Later?
The question that keeps defense insiders buzzing around these days
is how much of the nation’s ballooning deficit realistically
can be trimmed even as Pentagon’s budgets continue to rise.
Although the Pentagon has been under pressure for decades to slash
unneeded big-ticket programs that are perceived as Cold-War relics,
even deficit hawks warn that it may be irresponsible to cut weapon
systems indiscriminately, just for the sake of reducing the federal
deficit.
“I think President Bush’s words are sincere, that he
wants to reduce the budget. But I don’t think his policies
are yet consistent with those words,” says Michael E. O’Hanlon,
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Tax cuts suggest
we are not serious about deficit reduction. In this environment,
I don’t think the Defense Department should be asked to make
significant cuts to reduce the deficit.”
His prediction, nevertheless, is that the Defense Department’s
contribution will be largely “in the spirit of symbolism or
modest chipping away.” At worst, he said, the Defense Department
is going to offer up $5 billion to $10 billion a year, a modest
reduction in a $450 billion-a-year deficit.
Winning Isn’t Everything, But ‘Metrics’ Help
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously asked his senior advisors
in October 2003 if they could come up with ways to measure the Defense
Department’s performance in the war on terrorism.
Although it’s a valid question, the answer is, it can’t
be done, says Douglas Feith, the outgoing undersecretary of defense
for policy. “I don’t think we’ve gotten the complete
refinement of ‘metrics’ that would allow you to give
a mathematical response to the question the secretary raised,”
Feith tells reporters.
Rumsfeld’s memo noted that, “today, we lack metrics
to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are
we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more
terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics
are recruiting, training and deploying against us?”
Officials Advised to Tone Down ‘Joint’ Rhetoric
Pentagon officials like to drone on about the “jointness”
of every aspect of military operations. That thinking is also becoming
pervasive in the development and procurement of weapon systems.
The emphasis on “joint,” however, has gone too far and
may backfire, warns retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales Jr., former
commandant of the Army War College.
“We all want to be joint,” he tells a Navy conference.
“But frankly, I’m getting so sick of the pleadings from
the Joint Staff trying to make every piece of warfare joint.”
What’s happening in Iraq, he said, is joint to some extent,
“but it’s all about soldiers and Marines.”
In many ways, this obsession with “jointness,” he adds,
“becomes almost an impediment to melding together” concepts
from different services. As an example, he cites the difficulties
the Navy and Marine Corps are having in garnering Army and Air Force
support for the development of high-tech floating bases, which would
be used by all services.
Advantages of Info-Tech Overestimated
According to the thinking that prevails in the Defense Department
today, information technology is more important than old-fashioned
military hardware, such as fighter jets, observes Loren Thompson,
of the Lexington Institute, a defense industry think tank.
The growing emphasis on “net-centric” warfare, he says,
also offers a convenient rationale to budget officials seeking to
trim expensive weapon systems, such as the F/A-22 and the Joint
Strike Fighter.
This line of reasoning has serious flaws, Thompson contends, because
it assumes that no other country would have an edge over the United
States in information technology. “The problem with net-centric
warfare is that other countries can compete much more successfully,”
he asserts. “If you walk around Best Buy or any electronics
store, see if you can find anything made in the United States. Other
countries can compete much more successfully.”
Network-centric warfare may be a worthwhile option, he adds, “to
deal with fools such as Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.” But
it may not work against more sophisticated enemies, such as China.