Pajamas Media

32 Comments

1. Gozer the Carpathian:

I wish the administration valued the jobs of those at Lockheed-Martin, ITT Industries, Honeywell, and others as much as those at GM.

Apr 10, 2009 - 11:28 pm 2. retrophoebia:

Many defense programs– such as the F-22, the magic pebbles (or what-have you) ballistic missile defense systems, an able navy, and so forth, are like the loaded pistol you keep in your house for defense. Sure, it costs some money on initial outlay that you could use elsewhere; it takes up space; ammo is expensive; and you don’t use it every day. But when you need it, you NEED it, right now. Not sure if this concept has percolated up the ol’ CoC.

Especially harmful is the loss of those commo satellites. Those are and can be used for a lot more things than many people realize, and they take some serious time and effort to get up. We may end up regretting wasting the time now.

I hope Gates is right on his prioritizing.

Apr 11, 2009 - 12:35 am 3. ajacksonian:

The Navy is notorious for cost-overruns via the Request For Change process, in which a change to a ship is put in while it is being made. That creates loss of schedule, loss of efficiency, increases cost and decreases throughput. Of course the contracts are low-balled: you would be nuts not to as the Navy will put in so many RFCs during the course of ship building that the costwill skyrocket beyond what the Navy *expected* to pay (not the low-ball cost they are given). If you really wanted to put it to the ‘low ball’ cost estimates: never make a single design change and make the contracter have to eat having put an uneconomical bid out. Of course that won’t happen as RFCs come from contractors and upper echelon in the Navy, and often the first thing with the low-ball acceptance is the raft of RFCs that need to be done to make the ship work…

NASAitis is having to put work into every Congresscritters district. That is not economical, cost effective, or even ‘cheap’. Yet without the political graft of having work go to every district, NASA would probably go back to very basic science work and use the Air Force to get its work done… or go to private contractors in the aerospace field. It would help to have a diverse private aerospace industry…

The FCS has been DOA for a few years as major sub-components of it just aren’t meeting the bill. The weapon to replace the Ma Deuce was supposed to also be a nifty ’swap parts to get grenade launcher’ deal, but did neither job well. The modern, upgraded so many times you can’t count Ma Deuce still spits out lead with a trustworthy rate of speed that the troops adore and is more accurate than the WWII era platform it is created on was ever designed to be. Going after the Non-Line of Sight Cannon (NLOS-C) means we also don’t get its close-in defense system, hybrid stealth ability and other fun things that are proving necessary on the modern battlefield. Yes you can get some of the package from elsewhere, but we scrapped the intermediate post-Cold War artillery based on Cold War needs for a modern, multi-fire, multi-shell on target from multiple vehicles, that was stealthy, easily deployable and had a CID that targeted against RPGs and enemy combatants.

And we still have no way to defend against ground based ASAT capability, not to speak of orbital ones. A handful of ball bearings put into a retrograde orbit to a satellite means they hit at the cumulative velocity… that is also a hazard to civilian comms. How many launches would it take with a delivery vehicle (not necessarily rocket but end vehicle) to get most of the geostationary satellites everyone uses for tracking and data, along with commercial and military comms? After the US, Russia, UK, France, and China we have: India, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, Japan, Syria… actually that club is expanding pretty quickly. Ground based ASAT is a bit more picky, but China is certainly there with the technology, as are most of the Big 5 nuclear powers and a select group with high energy lasers from the rest of the world.

So where are the plans to get a ‘down and dirty’ hardened set of satellites back up after an orbital ‘Pearl Harbor’ makes all but undersea cables go dark? And what about those folks walking into sewers and deftly cutting fiber optic comms? How many people does it take to make the long-haul fiber links go down in a Nation?

Contingency plans?

I’m sure there are a few, here and there… but how people will squawk if their long-haul fiber optic and satellite comms link go *poof* in a couple of days. Yes the military has hardened infrastructure. No it is not impervious to simple attacks. Yes those attacks will also affect you as well as the Nation’s ability to understand and respond to a threat. It only took a double handfull of committed people to do the 9/11 attacks, and these are a lot less likely to see an expenditure of personnel, so they can go on doing more such attacks.

No, the world has not become all sweetness and light with a new President. Sorry, wrong reality, you want the ‘pipe dreams’ one that ended in glassy dishes where cities used to be…

Apr 11, 2009 - 4:56 am 4. marsouin:

But what about cuts to our responsibilities? In other words, is our foreign policy, and by extension, our global military commitments overly-ambitious to the point of being unwise? For example, is there a true need to remain in Korea? What about NATO? Do the Euro’s need our protection and do they appreciate it? It doesn’t seem NATO has been of much use in Afghanistan.

Apr 11, 2009 - 5:13 am 5. savage24:

I see he cut fighters and bombers from the Air Force , but ok-ed airborne refueling tankers. Without fighters and bombers what are the tankers going to refuel? I got it, Pelosi’s jet!The reason congress passed Gates is because he doesn’t kmow what he’s doing, and that’s why Obama keeps him on.

Apr 11, 2009 - 7:16 am 6. Oldguy:

What a smart plan by the secretary, knowing the f-22 raptor plant is in Chris Dodd’s state.

Apr 11, 2009 - 7:45 am 7. David S:

Ditching the F-22 to get moving on the F-35 is a prudent move. Reducing the explosion in Pentagon spending is necessary and Obama’s plan appears to do a very good job of setting priorities.

Peace.

DS

Apr 11, 2009 - 7:54 am 8. Sherab Zangpo:

Subversion is the art of cracking a dam while keeping the People who live downstream clapping their hands.

Some trolls here have their hands red from clapping. And when (not if) the flood will come, they will say that it’s America’s fault anyway.
Maybe with their last breath.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

Apr 11, 2009 - 8:25 am 9. Paul of Alexandria:

BTW, the F-15 is the “Eagle” – an air-superiority figher to be replaced by the F-22 Raptor. The “Falcon” is the F-16, a multi-purpose fighter/bomber to be replaced by the F-35 Lightning-II Joint Strike Fighter.

The ultimate need for the F-22 isn’t Afghanistan or Iraq, it’s the new Chinese and Russian fighters that are being sold to everybody and anybody that can’t or won’t buy ours. The powers-that-be seem to think that we’ll never get into another state-on-state war again and that all future operations will be counter-insurgency ops. Sigh.

Apr 11, 2009 - 9:41 am 10. Paul of Alexandria:

David S (7): there are differences in capability and mission between an air-superiority and a strike fighter. You need both.

Apr 11, 2009 - 9:44 am 11. Jeff Weimer:

Well David,

I partially agree with you. Most of these programs, especially Navy shipbuilding, are troubled to say the least. I do differ with the F-22, although he’s merely confirming a decision made by Gates during the Bush administration to stop F-22 production at 187. They are very expensive per unit. However, the more you make, the lesser the unit cost, and it is a “shovel ready” (in fact, digging as we speak) project that has the advantage of actually being in an area where the federal government has an explicit constitutional mandate (provide for the common defense…). Oh yeah, it also employs skilled Americans in high paying manufacturing jobs in the aerospace industry – an industry in which we still have a decisive advantage over the rest of the world.

I believe he should change that policy and build more – along with the F-35 variants, as they were mostly simultaneous programs designed to replace the F-15 (in the case of the F-22) and (for the F-35) the F-16 for the Air force, the F-/A-18C for the Navy, and the AV-8B (Harrier) for the Marines and the British Royal Navy.

The rest of it, meh. Even missile defense. We now have a mobile, proven, capable BMD capability against the smaller, unpredictable state actors we should worry about in the near term; the BMD-equipped Aegis Cruisers and Destroyers.

Now, my question to you is this: Why is it okay, even laudable, to cut expenditures here but EXPAND them nearly everywhere else?

Apr 11, 2009 - 10:09 am 12. 888:

#4, isolationism and non-collaboration with allies (or perceived allies) will not work in this dangerious, global environment we live in, especially as the US is the last ’superpower’ in existence (as of now anyways).

Korea is strategic, so, yes, we do have to be there, notwithstanding the bully from South Korea’s neighbor to the north and China’s ever-increasing militarism. In fact, we’re increasing our presence throughout the Korean peninsula — case in point: the massive growth and development (in troop size with families and US $ and Korean Won already spent for construction and yet to be spent) at Camp Humphreys, south of Seoul.

In a few short years, South Korea will look like Germany once did with US military personnel presence. This decision came out of the Bush Administration because Bush understood the dangers of potential conflict in this part of the world. This was not an Obama agenda item (never even mentioned it during the campaigns), so Obama cannot take credit for having the foresight to defend the Pacific through the building up of Korea, Japan and Guam — all Bush initiatives. Thank you, GW, for keeping us safe at home and abroad.

Apr 11, 2009 - 10:30 am 13. Larry J:

The ultimate need for the F-22 isn’t Afghanistan or Iraq, it’s the new Chinese and Russian fighters that are being sold to everybody and anybody that can’t or won’t buy ours. The powers-that-be seem to think that we’ll never get into another state-on-state war again and that all future operations will be counter-insurgency ops. Sigh.

It’s called “planning for the last war”, an age-old policy where political “leaders” buy weapons based on how the last war was fought instead of on the likely threats of future wars. Age-old, yes, but fatally flawed.

Apr 11, 2009 - 11:54 am 14. Paul of Alexandria:

Larry J (13):
No, it’s called planning for the next war. Hopefully one that you won’t have to fight because the bad guys see that you’ll be able to blow them out of the sky and thus never start the conflict in the first place.

I’m actually rather curious as to your thinking here. We’re fighting guerillas in Iraq and Afghanistan because they (both the locals and the Iranians, who sponsor them) know that there’s no chance on Earth that they could fact us on the battlefield. The Soviets didn’t invade Europe because they knew that we’d at least give them a good run for their money. Certainly future conflicts may be mostly in the same vein, but only if we retain our abilities to fight and win conventional battles. It’s rather similar to ICBM’s: God willing we’ll never launch one in anger, but it’ll only be because the other guys know that ours will work if needed.

Apr 11, 2009 - 12:37 pm 15. Paul of Alexandria:

Another problem is that people tend to look at ongoing conflicts in isolation, and don’t see the interconnections. Iraq and Afghanistan are not isolated battles. In both places we are fighting against militant Islam, which is instigated and supported by Iran (we’ve found a LOT of Iranian munitions in Iraq). In turn, Iran purchases a lot of weaponry from China, and it can be argued that Iran – and thus the other conflicts – are Chinese surrogates.

In reality, in both Korea and Vietnam we were not fighting the Koreans and the Vietnamese; we were fighting the Chinese. They are at the back of most of the cyber attacks that we’re currently facing (I presume you heard about the detected penetration of the power-grid control computer networks that recently made the news) and are responsible for a lot of worms and other computer malware. The Chinese want hegemony in Asia, and want us out of there. Hopefully we don’t ever have to one-on-one with them, but if we do you had better hope that our air-superiority fighers are better than theirs.

Apr 11, 2009 - 12:43 pm 16. Jeff Weimer:

13. Larry J:

Actually, Larry, it’s not. They may not be *enemies*, but they will always be rivals. There is nothing that says we won’t get into a conventional state-to-state conflict, and we need to be prepared for that. The fact that the same arms help us in lesser conflicts cannot be underestimated. That we are and have been in conflict with non-state groups is the last war. If we design our armed forces around that, we will be blinding ourselves to future threats.

Apr 11, 2009 - 12:46 pm 17. BJ:

Why does this Administration consider it good policy to destroy our high tech aircraft industry, both civilian and military, with it’s high skilled, high paid workers and then put $billions into pick and shovel construction projects? $Billions are spent to protect UAW jobs but the corporate jet industry has been knocked from the sky as everyone, except congress people, administration big shots and entertainers, are afraid to fly their planes.

Aeronautical Technology is one area where the US still leads the world. But maybe that’s the problem. Maybe the plan is reduce our capability, since air combat today is so unfair, and have a greater appreciation for “Europe’s Leading Role”.

I’ve now been around for several of these cycles. Why does it seem that so many supposedly brilliant political limelights apparently missed history class? Why do they insist on making the same mistakes over and over. Do they really believe that they are so smart that they can shape the world as they would wish rather than as it is and always has been?

Apr 11, 2009 - 1:02 pm 18. Drew F:

You need to fix one glaring mistake. It’s the F-15C EAGLE, not the F-15C “Falcon” as you wrote. The F-16 is named the Falcon. You’re gonna make your article look unprofessional with such a mistake remaining in it.

Apr 11, 2009 - 1:04 pm 19. Jeff Weimer:

Larry J,

We have been guilty of still planning for the ‘Cold War’ now 20 years in the past, and much of that is true – we were at the ready to fight the Soviets. But planning for that war largely consisted of planning for the upcoming conflict with them, so planning then was for the next war that never came.

We cannot truly prepare for the next war, as no one knows what is to come. We can try to guess – but little money will be expended towards a conjecture.

How do you propose to chance the paradigm from the ‘last war’ to preparing for the next? Even what’s considered ‘likely’ in the recent past has been way off base.

Apr 11, 2009 - 1:16 pm 20. Bilgeman:

Mr. Green:
“In a renewed age of piracy, what counts most is global presence. Gates barely addresses the problem of how we’re supposed to maintain that presence with an even smaller navy of multi-billion dollar stealth cruisers.”

In a renewed Age of Piracy, all the “presence” you need is two or three second-line M-60 machine guns with 5 200-round belts of ammo apiece issued to each US-flag vessel,the trained mariners to man them, and absolute immunity from any kind of dipstick prosecution, under the ancient “Enemies of All Humanity” Admiralty law code concerning pirates on the high seas, should we actually…y’know…like SHOOT the f+ckers.

Then you can spend the rest of the 995 million dollars you were planning to spend on whatever really necessary whiz-bang gadgets make the Brass-hats happy.

Apr 11, 2009 - 1:24 pm 21. Larry J:

“Planning for the last war” is what Gates is doing. We’re not using air superiority fighters for much in Iraq and Afghanistan, so to his thinking we’ll never need them.

Planning for the next war means looking at who you possible adversaries might be and selecting strategies and weapons systems that could defeat them. It means being prepared for all sorts of scenarios ranging from fighting terrorists and pirates to going head to head against a major power. Gates isn’t doing that. And if he’s wrong – as I firmly believe – a lot of good people will die as a result of his foolishness.

Apr 11, 2009 - 1:57 pm 22. Brent Ramsey:

Your gratuitous sideswipes at “Pentagon” problems with buying things for the troops and nation, are both a distraction from an otherwise good article and are patently untrue. Have you ever looked at the FAR (Federal Aquisition Regulation)? I just checked and it is 1973 pages long, a consequence of our wonderful Congress dictating how the Pentagon buys things. The FAR is based on the CFR…laws, lots of them passed by Congress. The FAR makes brain surgery look simple. Sure, the Pentagon (and every other Executive department that buys things) screws things up but it is not for lack of trying to both buy what we need and save the taxpayer money. I had 34 years experience not as a procurement weenie but with a close look at what they do and what they have to put up with and your characterization of them is off base. It takes years to build ships, even the smallest ones. And, they are incredibly more complicated to build than virtually anything else on the planet. Requirements and threats are not static. The Navy’s ships are one of the technological wonders of our world. I know many folks in the shipbuilding world…they are some of the best and brightest. Again, they are dealing with the FAR, Congress jostling their elbow at every turn, labor, changing requirements, incredible complexity and they turn out the best ships in the world. As much as people would like complex things to be simple and have simple explanations for why ships come in over budget and late to boot, your characterizations of these matters don’t do justice to real reality.

Regarding defense spending and the F-22 and other weapons systems, we should be buying more of everything for our future defense needs against the Chinese. To do otherwise is folly and a threat to our future. Defense spending continues to fall as a percent of GDP while the Democrats spend trillions on bailing out industry and social programs. We will rue the day unless future elections reverse the trend.

Apr 11, 2009 - 3:20 pm 23. Oscar the Grump:

We are being outclassed on so many battlefield systems that it is embarassing. Now we are throwing away the technological edge we had. I don’t understand this need to make the USA commit suicide. What is really behind all this?

Apr 11, 2009 - 5:13 pm 24. Jeff Weimer:

Larry, I think we are on the same page.

Apr 11, 2009 - 6:05 pm 25. typos_R_us:

Gates needs to be fired. Never hiring him would have been better, but Bush needed somebody to throw to the wolves and Rummy was the best choice. Gates is not and never has been a conservative. He has been a yes-man for his entire career, which is why the politicos like him.
The cure for the military procurement process is to nationalize Lockheed. That way the Air Force can get it’s F-22 for areasonable cost, 10 tpo 20 mill per and bunches of F-35’s. It will be shot across the bows to the MIC, which Ike warned us about many years ago.
The young socialista that voted the alleged Hawaiian into office are about to learn some of life’s harder facts. To bad the rest of us have to suffer along with them. Although if Conservatives had stayed true to their principals and not let the RINO’s take over the party, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

Apr 11, 2009 - 8:13 pm 26. typos_R_us:

“Ditching the F-22 to get moving on the F-35 is a prudent move. Reducing the explosion in Pentagon spending is necessary and Obama’s plan appears to do a very good job of setting priorities.”

Clueless. That makes about as much sense as having Tiger Woods ditch his driver to use a cricket bat. After all, they both are made to hit balls, right?
The F-22 and the F-35 are designed and built for two different missions. Might as well have the F-35 take over for the aerial tankers too.
It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that Gates doesn’t understand the difference between the F-22 and the F-35. He was a ground pounder and it either has wings or it doesn’t.

The single most critical weapon in the US arsenal is the F-22. Without air superiority, the other stuff isn’t very effective. The F-15 is getting long in the tooth. It still rules the sky because of the pilots flying it. 500 F-22’s means the USA has military superiority for the next 40 to 50 years. In two more generations, we will have some sort of world state, in which conventional warfare is useless, or the planet will be a crispy glow in dark radioactive ball. In either case, the F-22 will be the last air superiority fighter.
I expect this latest market crash to move the multinationals to get rid of governments. A corporate state isn’t going to allow politicians to screw things up like the ones we have now are doing. But that is sorta a different topic.

Apr 11, 2009 - 8:33 pm 27. Dave:

We need MORE F-22s. We can do with FEWER F-35s.

Reason is that air dominance is vital. Best we simply overhwelm anybody and everybody who might entertain notions of making the skies unfriendly.

F-35 ground support capabilites are needed against advanced foes, with advance anti-aircraft capabilities and hardened fortifications.

In places like Afghanistan, a turboprop version of the A1 Skyraider would be best. That is because it can stay ip there on patrol (and taking UAV-like pictures) for 8 hours at a stretch and still be able to answer any last-moment calls.

These later could be built tout suite and for a little bit of nothing.

It is that F22 that we need the most.

Apr 11, 2009 - 9:48 pm 28. James:

This is long overdue, anyone with any knowledge of military matters knows that air superiority is the biggest must have in todays world. When it comes to missle defense problem is, none of you seem to have ANYYYY knowledge of our past missle systems and how they are all failures….ALL of them!!! they dont even work people, you were lied to over and over again, its a fact, its history, look it up, stop being so dumb. This is a long time coming and way overdue, what doesnt work, cut it. We dont need a raptor when people are still flying vietnam era migs. Sorry. This wouldnt make us less safe as long as we are still maintaining the technology and remain in control of the sky. Anything else said about this is media hype, most likely going to be let loose by Fox news and their know nothing crew. So check yourself before you wreck yourself on stuff like this.

Apr 13, 2009 - 6:38 am 29. James:

Worth commenting, remember vietnam? the pentagon gave us guns that didnt even work, so are we dumb enough to make that mistake again and let them do whatever they want under the assumption that its for our own good??? they even tried to cover it up by telling people on the ground not to report that it was the gun that jammed, not the soldier that didnt clean it, the gun!!! well prepare to see more of that if you want to put your faith into the pentagon, who mind you, answers to no one, atleast back then. I find it hard to believe Republicans who are so anti government can be on the side of the pentagon, thats quite a step backword from the typical points they try to make, and honestly just another of the hundreds of contradictions i keep seeing and hearing.

Apr 13, 2009 - 6:46 am 30. submandave:

ajacksonian: The RFC problem with Naval consttruction is, as you said, a huge issue. However, as with many large capital projects, designing and building a ship is a decade-long prospect. It is impossible to anticipate technological and system improvements that may come to bear in the interim. One way we have, in the past, tried to deal with this was by building to spec and then bundling upgrades into a post-delivery shipyard period (the name for this escapes me). While a second period to rip out and replace antiquated equipment that had just been installed does seem wrong, with the RFC issue it actually is cheaper. We can also take a page from dear ole Rummy’s book and understand the “known unknowns” that await us. In fact, I believe this is being practiced in a sort of phased design process, where portions and systems of the ship are intentionally left unfinished to allow future design after basic infrastructure and hull construction is near complete.

Dave: re your comment about the utility of lower tech air platforms in theater, Many would be surprised to learn that one of the most requested platforms in CENTCOM are the old USN sub-hunting Maritime Partol Aircraft (MARPAT) P-3. They load them up with Hellfires and Mavericks, stick them up inthe air and let them use their high resolution RADAR and imagery systems to surveil. With 10-12 hr dwell time they just hang around up there until they’re needed, something no fast-mover can do.

Apr 13, 2009 - 8:43 am 31. Willy:

James,

You are an idiot. We need the best weapons on earth to maintain our role as the superpower. China and Russia are both working hard to catch up. We don’t need to make it easy for them. Also need the best fighters and anti-missile / anti-sat systems to fight the alien invaders when they arrive in the near future.

Need best, most powerful weapons. Stay on-top. Stay alive.

Apr 13, 2009 - 8:43 pm 32. Joseph:

Another consideration is the advancement of technology in general. So much of the technology that we enjoy in civilian life today stems from military R&D a generation earlier. Modern aviation technology, satellite technology, communications technology, the internet – all of these have significant roots in military development.

If we impeded military development, we will impeded the next generation of technology. We will also lose the skills necessary to develop future generations of technology.

Apr 14, 2009 - 10:12 am

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