Because the United States wastes so much money chasing their tails round and round the US Military is presently in tatters.
It is not that we don’t spend an enormous amount of money because we do. We just spend that money very poorly. As a result we are broke and the military can’t get the job done.
It is like wanting a really great dinner and going to Mcdonalds for a Big Mac. They tell you the Big Mac costs $4.50 and you hand them $100.00 anyway. You do this not because you have to but because you are stupid.
So you spent a lot of money and still got a crappy dinner. That is how our military industrial complex works.
For the first time since the end of World War II, the United States won’t have an aircraft carrier in East Asian waters. Defense funding shortfalls have dictated a four-month gap between the departure of the USS George Washington from its homeport of Yokosuka, Japan and the scheduled arrival of the USS Ronald Reagan.
Though the US Navy says their concerns are overblown, the foreign media in the region have given the story a considerable amount of attention. One reason for our allies’ concern is their profound unease about China’s intentions. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 93% of Filipinos, 85% of Japanese, and 83% of South Koreans are worried that China’s territorial ambitions could lead to military conflict.
Retired Vice Admiral Peter Daly, CEO of the United States Naval Institute recently told a gathering in Washington that “given the current glide slope, in a year we will only be able to deploy two carrier groups” worldwide, even with 30 days notice. That is down from three currently, and five carrier groups just a year ago.
The Air Force’s top officers have noted that our air fleet is the smallest and oldest in the service’s history.
(The F-15 and F-16 are old. The F-22 is discontinued. The F-35 is garbage. The result is the United States is not prepared at all.)
General Philip Breedlove, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, even went so far as to say that he is not sure the United States can maintain air supremacy in a major conflict.
(We are not going to War with China no matter what they do because we might not win. We can’t even beat the Taliban. The Taliban has no air force, or NAVY, and we still can’t beat them. We will definitely not be taking on a real enemy anytime soon. Enjoy your Nuclear program Iran because we don’t care. If China wants to bully the Pacific rim countries that is good with us as well. We are powerless.)
Congressman Randy Forbes, Chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces, points out that air supremacy accounts for much of the difference in American lives lost between Vietnam and more recent conflicts.
General Ray Odierno, the Army’s Chief of Staff recently testified that not only have we moved away from the long-held strategic objective of being able to fight and win two wars simultaneously, he is not even sure—given our current manpower levels—that we could win one. (Confidence Building statements.)
These diminishing capabilities may seem shocking in light of the military spending agreed to in the recent omnibus $1.1 trillion spending bill just agreed to by Congress.
Shipbuilding offers a dramatic example. Cost-overruns have limited the number of ships we can afford to build because far too many people have the authority to make changes in design and requirements even after construction has begun.
Some 40 different offices in the Navy Department had the authority to dictate design changes to the Littoral Combat Ship program. This led costs to rise from $220 million per hull, to about $457 million per ship, since even simple changes in one area often result in cascades of other changes throughout the ships. Such lunacy must end. Program managers must stick to agreed-upon performance requirements and the resulting design, and not be tempted by the lure of new technologies or the threat du jour.
defense industry leaders must have the incentive to say, “Sorry Admiral, that is a really bad idea.” Currently, defense contractors have little reason to push back against ever-changing program modifications. Under the current procurement system, when unit costs go up, defense contractors typically see reduced orders. But their overall revenues and margins do not change. (So the ship builders get to build less ships and still make the same amount of money. Good deal for them. Bad deal with tax payers and our national defense) It may be time to impose a margin penalty tax on contractors who agree to post-construction design changes. They need to have more skin in the game.
(The other problem is the United States starts building a program such as the F-35 and then 75% of the way through the project China hacks in and steals all the top secret info causing a lot of redesign. The United States needs to stop all the never ending hacking which costs Hundreds Of Billions in losses.)
