It is no surprise that a report by former Defense Department policy makers and defense contractors (probably - not certain), studying the budget needs and preparedness of DoD to win wars of every kind, while consulting heavily with the DoD, concluded DoD needs 3-5% MORE money! Incestuous and profligate!
This is the Military Industrial Complex President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned America about in the '50s! America, fear mongering makes you want to spend all you tax dollars on weapons!
DoD has enough budget to envision, idealize, invent, create, push the State of the Art, plan, design, buy, and manufacture any weapon on the planet, but DoD acquisition process failed to buy the appropriate weapons or to be prescient enough to know what to prepare for. No doubt politicians helped muck up those choices, NO DOUBT!
It is INCREDIBLY stupid to keep throwing more and more and more money at a problem when it is not money that will fix the problem. The problem with giving DoD more money, bigger budgets has at least four parts:
1. the budgets are too big to manage by ANYONE OR ANY PROCESS; it's too much money; you can solve fraud, waste, and abuse with MORE of the same,
2. too many politicians mucking around in military choices where they have absolutely no idea how to plan and fight wars, telling DoD what to buy and which state to manufacture the weapons,
3. a set of defense contractors with an appetite of pigs at a trough, all having a penchant for profligacy, gold plating (~$!,900 reheating coffee cups!), always telling DoD what to buy!,
4. a MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX made up of politicians, contractors, lobbyists, special interest groups, and fear mongering politicians (I know, I inserted pols twice - they get in every way hey can), and
5. DoD has become an organization designed like welfare, paying for people to serve even when not needed.
"Welfare’s last stand"
Long in retreat in the US, the welfare state found a haven in an unlikely place – the military, where it thrived for decades
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-us-military-became-a-welfare-state
"Over the past four decades in the United States, as the country has slashed its welfare state and employers gutted traditional job benefits, growing numbers of people, especially from the working class, grasped for a new safety net – the military. Everyone recognises that the US armed forces have become a global colossus."
The MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX is bad, but our acquisition processes that allow that Complex to operate is worse. A better INTEGRATED process can fix fraud, waste, and abuse in DoD Acquisition.
"Defense Spending Fraud, Waste, and Abuse: Hype, Reality, and Real Solutions
November 20, 2008"
The budget is too big to manage!
Just as there is a tipping point to adding problem solvers on a team to solve business problems, a point where adding even the best people, will make it harder to solve the problem, adding money to the DoD budget has the same bad effect.
"As Debt Rises, the Government Will Soon Spend More on Interest Than on the Military"
PROLIFGACY!
The Congress MUST address the growing disaster of our deficit!
Tax cuts, spending increases and higher interest rates could make it harder to respond to future recessions and deal with other needs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/business/economy/us-government-debt-interest.html
"Congress, Trump give Pentagon a budget the likes of which it has never seen"
Robert Burns and Richard Lardner Associated Press 9 Feb 2018
"A Short Tour of Pentagon Financial Mismanagement, Waste, Fraud, and Abuse"
November 20, 2011 | By Ethan Rosenkranz, Carl Conetta
This web site [use link] is a list articles and reports that highlight financial mismanagement as well as waste, fraud, and abuse at the Department of Defense. Read and learn!
A report comes out to say we need to increase the DoD budget because DoD has been fighting wars that box us into a set of weapons that will be ineffective against China and Russia, e.g., AI and electronics. The report says we need to INCREASE the DoD budget.
"U.S. military might "struggle to win, or perhaps lose" war with China or Russia, report says"
By Olivia Gazis CBS News November 14, 2018
"The commission identified a set of six trends it said had fundamentally altered the strategic environment now facing the United States:
- The return of major-power competition from authoritarian powers like Russia and China;
- The rise and expanded military capabilities of aggressive regional challengers like Iran and North Korea;
- Evolving and intensifying threats from jihadist groups;
- Rising "gray-zone" aggression, which includes strong-arm diplomacy and economic coercion, media manipulation and cyberattacks, paramilitary and proxy forces;
- Proliferation of advanced technology – hypersonics and AI, for instance – that is eroding U.S. advantages and creating new vulnerabilities;
- And political dysfunction – budgetary instability and reduced defense investment."
The budgetary instability is fundamental to the ineffective use of the funds in DoD, so I am not blaming acquisition experts so much as the acquisition PROCESS for wasted billions, and, of course, political interference in DoD decisions to buy weapons, i.e., "pork barrel!"
DO NOT INCREAESE THE BUDGET! FIX THE ACQUISITION PROCESS! The PROCESS is the problem, not the budget!
"The report also recommended an independent commission be appointed to review U.S. cyber policy. "It is painfully clear that America is not competing or deterring its adversaries as effectively as it should in cyberspace," the report said. "
This is good, but you do not need more budget to do this, to study cyber policy. DoD absolutely has enough budget to study cyber policy!
You are f**king kidding me! This is the last thing we need to do! You are f**king WRONG!
Increasing the DoD budget is the last thing we need to do. Giving more money to the "money pit" DoD acquisition system will not win a war for you, America.
Tell DoD what wars they need to fight if you need to, or tell them what to prepare for, but do NOT give DoD more money! Do not give DoD more money!
Give DoD a specific five (5) year budget and tell them THAT IS ALL THEY WILL GET, just like NATO does with the contributions from all the NATO Allies!
