US Air Force. Februar 2012.
http://www.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120201-027.pdf

Rachel Gerber. Politikk Memo, The Stanley Foundation, 1. februar 2012.
http://defensealt.org/AymAmo

Utdrag:

18. januar 2012, Stanley Foundation, i samarbeid med Carnegie Corporation of New York og MacArthur Foundation, sammenkalt tall kritiske til den historiske og samtidige utviklingen av Responsibility to Protect å vurdere den nåværende tilstand av prinsippet og vurdere utviklende globale dynamikk som vil ramme, kjøre bil, og utfordringen politikkutvikling i årene fremover.

Anthony H. Cordesman med Bradley Bosserman. Center for Strategic & International Studies, 30. januar 2012.
http://defensealt.org/xpBqhn

Utdrag:

USA må fundamentalt revurdere sin tilnærming til "valgfrie kriger." Det er langt fra klart at det kan vinne krigen i Irak, snarere enn styrke Iran, uten en sterk militær og hjelp nærvær. Det vil avgjørende miste den afghanske og Pakistan konflikt hvis det ikke utvikler raskt planer for et militært og diplomatisk nærvær, og bidra til å hjelpe Afghanistan i overgangen bort fra avhengighet av utenlandsk militær og økonomisk forbruk under 2012-2020. Amerikanske tropper kutt ikke er en overgangsplan, og fokus på uttak er en oppskrift for nederlag.

Når det er sagt, USA kan ikke, og bør ikke, gjenta den feilen det gjorde i intervenere i Irak og Afghanistan. Den må forholde seg til utradisjonell trusler med en langt bedre og rimeligere blanding av globale, regionale og nasjonale strategier som kan håndtere saker som uroen i Midtøsten og Sør-og Sentral-Asia, og terrorisme og ustabilitet på global basis. Det må stole på å hjelpe vennlige stater, avskrekking, oppdemming, og langt mer begrenset og mindre kostnadskrevende former for intervensjon.

fra prosjektet på Defense Alternatives, 26 januar 2012

Fremtiden-årene Pentagon basen budsjett plan utgitt av Sekretær Panetta på 26 januar 2012 forutser rulle utgifter tilbake til nivået i 2008, korrigert for inflasjon. Utgiftene til den ikke-krigen en del av budsjettet i løpet av de neste fem årene (2013-2017) vil være ca 4% lavere enn i de siste fem (2008-2012) i ​​reelle termer. Den virkelige (som er "inflasjon korrigert") endring fra 2012 vil være en reduksjon på 3,2%

Diagrammet nedenfor korrigerer for inflasjon ved å gjengi alle beløp i 2012 dollar. Det viser at base-budsjettets utgifter hadde hoppet 55% etter inflasjon mellom 1998 og 2010. Den nye budsjettplan setter 2013 utgifter på $ 525 000 000 000, noe som er 46% over 1998-nivå.

Den nye budsjettplan - representert ved den grønne trendlinjen - står i sterk kontrast til de reduksjoner som er pålagt av Budsjett-loven i henhold til bestemmelsene for deponering (representert ved den røde trendlinjen). Sequestration ville rulle Pentagon base-budsjettets utgifter tilbake til nivået i 2004, som fremdeles vil være 31% over 1998-nivå (korrigert for inflasjon). Den nye budsjettplan og karbonlagring har én ting til felles: begge ville beholde Pentagon utgiftene over den inflasjonsjusterte gjennomsnittet for den kalde krigen (representert ved den horisontale streken linje).

Christopher Preble og Charles Knight. Huffington Post, 20. januar 2012.
http://defensealt.org/ysCbHQ

Utdrag:

Balanse avhenger av hva du står på. Med hensyn til vår fysiske sikkerhet, er USA velsignet med kontinental fred og en mangel på mektige fiender. Vårt militære er best trent, best-ledet, og best utstyrte i verden. Det er våre ustabile økonomi og vår svak økonomi som gjør oss sårbare for snublet.

Dessverre gjør den nye strategien ikke fullt ut setter pris på våre styrker, heller ikke det helt adressere våre svakheter. Til slutt, betyr det ikke oppnår Eisenhowers oppskrytte balanse.

__________________________________________________

Matthew Rosenberg. New York Times, 20. januar 2012.
http://pulse.me/s/5a33j

Utdrag:

Amerikanske og andre koalisjonsstyrker her blir drept i økende tall av de afghanske soldatene de kjemper sammen og trene, i angrep motivert av inngrodde fiendskap mellom de angivelig allierte styrkene, ifølge amerikanske og afghanske offiserer og en hemmeligstemplet koalisjon rapport.

Redaktørens kommentar:

Virker som veldig sterke bevis for at amerikanske styrker har overskredet sin velkomst!

Andrew Taylor. AP, 20. januar 2012.
http://defensealt.org/xN9mYD

Utdrag:

The White House planen, trolig reprise nye skatter og gebyr forslag som er nonstarters med Capitol Hill republikanerne ville slå av hele ni år, $ 1.2 billioner over-the-styret utgiftskutt, referert til som en "beslaglegge".

"Vi har en beslaglegge kommer mindre enn et år fra nå hvis ikke kongressen handlinger," sier en senior administrasjon offisielle. "Vi kommer til å be Kongressen til å gjøre nå hva vi mener Kongressen bør ha gjort i desember, som er vedta mer enn $ 1,2 billioner i underskudd reduksjon, slå av beslaglegge og opprettholde (forbruk caps)."

DefenseTracker.com, 18. januar 2012.
http://defensetracker.com/web/?p=1681

Utdrag:

En del av "Doomsday Mechanism" hysteri spres ved forsvarsminister Panetta og hans kamerat i budsjettet kriger, Cong. Buck McKeon, har vært automatikk av over-the-brett kutt som binder ville pålegge forsvarsbudsjettet neste januar-i den sannsynlige tilfelle at lamme anda Kongressen og dens etterfølger neste år vil begge være like dysfunksjonell som kan av røde og blå ormer vi har nå. (Den andre delen av hysteri er "horror" å vende tilbake til 2007 nivåer av basen budsjett forsvarsutgifter.)

Det virker som presidenten har eksisterende lovhjemmel for å endre beslaglegge mekanisme, men ikke mengden av kutt som kreves.

Philip Taubman. New York Times 08. januar 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/reducing-the-nuclear-arsenal.html

Utdrag:

Dersom presidenten skyver tilbake mot forsvarerne av den gamle orden på Pentagon og andre redoubts av kjernefysiske prestedømmet, kan han bevare amerikansk sikkerhet, samtidig som USA en mer troverdig leder på en av dagens mest kritiske spørsmål - som inneholder spredning av kjernefysiske våpen. Som en kjede røyker ber andre om å gi opp sigaretter, lyder USA, med sin oppblåste arsenal, hyklersk når den legger press på andre land til å kutte våpen og slutte å produsere bombe-grade høyanriket uran ...

Relatert:

Forsvarsstrategi gjennomgang Side Nuclear Debatt

Carl Conetta. Project on Defense Briefing Memo nr. 53, 05 januar 2012.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1201bm53.pdf

Utdrag:

Rullen tilbake i lommepenger planer og de faktiske kutt til budsjett er tilstrekkelig til å engasjere hvert kontor og program i Pentagon. Det gjør for en omstridt debatt samt et lass av fôr for partipolitikk. Det vil hjelpe hvis vi kan holde ting i perspektiv. Kuttene vi står overfor i dag er langt mindre dramatisk enn de som følger den kalde krigen. Samlet budsjett myndighet under 1991-1996 var nesten 20% lavere i reelle termer enn under 1987-1990 - en nedgang fem ganger større enn det som administrasjonen i dag foreslår. Gitt vår nasjons nåværende økonomiske langsidene, bør Pentagons talsmenn faktisk puste lettet ut.

Department of Defense. 5 januar 2012.
http://www.defense.gov/news/Defense_Strategic_Guidance.pdf

Winslow Wheeler. TIME Battleland, 13. desember 2011.

Utdrag:

Uten inkludering av krig utgifter, DOD basen budsjettet under "Doomsday Mechanism" er ikke lenger på eller nær sin etter-verdenskrig høy, men det er heller ikke nær noen av de historiske lows. Faktisk er det omtrent $ 38 milliard over årlig forbruk under den kalde krigen ...

Stephen M. Walt. Foreign Policy, 01 desember 2011.
http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/01/a_bandwagon_for_offshore_balancing~~V

Utdrag:

... Offshore balansering er rett strategi, selv når våre coffers er fulle, forutsatt at ingen jevnaldrende konkurrenter truer med å dominere viktige strategiske områder. Selv i gode tider, er det ingen mening å ta på seg unødvendige byrder eller å tillate allierte til free-ride på Uncle Sam hubristic ønske om å være "uunnværlig nasjonen" i nesten hver krok av verden. Med andre ord, er offshore balansering ikke bare en strategi for harde tider, det er også den beste tilgjengelige strategien i en verden der USA er den sterkeste makt, utsatt for utløse unødvendig antagonisme, og sårbar for å bli dratt inn i unødvendige kriger.

Sara Sorcher. National Journal, 29. november 2011.

Utdrag:

President Obama nylig annonserte tiltak for å styrke arkitektur av en amerikansk utenrikspolitikk med nytt fokus på Stillehavet, herunder planer om å distribuere 2500 tropper til en base i Australia-alt mens insistere på at eventuelle reduksjoner i USA forsvarsutgiftene vil ikke komme på bekostning av prioriteringer i Asia-Pacific-regionen. Selv som mange i Washington varsomt øye Kina raskt modernisere militæret og utvide tilstedeværelse i Stillehavet, sier 39 prosent av Innsidere neste trekk er å forbedre amerikansk engasjement med Beijing og samtidig unngå eventuelle militær-relaterte tiltak.

Paula G. Thornhill. CNN, 23. november 2011.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/23/opinion/thornhill-defense-cuts/index.html

Utdrag:

Landets ledelse trenger en plan B, slik at en heroisk antakelse - eller håpet - om unlikelihood av fremtidige kriger ikke fører uforvarende til strategisk katastrofe. Dette er vanskeligere enn det ser ut. Plan B ville tillate mer fleksibilitet til å møte hva som kan gå galt i det strategiske miljøet snarere enn bare å lage budsjettkutt.

Redaktørens kommentar:

Plan B er å opprettholde en god "strategisk reserve. Som nykonservative liker å påpeke USA bruker bare 4,5% av BNP på militær sin. Dersom nye trusler knipe, kan den amerikanske lett rampe opp utgifter og engasjere sitt fortsatt betydelig industriell og kunnskapsbase. Problemet dette landet står overfor med en rekonstituering strategi er mangelen på politisk vilje. Sivile ledere er avsky å spørre det amerikanske folk til å ofre. En robust National Guard og Reserve kraft som ikke misbrukt av hyppige utplasseringer til unødvendige kriger og en samfunnsmessig forventning til å betale en skatt tilleggsavgift i tider med nasjonal krisesituasjon er det grunnleggende av hva dette landet trenger for å være strategisk forberedt og samtidig opprettholde en liten stående fredstid kraft . Med en slik strategisk plan i USA kan være godt klargjort for noen trussel.

Matthew Leatherman. Bloomberg regjering, 21. november 2011.
http://defensealt.org/veAUPs

Anthony H. Cordesman og Bradley Bosserman. Senter for strategiske og internasjonale studier, 17. november 2011.
http://csis.org/files/publication/111511_Defense_Resources_Threats.pdf

Michael E. O'Hanlon. New York Times, 14. november 2011.
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/1114_defense_budget_ohanlon.aspx

Utdrag:

Ved å holde et skip i utlandet for et par år og har to mannskaper aksje som fartøy samt et skoleskip hjemme, kunne Sjøforsvaret forbedre sin distribusjon effektiviteten med opptil 40 prosent per skip, oppnå med omtrent tre og et halvt skip hva i gjennomsnitt, har kanskje nødvendig fem. Med fokus på Sjøforsvarets store overflate stridende, kryssere og destroyere, kan denne tilnærmingen teoretisk gi rundt 60 skip (med litt mindre enn halvparten av dem utplassert i utlandet på en gang) for å opprettholde den globale tilstedeværelse at Marinen sier den trenger, i stedet for 94 skip det er for øyeblikket involvert.

Loren B. Thompson. Lexington Institute, 11. november 2011.
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/gen-odierno-breaks-the-code-on-why-weapons-cost-so-much?a=1&c=1171

Utdrag:

Gen Odierno er 2. november bemerkninger tyder på at han innser det er ikke bare entreprenørene som kjører opp kostnadene av programmer. Kostnadsoverskridelsene er ofte bakt inn i begynnelsen av den barokke krever at oppkjøpet systemet pålegger utviklere. Disse kravene resulterer i lange tidsplan forsinkelser, unaffordable enhetskostnader og våpen funksjoner som ikke kan oppfylle forventningene appropriators. Enda viktigere, bremse de levering av bedre kamper systemer til warfighters.

Paul Rogers. Åpent Demokrati, 11. november 2011.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/israel-vs-iran-regional-blowback

Utdrag:

Den nesten-uunngåelig realitet er at ut av konfrontasjonen Iran snart vil få en begrenset kjernefysisk arsenal. Dette er fordi selv en begrenset bombing av Iran vil skape en ny dynamikk hvor Iran er i sentrum av post-angrep regionen; vil ha flere nye muligheter til å pålegge kostnader på sine motstandere, og vil gå full tilt for sin egen avskrekkende.

Kelsey Hartigan. Democracy Arsenal, 10. november 2011.
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2011/11/if-you-want-peace-stop-clamoring-for-war.html

Utdrag:

Dersom Romney mener at han kan danse vals til det ovale kontoret, gi noen grove og tøff taler og plutselig Iran vil åpne dørene for IAEA-inspektørene, vel, han er i for en frekk oppvåkning.

Krigersk retorikk vil ikke løse situasjonen med Iran. Faktisk vil de fleste eksperter fortelle deg at det vil gjøre det verre. Trusler om militær aksjon, eller verre, faktisk militær handling, vil bare spille i hendene på Irans kompromissløse ... Hvis et amerikansk militært nærvær skulle overbevise Iran om å samarbeide, ville jeg trodd det ville ha skjedd nå.

Brian Phillips. AntiWar.com, 9. november 2011.
http://original.antiwar.com/bphillips/2011/11/08/10-factors-that-may-lead-to-war-with-iran/~~V

Carl Conetta. PDA Briefing Memo nr. 52, 25. oktober 2011.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1110bm52.pdf

Utdrag:

Den sterke veksten i Pentagons basen budsjett siden 1998 (46% i reelle termer) er vesentlig på grunn av strategiske valg, ikke krav til sikkerhet, per se. Det reflekterer en nektelse av å sette prioriteringer, samt en bevegelse bort fra de tradisjonelle målene for militær avskrekking, oppdemming, og forsvar til mer ambisiøse mål: trusselbeskyttelse, kommandoen over allmenningene, og transformasjonen av det globale sikkerhetsmiljøet. Den geografiske omfanget av rutinemessig amerikansk militær aktivitet har også utvidet.

følgesvennen: Pentagons New Mission Set: En bærekraftig valg, av Carl Conetta?. En oppdatert og utvidet utdrag fra rapporten fra Task Force på en Unified Security Budsjett (USB) for USA, 2011 August. http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/111024Pentagon-missions.pdf

Charles Knight. Prosjekt om Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo nr. 51, 25. oktober 2011.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1110bm51.pdf

Utdrag:

... Beskjedne endringer USAs militære strategi og global holdning implementert i løpet av de neste ti årene kan sikkert tilby underskudd redusere besparelser fra Pentagon budsjettet strekker seg fra $ 73 milliard i året til $ 118 000 000 000 i året.

For å oppnå besparelser krever kun bruk av ulike virkemidler til å oppnå strategiske mål. Det er nettopp det som noen god strategi gjør når forholdene endrer seg.

Abubakar Siddique. Radio Free Europe, 25. oktober 2011.

Utdrag:

Erfaring har vist oss at utenlandske styrkene ikke kan bringe fred til Afghanistan. Vi vil ha fred når vi fjerner årsakene til konflikt blant [afghanske] folk, "[protest arrangør] Mozhdah sa. "En av de viktigste grunnene for å bekjempe her er at vi ikke stoler på hverandre. Vi må sitte og snakke til hverandre for å vinne hverandres tillit.

Dan de Luc. Agence France-Presse, 19. oktober 2011.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?c=SEA&s=TOP&i=8003142

Utdrag:

"Asia vil være klart en prioritet, og vi vil justere driften vår i samsvar," Admiral Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval operasjoner, fortalte reportere i en telefonkonferanse.

Marinen nå stadig opprettholder et hangarskip - enten Kitty Hawk eller George Washington - i Stillehavet, sammenlignet med for 10 år siden da en transportør var tilgjengelig bare 70 prosent av tiden, sa han.

Abu Muqawama. Center for New American Security, 13. oktober 2011.
http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2011/10/looking-trim-defense-budget-start-qdr.html

Utdrag:

Gårsdagens kunngjøring om at det amerikanske forsvarsdepartementet vil danne en "Strategiske valg Group" for å identifisere prioriteringer og risiko i forkant av $ 450 000 000 000 i potensielle kutt til budsjettet er det siste eksempelet på verdiløshet av Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). En strategisk dokument nødvendigvis ville identifisere risiko og prioriteringer, men siden QDR gjør verken har Department of Defense for å etablere en helt ny arbeidsgruppe for å gjøre nettopp det.

Se også: Er QDR "en PR stunt" eller en oppriktig innsats for å forene holdning og budsjett med strategi?

Andrew Tilghman. Defense News, 12. oktober 2011.
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?c=LAN&s=TOP&i=7935114

Utdrag:

Panetta sa hæren bør forvente reserve-komponent tropper for å være en viktig del av fremtiden kraft.

"Som vi trekke ned fra disse krigene, må vi holde Guard og Reserve operasjonell og skaffe seg erfaring. Dette er den beste investeringen vi har gjort de siste 10 årene, "sa han. "Vi må fortsette å være i stand til å opprettholde det som en verdifull ressurs fordi reservestyrke har en spesiell rolle å spille som en kraft som gir nasjonen strategisk dybde i tilfelle krise, tilgang til unike sivile ferdigheter som kan være nyttig i moderne konflikter og som Hærens bro til en bredere sivilbefolkningen. "

Carl Conetta. Prosjekt om Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo nr. 50, 11. oktober 2011.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1110bm50.pdf

Utdrag:

Hva gjør håndtering upraktisk (og markerer det som en skremme taktikk) er den stupbratte måten det ville gjennomføre kutt. En gradvis tilnærming kunne utrette
tilsvarende sparing uten tilsvarende avbrudd. Som tenkt ut, er bestemmelsen ment
å motivere, snarere enn redusere, inntekter øker og kutt til bokførte programmer.

Spesiell Inspector General for Irak gjenoppbygging. Oktober 2011.
http://www.sigir.mil/publications/quarterlyreports/October2011.html

Ethan Pollack, The Economic Policy Institute Blog, 20. september 2011. http://www.epi.org/blog/militaristic-foreign-policy-saves-money/

En av de vedvarende kritikk av president Obamas finanspolitiske plan er at det teller krig utgifter reduksjoner som sparing. I utgangspunktet beregner Congressional Budget Office sitt forsvar baseline delvis ved å ta den siste krigen supplerende (teknisk kalt Overseas beredskap operasjoner, eller OCO) og forutsatt at beløpet-justert for inflasjon, vil bli brukt hvert år over overskuelig horisonten. Dette legger opp til ca $ 1730 milliard over 10 år. Presidenten forslag omfatter imidlertid bare $ 653 000 000 000 i OCO utgifter over 10 år, for en besparelse på ca $ 1.1 billioner.

Enkelte kritikere, men hevder at disse besparelsene ikke kan telles fordi CBO OCO grunnlinjen selv er ikke realistisk, derfor besparelsene er ikke "ekte." For eksempel, argumenterer utvalget for en Ansvarlig føderale budsjettet (CRFB) som teller disse besparelsene er en "budsjett gimmick" at presidenten bruker for å "blåse sparepengene." Ifølge denne kritikken, en annen baseline for OCO utgifter skal brukes, enten presidentens budsjett forespørsel eller CBO har opptak politikk alternativ-som ville senke grunnlinjen og gjøre det praktisk talt umulig å generere økonomiske besparelser fra redusere krig utgifter.

All respekt for CRFB og de andre kritikere, men denne kritikken er tåpelig. Den CBO OCO grunnlinjen er ikke "urealistisk"-snarere representerer det kostnadene ved president Bushs aggressive invasjon-sentrert tilnærming til utenrikspolitikken utvidet til evigvarende. President Obama er heldigvis i ferd med å prøve å endre USAs tilnærming til utenrikspolitikk, tegning ned tropper fra Irak og Afghanistan, og beveger seg mot en mer multilateral, tålmodig, diplomatisk, og viktigst, rimeligere tilnærming. Videre foreslår finanspolitiske planen til cap OCO utgifter, og dermed gjør at disse besparelsene er realisert.

President Obamas utenrikspolitikk tilnærming koster mindre penger enn president Bush ', og budsjettet utsiktene bør reflektere de besparelser.

Redaktørens kommentar:

Det må være et tegn på hvor ille det er for progressive som EPI nå feirer en stor røyksky fra Obama-administrasjonen sendte til avlede oppmerksomheten fra virkelige budsjett reduksjoner og, spesielt, for å beskytte Pentagon mot ytterligere kutt i de skattemessige kampene . Ethan Pollack har jobbet for OMB, så han sikkert forstår regnskap forvrengning bygget inn i CBO baseline anslag basert på gjeldende rett. Ikke én person i verden (inkludert de på CBO som forbereder grunnlinjen) mener at OCO utgifter vil fortsette å finansiere krigene i Irak og Afghanistan på samme nivå som 2011. Derfor CBO har en "trekke ned policy alternativet" - for å beregne sannsynlige OCO kostnader. Det sistnevnte øvelsen er ikke "dumt", eller de forslagene at slike beregninger være grunnlag for å vurdere budsjett reduksjon planer.

Mr. Pollack må også vite at president Obamas FY12 budsjett underkastelse til kongressen inneholder bare $ 50 milliarder i året for OCO for fremtidige år. Hvilken er det? $ 118 000 000 000 evig eller $ 50 milliard for alltid? Du kan ikke ha det begge veier.

CBO har uavgjort ned alternativet er sikkert bedre for budsjett (og underskudd
reduksjon) planlegging som enten urealistisk "plassholderen" (som
er rett og slett uansvarlig budsjettering) eller CBO grunnlinjen gjenstand av
$ 118 000 000 000 evig.

Hvis president Obama ønsker å kunngjøre en plan for å redde meningsfylt
beløp fra OCO han ville trenge for å kunngjøre raskere uttak fra Afghanistan ... men så ingen som egentlig tror han forlater
Afghanistan i 2014. Så dette er all røyk og speil ... og progressive bør føle forferdelig om det, ikke feire.

Det er disingenuous å hevde at CBO grunnlinjen OCO er liksom en Bush ansvar. Det er rett og slett en metodisk konsekvens av hvordan CBO gjør sitt baseline.

President Obama har vært ansvarlig for nesten tre år og har ikke brakt alle troppene hjem fra Irak og har knapt begynt en uavgjort ned i Afghanistan. Inneværende år OCO av $ 118 000 000 000 er hans ansvar som er lissom-ness av prosjektering den frem ti år, og deretter hevde besparelser fra å tilbringe "$ 653 milliard ... over ti år." Hvis han var veldig villig til å avslutte krigen i Afghanistan snart han kan være i stand til å kutte som OCO i to og tilbyr $ 325 000 000 000 fra reduserte fremtidige krig kostnader til underskuddet reduksjon.

Og frem til årets budsjett imbroglio i Kongressen tvunget hånden han
har fortsatt å mate Pentagon med høyere og høyere base budsjetter hvert år. Det er ingen bevis for at president Obamas "tilnærming til utenrikspolitikken ... [er] mindre dyrt" ... ikke så langt rundhåndethet tilbudt opp til Pentagon er bekymret.

Vi må ikke basere progressiv politikk på røyk og speil. Slike
politikk gjør vondt bare oss i det lange løp.

En annen kritikk av dette budsjettet gimmick kan finnes på: http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/gordon-adams/2369/how-about-those-defense-savings .

___________________________________________________________

The White House. September 2011.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/66998459/WH-Report-on-Afghanistan-and-Pakistan-September-2011

W. Andrew Terrill. Strategiske studier Institute, US Army War College, 2. august 2011.

Matthew Leatherman. Vilje og lommebok, 26. juli 2011.
http://thewillandthewallet.squarespace.com/blog/2011/7/26/dods-64b-question-where-is-that-64b.html

Utdrag:

"CBO har lenge sagt at DoD undervurderer Programmet koster inkludert, senest, sin rapport om de langsiktige virkningene av 2012 årene fremover Defense Program. At studien konkluderte med at «forskjellen mellom CBO projeksjon og DOD anslag for FYDP er ca 2%, eller ca $ 64 milliarder, over femårsperioden." "

David E. Mosher, assisterende direktør for nasjonal sikkerhet, Congressional Budget Office. Vitnesbyrd før komiteen på budsjettet, US House of Representatives, 7. juli 2011.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12162/07-07-FYDP_Testimony.pdf

redaksjonelle. Boston Globe, 30. juni 2011.

Når Leon Panetta tar roret ved forsvarsdepartementet i morgen, vil han stå overfor vanskelige valg om de amerikanske militære innsatsen i Afghanistan, Irak og Libya. Men en like presserende - og potensielt enda mer umedgjørlige - Problemet er Pentagons budsjett og forbruk. Utgående sekretær Robert Gates var god til å betale lip service til behovet for å kontrollere utgiftene, han bemerket nylig at «USA bør bruke så mye som nødvendig på nasjonalt forsvar, men ikke en penny mer'' Men instituttets grunnlinjen budsjett har økt. hvert år siden Gates overtok - fra $ 450 000 000 000 til mer enn $ 550 000 000 000 fire år senere. Bare i år er Pentagon søker en 3,4 prosent økning fra sin 2010-budsjettet.

Det er ikke bare de krigene, de utgjør mindre enn 30 prosent av Pentagons enorme budsjett anmodning. I sammenheng med andre offentlige utgifter, er det Pentagon en Behemoth. For hver $ 100 av statlig skjønnsmessig utgifter, går over $ 30 for ikke-krig forsvarsutgiftene. Omfanget er overveldende, behovet for mer enn stykkevis kutt av mislykkede systemer er presserende.

Gates nylig hevdet at Pentagon har allerede kuttet $ 300 000 000 000, men regnestykket tyder på noe annet. De pengene kom fra programmer som allerede er planlagt å være avsluttet. Besparelsene ble rett og slett satt i andre militære prioriteringer. Etter å merke seg at Marinens 11 carrier Battle Groups var overdrevne, nektet Gates å eliminere en eneste en.

Panetta må ta en mer disiplinert og systemisk blikk på budsjettet. Det er ingen mangel på råd fra innflytelsesrike tankesmier og uavhengige studier, deriblant fjorårets rapport for Sustainable Defense Task Force , en tverrpolitisk gruppe innkalles av representant Barney Frank. Deres anbefalinger vil trimme $ 960 000 000 000 mellom 2011 og 2020, hvis bare Pentagon ville handle på dem.

Kutte antallet utplasserte kjernefysiske våpen til det halve - til 1000 stridshoder - er konsistent med en redusert vekt på kjernefysisk krigføring og innsatsen for rustningskontroll talsmenn. Dette trekket alene ville spare over $ 100 milliarder over 10 år. Redusere konvensjonelle styrker ved 50 000, som fortsatt ville forlate 100.000 personell utplassert i Europa og Asia, er mer realistisk styrkestruktur. Avbryter bare noen få systemer som verken er kostnadseffektive eller essensiell ville spare mer. MV-22 Osprey og Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle er lange på problemer, og kort på funksjonalitet. I tillegg Congressional Budget Office og Government Accountability Office både har foreslått endringer for å støtte arbeidet, for eksempel vedlikehold, forsyning og infrastruktur, som kan spare 100 milliarder dollar i det neste tiåret.

Alt dette kunne gjøres uten at det går nasjonal sikkerhet. Panetta trenger å presse tilbake på de politiske kreftene som hevder foreta eventuelle kutt nasjonen sårbar for ulike fiender. Underskuddet er en mye større sikkerhetsrisiko.

Dessverre forblir Pentagon den største føderale byrå som simpelthen ikke kan passere en uavhengig revisor test; når det utsettes for normale bokføring prosedyrer, det kan ikke, med noen nøyaktighet, spor utgifter, bedrageri, avfall, eller redundans. Det har gitt seg selv en september 2017 frist for revisjon "beredskap.'' Det er ikke fort nok. Panetta, som, som tidligere leder av Office of Management and Budget, har et rykte som en streng fighter for regnskapsåret disiplin. Han vil trenge for å få Pentagons huset i orden på dag én.

Task Force on A Unified Security Budsjett Institute for Policy Studies, juli 2011.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/Unified_Security_Budget_FY2012.pdf

Melvin Goodman. Baltimore søn 29 juni 2011.

Utdrag:

I hans siste forelesning, advarte Mr. Gates mot enhver fryse i forsvarsutgiftene, slik Mr. Panetta å håndtere våpensystemer og militære oppdrag at USA ikke lenger har råd. Som tidligere direktør for Office of Management and Budget, forstår Mr. Panetta trolig at USA, med mindre enn 25 prosent av verdens økonomiske produksjon og mer enn 50 prosent av verdens militære utgifter, vil måtte begrense visse våpen og oppdrag. Forsvarsbudsjettet har vokst mer enn 50 prosent de siste 10 årene, og nå overstiger tempoet i bruken av den kalde krigen, inkludert krigene i Korea og Vietnam samt fredstid oppbyggingen av president Ronald Reagan.

En reexamination av dagens tropp deployeringer må inkludere titusenvis av tropper i Europa og Asia mer enn seks tiår etter slutten av andre verdenskrig; hundrevis av baser og fasiliteter over hele verden, og overdreven vilje til å projisere makt på områder som Irak, Afghanistan og Libya, hvor vitale nasjonale interesser står på spill.

The White House, 29. juni 2011.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/06/29/fact-sheet-national-strategy-counterterrorism

White House Faktaark Nasjonal strategi for Counterterrorism

The White House
29 juni 2011

"Som et land, vil vi aldri tolerere vår sikkerhet truet, eller stå passivt og se på når våre folk har blitt drept. Vi vil være nådeløse i forsvar for våre innbyggere og våre venner og allierte. Vi vil være tro mot de verdier som gjør oss hvem vi er. Og på kvelder som dette, kan vi si til de familiene som har mistet sine kjære til al Qaidas terror: Justice har blitt gjort ".

-President Barack Obama
1 mai 2011

Nasjonal strategi for Counterterrorism, finnes her, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/counterterrorism_strategy.pdf formaliserer tilnærming som president Obama og hans administrasjon har vært forfølge og tilpasse de siste to og et halvt år til hindre terrorangrep og for å levere ødeleggende slag mot al-Qaida, inkludert vellykket oppdrag å drepe Osama bin Laden.

Snarere enn å definere hele vår nasjonale sikkerhet politikk, er dette antiterror strategien en del av president Obamas større nasjonale sikkerhetsstrategien, som søker å fremme våre varige nasjonale sikkerhetsinteresser, inkludert vår sikkerhet, velstand, respekt for universelle verdier og globalt samarbeid for å møte globale utfordringer .

Denne strategien bygger på den fremgangen vi har gjort i tiår siden 9/11, i samarbeid med Kongressen, til å bygge vår kontraterrorisme og Homeland Security kapasitet som en nasjon. Det representerer hverken en grossist overhaling-nor en grossist for oppbevaring av tidligere politikk og strategier.

Trussel-Denne strategien anerkjenner det mange nasjoner og grupper som støtter terrorisme til å motsette seg USAs interesser, inkludert Iran, Syria, Hizbollah og Hamas, og vi vil bruke hele spekteret av våre utenrikspolitiske verktøy for å beskytte USA mot disse truslene.

Imidlertid er det viktigste fokus for denne antiterror strategien nettverket som utgjør den mest direkte og betydelig trussel mot USA-al-Qaida, dets partnere og dens tilhengere.

Al-Qaida har myrdet tusenvis av våre innbyggere, inkludert den 11/9.

Al-Qaida tilknyttede-gruppene som har innretta med al-Qaida-har forsøkt å angripe oss, slik som Yemen-baserte al-Qaida på den arabiske halvøy tallet (AQAP) mislykket forsøk på å bombe en Detroit-bundet passasjerfly 25. desember 2009.

Al-Qaida tilhengere-individer, har al-Qaida-noen ganger amerikanske borgere, som samarbeider med eller er inspirert av engasjert i terrorisme, inkludert den tragiske slakting av våre service medlemmer ved Fort Hood i 2009.

Vårt endelige mål-Denne strategien er klar og presis i vårt overordnete mål: vi vil forstyrre, demontere, og til slutt beseire al-Qaida-sitt lederskap kjerne i Afghanistan-Pakistan-regionen, til dets samarbeidspartnere og tilhengere ivareta sikkerheten til våre borgere og interesser.

Vår holdning-Vi er i krig. Vi fører et bredt, vedvarende, integrert og nådeløse kampanje som utnytter alle deler av amerikansk makt til å beseire al-Qaida.

Våre mål-å beseire al-Qaida, er vi forfølge konkrete antiterror mål, inkludert:

Beskytte vårt hjemland ved stadig å redusere våre sårbarheter og tilpasse og oppdatere vårt forsvar.

Forstyrre, nedverdigende, demontering og bekjempe al-Qaida uansett hvor den slår rot.

Hindre terrorister fra å anskaffe eller utvikle masseødeleggelsesvåpen.

Eliminere safehavens al-Qaida trenger å trene, plot og lansering angrep mot oss.

Nedverdigende koblinger mellom al-Qaida, dets partnere og tilhengere.

Countering al-Qaida ideologi og sine forsøk på å rettferdiggjøre vold.

Frata al-Qaida og dets partnere for sine slik at midler, herunder ulovlig finansiering, logistisk støtte og online kommunikasjon.

Våre prinsipper-Vår streben etter disse målene er styrt av flere viktige prinsipper, herunder:

Opprettholde core amerikanske verdier, herunder rettssikkerhet og personvern, sivile rettigheter, og borgerrettigheter for alle amerikanere;

Harnessing hver verktøy til rådighet, inkludert intelligens, militær, Homeland Security og rettshåndhevelse, og maksimere samarbeid mellom miljøer;

Bygge partnerskap til med internasjonale institusjoner og partnere, slik at nasjonene kan ta kampen til al-Qaida, dets partnere og tilhengere i sine egne land;

Bruk verktøy riktig, erkjenner at ulike trusler i forskjellige regioner krever ulike verktøy;

Bygge en kultur for beredskap og elastisitet hjemme for å hindre terrorangrep og sikre at vi raskt kan gjenopprette bør et angrep inntreffer.

Ødeleggende slag mot Al-Qaida-guidet av denne strategien, har vi oppnådd betydelig fremgang mot al-Qaida de siste to og et halvt år.

Vi har lagt al-Qaida under mer press enn noen gang siden 9/11, påvirker dets evne til å tiltrekke seg nye rekrutter og gjøre det vanskeligere for al-Qaida å trene og plot angrep.

Al-Qaida ledelsesprinsipper rekkene har blitt desimert, med flere sentrale ledere eliminert i rask rekkefølge enn noen gang siden 9/11.

Nesten alle store al-Qaida affiliate har mistet sin viktigste leder eller operativ sjef.

Mer enn halvparten av al-Qaida ledelse er blitt eliminert, inkludert Osama bin Laden.

"På en bane å beseire"-Som president Obama uttalte i sin 22. juni bemerkninger på vår vei videre i Afghanistan, "vi har satt al-Qaida på en bane å beseire, og vi vil ikke angrer før jobben er gjort."

Informasjon beslaglagt fra compound hans avslører bin Ladens bekymringer om al-Qaida langsiktige levedyktighet.

Bin Laden tydelig så at al-Qaida er å miste den større kampen om hjerter og sinn.

Bin Laden visste at han hadde mislyktes i å portrettere Amerika som i krig med islam.

Han visste at al-Qaida drapet av så mange uskyldige sivile, de fleste av dem muslimer, hadde dypt og kanskje permanent besudlet al-Qaida image i verden.

Redaktørens kommentar:

I forhold til militære midler for å bekjempe terrorismen det har blitt rapportert at dette Counterterrorism Strategy signaliserer skifte bort fra store bakken intervensjoner i fremmede land og dermed vil redusere kravet til counter-insurgency evner i de væpnede styrker. I stedet bygger mer på spesialstyrker assistert av droner for å målrette oppdragsgivere i terrororganisasjoner.

Tiden vil vise om COIN er på vei ut.

William Hartung. Huffington Post, 28. juni 2011.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-hartung/afghanistan-for-real-savi_b_886241.html

Utdrag:

Det vil ikke være store besparelser fra avvikling av den afghanske krigen til nesten alle amerikanske styrker trukket tilbake. Selv da er det fortsatt trolig bli løpende kostnader for trening, utrustning og muligens også betale afghanske sikkerhetsstyrker, noe som kan koste opp til $ 10 milliarder kroner eller mer per år hvis dagens priser opprettholdes. Men den største delen av $ 120 000 000 000 per år nå brukt på krigen vil bli frigjort til andre formål: underskudd reduksjon eller offentlige investeringer, eller en kombinasjon av de to.

An end to the Afghan and Iraq wars may also open the way to a more comprehensive public debate on the Pentagon's $550 billion-plus annual base budget — a sum over four times as large as what we spend on the wars. Politically, making real cuts in Pentagon spending during a time of war is a tough sell, even given our current budgetary predicament. But an end to the wars combined with the pressure from the deficit could lead to real cuts in the Pentagon's base budget as well, especially if we adopt a new strategy that forswears major wars of occupation or large-scale insurgency campaigns of the kind our nation has waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we cut the war spending and bring the Pentagon's larger budget into line with reality, then we'll be talking real money.

Jeff Jacoby. Boston Globe, 22. juni 2011.

Utdrag:

…with great power come great responsibilities, and sometimes one of those responsibilities is to destroy monsters: to take down tyrants who victimize the innocent and flout the rules of civilization. If neighborhoods and cities need policing, it stands to reason the world does too. And just as local criminals thrive when cops look the other way, so do criminals on the world stage.

Vår verden trenger en politimann. And whether most Americans like it or not, only their indispensable nation is fit for the job.

Redaktørens kommentar:

When three-quarters of Americans reject a role of global policeman for the US perhaps they understand something fundamental about policing that Jeff Jacoby doesn't. A police force without oversight by a judiciary and a guiding body of law is surely a formula for tyranny .

Jacoby would never endorse tyranny, but the avocation to be global policemen by White House occupants who are elected by and responsible to only 10% of the world's people is a decision to be a vigilante on the global stage. Tenk at amerikanerne ville være opp i armene hvis Kina eller Russland tok på seg å være globale hevnere.

For the leaders of the US to so gladly to take up this role only serves to delay the day when we have capable international judicial and policing institutions. Hvis våre ledere prøver å tenke selv om noen få år inn i fremtiden bør det være klart for dem at praksisen med vigilantism ikke tjener amerikanske interesser.

[A version of this comment was published as a letter to the editor in the Boston Globe , 28 June 2011.]

Sandra Erwin. National Defense , 10 June 2011.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/lists/posts/post.aspx?ID=441

Utdrag:

Ikke bare er det interne uenigheter i Pentagon og Obama-administrasjonen over hva de militære tjenestene vil være å gjøre i fremtiden, men fraksjoner innen Kongressen vil også være en pådriver individuelle agendaer. "I Kongressen, har du 535 individer og hver og en av dem tror de er ansvarlig," O'Keefe sa. "Hvis du ikke har noen benchmark å jobbe med å starte diskusjonen," Pentagon vil miste kontrollen over hva som blir kuttet i kommende budsjetter.

"Hvis det ikke er strategisk rammeverk, som er hva som vil skje: Prosessen tar over," sier O'Keefe. Defense ledere bør komme opp med en rimelig strategisk rammeverk så tidlig som mulig at de kan selge til Kongressen, sa han. "Fravær at det kommer til å være programmerere og bønne tellere kjører toget for å møte et nummer."

En helhetlig melding fra Forsvarsdepartementet er "mangler akkurat nå," sa John J. Hamre, president i CSIS og tidligere nestleder forsvar sekretær.

"Hva skal vi egentlig prøver å planlegge etter, som en forsvarsdepartementet, er det bra for 20 år?" Spurte han. "Skal vi få helvete ut av disse krigene, og aldri kjempe dem igjen? Hva er vi forbereder? "La han til. "Det, tror jeg, er arbeidet for de neste seks månedene."

Det må være en følelse av at det haster om bevegelig en plan for fremtiden til det amerikanske forsvaret, fordi stadig den amerikanske offentligheten er å miste tålmodigheten med tilsynelatende endeløse kriger og gridlock over hvordan å gå videre, sa Hamre

Steps Toward Defense budsjettdisiplin , en Hill orientering sponset av skattebetalerne for Common Sense og Project on Defense Alternatives, 7 juni 2011, video av Stimson senteret . Featuring: Amy Belasco, Carl Conetta, Benjamin Friedman, Matthew Leatherman, Laura Peterson og Winslow Wheeler.

Carlton Meyer. G2mil.com, juni 2011.
http://www.g2mil.com/OBCL.htm

Utdrag:

Her er en liste over utdaterte amerikanske militærbaser i utlandet som kan umiddelbart stengt for å spare milliarder av dollar hvert år ...

Lukk utdaterte amerikanske militærbaser i Japan - Futenma & Atsugi

Trekk Fly og Airmen Out of Osan - nå i en kill sone

Cut Army Fat i Korea - åttende Army og Daegu

Forlat To Army baser i Tyskland - som en gang planlagt

Lukk Torii Station - en amerikansk militærbase på Okinawa?

Forlat RAF Lakenheath - russerne ikke kommer

Lukk Gitmo, hele Base - det har ingen hensikt

Lukk Chinhae morgen - det kommanderer ingenting

[Det er mer argumentasjon om hver av disse ved kilden.]

Winslow Wheeler. Gjest Post, 24. mai 2011.

The National Defense Authorization regningen, 1540 HR, vil bli behandlet av Representantenes hus denne uken. Lovforslaget er arbeidet produktet of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), ledet av kongressmedlem Buck McKeon, R. - California.

Operasjon og vedlikehold (Tittel XLIII) av regningen er en av dens største og viktigste. "O & M" omhandler støtte, logistikk, vedlikehold, opplæring og mye annet som trengs for å gjøre våre væpnede styrker for å fungere effektivt. $ 170 800 000 000 ble forespurt av president Obama, komiteen økte at ved $ 361 millioner til $ 171 100 000 000. Men for å komme dit komiteen tok noen omveier.

Stenket i hele O & M tittelen HASC lagt ulike earmarks (en mindre eksempel: $ 4,0 millioner for "Simulering Training Systems for Hæren" [p 430 av komiteen Report.]). Alle disse kom til mye mer enn $ 361 millioner netto legge til regningen. Komiteen og dets ansatte måtte finne forskyvninger til å betale for disse øremerke godsaker og andre tillegg.

I siste årene har HASC (og Senatets forsvarskomité og sikkerhetstenkning underutvalg av både hus og Senatet bevilgninger komiteer) oppført merkelige høres reduksjoner i O & M deler av regningene sine - ". Unobligated balances" Disse skal være tekniske endringer for penger tidligere bevilget til de ulike militære tjenester for ulike programmer, de blir "unobligated" når den planlagte utgifter ikke oppstår, og de formodentlig blir tilgjengelige for forskyvninger for nye utgifter, eller - hvis komiteen skulle være mer imøtekommende for skattyter - tilbake til statskassen.

For eksempel, på s.. 432 av HASC komitéinnstilling, tabellene for Hæren O & M viser en reduksjon på $ 384.600.000 merket "Army unobligated balanserer anslag." Det beløpet skjer for å være 1,1% av presidentens anmodning om total Army O & M ($ 34735000000).

Marinen avsnittet om O & M i HASC regningen viser en $ 435,900,000 reduksjon for "Navy unobligated balanserer anslag." For en eller annen merkelig grunn, regner med at beløpet også til 1,1% av presidentens anmodning om Navy O & M ($ 39365000000).

Stranger selv, Marine Corps O & M reduksjon for unobligated saldoer som også 1,1% (66 millioner av en $ 5.960 milliarder forespørsel).

Samme for Luftforsvaret, den samme 1,1% ($ 400 800 000 fra en $ 36195000000 forespørsel).

Ingen av disse er diskutert eller forklart i teksten til komitéinnstilling, den eneste "forklaringen" vi får er at de er "Army [eller Sjøforsvaret, eller Air Force, etc.] unobligated balanserer anslag."

At alle disse "beregninger," som bør være teknisk i sin natur, kommer til 1,1% oser av gaming systemet. To relevante spørsmål: Hvem gjorde det? Og hvorfor?

Først, jeg seriøst spørsmål om disse praktisk tilsvarende beregninger faktisk hadde kommet fra de militære tjenester. Det ville kreve en ganske merkelig (og specious) mengden av koordinering av dem alle til alle komme til 1,1% av deres respektive O & M budsjett forespørsler.

Dernest, hvorfor er det ingen "unobligated balanserer" i anskaffelser og FoU-titler, som er tunge med den slags utgifter som kan ende opp "unobligated"?

Tredje, hvorfor ikke disse pengene bli returnert til statskassen, hvorfra det kom, og nå hører så sant pengene er ikke lenger nødvendig med Forsvarsdepartementet?

Det er mange andre spørsmål, men forhåpentligvis får du min drift. De oppveier HASC tok, og kaller dem "unobligated balanserer," er ingenting, men over hele linja tupper på en av de mest betydning kontoene i DOD budsjettet - den som gjør for en godt trent og støttet militært. Hvorfor er HASC gjøre disse over hele linja kutt, og hvorfor gjør de det i O & M?

Det er noen andre "unobligated balansere" spørsmål i regningen. Forsvaret brede delen av O & M tok også en $ 456 800 000 hit fra en anmodning fra $ 30,940 milliarder. Dette kommer til 1,47%. Hvorfor tar den delen som støtter spesialstyrker og andre større proporsjonal hit enn de andre militære tjenester?

Også tar Defense Health Program en $ 225 millioner hit som er "forklart" som en "GAO estimat", men ingen GAO analyse eller annen forklaring tilbys.

Den militært personell budsjett som betaler militære lønn tar en $ 693 millioner treff fra en $ 142 828 000 000 forespørsel (0,48%). Jeg fant ingen forklaring.

Finally, section 2107 permits the Secretary of the Army to use $115 million in previously “unobligated” spending to fund a water treatment facility at Fort Irwin California. Perhaps the House representative from the Fort Irwin area can explain how all this works and how he or she got to fund some spending in the district from these ubiquitous funds.

In my judgment, the HASC, which is charged with oversight of DOD, could use a little oversight itself.

Pentagon's Phantom Savings: $330B Claim Erodes as Programs Reappear
Marcus Weisgerber. Defense News , 16 May 2011.
http://rempost.blogspot.com/2011/05/pentagons-phantom-savings-330b-claim.html

Utdrag:

Nearly 40 percent of that sum [$330 billion] is going straight back into US military programs that replicate the canceled ones, and it's unclear where another 10 percent came from at all, according to a Defense News analysis and to several analysts.

…many of the military services' capability requirements remained in place. More than $130 billion is back on the books, or will be soon, for follow-on or replacement programs. Of the programs canceled in 2010, at least five have already been relaunched, or are in the planning stages to begin again.

Redaktørens kommentar:

When President Obama addressed the nation about the Federal deficit on April 13th he said, “Over the last two years, Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.” A number of us military budget analysts looked at each other and said, “Huh, did we miss something?” We hadn't notice any significant cuts in Pentagon spending that could count toward reducing the Federal deficit. Where did the President get that big number?

Of course, we had taken notice when Defense Secretary Gates had announced $78 billion in budget cuts for the FY12 five year defense plan. We noted that the DoD budget would still continue to grow, that some of these cuts were fairly soft (dependent on assumptions about future inflation rates) and most savings would be generated in the out-years. (See: Pentagon Resists Deficit Reduction )

And we had noted that Secretary Gates had cancelled a number of programs in 2009. But we also noted that many of the cancelled programs were being replaced by others substantially reducing the putative savings (see Gordon Adams, Defense Budgets: Still Need to Get it Right! )

In the days following the President's speech we commented on how there was much less real savings than the President attributed to Secretary Gates' “courageous” efforts. I pointed out that $68 billion of the January $78 billion in savings had been consumed when 2012 war costs appeared in the budget released in February, replacing small placeholder numbers.

Benjamin Friedman observed that “current 'savings' consist entirely of spending that the Pentagon reprogrammed and kept, and the future 'savings' come by reducing planned spending growth, rather than reducing actual spending.”

Carl Conetta reviewed the history of these supposed cuts going back to 2009 and compared successive Obama budgets, 2010 through 2012, finding no more than $233 billion in “maybe” DoD reductions in projected out years.

The collective skepticism of independent analysts about the $400 billion no doubt reached the attention of the editors of Defense News , the leading defense industry weekly, where Marcus Weisgerber sought to justify Secretary Gates' claim of $330 billion in savings from the 2009 program cancellations. When DoD officials refused a request to give a program-by-program breakdown of the figure Defense News “used budget justification documents, DoD officials' public statements, annual acquisition reports and Government Accountability Office estimates to project program costs. For classified and far-term programs not on the books – but factored into DoD's projections – think tank and analysts' estimates were used.” The Weisgerber article title, “ Pentagon's Phantom Savings “, sums up the results of Defense News' effort to justify Secretary Gates' claim of savings.

Defense News editorial, 16 May 2011.
http://rempost.blogspot.com/2011/05/us-defense-budget-get-real-pentagon.html

Utdrag:

There is an old Washington saying that no money is less real than out-year money. This means that anything that is beyond the immediate spending bill is purely notional.

Requirement control is a popular method of limiting the costs of new weapons, but it's equally important to control the growing number of missions.

The first step should be to ensure the roles-and-missions review ordered by Obama slashes unnecessary and costly redundancies in capabilities.

Second, the Pentagon must avoid doing what it did – portraying soft numbers as hard ones that do little other than expose it to criticism.

Lastly, to make wise cuts, the Pentagon must improve its internal financial management processes to pinpoint what it's spending and how. Without hard data, it's hard to come up with hard savings.

Charles Knight. Project on Defense Alternatives Note , 12 May 2011.

Word is that two principals in the production of 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review will be charged with producing the “fundamental” defense review President Obama ordered in his April 13th speech on the deficit. They are Kathleen Hicks , Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Planning, who was the lead 2010 QDR author and David Ochmanek , Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development, who headed the “analysis and integration cell” which pulled together all the analytical aspects of the last QDR.

Update

Defense News reports (23 May 2011) that “The missions and capabilities review will be led by Christine Fox , director of cost assessment and program evaluations [and formerly the President of the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA)]; Michele Flournoy , defense undersecretary for policy [and the Pentagon official in charge of the 2010 QDR]; and Adm. Michael Mullen , Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Redaktørens kommentar:

Putting the same people who did the 2010 review in charge of producing the new review raises an obvious question of whether we should expect anything much “new” or “fundamental” from this review. QDRs in the past have certainly failed to be “fundamental” in any meaningful sense of the word.

One suspects that the foregone sub-text of what Ms. Hicks writes into the new review will be, “We got this pretty much right when we did it last year. Now, of course, if you are willing to take greater security risks you can cut some pieces out of the force posture, but that is a political decision…”

If the new review makes such a smug presentation it will serve the President and the nation poorly. The 2010 QDR did not make any real effort to set clear priorities among the many military requirements it listed, failing one of the principles of strategy development which is to set a practical path within resource constraints. A new fundamental review must present a variety of low-risk options that can be achieved at various resource investment levels. Its authors should not be allowed to simply push the matter of security risk into the political domain.

President Obama would be smart to solicit ideas from a wide variety of sources, reaching far beyond the Pentagon's strategy, policy and force planning staff. If a fundamental review is needed, it is wise to hear and consider diverse voices.

Winslow Wheeler. Center for Defense Information, mai 2011.
http://www.cdi.org/pdfs/GreenbookInflationMay11.pdf

Utdrag:

The comparison of DOD's prediction of inflation for itself compared to the commonly accepted GDP measure looms as a major consideration when one considers the time frame that President Obama and Congress are contemplating in the context of deficit reduction. The President's Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform assumed a budget window of 10 years from 2011 to 2020. In his April 13 speech on deficit reduction the president addressed a budget window going out to 2023, when he implied, but did not explain, a reduction in the planned “security” budget of $400 billion in the 2012 -2023 time frame.

There are multiple caveats and uncertainties in the defense related reductions the president appears to have been talking about; these should be identified before identifying how the inflation issue impacts any contemplated savings. They are the following:

• The manner in which the president addressed past and future “savings” made it unclear the extent to which he was addressing actual reductions in spending, or “savings” as efficiencies (ie internal transfers inside the DOD budget as Secretary of Defense Gates has for the most part been conducting);

• No DOD budget figures exist for some of the years the president addressed; available DOD figures go out to only 2016; available OMB figures for defense spending go out to 2021, but the amounts for 2022-2023 are unknown; it is also notable that in recent budget history, most deficit reduction plans have spanned either five or ten years, not twelve; the latter spreads out the annual amount required to be saved, and – more importantly – moving savings out to years as far as ten or twelve years away literally moves them to never-never land;

• No figures were released for any reductions in any year, whether the pre-existing annual budget was known or unknown;

• The target for these $400 billion in “savings” is the “security” budget, not just the Defense Department's budget. The security category includes not just DOD but the State Department/International Affairs budget function, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the nuclear weapons activities of the Department of Energy, and other miscellaneous programs and agencies; the Defense Department's proposed share of the $400 billion “savings” is unknown, and

• Materials released by the White House at the time of the speech asserted that the new plan had a “goal” to hold DOD spending “below” the rate of inflation. While DOD's preferred rates of inflation will – as always – be used for the DOD budget, the differences between the DOD and GDP inflation indices for the years beyond 2016 have also not been made available.

… if the Department of Defense is held to the rate of inflation – or just “below” – as calculated by the DOD inflation indices, it is clear from the above analysis that it will be quite possible for the Pentagon to enjoy “real” growth – under the more generally accepted GDP indices.

Carl Conetta. Project on Defense Alternatives Note , 30 April 2011.

Why is our defense spending so high and apparently out of control? Plenty of ink has been spilled addressing this question, including my own short, The Pentagon's Runaway Budget .

Andy Bacevich may get closer to the key political dynamics in Why Military Spending Remains Untouchable .

There is no better example of the dysfunctional political dynamic governing the Pentagon budget than President Obama's affirmation (April 13, 2011) of the claim that Secretary of Defense Gates has “already saved” the nation $400 billion in defense expenditure. And there is no better illustration of the poverty of our discourse on this subject than the fact that the claim goes largely unchallenged.

Most of the $400 billion in earlier DoD “savings” that President Obama has attributed to Secretary Gates are not “savings” in the ordinary sense of the word. They do not show up as reductions in DoD budget plans from one year to the next, as shown below. At best, they represent DoD marginally adjusting its programs and aspirations to marginally deal with spiraling cost growth.

Rough analogy: Having said it would deliver a “fully-loaded” Cadillac for a specified price X, and having discovered that this estimated price is entirely unrealistic, a car dealer trims back some of the features and delivers something less for the full promised price. Most consumers would call this a gyp, not a savings.

The alternative would be for DoD to further boost subsequent budget requests to fully reflect cost growth, and let Congress and the Executive reconsider what they wanted to buy. I suppose one could say that DoD has “saved” these authorities from the headache of making this decision. Fully confronting a realistic pricing of current programs might lead to a thorough-going rethink of our defense posture and modernization efforts. But that's too much to consider.

Now, let's try to find those $400 billion in “savings”….

THE $400 BILLION

1. Much of the $400 billion that Secretary Gates is claimed to have saved derives from his April 2009 announcement of program cuts. Gates claims that the systems and programs he cut in 2009 would have eventually cost more than $300 billion. However, at least some of this was immediately reprogrammed, meaning: DoD used the savings to buy other things.

April 2009 Gates Defense Budget Recommendation Statement

2. In August 2010 and January 2011, Secretary Gates outlined additional “cuts” and “savings” totaling $178 billion. Of this, $100 billion was immediately reprogrammed to purchase other things or cover other costs. The remaining $78 billion was supposed to be released from the Pentagon orbit to help pay down the deficit. In the August 2010 statement, we find Gates' claiming that his earlier 2009 effort has already saved more than $300 billion.

August 2010 Gates Statement on Department Efficiencies Initiative

Jan 2011 Gates Statement on Department Budget and Efficiencies

PDA summary chart re: the $178 billion

3. How much (if any) of the earlier “more than $300 billion” in savings was similarly given over for deficit reduction? Looking at actual budget plans, what do we see? The first $300 billion was announced in April 2009 and it might reasonably have shown up as difference between the last Bush budget plan (FY09) and the first Obama budget plan (FY10).

Comparison between these two budget plans is easy for the years 2010-2013:
- Bush FY09 planned total spending for 2010-2013 = 2.155 trillion
- Obama FY10 planned total spending for 2010-2013 = 2.183 trillion

An increase is not a reduction, therefore: no savings apparent in the near years.

4. Obama's next budget plan (FY11) foresaw a significant increase over his first. So, no savings apparent there either.

5. Only in the next plan – the FY12 plan – do we see a reduction in planned spending between FY12 and FY11 plans. In the nine years that overlap between the FY11 and FY12 plans, we see a reduction of about $233 billion.

But the FY12 plan follows Gates' second announcement of cuts and savings (summarized in #2 above). So, at least, $78 billion derives from that and not the earlier cuts. Indeed, when we compare the FY12 plan with the FY11 plan for the years 2012-2016, there is a reduction in planned spending of $76 billion. Still no apparent impact from the April 2009 “cuts,” however.

6. Well, as noted above, the total difference between the FY11 and FY12 plan for the years 2012-2020 is $233 billion. 233 minus 78 = 155. This additional planning rollback of $155 billion shows up for the years after 2016. So maybe we've found at least $155 billion of the earlier supposed cut? Maybe it just took 2 years to register? Kanskje.

“Maybe” because the Obama FY12 budget rolls back planned spending almost exactly to the levels foreseen in the Obama FY10 budget …being the budget that was larger than the final Bush budget and being the budget that showed no impact from Gates' April 2009 offer. To put it another way: Obama's FY12 budget simply rolls back the future spending plan he produced in FY11 to the level he had proposed in FY10. The FY12 plan simply disappears the increase proposed in FY11.

7. The other possible (likely) reading of all this is that: (i) None of the original $300 billion “saved” ever left the Pentagon,
(ii) The $78 billion that Gates offered up to deficit reduction is the only “savings” really specified so far to actually show up as a reduction in planned spending, and (iii) The other $155 billion that the FY12 plan subtracts from the FY11 plan involves as yet unspecified cuts and efficiencies.

Project on Defense Alternatives Budget Brief , 28 April 2011.

The Obama Administration to date has made three successive Pentagon budget requests: FY10, FY11, and FY12. Each has looked ten years into the future.

On 13 April, the President offered a new proposal and framework — a revision to achieve greater deficit reduction. It looks forward 12 years. How do all these compare?

In order to compare the President's successive plans, we must stretch the earlier ones out to the new horizon set in his April 13 speech, which is 2023. Reviewing the budget requests shows that in each case the projections for the “out years” — the tail-end years — have been generated by the application of a simple inflator. We can adopt these inflators to stretch all the requests out to 2023. Of course, the result must be regarded as only an estimate of the administration's intent.

The difference between the FY11 and FY12 plans for the 10-year period 2012-2021 is around $240 billion. Stretch it out two more years and the difference grows to about $400 billion. This shows that the differences among the plans (when measured in “then year” dollars) really begin to accumulate as we go further and further into the future.

Keeping in mind that Congress must consider and pass the budget year by year, any series of budget projections going out twelve years, spanning three Presidential terms and differing economic conditions, must be judged distinctly uncertain.

Below are the total budget figures (in “then year” dollars) for the President's successive plans. Each plan is also weighed as a percentage of the earliest one (ie FY10):

FY10 plan for 2012-2023: 7543 billion = 100%

FY11 plan for 2012-2023: 7947 billion = 105%

FY12 plan for 2012-2023: 7512 billion = 99%

New (April 13) proposal for 2012-23: 7112 billion = 94%

The most consequential years for national policy are the next five: 2012-2016, which constitute the FYDP. The President's successive requests for these years are more firm and we needn't do any estimating to derive them. All the Administration budget requests have been explicit about these years. And reviewing the successive requests for 2012-2016 shows that the difference among them is not as substantial:

FY10 plan for 2012-2016: 2878 billion = 100%

FY11 plan for 2012-2016: 2995 billion = 104%

FY12 plan for 2012-2016: 2919 billion = 101%

We don't yet know what the President's April 13 proposal will imply for the 2012-2016 period. It's a fair bet, though, that he will want to reinstate his earlier request to DoD that $150 billion be “saved” in the near future and not just the $78 billion pledged earlier this year by Secretary Gates. That would produce the following:

New plan for 2012-2016: 2845 billion = 99%

If this proves true, the rollback in planned spending for the five years that matter most will be modest, verging on insignificant.

Project on Defense Alternatives, Briefing Memo #49, 25 April 2011.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1104bm49.pdf

There is good reason to welcome a strategic review, as promised by President Obama on 13 April. For nearly 14 years, US defense policy has been guided by the “QDR consensus” – a set of axioms and imperatives that won adherence among defense planners in the course of four Quadrennial Defense Reviews, beginning in 1997. In retrospect, this consensus has produced a syndrome of profligate and desultory military activism. It has fed the dysfunctions of our military procurement system and helped drive the Pentagon's base budget to unsustainable heights. Certainly, it is time for a fresh start. But will the promised review deliver?

Will the review be more open and critical than the QDRs it aims to rectify? How deep will it dig? Will it even aim to “rectify?” Or will it serve a more narrow purpose: a revised bargain among the Commander-in-Chief, his defense secretary, and the chiefs of the armed services to exchange modest new constraints on budget growth for a strong rationale, a bulwark, against any further cuts.

What the President seeks is only $400 billion in savings over 12 years – about 6.5% of planned base budget expenditures. Last year, the President's Fiscal Commission and other independent task forces identified more than twice as much in potential defense savings over a period of just ten years. And it is unclear whether the President intends to extract the $400 billion from the Pentagon's budget alone or from the larger “security basket,” which includes International Affairs, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs.

Also, it is not encouraging that the President applauded Defense Security Gates for having “already saved” $400 billion in previous years, when most of those “savings” never left the Pentagon's coffers, nor dented the government's deficits. What the nation needs now are “savings” in the colloquial sense of an actual decrease in defense spending.

A serious strategic review should enable considerably more than a 6.5% retraction in planned future expenditures. It should do more than limit future growth. And maybe it will. But we should recognize at the start that what the President has proposed is not itself substantial enough to actually necessitate a strategic review. Yes, we need one – but not because the President hopes to modestly dampen Pentagon growth.

To be meaningful, such a review must look well beyond $400 billion in savings, and even beyond what the Fiscal Commission and other task forces have proposed. Of course, Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen disagree. They have already publicly derided any substantial new constraints on their spending as putting the nation and its armed services at risk. The strategic review should be more than a conciliatory concession to their concerns, which are tendentious.

We can gain needed perspective by comparing recent budget submissions and proposals in historical context. This table prepared by PDA converts recent plans and proposals into average annual Pentagon base budgets, expressed in 2010 dollars. It shows that the President's requests and proposals, including his recent one, would produce average annual budgets that occupy a narrow band of spending. They are all close cousins.

Even the more ambitious proposal by the Sustainable Defense Task Force does not go far afield.

All of the President's requests and proposals produce average annual budgets that, in real terms, exceed previous spending, exceed Reagan-era levels of spending, and substantially exceed average spending during the entire Cold War period. (And, notably, the budget average for the Cold War years includes war spending, while the more recent averages do not.)

We should gladly accept the opportunity for a review of defense planning and work to make it worthwhile. But we need not and should not accept the idea that modest revisions in budget planning give good reason to hit the “strategy panic” button.

Sebastian Sprenger skrive i Inside Defense 21. april 2011 rapporterer at QDR Red team ledet av general James Mattis (USMC) og Andrew Marshall, direktør ved Office of Net Assessment, vakt bekymring i 2009 om de skattemessige tilbakeholdenhet virkningene av den dype lavkonjunkturen på militære planer om å være representert i QDR.

The Red teamet rapporten ble ikke gjort offentlig. When the QDR was published in early 2010 it did not include a presentation of the effects of fiscal constraints.

Last week, a little more than a year later, President Obama asked Secretary Gates to find $400 billion in additional security budget cuts over a twelve year period and called for a new review of military roles and missions.

The effect of this development will be an update of the 2010 QDR which will likely now heed the concerns of the 2009 Red Team concerning fiscal constraints.

On Wednesday April 13th 2001, President Obama announced an initiative to roll back planned security spending by $400 billion over the next 12 years. Naturen av disse "sparing" er ennå ikke klart. Det er heller ikke klart hvor mye som skal trekkes fra Pentagons investeringer.

Nonetheless, Secretary Gates and the Chiefs are not pleased and have begun to make noise about risks to security. Apparently, they were not briefed on the proposal until Tuesday.

Part of the initiative is to begin a “fundamental review of America's missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world.” What and how much is subtracted from the Pentagon will depend on this review. Notably, the United States just completed a Quadrennial Defense Review last year. What the President proposes is some sort of “second look.” The President, Secretary Gates, and the service chiefs will be the prime movers of this process. Hvor dypt deres "andre blikk" vil gå er uklart. Og det synes slaget linjene er allerede under utarbeidelse.

På en pressekonferanse onsdag, sa Pentagon talsmann Geoff Morrell gjennomgangen vil trolig påvirke 2013 budsjettet. Det vil ikke være ferdig innen juni, da Congressional debatt for 2012 budsjettet starter.

How open will the review process be? Vi vet ennå ikke. But the experience of recent defense reviews is not encouraging. Likevel bør vi ønsker denne første skritt, og forsøker å åpne opp prosessen. Behovet for en gjennomtenkning vår forsvarsstrategi og holdning ble fremhevet i 2010-rapporten fra Sustainable Defense Task Force :

[I]n order to ensure significant savings, we must change how we produce military power and the ways in which we put it to use. Significant savings may depend on our willingness to:

Rethink our national security commitments and goals to ensure they focus clearly on what concerns us the most;

Tilbakestill vår nasjonale sikkerhet strategi slik at den gjenspeiler en kostnadseffektiv balanse mellom sikkerhet instrumentene til rådighet, og bruker disse instrumentene i kostnadseffektive måter, og

Reformere systemet vårt å produsere forsvar eiendeler så det.

News links on President Obama's proposed rollback in planned security spending, his call for a strategic review, and the Pentagon's reaction:

DOD: Finding More Savings In Defense Budget Means Nixing Missions . Christopher J. Castelli. Inside Defense , 13 April 2011.

Obama Calls for Sweeping Review of US Military Strategy . Sandra Erwin. National Defense , 13 April 2011.

Pentagon warns on big defense cuts . Missy Ryan and Jim Wolf. Reuters , 13 April 2011.

Forsvar sjef advarer mot planlagte kutt . Daniel Dombey and James Politi. Financial Times , 14 April 2011.

Events frequently overtake long-term Pentagon planning . Megan Scully. Government Executive, 14 April 2011.

Editor's Commentary

13 April 2011 (revised and updated 16 April 2011)

In President Obama's April 13th “deficit speech” he says:

Just as we must find more savings in domestic programs, we must do the same in defense. Over the last two years, Secretary Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again.

What might “do that again” mean?

Actually contribute $400 billion from projected Pentagon budgets to deficit reduction?

That would require the Pentagon to take in and spend $400 billion less. But it is very difficult to identify much actual contribution to deficit reduction in the first $400 billion in Pentagon savings President Obama refers to and believes can be repeated.

Let's take a quick look at the components of that first $400 billion working backward through time.

This past January Secretary Gates announced $78 billion in cuts over five years. In February when the President's FY12 budget appeared all but $70 billion of this as regards deficit reduction evaporated. $68 billion was consumed by the special Overseas Contingency Operations (war) budgeting as the FY11 projected placeholder of $50 billion was replaced by the FY12 real OCO budget of $118 billion. Another $2 billion in the savings appears to have simply vanished in the five year budget projections, perhaps due to those pesky “rounding errors” that plague Pentagon budgets.

In 2010 Secretary Gates announced $100 billion in “efficiency” savings. He was quite forthright at the time, saying that he was keeping all the savings within the Pentagon to pay for other requirements. So we can't legitimately count those toward deficit reduction, and presumably the President did not count those toward the $400 billion that has been saved.

So that leaves about $322 billion in Pentagon savings the White House needs to account for.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on 17 February 2011 Secretary Gates said:

…over the last two defense budgets submitted by President Obama, we have curtailed or canceled troubled or excess programs that would have cost more than $330 billion if seen through to completion.

Connecting this to President Obama's speech Defense News reports (13 April 2011) that:

Of the $400 billion already saved, $330 billion is supposed to come from Gates' cuts to weapons programs – for example the cancellation of the Army's Future Combat Systems program and the Air Force's Next-Generation Bomber, both of which Gates terminated in the 2010 budget. However, those two programs have been replaced: The Army is developing the Ground Combat Vehicle, and the Air Force has launched a scaled-back bomber program.

“Supposed” and “However” are the key words in the preceding paragraph. To be real savings that contribute in any meaningful way to deficit reduction the the program cancellations would have to lead to a declining Pentagon budget topline… and not be replaced by some other expenditure.

Gordon Adams of the Stimson Center assesses the $330 billion savings claim in a 5 November 2010 post this way:

Gates has not cut $330 billion from defense. When he announced hardware cuts, he said the out-year savings were estimated at $330 billion, but he didn't cut a nickel from the projected defense budgets; he wants, as he has clearly said, to use those savings for other investments, not give them back to the taxpayer. And the figure is way too big, anyway, because he terminated the F-22 and the C-17 cargo plane when neither one of them was in the long-term budget (he has been trying to let both programs arrive at a normal death, as planned, and Congress keeps getting in the way.) It is even more too big because his savings figure did not net out the alternative investments he proposed for the same missions, like replacing the terminated Future Combat Systems (FCS) vehicle with a new Army vehicle R&D program. So a big kerfuffle over a non-number, but no big cut in defense here.

To date the Pentagon or OMB have not produced any accounting of these supposed savings from Secretary Gates' program cancellations which indicate where they come out of the topline. Meanwhile it would be wise to substantially discount their value when thinking about overall Federal spending.

What we know for sure is that Pentagon budgets continue to rise despite the “savings.” The Pentagon and the Administration might argue that the Pentagon budget would have grown faster if Secretary Gates had not made those “courageous” program cuts. Possibly. But that “would have been” is simply not the same as actually contributing to deficit reduction which requires real cuts in the topline of the Pentagon budget.

In terms of cutting the topline of the Pentagon budget, when we remove the long-awaited reductions in war costs, we can count just $8 billion that Secretary Gates has given up to deficit reduction in the five year defense plan (FYDP) through FY16.

Looking out ten years there are more savings in the President's projections. My colleague Carl Conetta finds $164 billion less Pentagon spending in the overlapping four “out years” (FY17-20) when comparing the President's FY11 and Fy12 budget submissions.

We might speculate that this is where we realize some of Secretary Gates' $330 billion in savings, but it would be only speculation…

So far no one in the Administration has demonstrated in sufficient detail how the Pentagon will contribute much of anything toward reducing the Federal deficit, rounding errors notwithstanding.

Joshua Thiel. Small Wars Journal, 12. april 2011.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/732-thiel1.pdf

Utdrag:

Manøver krigføring i sin kjerne er en mekanistisk bestrebelse og passer med en tilsvarende nødvendighet av top-down hierarkier. Motsatt er opprørsbekjempelse en mer tvetydig miljø som varierer i sin kompleksitet og kontekst, det er den sjakk kamp av krig. It is different in every locale and can cover the entire spectrum of war simultaneously. Følgelig er opprørsbekjempelse vanskelig å sette på en støtfanger klistremerke, til varemerke som en catch setning, eller selge til en befolkning og deres representanter. I 2006 USA (US) publikums oppfatning av suksess eller fiasko for den irakiske opprørsbekjempelse strategien ble konsentrert rundt begrepet masse som kamp makt i tid og rom, ofte kalt "The Surge". Betegnelsen "The Surge", kondensert en ny opprørsbekjempelse strategi inn i en enkel og kvantifiserbare slagord for lyden bite kulturen omkring aktuelle saker i den moderne verden. Dessverre er opprørsbekjempelse mer komplisert enn "legge mer og så vinner du."

Kommentar av Gian Gentile:

Josva sa dette på slutten av stykket:

“…in Afghanistan in 2011, will the victor once again write the history by touting the Afghanistan troop surge of 2010-2011 rather than the decisive operational changes.”

What evidence, I mean hard evidence (and beyond what officers who were part of the Surge recall)that there was a “decisive operational change.”? How much “decisive” operational change can there be in an area security mission where combat forces are dispersed widely and operate in a decentralized manner? Dette operasjonelle rammeverket kom på plass i Irak fra våren 2003 på. Svaret er at det ikke var en avgjørende endring i den operative rammeverket. Å være sikker på at det var noen tweaks laget her og der, noen flere utposter her og der, men stort sett forble det samme.

Dessverre en fortelling har blitt konstruert som tar for gitt at en frelser general ved navn Petraeus kom ombord, gjenoppfunnet hans felt hær operasjonelt og kombinert med en økning av troppene var den primære årsaken til senking av vold. Dette er en Chimera.

Likevel folkens, spesielt oss i Hæren som har sølt blod på disse stedene, ønsker å tro at det som skjer eller ikke skjer er på grunn av oss og hva vi gjør eller ikke gjør, eller på grunn av frelser generaler ridning på scenen.

Men utenrikspolitikk eliten (og mange militære ledere) i dette landet elsker denne fortellingen, og ønsker at den skal holde seg fordi det legger vekt og kritikk på mekanikken i å gjøre disse krigene intervensjon og statsbygging og vekk fra strategi og politikk som setter dem på plass. Siden suksessen i disse kriger og konflikter er bare et spørsmål om å få riktig antall tropper på bakken med de rette taktikk og med frelser generelt, så de kan vinnes igjen og igjen.

Som senior generalene i Afghanistan hevder "er de rette inngangene endelig på plass," så også er vi allerede ser samtaler i enkelte hold for myr i Libya.

Men i Irak var det verken økningen i tropper som en del av Surge (som Josva effektivt argumenterer) eller var det en avgjørende endring i operative rammeverket (som han feilaktig hevder) og i stedet senking av volden hadde å gjøre med andre mer kritiske forhold (spredning av Anbar oppvåkning, sjia-militsen står ned, den fysiske atskillelsen av Bagdad i sekteriske distrikter) oppstår.

Budget Memo by Charles Knight. 14 February 2011.

For several years now White House budget projections have included a “placeholder for outyear overseas contingency operations” most of which are accounted for by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This placeholder number has been and remains $50 billion. Every year actual OCO (overseas contingency operations) spending turns out to be several times that number. FY11′s OCO is $159 billion and FY12′s is $118 billion .

Adjusting for the effect of the new OCO for FY12, the $68 billion budgeted above the placeholder of $50 billion eats up most of the $78 billion in Pentagon cuts that Secretary Gates offered up in January to fiscal responsibility (only $76 billion actually shows up in the 14 February budget release.) The remaining $8 billion (and much more) will go to the war budgets when reality collides with placeholder projections.

On 14 February Pentagon Comptroller Hale confirmed that the $50 billion placeholders for FY13 and beyond was the “best we can do.” Others make an attempt to be more realistic. The high tech industry association called Tech America annually projects DoD budgets for ten years out. In their 2010 projection they estimate that OCO spending will be $102 billion in FY13 , $69 billion in FY14 and $57billion in FY15 . When we subtract the $50 billion placeholder for each of those years and total the remainder we find that the Pentagon is likely to spend $78 billion more in the years FY13 through FY15 than in the White House budget projections.

In sum, not only does the President's FY12 budget plan give an exemption to the Pentagon from contributing anything substantial to deficit reduction, but the likely cost of the war in Afghanistan will push up the national debt substantially higher than the White House budget projections.

Decoding the Defense Budget by Winslow Wheeler, from The Pentagon Labyrinth , 09 February 2011.

Utdrag:

What Is the Defense Budget?

Each year in early February, the Pentagon releases what is invariably called the “defense budget” in press articles. The numbers presented do not address all forms of defense spending; they do not even address all forms of Pentagon spending.

For example, a table included in the Pentagon's press materials for the 2011 budget shows the “base” (non-Iraq or -Afghanistan war) budget request at $549.8 billion. The materials presented by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) are more complete. The 2011 budget request for “base” (non-war) Pentagon spending was $554.1 billion. The additional $4.3 billion was for “mandatory” spending (also known as “entitlement” spending) mostly for personnel programs. The number the Pentagon released was for the “discretionary” (new annual appropriations) spending. The difference may be a minor one in this case, but it can be significant; in past years Congress has added scores of billions in new mandatory spending for military healthcare, and retirement and survivors' benefits.

The more complete exposition of DOD budgets in the OMB materials is not easy to find; it is usually buried in the “Supplemental Materials” to a volume called “Analytical Perspectives” that is released each year the same day the Pentagon releases its version of its budget. Unfortunately, the DOD press corps roundly ignores the more complete OMB materials. To be better informed in future years, track it down.

The same OMB table yields other important information: the additional DOD spending requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not just for the budget year but also for succeeding “out-years,” and the non-DOD spending for what OMB calls the “National Defense Budget Function,” which includes nuclear weapons, the Selective Service, the National Defense Stockpile of minerals and commodities, and more. The total for 2011 comes to $738.7 billion in “total” (discretionary plus mandatory) spending.

The same table also yields the budget amounts for the departments of Homeland (domestic) Security, State (for economic and weapons aid and other national security programs) and Veterans Affairs (for what might be called the human cost of wars). Each is clearly related to national security or “defense,” writ broadly. Finally, if you know where to look near the bottom of this long OMB table, you can find some additional spending in the Treasury Department for military retirement and healthcare, and finally the data needed to make a calculation of how much of the 2011 payment for interest on the national debt can fairly be attributed to the Pentagon.

The results of this more complete compilation of the president's 2011 budget request for “defense” is summarized in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Defense Related Budget Requests for 2011.
(President's 2011 Budget Request – in $ billions)

“Base” DOD Budget (Discretionary only) 548.9

DOD (Mandatory only) 4.3

DOD War Spending 159.1

DOD Total 712.3

DOE (Defense) 18.8

Miscellaneous Defense-Related Agencies 7.6

National Defense Budget Function Total 738.7

Homeland Security (DHS) 43.6

Veterans Affairs (DVA) 122.0

International Affairs 65.3

Treasury Dept. Military Retirement Payments 25.9

Interest on DOD Retiree Health Care Fund 5.7

19% of Interest on Debt (DOD Proportional Share) 47.7

Grand Total $1,048,900,000,000.

The next time someone tries to tell you that the numbers DOD throws at you in its press releases are what you should use to understand monies spent for national security, give him a polite smile; then, go to that obscure table in the Supplementary Materials in OMB's “Analytical Perspectives.” It is published online the same day as the Pentagon press release. A few minutes of checking can give you a more complete understanding than what the press will report.

Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo 46 , 26 January 2011.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1101bm46.pdf

Utdrag:

* Although described as a “cut,” Gates' offer would allow defense spending to rise steadily over the next five years.

* Although Gates says that any bigger cuts would court “catastrophe,” all the savings plans grant DoD more money in real terms during the next ten years than it had during the last ten.

* The proposals for bigger cuts would produce average Pentagon base budgets during the next ten years that are only about 5% below Reagan-era spending, adjusted for inflation.

* The Pentagon seeks future budgets that average more than 12% above the Cold War highs.

Sandra Erwin. National Defense Magazine , 24 November 2010.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=258

Utdrag:

An AESA equipped Super Hornet is “generation four-and-a-half,” says [Michael “Ponch” Garcia, a reserve Navy pilot and manager of business development at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems]. “All the sensors are fifth generation. You won't have super cruise. You won't have 360 stealth. You lose that. But you're getting it for half the price.”

Sandra Erwin. National Defense Magazine, 22. november 2010.
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=255

Utdrag:

“The Defense Department's biggest weakness is its budget strategy: the absence of strategic choice,” says Gordon Adams, American University professor who authored the defense recommendations in the Domenici-Rivlin proposal that was presented by former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (RN.M.) and White House Budget Director under Clinton, Alice Rivlin.

Klippe forsvarsbudsjettet bør ikke være om å gjøre det samme med mindre, sier Adams. The reaction to the Simpson-Bowles report, which takes aim at many big-ticket weapon programs and calls for work force reductions, was predictable. Every targeted program or agency, as was seen recently with US Joint Forces Command, is making a case that it is essential to national security, and its supporters already are mobilizing lobbyists and advocacy groups.

Den smartere tilnærming ville være for Obama-administrasjonen og Kongressen til å godta en skalert-back militær strategi, sier Adams. "På slutten av dagen, det handler om politikere besøksforbud sin impuls til å bruke militære i uvøren slik det er blitt brukt i de siste 20 årene," sier han.

18 November 2010

Dear Co-chairman Bowles and Co-chairman Simpson:

We are writing to you as experts in national security and defense economics to convey our views on the national security implications of the Commission's work and especially the need for achieving responsible reductions in military spending. In this regard, we appreciate the initiative you have taken in your 10 November 2010 draft proposal to the Commission. It begins a necessary process of serious reflection, debate, and action.

The vitality of our economy is the cornerstone of our nation's strength. We share the Commission's desire to bring our financial house into order. Doing so is not merely a question of economics. Reducing the national debt is also a national security imperative.

To date, the Obama administration has exempted the Defense Department from any budget reductions. This is short-sighted: It makes it more difficult to accomplish the task of restoring our economic strength, which is the underpinning of our military power.

As the rest of the nation labors to reduce its debt burden, the current plan is to boost the base DOD budget by 10 percent in real terms over the next decade. This would come on top of the nearly 52 percent real increase in base military spending since 1998. (When war costs are included the increase has been much greater: 95 percent.)

We appreciate Secretary Gates' efforts to reform the Pentagon's business and acquisition practices. However, even if his reforms fulfill their promise, the current plan does not translate them into budgetary savings that contribute to solving our deficit problem. Their explicit aim is to free funds for other uses inside the Pentagon. This is not good enough.

Granting defense a special dispensation puts at risk the entire deficit reduction effort. Defense spending today constitutes over 55 percent of discretionary spending and 23 percent of the federal budget. An exemption for defense not only undermines the broader call for fiscal responsibility, but also makes overall budget restraint much harder as a practical economic and political matter.

We need not put our economic power at risk in this way. Today the United States possesses a wide margin of global military superiority. The defense budget can bear significant reduction without compromising our essential security.

We recognize that larger military adversaries may rise to face us in the future. But the best hedge against this possibility is vigilance and a vibrant economy supporting a military able to adapt to new challenges as they emerge.

We can achieve greater defense economy today in several ways, all of which we urge you to consider seriously. We need to be more realistic in the goals we set for our armed forces and more selective in our choices regarding their use abroad. We should focus our military on core security goals and on those current and emerging threats that most directly affect us.

We also need to be more judicious in our choice of security instruments when dealing with international challenges. Our armed forces are a uniquely expensive asset and for some tasks no other instrument will do. For many challenges, however, the military is not the most cost-effective choice. We can achieve greater efficiency today without diminishing our security by better discriminating between vital, desirable, and unnecessary military missions and capabilities.

There is a variety of specific options that would produce savings, some of which we describe below. The important point, however, is a firm commitment to seek savings through a reassessment of our defense strategy, our global posture, and our means of producing and managing military power.

■ Since the end of the Cold War, we have required our military to prepare for and conduct more types of missions in more places around the world. The Pentagon's task list now includes not only preventive war, regime change, and nation building, but also vague efforts to “shape the strategic environment” and stem the emergence of threats. It is time to prune some of these missions and restore an emphasis on defense and deterrence.

■ US combat power dramatically exceeds that of any plausible combination of conventional adversaries. To cite just one example, Secretary Gates has observed that the US Navy is today as capable as the next 13 navies combined, most of which are operated by our allies. We can safely save by trimming our current margin of superiority.

■ America's permanent peacetime military presence abroad is largely a legacy of the Cold War. It can be reduced without undermining the essential security of the United States or its allies.

■ The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have revealed the limits of military power. Avoiding these types of operation globally would allow us to roll back the recent increase in the size of our Army and Marine Corps.

■ The Pentagon's acquisition process has repeatedly failed, routinely delivering weapons and equipment late, over cost, and less capable than promised. Some of the most expensive systems correspond to threats that are least prominent today and unlikely to regain prominence soon. In these cases, savings can be safely realized by cancelling, delaying, or reducing procurement or by seeking less costly alternatives.

■ Recent efforts to reform Defense Department financial management and acquisition practices must be strengthened. And we must impose budget discipline to trim service redundancies and streamline command, support systems, and infrastructure.

Change along these lines is bound to be controversial. Budget reductions are never easy – no less for defense than in any area of government. However, fiscal realities call on us to strike a new balance between investing in military power and attending to the fundamentals of national strength on which our true power rests. We can achieve safe savings in defense if we are willing to rethink how we produce military power and how, why, and where we put it to use.

Vennlig hilsen

This letter reflects the opinions of the individual signatories. Institutions are listed for identification purposes only. The letter is the result of a joint effort by The Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and the Project on Defense Alternatives .

av Winslow Wheeler.
November 2010.

Based on my experience at the Senate Budget Committee, I learned that reading different deficit reduction plans can be tricky. Some use CBO or other “baselines” as a basis for comparison, but those baselines can be a mystery to some and differ – sometimes by huge amounts – from more readily understood future budget proposals for departments, such as the Pentagon's. Other sources of confusion can be whether the plan applies just to the Pentagon or the larger National Defense Budget Function, uses outlays rather than budget authority, and does or does not include funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sometimes the dollars used are “constant;” sometimes they are “current.”

Sometimes the press and others simply misunderstand elements of an overall plan, such as by reporting a plan's savings for one “illustrative” year as the entirety of the plan's savings. Sometimes uncovering what a plan really means requires close reading of the text and footnotes; in still other cases, it requires prolonged discussion with the authors.

This information paper attempts to remove the various impediments to an apples-to-apples comparison of the major plans to reduce defense spending that have been publicly proposed to the Obama Commission of Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. It compares all the plans to the Obama/Gates Plan for National Defense Spending for the years 2011 to 2020; it addresses only “base” budgets (which exclude spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere), and it applies budget authority in “current” dollars.

Budget Authority Savings
Relative to the Obama/Gates “Base” National Defense Budget 2010-2020
Billions of Dollars, All Dollars Are “Current” Dollars

After the above table each plan is addressed briefly , pointing out its major characteristics. I have attempted to do so objectively, with as little editorial comment as possible.

Editor's Commentary

There are at least as many reasons to think that significant real reductions in defense spending will be hard to achieve as there are reasons to doubt that significant revenue increases will be found or that substantial reductions in entitlement spending will happen. “Political realities” are indeed daunting for any of the options the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will consider. If there were quick, easy and obvious decisions to be had there would be no need for the Commission.

Political realities change over time in part because underlying realities eventually change political calculation. Such is the case with defense spending. After more than a decade of rapid growth there is likely to be some retrenchment in the middle of this decade, notably by 2015.

The likely path of defense spending this decade was recently forecast by the high-tech industry association Tech America Foundation in their DoD Topline Forecast 2011-2020 .

Tech America's forecast is for a real reduction in the base Pentagon budget (not including Overseas Contingency Operation war supplemental funding) of 9% or $45 billion (USD 2011) in 2015 relative to the 2011 base budget.

When taking into account the Pentagon's preferred budget path this decade of at least 1% real annual growth, Tech America forecasts a reduction in defense spending by 2015 of 16%.

Tech America's forecast of Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO) war supplemental spending during the decade is also important to consider. Since FY10 (President Obama's first budget) there has been an OCO war supplemental DoD budget line for FY12-FY15 of $50 billion per year. The OCO war supplemental in the FY11 budget is $159 billion.

Although the actual OCO war supplemental might come down in FY12, with the military operational demands in Afghanistan remaining elevated it is unlikely the OCO war supplemental will come down even $50 billion, let alone $109 billion in FY12. Tech America forecasts OCO war expenditures of $122 billion in FY12.

These likely under-budgeted OCO war supplemental costs should be counted as probable additions to the national debt beyond those already projected by the government.

Tech America's forecast is for the OCO supplemental to be $122 billion in FY12, $102 billion in FY13, $69 billion in FY14 and $57 billion in FY15. That adds up to $150 billion more than is budgeted in the Five Year Defense Plan … an un-budgeted addition to the national debt.

For the target year of the federal budget reaching “primary balance” in FY15, the forecast OCO war supplemental will add $7 billion to the problem that the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform faces in attempting to balance the budget in that year.

Adam J. Hebert. Air Force Magazine , November, 2010.
http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2010/November%202010/1110edit.aspx

Utdrag:

…ill-advised calls to cut the Pentagon budget follow as predictably as the tides. Without credible analysis of strategy or requirements, critics are once again declaring defense spending to be out of control.

Redaktørens kommentar:

In his editorial Security Isn't Cheap Adam J. Herbert cites the work of the Sustainable Defense Task Force as a case in point of critics of Pentagon spending recommending cuts “without credible analysis of strategy or requirements.” As a member of the task force I differ over the credibility of our analysis. But let me speak to where I agree with Mr. Herbert:

• “Security is not cheap.” In fact it is extremely expensive. When the country is hit with a financial disaster we owe it to the country and our military to reexamine our national security strategy and make sure priorities are clear and that our military investments are cost-effective. In the last twelve years of Pentagon budgets the planning has proceeded as though there is no resource constraint. Unfortunately, that is true of the last QDR as well. Those days are clearly over – Secretary Gates has said as much.

• “A well-trained, well-equipped, professional military is not cheap. If the nation wants it to cost less, the nation will probably have to ask it to do less.” Exactly. Since the end of the Cold War the US military has steadily advanced its global reach and engagement. Missions have proliferated, including many that should be done by civilians in the State Department and other agencies. Significant numbers of US troops still remain in Europe, even though there is no military threat to Europe that allies can't handle. The most important take-away lesson from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that long low-intensity land wars are not cost-effective uses of US military power and should be avoided whenever possible. Hopefully we can all agree there should never again be such a “war of choice.”

• “There are certainly ways to reduce defense spending…” Yes, and one that will save around $45 billion in Air Force modernization accounts is available in a choice about how to modernize the fighter fleet. The Air Force has decided to replace its aging F-16s with just about the most expensive new fighter one can dream up, the F-35. In today's fiscal environment either the Air Force will end up with a lot fewer of these planes than planned, or they will choose to get ahead of the budget crunch and modernize with new block versions of the still best of class F-16s and limit the buy of F-35s this decade to a few squadrons for high-intensity air-superiority missions. If serious air competition emerges a decade from now we can then roll out production of F-35s (or perhaps a less costly follow-on to the F-16), planes presumably much improved with ten years or more of further fighter technology development.

Thomas PM Barnett. China Security , October 2010.
http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/1010Barnett.pdf

Utdrag:

In sum, ending China's free-riding is arguably more important for long-term system-wide stability than continuing to deter China's military invasion of Taiwan. As globalization's networks continue to expand at a rapid pace, America's ability to play sole Leviathan to the system naturally degrades dramatically. That means, while the likelihood of China's military invasion of Taiwan dissipates with each passing year, the likelihood of America's “imperial exhaustion” most certainly surpasses it in strategic importance in the near term.

History will judge US strategists most severely if our choice to maintain “access” to East Asia by triggering a regional arms race precludes our ability to draw China into strategic co-management of this era of pervasively extending globalization—without a doubt America's greatest strategic achievement. I cannot fault the AirSea Battle Concept as an operational capability designed to keep us in the East Asian balancing “game.” But my fear is that it will—primarily by default and somewhat by “blue” ambition—serve America badly in a strategic sense, absent a proactive political and military engagement effort to balance its negative impact on the most important bilateral relationship of the modern globalization era.

Redaktørens kommentar:

Barnett alerts us to a prospective instance when leading with military capability is likely to be a disservice to strategic interests.

Daniel Goure. Early Warning Blog , Lexington Institute, 03 September 2010.
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/future-defense-budget-choices-require-clear-strategic-priorities

Utdrag:

The United States cannot afford and the people will not pay for a military that can do battle with uncertainty.

As a consequence of the need to do battle with uncertainty, emphasis was placed on a military that can cover all bases and do all things. This would not be a wise strategy even if resources were unconstrained. Not all threats are equal. Nor are all interests equally important. Finally, it is possible to make reasoned and reasonable judgments regarding how the future security environment will unfold and define a set of demand signals that would require shifting strategic priorities.

In the past, when US leaders refused to make choices they allowed the military to shrink symmetrically, by cutting every program or service a little. That approach is self-defeating. It makes no sense to keep a so-called full spectrum military but continually reduce it in size.

Redaktørens kommentar:

Relevant passages from the archives ($3 trillion later):

Carl Conetta and Charles Knight. “Dueling with Uncertainty”, February 1998.
http://www.comw.org/pda/bullyweb.html

There is no escape from uncertainty, but there is relief from uncertainty hysteria. It begins with recognizing that instability has boundaries — just as turbulence in physical systems has discernible onset points and parameters. The turbulence of a river, for instance, corresponds to flow and to the contours of the river's bed and banks. It occurs in patches and not randomly. The weather also is a chaotic system that resists precise long-range forecasting, but allows useful prediction of broader trends and limits.

Despite uncertainty, statements of probability matter. They indicate the weight of evidence — or whether there is any evidence at all. The uncertainty hawks would flood our concern with a horde of dangers that pass their permissive test of “non-zero probability.” However, by lowering the threshold of alarm, they establish an impossible standard of defense sufficiency: absolute and certain military security. Given finite resources and competing ends, something less will have to do. Strategic wisdom begins with the setting of priorities — and priorities demand strict attention to what appears likely and what does not.

The world may be less certain and less stable today than during the Cold War, but it also involves less risk for America. Risk is equal parts probability and utility — chances and stakes. With the end of global superpower contention, America's stakes in most of the world's varied conflicts has diminished. So has the magnitude of the military threats to American interests. This permits a sharper distinction between interests and compelling interests, turbulence and relevant turbulence, uncertainties and critical uncertainties. And this distinction will pay dividends whenever the country turns to consider large-scale military endeavors, commitments, and investments.

Among the visions that guide present policy, one is absent conspicuously: a world in which economic issues have displaced military ones as the central focus of global competitions and concerns. Failing to engage this prospect, the recent defense policy reviews are oblivious to the opportunity cost of military spending. And it is this lapse that gives license to their speculative methods and overweening goals.

The United States continues to invest more of its national product in defense than does its allies, more than the world average, and much more than its chief economic competitors. By disregarding the requirements and consequences of increased global economic competition, present policy makes an unacknowledged bet about the future: The Soviet Union is gone and no comparable military challenge to the West exists, except as distant possibility. Nonetheless, the American prospect depends as much as ever, if not more, on the specifically military aspects of strength. Of this much, the uncertainty hawks seem certain.

Army Training and Doctrine Command. TRADOC Pam 525-3-1, 19 August 2010.
http://www-tradoc.army.mil/tpubs/pams/tp525-3-1.pdf

Utdrag:

This pamphlet revises the conceptual and operating focus of the Army from major combat operations to that of operational adaptability employing full-spectrum operations under conditions of uncertainty and complexity.

TRADOC Pam 525-3-1 describes how future Army forces conduct operations as part of the joint force to deter conflict, prevail in war, and succeed in a wide range of contingencies in the future operational environment. The pamphlet describes the employment of forces in the 2016-2028 timeframe and identifies capabilities required for future success to guide Army force development efforts.

Reva Patwardhan. Peace Action West Groundswell Blog , 29 July 2010.
http://blog.peaceactionwest.org/2010/07/29/wikileaks-war-logs-roundup/

Jason Sherman, Inside Defense , 26 July 2010.

A bipartisan independent review of the Obama administration's 20-year blueprint for the Defense Department calls for increasing the size of the Navy to a 346-ship fleet and increasing the US military's posture in the Western Pacific to counter China's growing influence in the region, according to a draft report of the Independent Quadrennial Defense Review Panel.

InsideDefense.com obtained a draft copy of the report titled “ The QDR in Perspective: Meeting America's National Security Needs in the 21st Century .”

The 20-member blue-ribbon panel — co-chaired by former Defense Secretary William Perry and Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to President George W. Bush — also finds a significant increase in funding is needed to bolster capabilities necessary to counter anti-access challenges, strengthen homeland defense; and to deal with cyber threats.

The panel's report argues that a centerpiece of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review — a force-planning construct that downplayed the significance of preparing to fight and win two, nearly simultaneous major wars, a bedrock of defense planning since 1993, in order to prepare US forces to deal with a wider set of possible contingencies — is unreliable. Instead, the independent panel recommends the Pentagon adopt force levels required by analysis conducted 17 years ago.

The “panel recommends the force structure be sized, at a minimum, at the end strength outlined in the 1993 Bottom-Up Review,” an assessment prepared by then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin, which Perry then worked to implement during his 1994 to 1997 term as secretary. “We further recommend the department's [weapon system] inventory be thoroughly recapitalized and modernized,” states the draft report.

Funding to pay for these capabilities, as well as to recapitalize equipment consumed in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, will require resources beyond the $100 billion efficiency savings recently directed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to the report.

The “panel believes that substantial additional resources will be required to modernize the force. Although there is a cost to recapitalizing the military, there is also a price to be paid for not recapitalizing, one that in the long run would be much greater.”

Tasked by Congress — and composed of members appointed by lawmakers and Gates — the panel's report delves into nearly every dimension of the US military enterprise — from personnel policy to weapons acquisition to defense policy formulation — and offers an “explicit warning” about the shape of US weaponry after a nearly a decade of persistent conflict.

“The aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition, and force structure,” states the draft report.

The draft document argues that the Pentagon's force-structure plans “will not provide sufficient capacity” to deal with a major domestic catastrophe while also conducting contingency operations abroad. The panel also asserts that the recently established US Cyber Command should be prepared to assist civilian authorities in defending this domain “beyond” the Defense Department's current role, to support civilian agencies.

The Pentagon's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review did not include a force-planning construct that explicitly quantifies the number and type of contingencies for which the US military must prepare, removing a formula the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines have relied on since the end of the Cold War to justify their force structures and their investment plans, an omission the independent panel laments.

The Pentagon's 1993 Bottom-Up Review, the first major assessment of the the US military's needs after the fall of the Berlin Wall, advanced a requirement to fight and win two major-theater wars nearly simultaneously, a construct that was incorporated in the 1997, 2001 and 2006 QDRs.

“The 2010 QDR, however, did not endorse any metric for determining the size and shape of US forces,” states the independent panel's draft report. Rather, it put diverse, overlapping scenarios, including long-duration stability operations and the defense of the homeland, on par with major regional conflicts when assessing the adequacy of US forces.”

The current size of US ground forces “is close enough to being correct,” according to the draft report.

In addition, the panel argues that the Army is “living off the capital accumulated” during the Reagan administration. “The useful life of that equipment is running out; and, as a result, the inventory is old and in need of recapitalization,” states the draft report, which calls for inventory replacement on a one-for-one basis “with an upward adjustment in the number of naval vessels and certain air and space assets.”

A larger Navy and Air Force, according to the panel, is needed to protect US interests in the Pacific region.

“The force structure in the Asia-Pacific needs to be increased,” states the draft report. “The United States must be fully present in the Asia-Pacific region, to protect American lives and territory, ensure the free flow of commerce, maintain stability, and defend our allies in the region. A robust US force structure, one that is largely rooted in maritime strategy and includes other necessary capabilities, will be essential.”

The panel advances recommendations to reform the structure and organization of both Congress and the executive branch in order to improve oversight of national security matters. The panel also advances suggestions for the Defense and State departments to shore up “institutional weaknesses of the existing security assistance programs and framework.”

Høre på å nå nasjonale sikkerhetsråd gjennom bærekraftig forbruk, Komiteen for tilsyn og regjeringen Reform, National Security og Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives, 20. juli 2010.

This hearing continued the Subcommittee's oversight of defense spending by examining recent scholarship and policy research on defense budget reform, including the conclusions and recommendations made in a recent report by the Sustainable Defense Task Force, Debt, Deficits, & Defense: A Way Forward , which presents a series of recommendations to reduce the budget of the Department of Defense by $960 billion by 2020.

Vitner tilbudt perspektiver på Department of Defense plan om å kutte militærutgifter i sammenheng med nasjonale sikkerhet prioriteringer og dagens økonomiske situasjon. The Department of Defense budsjett har stått for nesten 65 prosent av økningen i føderale skjønnsmessige utgifter siden 2001. Siterer rolle forsvarsutgifter i den generelle økonomiske helsen til USA, forsvarsminister Robert Gates nylig til orde for reduksjoner i forsvarsutgiftene ved å eliminere sløsing utgifter og unødvendige våpensystemer, og redusere faste kostnader ved Pentagon.

For å se en webcast av rettsmøtet, klikk her: http://groc.edgeboss.net/wmedia/groc/nationalsecurity/2010/07.20.10.ns.defense.budget.wvx

Vitner:

* Carl Conetta, co-regissør, Project on Defense Alternatives
* Benjamin Friedman, forsker, Cato Institute
* Todd Harrison, Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic og budsjettmessige evalueringer
* Gary Schmitt, Ph.D., direktør, Avanserte strategiske studier, American Enterprise Institute
* Gordon Adams, Ph.D., Distinguished Fellow, Stimson senteret

Åpningsinnlegg av styreleder John F. Tierney

Prepared Statement of Mr. Carl Conetta

Forberedt Statement of Mr. Benjamin Friedman

Forberedt Statement of Mr. Todd Harrison

Prepared Statement of Dr. Gary Schmitt

Forberedt Statement of Dr. Gordon Adams

Lance M. Bacon. Navy Times , 28 June 2010.
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/06/navy_force_cuts_062810w/

Utdrag:

With an eye on diminishing budgets and rising tensions with Iran and North Korea, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead on June 24 called for continued international partnerships to hone a “just and sustainable international order.” He also continued his call for fiscal restraint, emphasizing that the Navy “cannot afford a tailor-made solution to every need that we have.” But the CNO still is adamant that a 313-ship Navy is needed to maintain maritime security.

Redaktørens kommentar:

Lance M Bacon quotes from a speech by Chief of Naval Operations Roughead at the Maritime Systems and Technology seminar on June 22nd. These quotes are misleading because Roughead is speaking not about reducing the national deficit, but rather about the Navy's need to watch its spending in the context of growing fiscal pressures on service budgets.

Roughead remains committed to the goal of a 313 ship battle fleet. He also supports Secretary Gate's initiative to save $105 billion within DoD accounts over the next five years. Gates' savings will not contribute a penny to deficit reduction. He plans to plow all savings back into Pentagon programs and it is the Navy's share of this money that Roughead wants to use to help grow the battle fleet to 313 ships.

Not only is Gates not offering to contribute to deficit reduction, but he is sticking to his goal of real growth of 1 to 2% a year for in Pentagon budgets. This will increase annual national deficits somewhere in the range of $6 to 12 billion.

Gates' position is untenable and will not hold. If the nation is going to meet its deficit reduction commitments the Pentagon will have to contribute its share — which is at least 40% of the $230 billion a year increase in its base (non-war) budget during the last decade. This is the level of cuts the task force has suggested — it is not “extreme”, but rather responsible and realistic.

In the context of the coming national fiscal restraint, the worst thing the CNO can do is continue pushing to grow the Navy battle fleet to 313 ships. The more success he has in buying now what will prove to be unaffordable new ships, the further the fleet will have to shrink when austere budgeting arrives.

Far wiser is to start reconfiguring and trimming the fleet now and save procurement dollars for a more realistic set of priorities and a more restrained strategic posture. The task force has put forward one set of priorities for lean times. Let others suggest theirs.

Michael Hastings. Rolling Stone, 22. juni 2010.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236

Utdrag:

Når det gjelder Afghanistan, er ikke historien på McChrystal side. Den eneste utenlandske inntrenger skal ha noen suksess her var Djengis Khan - og han ble ikke hemmet av ting som menneskerettigheter, økonomisk utvikling og trykk gransking. Mynten doktrine, bisarr, trekker inspirasjon fra noen av de største vestlige militære embarrassments i nyere minne: Frankrikes stygg krig i Algerie (tapt i 1962) og den amerikanske uhell i Vietnam (tapt i 1975). McChrystal, som andre talsmenn for COIN, erkjenner lett at opprørsbekjempelse kampanjer er iboende rotete, dyrt og lett å miste.