Feb 1

Feb 1 Scuttlebutt: Nuclear Spending by Government

President Biden is proposing to spend $1.7 trillion dollars. Wow. That's a lot of money. You may think that isn't so bad. After all, it should be a significant benefit to most middle and lower income citizens.

Oh, wait a minute! Did you think I was referring to the Build Back Better bill? Nah, I'm talking about the ongoing $1.7 TRILLION effort to maintain, rebuild, and upgrade every delivery system and warhead in our nuclear weapons arsenal. Or didn't you notice that in the news. If not, you can be forgiven because that huge expenditure gets absolutely no discussion in the mainstream media. Nearly all Congressional representatives (especially the budget conscious Republicans) will puff out their chests and, when asked about their support, say how proud they are to be defending the United States against foreign aggressors.

But maybe it would be worthwhile to have a public debate about the necessity of maintaining the so-called nuclear triad of ICBMs, bombers, and nuclear armed submarines. Thoughtful and knowledgeable people have actually done so. Former US Defense Secretary William Perry said in his 2020 book, The Button to modernize a leg of the US nuclear triad—namely intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—is not only is outrageously expensive but also inherently destabilizing and unnecessary for deterrence.

Some defense experts ask why should we keep building aircraft carriers- each of which cost up to $5 billion to build and $1.5 billion per year to operate- when we’ve already got most of the world’s fleet of active aircraft carriers? (We’ve got 11; no other nation has more than two). Some think of them as sitting ducks.

Gen. Mark Milley, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted that there would be a budget cut under a Biden administration as a result of a struggling economy and the COVID-19 pandemic, which, he argued, the United States must take care of before increasing defense.

But that is not happening. According to a projection by the Congressional Budget Office, Congress is projected to spend about $8.5 trillion for the military over the next decade — about half a trillion more than is budgeted for all nonmilitary discretionary programs combined.

The Biden administration is proposing to increase the overall defense budget $24 billion beyond the $100 billion increase that Trump produced. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives recently voted to add $25 billion to the already staggering $750 billion the Biden administration requested for the Pentagon.

Biden continues the Trump plan to modernize all three legs of the nuclear triad and, in fact , increases funding for them. In doing so, he goes against the Democratic Party’s platform; his own national security document; and the advice of nuclear experts like former Secretary of Defense William Perry and Democratic congressional leaders like Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, who all recommended canceling the land-based component of the nuclear triad. In their view, a new, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles are not only unnecessary for deterrence but actually increases the probability of a nuclear war because it would be launched on warning of attack.

Mark Cooper, Senior Fellow for Economic Analysis, Institute for Energy and the Environment, Vermont Law School believes removing the ICBMs from the US nuclear fleet, even pledging to do so, would provide a sorely needed confidence-building measure in the US-Russia relationship.

Nevertheless, 45 members of the House and 11 Senators (all Democrats) have written to Biden to ask that he defer plans for a new ICBM and other new weapons until independent studies verify their cost and necessity.

The Air Force continues to test Minuteman 3 missiles and the Defense Department last year awarded a $13.3 billion contract to Northrop Grumman to develop the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, a next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile system.

The planned replacement for today’s ICBMs is 1.5 $billion. That is for just one year. The Biden Administration’s ask for this program in 2022 is $2.6 billion.

The number of U.S. nuclear weapons, including those on active status as well as those in long-term storage, stood at 3,750 as of September 2020.

The budget proposes to spend more than $12 billion dollars to procure 85 more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters—an increase over the number Trump requested last year (79). Biden did this even though the program is significantly over budget and behind schedule. The late Sen. John McCain called the F-35 program a scandal and a tragedy; Armed Services Committee chairman Adam Smith compared spending more money on the F-35 “to pouring money down a rat hole”. At least 563 F-35s have already been produced.

Congress is once again denying the service’s request to retire the A-10 Warthog, fiercely protected by the congressional delegation that represents Davis Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.

The Department of Defense (DoD) spent nearly $43 million to build a gas station in Afghanistan that should have cost no more than $500,000.

GAO figures indicate the Pentagon failed to even spend about $80 billion in canceled funds between 2013 and 2018. U.S. defense spending is greater than the next 10 countries combined.

The Pentagon has never passed an audit.

Fifty-six percent of voters support cutting the defense budget by 10 percent to pay for priorities like fighting the coronavirus, education, healthcare & housing—including 50 percent of Republicans,

So how is it that most Americans want a defense cut, but both political parties are happy to increase spending- even for something the Pentagon doesn't want?

I suspect it has much to do with the fact that during the big Ronald Reagan defense spending increase, his Secretary of Defense, Casper Weinberger, made a conscious effort to award military contracts in every possible congressional district. Thus, if any congress member spoke of reducing the defense budget, the cut would come in their district with the accompanying loss of defense jobs and other military spending. Some might recall the intense fighting in congress during the base closures during the Clinton years as an example. So if defense spending is largely a jobs program, then we should insist that these companies pivot away from military hardware and into products that will help meet today’s challenges.