Volume XXV, Number 4 - April/May 1996

The 1997 Military Budget: A Ticking Time Bomb

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Table of Contents
Monitor in Brief
Main Text
Letter from the Director
What the Military Budget Means for You
Americans on Military Spending
More Money for the Military
Discretionary Spending
Last of the Big Time Spenders
Q & A

• President Clinton's request for $254 Billion for the military in 1997, plus congressional promises to add to this funding, mean U.S. military spending will remain near Cold War levels.
• Most Americans agree that current military spending is too high. They would support cutting military spending and retargeting the savings to other national priorities, such as improving education, fighting crime, reducing the deficit, or even prudent tax cuts.
• Spending on costly and unneeded Cold War weapons programs continues and will increase in the coming years. Total acquisition costs for new aircraft and ballistic missile defenses alone could exceed $500 Billion.
• The United States can safely and sensibly reduce its annual military budget to about $200 Billion and continue to maintain the strongest military forces in the world.

President Clinton's 1997 federal budget request includes $254 Billion for the military. The Republican-led Congress is seeking to increase this amount to as much as $267 Billion, the level called for in last year's congressional budget resolution. Meanwhile, a modest majority of Americans today believe the United States is spending too much on its military. And with military budgets slated to increase in the coming years, this sentiment is likely to grow even stronger.Pentagon plans to buy new weapons, in particular, are a ticking time bomb threatening to bankrupt the nation! But this need not occur. Canceling or scaling back costly and unneeded Cold War weapons programs, combined with reductions in the size of the nation's active duty military force structure, would enable the United States to reduce its annual military spending to about $200 Billion. The resulting savings could be redirected to other purposes, including balancing the federal budget.

This issue of the Defense Monitor examines two of the costliest areas of planned weapons spending and updates other important and useful information about our nation's military budget.

Many Americans are familiar with the B-2, the Air Force bomber that costs four-and-a-half times its weight in gold! But while the B-2 has hogged the headlines, a handful of lesser-known aircraft are poised to consume by far the biggest chunk of weapons spending in the coming years. Six new planes have combined total estimated program costs of nearly $400 Billion!

This includes:

• $70 Billion to purchase 442 Air Force F-22 fighters;
• $42 Billion for 120 C-17 airlifters;
• $81 Billion for 1,000 Navy F/A-18 E/F fighter-bombers;
• $47 Billion for 523 Marine Corps V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft;
• $43 Billion for 1,292 Army RAH-66 Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopters;
• and perhaps $90 Billion for 2,978 Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines.

Currently, three military contractors (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and a joint venture of McDonnell Douglas, Northrup Grumman, and British Aerospace) are vying for the right to design and build the new Joint Strike Fighter. For the winner, the plane is a potential Trillion dollar goldmine! That reportedly is what some industry analysts believe the Joint Strike Fighter contract could be worth, including research, development, acquisition, operation, and support costs over the life of the program, plus foreign sales. This prospect of huge profits has the bidding companies' political action committees jostling to gain influence with 1996 congressional candidates through campaign contributions and promises to locate factories in lawmakers' home states and districts.

The Joint Strike Fighter will attempt to blend the characteristics of vastly different planes in order to create the capability to carry out a variety of missions. The Navy wants a plane that can replace its fleet of A-6 and F-14 aircraft. The Air Force wants a plane to replace its F-16 fighter. And the Marine Corps wants a plane that will replace its F/A-18 and AV-8B aircraft. With so many specified features, including radar evasion, aircraft carrier takeoff and landing, and both vertical and horizontal takeoff capabilities, the Joint Strike Fighter appears a prime candidate for design and cost problems. It may well end up a casualty of the "goldplating" phenomenon in which the incorporation of so many capabilities into a single weapon results in a weapon that is overly complex, costly, unreliable, and difficult for crews to maintain and operate.

By pouring money into new military aircraft, we are wasting Billions of dollars in an arms race with ourselves. No other nation comes even close to matching existing U.S. air capabilities. All four branches of the armed services already possess potent air forces:

• attack fighters in the Air Force (F-15, F-16), Navy (F-14, F/A-18), and Marine Corps (F/A-18, AV-8B);
• attack helicopters in the Army (Apache, Kiowa) and Marine Corps (Cobra);
• and bombers in the Air Force (B-1, B-2, B-52, F-15E) and Navy (F/A-18).

Instead of building entirely new weapons before they are needed, the Pentagon can satisfy most foreseeable air requirements by investing in upgrades of proven, existing weapons. This would lessen the risk of technical problems and program delays. It would also be far less costly:

• Each F-22 fighter will cost about $159 million on average to produce at current prices compared with a $28 million per plane cost for the F-15 it is intended to replace.
• Each C-17 airlifter will cost about $337 million compared with $140 million for the existing C-5B.
• Each F/A-18E/F will cost $81 million versus $36 million for the older version F/A-18C/D.
• Each V-22 will cost about $89 million compared with $22 million for predecessors such as the CH-53 and $6 million for the UH-60.
• Each Comanche helicopter will cost about $33 million versus $9 million for the OH-58 and $3 million for the AH-1 aircraft it would replace.

One of the major partisan debates involves whether the United States needs to move rapidly toward deploying costly ballistic missile defenses. The Administration and Congress are headed for a showdown over the focus and intensity of the nation's Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) program. Congressional leaders insist that the nation is vulnerable to attack from incoming long-range ballistic missiles and emphasize the need to build and deploy a National Missile Defense (NMD) system at one or more sites around the continental United States.

President Clinton, however, has held fast to the commitments made in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which limits the United States and Russia to the deployment of an ABM system at a single site for regional defense and restricts the number of interceptors deployed at the site to 100. Furthermore, the President seeks to focus BMD efforts on Theater Missile Defenses (TMD) to defend U.S. troops deployed abroad from current and near-term threats.

The President's 1997 budget request includes $2.8 Billion for BMD. Of this, $516.3 million is for National Missile Defense (NMD); $2.05 Billion is for Theater Missile Defense (TMD); $1.4 million is for military construction; and $230.0 million is for support technologies. Congressional Republicans plan to boost the President's request by as much as $1 Billion.

The United States has spent more than $70 Billion on BMD efforts since President Reagan launched the Star Wars program in 1983. According to a March 1995 study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), building and deploying a single-site NMD system could cost an additional $29.2 Billion, including $3 Billion for space-based sensors. This would raise total spending on BMD to more than $100 Billion. Expanding to additional sites, as advocated by many Republican leaders, could add another $18.8 Billion to the program. And operating and supporting any NMD system once it becomes operational will further add to the cost.

While congressional leaders are pressing for the Pentagon to field a near-term National Missile Defense system, the service chiefs are more concerned about attacks by existing medium- and short-range missiles. The Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) concluded that TMD should be prioritized over NMD. According to a January 1996 memorandum signed by the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the vice chiefs of staff of each of the armed services, the JROC "believes that with the current and projected ballistic missile threat, which shows Russia and China as the only countries able to field a threat against the U.S. homeland, the funding level for [NMD] should be no more than $500 million per year and [TMD] should be no more than $2.3 billion per year" over the next six years. The Clinton Administration had planned on spending an average of $3 Billion annually on BMD. This memorandum was JROC's contribution to a six-month Pentagon review of it's BMD program.

The service chiefs are not the only ones who do not see the need for a NMD system at this time. The CIA's latest National Intelligence Estimate found that "no country, other than the major declared nuclear powers, will develop or otherwise acquire a ballistic missile in the next 15 years that will threaten the contiguous 48 states or Canada."

An overemphasis on efforts to protect the nation from a highly inflated threat may make the nation less, not more, secure. Already, talk of deploying a NMD system has harmed U.S.-Russian relations and may undermine the START I and II Treaties. These important treaties will (if START II is ratified by the Russian parliament and both treaties are fully implemented) reduce the number of long-range nuclear weapons on the planet by two-thirds.

Furthermore, should this obsession with NMD become policy, there is a danger that the United States is putting all of its eggs in one basket: Even if an NMD system could be made to work, it would not counter bombers or cruise missiles; it would be unable to protect the nation from a bomb sailed into New York Harbor or driven across the Canadian border in the back of a pickup truck; and it could not eliminate a single weapon until it was already airborne.

There are more productive and effective approaches to countering potential threats, be they from ballistic missiles, bombs, or terrorists. These are: to eliminate the weapons themselves before they can be delivered; safeguard nuclear materials so that the next explosion in Oklahoma is not that of a nuclear bomb; control the proliferation of ballistic missile technology; and address the reasons why nations may wish to acquire sophisticated weaponry such as ballistic missiles in the first place.

Rather than taking a preventive approach to countering potential threats, the Republican-led Congress has attacked funding for the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, commonly known as Nunn-Lugar. Although the Administration requested $371 million for Nunn-Lugar for 1996 (the same amount as it requested for NMD), Congress cut the program to $300 million (while raising NMD funding to $731 million). Since its inception in 1991, the Cooperative Threat Reduction program has helped destroy more than 2,000 nuclear warheads and remove from service 2,600 additional warheads. Nunn-Lugar funds have also helped destroy 378 silos for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), 212 launchers for Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs), 25 bombers, and 1,331 actual missiles.

In the words of Secretary of Defense William Perry, the Nunn-Lugar program is effectively "reducing the nuclear threat missile by missile, factory by factory, and person by person." By assisting the states of the former Soviet Union to destroy strategic nuclear missiles and properly control potentially dangerous fissile materials, the United States can reduce the threat of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile proliferation more effectively and at far less cost than by building missile defenses.

How much did the Air Force spend on a single hinge for its C-17 aircraft?

See below.

Letter from the Director

While reading the daily newspaper I am sometimes discouraged. There are so many reports of violence around the world and so many reasons, apparently, to fear and mistrust others. The automatic response is too often to look to military power for security. The limited horizons of our partisan political debates offer little enlightenment.

We seem to be entering an age of anxiety and uncertainty. The lose of national optimism and purpose is palpable. The mistrust of government's capacity to solve problems is striking. We seem to have lost our way after the Cold War.

I do not accept this climate of fear. America is militarily secure. We face no enemies. Our capacity for constructive leadership, while not infinite, is great. Our economic and social strengths are many. We are, still, the envy of the world and live in fortunate circumstances.

Why is it, then, that so many Americans see the world as dangerous and filled with peril? One reason, unfortunately, is that our media seem to dwell on stories of conflict and danger. There may be entertainment value in this approach but the public is left inadequately informed. Even within the counsels of government, the tendency is to look to simple explanations and simple solutions.

I do not believe in conspiracies but I do believe that too many national security officials deliberately cultivate fear of foreign threats in order to justify their role. Without enemies how could we justify spending more that $250 Billion every year on a worldwide military empire? Only if the world is perceived as "dangerous" will taxpayers willingly pay this enormous bill.

There has not been a real national debate on America's role in the world after the Cold War. Our current defense strategy is a hand-me-down from the old militarized approach to national security.

Pressures for big increases in military spending to pay for new weapons are creating a defense budget time bomb. Perhaps this will force a much-needed rethinking of basic assumptions.

- Vice Admiral John J. Shanahan, USN (Ret.)

1997 military bill:

Military spending per citizen in:

While both the President and a majority in Congress maintain that military spending must not be cut, public opinion surveys indicate that a majority of the citizens they are sworn to serve feel differently. In a nationwide poll of public attitudes on military spending conducted by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes in November 1995:

• Fifty-four percent of respondents agreed that, "In order to reduce the federal budget deficit...the government should cut back defense spending." Overall, the median respondent favored a 10 percent cut in military spending. But 56 percent said they would cut military spending by 20 percent. And 72 percent supported a 20 percent cut if the savings would be redirected "to improving education, fighting crime, and cutting the deficit."
• Asked how much the United States "should spend on defense as compared to its potential enemies" (identified as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya), 48 percent said "the U.S. should spend a bit more than its most powerful potential enemy" (we currently spend four times as much as the strongest "potential enemy," Russia). Only 7 percent said the U.S. should spend "about twice as much as all its potential enemies combined" (we currently spend more than twice as much as these countries combined).
• Sixty-three percent of those polled agreed with the argument that American military spending "has weakened the U.S. economy and given some allies an economic edge. It is time for the U.S. to cut back its defense spending and make its economy more competitive." Only 43 percent said military spending should not be cut because "many people will lose their jobs when bases are closed and factories are shut down."
• Seventy-six percent of respondents agreed that the military budget is inflated by "congressional representatives promoting defense-related jobs in their districts, the military branches duplicating functions, and defense contractors influencing members of Congress through campaign contributions." Seventy-seven percent said they opposed Congress' addition of nearly $7 Billion in unrequested spending items to the 1996 military budget.
• Sixty-nine percent agreed that the Pentagon, in trying to improve U.S. military technology, "often goes overboard, building expensive capabilities that are not really necessary." Seventy-four percent said they "feel that defense companies and the military sometimes take advantage of the public's fears in order to get the public to accept building weapons that are not really necessary."
• A majority of Americans would like to see a change in America's role in the world. While most want the United States to continue to do its share in collective efforts to maintain world order, they want to move away from playing the dominant role. Seventy-one percent agreed that "the U.S. is playing the role of world policeman more than it should be." Eighty-nine percent said that "countries that receive protection from U.S. military capabilities...rely too much on the U.S."

Administration and congressional plans call for military budgets totaling more than $1.6 Trillion over the next six years -- enough money to fund the entire federal government for a full year!

Projected Future Military Spending
($ Billions in Budget Authority)

Fiscal Year	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	Total
Clinton Plan	254	259	264	271	280	288	1,616
Congress Plan	267	269	272	274	277	280	1,639

Prepared by Center for Defense Information.
Sources: DOD, HAC, CDI.

Military programs and essential domestic spending programs are competing for the same taxpayers' dollars...and the Pentagon is winning! Despite talk about declining military spending and suggestions that the military has taken its "fair share" of spending cuts, military spending still consumes a huge chunk of federal government funds. And the military budget continues to be kept "off the table" in budget balancing efforts by both the President and the Congress.

In the President's proposed federal budget for Fiscal Year 1997, the "National Defense" category of federal spending (excluding veterans programs and other military-related spending) amounts to a whopping 51 percent all discretionary spending, the money the President and Congress must decide and act to spend each year. The other category of federal spending is mandatory spending, the money the federal government spends automatically unless the President and Congress change the laws that govern it. Mandatory spending includes entitlements, money or benefits provided directly to individuals such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Federal Retirement. It also includes interest payments on the national debt.

• A $254 Billion military budget is four times that of the second largest spender, Russia.
• It is nearly five times as much as our ally Japan's military budget, and more than seven times that of Germany.
• It is nearly seventeen times as large as the combined spending of the six countries often identified by the Pentagon as our most likely adversaries (North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Cuba).
• The United States and its close allies spend far more than the rest of the world combined. They spend more than thirty times as much as the six potential "enemies" combined!

In March the Clinton Administration released its 1997 military budget request. The President has asked for $242.6 Billion for the Department of Defense. The total request for "National Defense," including military programs of the Department of Energy and a few other agencies, amounts to $254.4 Billion in budget authority.

As the figures here show, no other country is in the same league in military spending as the United States.

For a clearer image of the table showing the military expenditures of various countries, please click on it.

$2,187. The Air Force paid $2,187 for a hinge that would have cost $31 for a subcontractor to produce.

Source: GAO

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