The Center for Defense Information
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| February 4, 1999 |
| February 4, 1999 |
Administration Seeks More Money for the Pentagon
Chris Hellman, Senior Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information
chellman@cdi.org
On February 1, the Clinton Administration unveiled its spending proposal for Fiscal Year 2000. As expected, it includes $12.6 billion in new spending for the Pentagon in FY'00, and $112 in additional funding for the military over the next six years. The budget includes $280.8 billion in Budget Authority (BA) and $274.1 billion in Outlays for the military and defense functions of the Department of Energy in FY'00. Budget Authority over the entire Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP), which covers FY 2000-2005 inclusive, is nearly $1.9 trillion.
The new spending includes nominal increases of $84 billion over the FYDP and an additional $28 billion in new spending made possible by inflation savings, lower fuel costs and other sources. This total, in the words of Defense Secretary Cohen, "meets the most pressing requirements identified by our uniformed leaders and will enable us to continue the military excellence that has become our nation's pride."
The Pentagon's spending plan however, is receiving a chilly reception on Capitol Hill from GOP leaders. For example, Representative Floyd Spence, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said that "this budget falls well short of adequately addressing the services' unfunded requirements."
Highlights of the budget include:
Base Closures: Calls for two additional rounds of base closures and realignments (BRAC) in FY 2001 and 2005.
"Star Wars" National Missile Defense: Contains $1.3 billion for National Missile Defense (NMD) for FY'00, including $450 million from the FY'99 Emergency Supplemental Appropriation. Total NMD funding for FY 1999-2005 is $10.5 billion (including $951 million in the FY'99 budget, and an additional $150 million from the FY'99 Emergency Supplemental allocated for FY'99).
Procurement: Includes $53 billion for purchase of new weapons in FY'00. Reaches the target of $60 billion in annual procurement in FY'01, as expected ($61.8 billion).
Contingency Operations: Contains $1.8 billion for continued operations in Bosnia, as well as $1.1 billion for operations in Southwest Asia. Anticipates a supplemental appropriation for U.S. military assistance in the aftermath of hurricane "Mitch" and for support of Operation Desert Fox.
"Putting People First": Includes $36.5 billion for FY 2000-2005 for pay raises for active duty personnel, DoD civilian employees, increasing retirement benefits for service personnel with twenty years of service from 40% to 50% of pay, and improving military pay scales. The budget funds a 4.4 percent pay raise in FY'00, and 3.9 percent in years FY'01-'05.
"Nunn-Lugar": Includes $2.9 billion for the Cooperative Threat Reduction program over the FY'00-'05 period.
Tactical Aircraft Modernization: Includes $6.6 billion in FY'00 for continued development and procurement of the Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, the Air Force's F-22 Raptor, and the Joint Strike Fighter.
Air Force: $3.1 billion for continued development of the F-22 and procurement of six aircraft, $440 million for the purchase of 10 F-16 fighters, and $3.6 billion for procurement of 15 C-17 transport aircraft.
Navy/Marines: $3.1 billion for 36 F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter aircraft, $1.5 billion for two LPD-17 assault ships, $2.9 billion for three DDG-51 destroyers, and $1.2 billion for 10 V-22 "Osprey" aircraft. The tenth Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carrier is fully funded in FY'01.
Army: $427 million for development of the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter, $349 million for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle upgrade program, $658 million for M1A1 tank upgrades, $344 million for development of the Crusader Artillery System, and $428 million for purchases of 2,179 Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) program.
For additional information on the Pentagon's FY'00 budget request, visit the CDI web page at:
http://www.cdi.org/issues/usmi/highlightsFY00.html
ACDA Releases Annual Arms Transfer Report
Rachel Stohl, Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information
rstohl@cdi.org
At the end of January the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency finally released via the Internet the first part of its annual report, "World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers 1997" or WMEAT. The report, which had been expected last summer, contains data on world-wide arms transfers for 1996.
Noteworthy in this latest edition is a recalculated data formula that gives a more representative picture of U.S. arms sales. The revision concerns the commercial component of U.S. arm sales, those between U.S. firms and foreign importers that are licensed through the Department of State. The revision does not affect arms exports under the Department of Defense's Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. Under the recalculated data, commercial exports totaled 52 percent of all U.S. arms exports, FMS sales 47 percent, and other smaller export programs the remaining one percent. Using the new methodology, the dollar value of direct commercial sales grew from $1.1 billion to 10.6 billion of total U.S. exports.
However, the new methodology represents only a quick fix to a larger problem: the lack of reliable data on commerical arms exports. The explanation of the changes provided in the WMEAT -- "Revision of U.S. Arms Export Data Series" -- says that "pending the establishment of reliable recording of actual commercial exports, the U.S. arms exports data series in this edition of WMEAT incorporates an estimated data series employing an interim methodology, which is to be replaced in an early successor edition with a more satisfactory solution based on ongoing research efforts."
Even if this year's report uses an "estimated data series employing an interim methodology," the revision had a significant impact on the reported values of U.S. arms exports. For the 1986-96 decade, arms sales are 45 percent higher on average and for 1990-96 60 percent higher.
WMEAT reported that the world arms trade in 1996 was $42.7 billion, an increase of $2 billion from the 1995 report. The rise was attributed to a $3 billion increase in imports by the developed world that was only partially offset by a $1 billion decrease in the developing world. The report also found that the U.S. primarily supplies weapons to developed countries. In 1996, U.S. exports to the developed world were 33 percent of world trade and 61 percent of total U.S. arms exports. According to these figures, the developed world received 75 percent of its total arms imports from the U.S. Conversely, in the same period, the developing world received 61 percent of their arms transfers from non-U.S. sources and only 39 percent from US suppliers -- still the largest single exporter to the developing world.
According to the WMEAT publication, the top ten arms exporters in 1996 controlled 94 percent of the world trade. The top ten are:
Country BillionsUS$ Percent of Total
United State 23.50 55
United Kingdom 6.10 14
Russia 3.30 8
France 3.20 8
Sweden 1.20 3
Germany .83 2
Israel .68 2
China .60 1
Canada .46 1
Netherlands .34 <1
In terms of exports to the developing world, WMEAT reported the following top exporters:
Country BillionsUS$ Percent of Total
United States 9.2 39
United Kingdom 5.6 24
Russia 2.8 12
France 2.1 9
China .6 3
Israel .4 2
Canada .2 1
ACDA's data showed that three regions of the world were responsible for 80 percent of total world arms imports in 1996. These regions were the Middle East with 38 percent, East Asia with 22 percent, and Western Europe with 21 percent. WMEAT 's top ten importing countries, responsible for 57 percent of all arms imports in 1996, are:
Country BillionsUS$ Percent of Total
Saudi Arabia 9.8 23
Japan 2.4 6
Taiwan 2.0 5
Egypt 1.8 4
Kuwait 1.7 4
China 1.5 4
United Kingdom 1.5 4
Turkey 1.4 3
Australia 1.3 3
South Korea 1.1 3
ACDA's development of a new and more accurate methodology is welcome. The report's authors also recognize that there are still significant problems with the calculations, saying that there are significant problems in tracking direct commercial sales. However, the WMEAT's utility is open to question because the data is so dated. Other government publications, such as the Congressional Research Service's report on U.S. arms exports to the developing world, have more recent data available for analysis. This dichotomy fuels the frustration felt by many researchers since the U.S. is one of the world's most transparent countries with respect to publishing arms trade data.
Military Obsession
Oscar Lurie, Associate Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information
America's decision-makers appear to be obsessed with a drive to expand our super-power military to hyper-power status. While the hundreds of fighter planes in our inventory exceed the capabilities of any aircraft elsewhere in the world, we have scheduled the building of more than three thousand aircraft in three even more powerful designs. Our Navy, already able to deploy twelve of the world's most powerful aircraft carriers, has two more under construction costing over $9 billion; it is also expanding its fleet of super-powerful nuclear submarines at a price exceeding $3 billion each.
Money is no object. The U.S. by itself spends $281 billion on its military, more than the total spent by 25 of its closest allies and friends. Countries of most concern to the U.S. -- Russia, China, India and Pakistan (because of their recent nuclear and missile tests), and the seven "rogue states" -- together spend less than half the U.S. total on their military forces. Yet over the next six years, President Clinton wants to increase America's military spending by more than $110 billion -- and Congress thinks even this insufficient!
What accounts for this profligate mind set? Several causes contribute:
But by themselves these influences do not account for directing just over half of the federal government's discretionary (that is, non-mandatory) budget to the military. There is also an emotional predisposition toward powerful fighting forces and a tough foreign policy. In plain words this is an obsession to be "king of the hill." Opinion makers give this emotion an attractive, positive label -- leadership. A more appropriate label is domination.
The drive for domination produces some strange choices. While the Pentagon spends millions of dollars on "force protection" for the military, the commission chaired by retired Admiral William Crowe found the provisions made for the security of U.S. embassies and diplomats almost universally inadequate. The commission cited a "collective failure of the U.S. government over the past decade" to provide adequate protection for U.S. personnel abroad. Among the other reasons for this failure is the cost of constructing redesigned facilities.
Although the Crowe commission was too polite to say so, diverting a few billion from the defense budget to the basic security of our non-military overseas representatives might have dissuaded those who attacked our Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam embassies. Instead, America responded to the havoc wreaked on these two African embassies by pounding Afghanistan and Sudan with missiles that cost more than what should have been devoted to protecting these embassies.
The bombing of Iraq also illustrates this obsession with military action at the expense of political and diplomatic foreign policy avenues. The U.S. called the bombing "leading," but only Britain followed. Russia and France [geographically much closer to Iraq than America] do not seem to believe that Saddam is a serious threat to international order. And Iraq's neighbors seem so little concerned that they are reluctant to provide basing for U.S. forces.
Of all the emotions that underlie our policy-makers' obsession, threat-based concerns seem least important. Customarily, military buildups have been prompted by enemy threats. Yet our military planners now see so little threat to America that they downplay threats as the basis for force structure planning and substitute the concept of "capability." This is what drives the current acquisition of a cornucopia of weapons that, while technologically possible, are not the weapons that can best enable our armed forces to meet the real threats to our national security -- including those that the Pentagon itself names.
There are other intangible factors which play a role in the current military spending binge:
These emotions engender a militarism that all to easily masquerades as an exaggerated and warped patriotism. Left free of rational control, human ingenuity will continue to develop and employ weapons of ever-increasing destructiveness. Instead of focusing energy on dominating the world military, the U.S. should be exerting effort to lead in the diplomatic, economic, and where necessary the humanitarian arenas. And we should be devoting more talent and resources to creating the kind of international system that in the future will have the capability of effectively shouldering more of the burdens of keeping the world at peace.
Look Who's Sharing
Tomas Valasek, Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information
tvalasek@cdi.org
Even as the United States is planning to build a national missile defense system, Russia is fighting to keep its existing anti-ballistic missile complex together -- with assistance from the United States.
Earlier this week, deputies of the parliament in Azerbaijan suggested shutting down the Russian radar station in the Azeri city of Gabala (also referred to as Lyaki in arms control documents). The move came in response to Moscow's deliveries of arms to the Russian base in Armenia, which Azerbaijan vehemently opposes. The Gabala station does not appear in danger of being shut down in the near term, but its fate hangs in balance. Its future will impact not only Azerbaijan and Russia but has direct bearing on U.S. security.
The collapse of the Soviet Union left a number of radar stations, indispensable to the ABM system, outside of the territory of Russia. Their radar beams detect and track oncoming missiles and other air traffic. To increase warning time, most stations were built as far out as possible on the periphery of the former Soviet Union. But this translated into political trouble after 1991 -- four out of the five major radar stations suddenly fell in the hands of independent governments. Moscow was left scrambling to negotiate with the new governments in Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan to allow Russia to continue operating the sites.
Azeri officials contend that the Gabala station is illegal -- the ABM treaty prohibits stationing ABM technology outside the territory of the United States and the then-Soviet Union. A 1997 Memorandum of Understanding expanded the list of ABM Treaty signatories to include four USSR-successor states: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Two countries with ABM radar stations did not sign: Latvia and Azerbaijan. Latvia reached a bilateral agreement with Moscow in 1994 that allowed the station in Skrunde to operate for four more years. Its radars were turned off in August 1998, and the entire station is slated for dismantling by 2000. A new station in Baranovichi, Belarus is being built to replace Skrunde.
Russia and Azerbaijan have been talking on and off since 1995 but failed to reach a final agreement. Originally, Russia asked for a 25 years lease, which Azeri authorities rejected. They offered a shorter term agreement which would give Russia enough time to relocate the station or build a new one elsewhere. Azeris allege that the use of freon and dumping of contaminated coolants into the soil is destroying the environment around the station. Also, in case of a war, Azerbaijani officials say, they don't want their country to be targeted because of the Russian radar station.
Then there is the politically sensitive issue of the Russian military personnel working at the station -- Azerbaijan is wary of Russian involvement in the region. The Baku government has resisted Moscow's attempts to build a military base there, similar to the ones in neighboring Armenia and Georgia.
The Gabala station is not strictly a bilateral problem -- a false nuclear alarm could send Russian intercontinental missile flying out of their silos and cause a global disaster. A 1995 flight of a Norwegian scientific missile almost caused a launch of nuclear missiles from Russia. Only in the last moments did Moscow determine that the missile was not hostile.
John Pike, a space and missile expert at the Federation of American Scientists, said that a loss of the accurate, Darya class radar at the Azeri site cannot be fully replaced by other means. Russian early-warning satellites can only provide general information about the ballistic missile launches and their status is uncertain anyway. Lower class Dniestr radars in Kazakhstan are not accurate enough to predict the impact point of missiles. This is important -- Russia could resort to an all-out launch of nuclear missiles if it suspects that its command centers are being targeted. Without the powerful radar at Gabala, Russia would have considerably less accurate information on missiles coming from Iran, Iraq, or U.S. Trident submarines in the Indian Ocean. "Opening a gap in Russian radar coverage," Pike said, " would make Russian strategic forces more accident-prone."
Holes in the radar coverage of the Russian skies are being plugged by the United States itself. Washington and Moscow signed an agreement in 1998 on sharing information on ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles. Under the agreement, information derived by Russia and the United States from their space and ground-based stations is processed by the countries at their command centers, such as the one at the Buckley Air Force base in Denver, Colorado. The United States and Russia would then send the information to its counterpart on a virtual real-time basis. The agreement is intended to lower the risks of a false alarm, such as the 1995 Norwegian missile scare, and to offset any losses in radar coverages.
But any such agreements are only half-steps. Only a significant reduction or elimination of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals can prevent an accidental nuclear holocaust. The United States and Russia have been negotiating cuts in their missile and bomb arsenals, but the talks appear to have stalled. The Russian parliament refuses to ratify the START II Treaty and the United States seems bent on constructing of a national missile defense system, which Moscow contends violates the ABM Treaty. But until the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are taken off alert and destroyed, any U.S.-Russian agreement on information sharing can only hope to slightly diminish the dangers the missiles pose.
This week on America's Defense Monitor -- "Are We Prepared For
Chemical/Biological Attack?"
Length: 30 minutes
Air Date in Washington DC: 12:30 Sunday February 7, Channel 32
Air Date in New York: 8:30p.m. February 12 Channel 25
7:00 a.m. February 13, Channel 13
For air dates in other cities, check your local listings.
Synopsis: Ever since the poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway, our government has been preparing for a similar attack on U.S. soil. Forty federal agencies and billions of dollars are committed to counter things like sarin gas, anthrax, and small pox. Domestic and international terrorism are at the center of this informative program.
Key Interviewees:
Charles Cragin, Assistant Secretary of Defense
Major General George Friel, U.S. Army Chemical and Biological Command
U.S. Representative Ike Skelton, (D-MO)
Cost: $25
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For a transcript: http://www.cdi.org/adm/Transcripts/1139/index.html