The Center for Defense Information
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| March 4, 1999 |
| March 4, 1999 |
On March 1, 1999 the Ottawa Treaty banning the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines entered into force. The Treaty was signed in December, 1997 in Ottawa, Canada by representatives from 122 of the 159 countries that were meeting. As of March, 1999 a total of 133 nations have signed the Treaty and 64 have ratified it. However, major world powers such as Russia, China, and the United States, along with "rogue" states such as Libya, Iraq, and North Korea, still refuse to sign the Treaty.
Once started, the momentum to fight the scourge of landmines proved overwhelming. The Ottawa Treaty became binding international law more quickly than any treaty in history. Unfortunately, although the international community has come together as never before on the landmines issue, the devastating effects of these weapons have not been eliminated.
Over 400 million landmines have been laid since the beginning of World War II. The actual number of landmines still in the ground is unknown, but experts estimate that between 80-120 million mines lie in wait in some 70 countries world wide. Equally troubling, over 100 million landmines remain in stockpiles.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, landmines claim 26,000 new victims each year. In some of the countries most affected by this scourge, landmines are still being laid to wait for a victim, render farm land useless, and devastate local communities and economies. In fact, every twenty-five minutes someone around the world steps on a landmine.
In Cambodia, landmines are the cause of 300 amputations each month. In Angola, 5,000 new artificial limbs are needed each year. By the mid-1990s in Afghanistan, 60,000 Afghan children needed prosthetic limbs.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), the group which created and facilitated the landmines treaty, realizes that the work on landmines is far from over. The ICBL is now focusing on long term goals such as treaty compliance, victim assistance, and continued public awareness.
To assist with monitoring treaty compliance, the ICBL has started "The Landmine Monitor" project. Information will be collected through a systematic, coordinated monitoring and reporting effort that focuses on the actions of governments to effectively implement the mine ban treaty and comply with its provisions. The Monitor's main components are a global reporting network, a database, and an annual report that will be released in advance of each annual meeting of the state parties to the treaty.
Beyond compliance and victims' assistance, the ICBL and United States Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL) still hope the U.S. will sign the Ottawa Treaty. Unfortunately, the U.S. position has not changed significantly since the it refused to sign the treaty in 1997. However, in 1998 President Clinton said that the U.S. will sign the Ottawa Treaty by 2006 if alternatives to anti-personnel landmines are found. He also announced that the U.S. would commit additional funds to demining programs. Nonetheless, many don't believe suitable alternatives will be found as long as the Pentagon continues to insist that it be allowed to keep landmines as a part of its weapons arsenal.
Instead of signing the Ottawa Treaty, the Clinton Administration prefers to direct attention to its global humanitarian demining efforts, removing landmines from the ground and disabling them.
According to Donald Steinberg, the Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State for Global Humanitarian Demining, "The principle of the demining two thousand and ten initiative is that we need a goal, a concrete fixed goal, to focus our attention. And that goal, as defined by President Clinton about sixteen months ago, is that, by the year two thousand and ten, we will eliminate the threat to civilians around the world of anti-personnel landmines."
The U.S. contribution to demining efforts has been impressive. So far, the U.S. has spent $250 million on direct demining efforts, training local deminers, and providing mine awareness materials to children. The U.S. 1999 de-mining budget is over $100 million.
Beyond demining, the United States has destroyed over 3 million landmines. It is also aggressively pursuing alternatives to landmines and has committed to not use landmines outside of Korea after 2003.
Some members of Congress are deeply involved in the landmines issue. Representative Jack Quinn (R-NY) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) have been instrumental in introducing landmines related resolutions in Congress and standing up to the Administration's refusal to sign the Treaty. Both have declared their commitment to introducing new legislation this year challenging the Clinton Administration to announce a fixed date by which the U.S. will sign the Treaty.
Although the work of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has been admirable and the U.S. government has pledged a large amount of money for victim's assistance and demining programs, the fight against landmines is far from over. Public awareness is the key to renewing pressure on the United States to sign the Ottawa Treaty. Landmines should be banned not simply because they are not a military necessity, they should be banned because it is right to do so. The U.S. should step up to the plate and become the leader on the landmines issue. The Ottawa Treaty should be signed now.
Congress Begins Work on FY'99 Supplemental, New Budget Resolution
Chris Hellman, Senior Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information
chellman@cdi.org
This week Congressional budgeteers began work on two important pieces of legislation, a supplemental spending package for the current fiscal year, and the FY 2000 budget resolution.
Because the need for unexpected federal expenditures does arise, the budget process allows for the enactment of special supplemental appropriations which are used to pay for unanticipated federal expenditures such as disaster relief. Supplementals are generally funded by making cuts -- referred to as offsets -- in other areas of the federal budget. Thus, supplementals normally represent a reallocation of assets and not new federal obligations. Congress has already passed one supplemental spending package for FY'99 for about $21 billion in additional spending; this was adopted as part of the omnibus spending bill approved last October.
Both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees were expected to draft versions of the new supplemental this week. The package is likely to contain about $1.2 billion in additional spending. This would include roughly $950 million in disaster relief for victims of the Central America hurricane and of the recent earthquake in Colombia. It would also include $100 million for in aid for Jordan as part of the Wye Middle East peace accord -- less than the $300 million requested by the Administration.
Interestingly, the legislation does not contain funding for Operation "Desert Fox," the U.S. and British air operations against Iraq that occurred last December, even though the Navy has indicated that it needs supplemental funding to replace the Tomahawk cruise missiles expended during the operation. According to CDI's own preliminary estimates, U.S. costs of the four day operation were approximately $500 million. (See CDI's fact sheet, "Costs Of U.S. Military Operations in Iraq" at http://www.cdi.org/issues/iraq/costs_Dec1998.html).
The annual congressional Budget Resolution sets overall spending limits for federal functions, but does not specify how funds will be allocated in each account. Specific spending proposals are set later during the authorizing and appropriating process. And while the Budget Resolution does not require the President's approval, nor is it subject to a veto, it does present the first indication of what Congress' spending priorities will be during the coming fiscal year.
According to press reports, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM) is circulating a draft Budget Resolution that calls for an increase in military spending of $16 billion over last year's appropriated levels (not counting funds included in the first FY'99 Supplemental), to about $289 billion. This is approximately $8 billion more than the Administration's request for FY'00 and $14 billion more than was planned for FY'00 in the 1997 Balanced Budget Act (BBA). Unless Congress moves to eliminate the spending caps included in the BBA, such an increase will require corresponding cuts in other federal programs.
Meanwhile, pressure is building in Congress and the Pentagon to add significantly to the President's proposed increase in Pentagon spending. For instance, the military pay raise legislation which has already passed the Senate and is likely to pass the House increases the proposed 4.4% Administration pay hike to 4.8% and expands retirement benefits, without indicating how the increases should be funded. Defense Secretary Cohen has told Congress that the change will result in $7 billion to $11 billion more than is currently budgeted for pay and benefits over the next five years. Secretary Cohen is threatening to take the necessary funds out of the Pentagon's weapons modernization or operational accounts, a move that is likely to face serious resistance in Congress.
The Pentagon is also pushing for additional funds. According to press reports, Defense Department officials may ask Congress for $15 billion over the next six years for information technology to improve security and recruit "cyber warriors" for the military. Furthermore the Chiefs of the military services have told Congress that the proposed FY'00 budget leaves them with $8.3 billion in unmet "needs," $3.2 billion of which is for weapons modernization.
What does it all mean? Unfortunately, as CDI predicted last September when the Clinton Administration first indicated its willingness to negotiate Pentagon funding increases, it means that the floodgates are now open. The Administration, the Pentagon and Congress seem bent on a military spending spree that could well rival that of the Reagan-era buildup.
The Soaring Costs of the F-22
Colonel Dan Smith, U.S. Army (Ret.), Chief of Research, Center for
Defense Information
dsmith@cdi.org
A draft General Accounting Office report on the F-22, due to be completed and published within two weeks, predicts that the plane's contractor, Lockheed Martin, and the U.S. Air Force are facing an additional $482 million cost overrun in the development phase alone. The GAO draft study, first reported in "Bloomberg News," is not being disputed by the contractor although Lockheed Martin and the Air Force program manager say they are continuing a hard charging campaign to keep costs to a minimum.
Good intentions aside, this latest news is a further setback in a long string of cost increases and quantity decreases. Original 1980s projections called for 750 planes for the Air Force. By the time the F-22 was rolled out in April 1997, that number had decreased to 438 with an advertised per plane cost of $171 million and a program cost of approximately $70 billion. (A contemporaneous internal Pentagon study reportedly pegged the potential program cost at $86 billion.)
Two years later, the per plane cost stands at $187 million and the number of aircraft at 339, enough for three operational wings plus training aircraft and spares. Some analysts predict that in the end the Air Force may be fortunate to get 250 planes. Even at 339, the Air Force cannot completely replace its fleet of F-15E Eagles, the original goal for the F-22.
Although both Lockheed and the Air Force downplayed cost concerns in 1997, Congress was not satisfied that the program would remain affordable. As part of the FY1998 Defense Authorization bill, Congress capped the total program costs for the F-22 at $62.3 billion, of which the development phase was not to exceed $18.9 billion. The soon-to-be-released GAO report pegs the development costs to date at only $28 million below this cap -- and this is before the projected $482 million is added.
The real wrinkle in this shambles is that the development contract is "cost-plus." Unlike a fixed price or fixed price-plus profit contract, in which the contractor must pay excess costs, the government, not the contractor, pays the entire freight of a cost-plus contract no matter how much costs exceed the estimates. (Most development contracts are cost-plus, particularly if designs and technology push the scientific envelope to extreme.) In this case, the rapidly soaring costs, plus Lockheed's reluctant agreement to a cap, carried the day for the cost caps.
In light of the congressionally imposed ceiling, with development costs now projected to be at least $19.2 billion, with only 183 flight test hours of a planned 4,300 completed (more testing will run costs up even further), and with the complete avionics package not yet installed in the two test aircraft (and thus still requiring integrated platform testing), it appears that the Air Force has four program options.
Option one doesn't even get out of the hangar. Even though there is no threat to U.S. dominance in the air, the F-22 has too much momentum and too much congressional support. The program has already survived a 20 year gestation period.
Option two is also "dead on arrival" given the nature of the contract with Lockheed Martin.
Option three is possible, but the Air Force and Lockheed Martin will resist strenuously. For the Air Force, fewer planes (should this happen) will increase the per unit cost, already virtually four times the $47 million per unit cost of the F-15. Fewer planes will cut into Lockheed Martin's profits.
Option four is the one on which to place your bets -- and within this option the more likely outcome is the complete removal of the program caps. Of course, either way the only penalty will be a stern "admonition" to get control of costs.
Finally, getting back to the question posed at the beginning, the F-22's maximum operational altitude is still classified. But the F-15 Eagle, which the F-22 is replacing, has an advertised ceiling of 65,000 feet. Obviously, the F-22 will fly higher. But with its program cost already at $62.8 billion, with over 330 F-22s still to build, and with tactical aircraft programs registering a historical average increase in cost from development to full production of 35%, the final cost of the F-22 may well exceed its maximum altitude -- whatever it is.
NEW this week on America's Defense Monitor: "Ridding the World
of Landmines"
Show #1225
A single blast from an anti-personnel landmine not only has the power to kill or maim its victim, but also to disrupt entire communities.
These small weapons are not a new phenomenon. They have been used in all the major wars of this century and in regional conflicts around the world.
Yet, despite an international treaty to ban landmines, new landmines are still laid, killing civilians, rendering farm land useless, and devastating local communities.
Where do we go from here?
Featuring:
Donald Steinberg, Special Representative of the President and the
Secretary of State for Global Humanitarian Demining
Steve Goose, Arms Division Program Director, Human Rights Watch
Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Co-founder of the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines
Bobby Muller, President of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation,
Co-founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines
Length: 30 minutes
Airs in Washington, DC on Sunday, March 7 at 12:30 pm on Channel 32.
Airs in NYC on Friday, March 12 on Channel 25 at 8:30 p.m., and on
Saturday at 7:00 a.m. on Channel 13.
For air dates in other cities, check your local listings.
Cost: $29
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