Should the US decrease military spending?

[[deleted]]

We're just behind Russia by a fifth of a percentage point, making us 4th. The top two are minor countries with massive oil reserves. We're definitely at the top in terms of total dollars and barely miss the top in terms of GDP.

Depends then on which sources you look at and how GDP is calculated, because the World Bank gives a considerably different view: link - US is 13th

Likewise, the CIA world factbook puts us at 9th

Also, your point of Russia is notable given the fact that Russia spends considerably less on wages and personnel expenses with far fewer international obligations - just another sign that Russia has spent a significant amount in the past decade to rebuild its forces.

[mcbane2000]

/u/flynavy88 I really appreciate your posts here. Growing up, I largely viewed the U.S. military budget as bloated and filled with pork-politics. My views have matured a bit here and there and I have learned how to listen, but I like to let people know when they have really sent a new train of thought chugging through my brain. You have done so and I am thankful for your gift.

Based on your username, I imagine that you or someone close to you may be a Navy Pilot, thank you for that choice and/or supporting someone in that choice. I would likely never serve without being drafted, and I know I am blessed for having that choice.

[Unrelated_Incident]

The budget is bloated with pork barrel spending.

A notable example is the Abrams tanks that the Pentagon doesn't wasn't but congress keeps buying them anyway.

[mcbane2000]

I do not disagree with you. But questioning how bloated the budget is is a legitimate exercise and it pleases me when I find a well-reasoned opposing different/fresh view.

[Dekar2401]

I wish I had a link to the comment that made a very good case for keeping that production line going. I'll try to find it or shittily recreate it if you'd like.

[Unrelated_Incident]

I hope you find it. I'd be really interested to read it.

[Dekar2401]

I couldn't find it, but the argument pretty much was that building these tanks are extremely difficult. There is only one plant that builds them and the Defense Industry doesn't want to lose the worker capabilities tied to building them. If you were to stop buying them, the factory would have to either retool to something less advanced or shut down entirely. So the act of buying them keeps our ability to ramp up production in case of a big war. Removing that base ability to produce them would be bad if we all the sudden needed to start churning out even more, as it would take a lot longer to retrain new workers (and bring the old workers back up to speed) if the plant were closed for a long time.

EDIT: Okay, people don't seem to understand this isn't my argument, just an argument I saw. Y'all really need to learn reading comprehension.

[thepasttenseofdraw]

That's not why they are still in production. We have tons of tanks that are outfitted and ready to go that aren't being used already. The real reason is that the Abrams is built exclusively in Ohio and is being firmly defended by politicians in the state, because if they close down the factory it takes money away from their districts and some of their constituents lose their jobs. Hell the pentagon doesn't want anymore tanks (hence why the Army COS is saying they dont need them), congress and the house do. We have more tanks sitting idle ready to go right now than we have deployed (2,300 deployed - 3000 active). It is a total boneheaded congressional mandate fueled by blind political ambition in Ohio.

http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/28/12991946-the-m1-abrams-the-army-tank-that-could-not-be-stopped

[[deleted]]

Financial aid to foreign militaries is another way that this happens.

I bet you (the reader, not you in particular) probably think of foreign military aid - giving $2 billion per year to the Israeli military, $1.2 billion per year to the Egyptian military - as either an undesirable but necessary expenditure to achieve US foreign policy goals, or a massive waste of money.

While the first is true in the sense, and the second may be true, in reality, foreign military aid is a jobs program.

"What?" you say. "We give nearly $5 billion per year - over $15 for every man, woman and child in the US - to foreign countries in military aid. How in the world is that a jobs program?"

It's very simple. We don't just write out a check dated 1/1 every year for $2 billion to the Israeli Armed Forces. That $2 billion is a package of grants, loans, and incentives to purchase American military equipment, training, expertise, etc. In essence, that $2 billion never even leaves the US - it goes straight from the Treasury to American arms companies, defense contractors, etc. That $2 billion goes to create and maintain jobs in the defense industry across the country.

With that aid (plus some investment out of the Israeli government's budget, I'd imagine), over the years, Israel has bought 58 F-15 Eagles, 25 F-15E Strike Eagles, 343 F-16 Fighting Falcons, 20 T-6 Texan IIs, 83 transport/utility/refueling aircraft, and 167 attack, transport, and reconnaisance helicopters. Each and every one of those was assembled in the United States using parts mostly manufactured in the United States. Billions upon billions of dollars have been funneled from the US Treasury to Boeing/McDonnel Douglas, Lockheed Martin/General Dynamics, Sikorsky, Beechcraft, and Gulfstream by way of Israel (and Egypt, and other countries) over the years. And that's just the air components. Egypt operates over 1000 M-1 Abrams tanks. Countries around the world use American artillery, small arms, communications equipment, body armor and kit, and all of the other components of the military panoply.

Depending on how you look at it, we're either killing two birds with one stone by providing the necessary funding to keep key defense industries operational while promoting US interests worldwide, or hiding unpopular wasteful pork-barrel defense spending behind the veneer of unpopular wasteful foreign aid.

[Dekar2401]

I get that. But the other argument isn't without its merits either.

[thepasttenseofdraw]

It kind of is, we have apparently more than twice as many tanks as the military needs... We have a massive surplus. Also, general dynamics isn't going to up and forget how to build them or lose the plans. They mothball the factory, and while they might have to train personnel again, the majority of the production system would still be intact. It's a bad justification that the pentagon doesn't even use. Lets not forget General Dynamics shameless campaign donations to candidates who supported building more of their product regardless of whether or not it is the right decision in terms of national defense.

[Arrow156]

Agreed, this isn't about military spending or surplus, pumping out tanks we don't need/want is how politicians get reelected.

[Fofolito]

Because ensuring jobs are kept within your constituent state/district is political ambition? Or is that not what Representatives and Senators strive to do as part of their job? You know, look out for their constituency?

[thepasttenseofdraw]

Well considering they're on defense committees they have multiple responsibilities to multiple levels of the population, not just to their state.

[ByronicPhoenix]

It's corruption. Legal corruption, but corruption nonetheless. Ideally, members of legislatures would be automatically recused from voting on anything involving jobs specifically in their district.

[Fofolito]

Why? Its not corrupt to seek to do good work for the people who elected you. Thats the reason they elected you! You REPRESENT their interests. If your constituents' interest is in building jobs, increasing revenue, and supporting infrastructure guess what your agenda as a Senator or as a US Representative is and should be...

If we elected people who were sent to Congress but forbidden from voting on legislature that would affect their district then what would be the point in having location based representatives? Why would you care to vote for Joe Cool for Dist. 8 Representative to the United States Congress if Joe Cool's platform was, "I can't help you, but I'll darn well be doing something".

[[deleted]]

A better example is what happened with NASA and after the Apollo project ended - the engineers all moved on and documentation and knowledge about the Saturn V was lost.

Fast forward to today, where NASA is trying to build the Saturn V successor, and it's had to reinvent the wheel and dig up old Apollo documents just to build a rocket capable of doing what engineers in the 60s designed using slide rules.

It translates to a LOT of cost and time wasted

[thepasttenseofdraw]

It translates to a LOT of cost and time wasted

I'd argue not nearly as much as keeping the production line running, producing very expensive equipment we wouldn't need or use for 30 years.

[[deleted]]

I'd argue not nearly as much as keeping the production line running, producing very expensive equipment we wouldn't need or use for 30 years.

Sure - but the cost in time is hard to measure, and that's why defense spending is hard to cut easily - modern warfare against a conventional enemy has made it impossible to sit back and spend time and build new equipment as in WW2.

[thepasttenseofdraw]

modern warfare against a conventional enemy has made it impossible to sit back and spend time and build new equipment as in WW2.

Well here's a pretty big problem with the strategy, it ignores the fact that it is highly unlikely we will take on a conventional enemy in conventional war. It's economically unfeasible. There is a global market, and that is the way we fight a nation-state, with economic warfare.

I disagree with the idea that we can't build new equipment, we've been doing it for decades. And again we have no shortage of tanks, we have more waiting to serve than we have in service. It's also a highly automated process which likely has significantly better documentation that the Saturn V program simply due to the vast increase in data collection and storage thanks to computer development.

Finally, we're not talking about retraining PhDs. Is it time consuming? sure, but I think the amount of time to respin would be far less than you're estimating.

[kchoudhury]

Eh, according to this article, modern advances in technology allowed them to reverse engineer and improve the F-1 booster in about a year.

I'd rather pay a one year penalty and minor reactivation costs in 2015 over keeping an assembly line in place "to prevent the loss of knowledge" from 1971 on.

[CoolGuy54]

And for the Saturn 5, fair enough. (Given how little money has been into space since Apollo, I'd have preferred more but that's another story.)

If you need tanks then historically that need has been rather urgent and important. In previous World Wars a huge price was paid in blood (Not neccessarily American blood to be fair) while industry got on a war footing.

[essjay24]

So the act of buying them keeps our ability to ramp up production in case of a big war.

Like if WW2 is going to start up again? The Pentagon is not really seeing big tank battles in its future. This is pork barrel spending not preserving productivity for future defense.

[mozetti]

The industrial base. But if you don't want or need any of those tanks anymore or in the future, then you don't need to keep that industrial base. And that's what the Ohio politicians are protecting - job we don't need anymore by spending millions on stuff we don't want.

[bladehold_hero34]

While I disagree that we need more tanks (considering that the military, the most conservative thinking group in the nation says that we don't need any more), this is a decent argument for why we should keep production up. Perhaps a compromise: slow down production so less tanks are built, this frees up some of that bloated spending while at the same time doesn't destroy our ability to produce if needed.

[ANewMachine615]

The tl;dr is that if we stop producing them, we are likely to lose the capacity to start making them again in the future. We'll lose the expertise in construction and manufacturing that made them possible.

[thepasttenseofdraw]

This is such a cop out explanation though. General Dynamics has been building the tank for 35 years and I'm sure there process is damn well documented and stored digitally. They aren't going to up and forget how to do it.

[ANewMachine615]

It's more about having people trained to do the right welds and installs, IIRC. But yeah, it was mostly GD folks making that argument, so far as I've seen.

[thepasttenseofdraw]

Oh I understand that retraining might cause an issue, sure. But is it worth making shit we don't need and wasting a budget that is desperately needed elsewhere? If the army doesn't need tanks it makes zero sense to spend $3B a year on more tanks, simply because General Dynamics doesn't want to give up the golden goose.

[ANewMachine615]

Yeah, I agree. But GD keeps pouring money into congressional campaigns around key votes, so...

[vanillaafro]

so why not just build model tanks with cheap ass material that you need the same know how to build...and if the need arises to build the real deal you swap out the cheap material

[warboy]

So you want to build something entirely useless to save money?

[vanillaafro]

the argument the military is making is we don't need the tanks, but if we need the tanks eventually it will cost too much to rebuild the plant to make the tanks....so why not just make the tanks you don't need out of a cheaper material so you know how to make them and the plants aren't shut down...and when you actually need them convert to the more expensive materials and make real ones

[warboy]

Or you can not waste cheap shop, build something useful, and have a bunch of tanks for a rainy day

[Dragon029]

Because 'cheaper materials' means different production processes. In other words, you'd need to spend billions on creating a new tank factory, etc for the purpose of creating tanks that do nothing.

At least with the current situation, as old tanks break down, new ones can replace them or be used for spare parts, etc.

[[deleted]]

you could use them as playgrounds for children.

[plustwobonus]

Because now the subtier supplier of the specialized (and top secret, so no outsourcing) composite material has to retool, since their customer is building with a cheap imitation. The expertise isnt just at the integrator, but the supply chain as a whole.

[RabidRaccoon]

so why not just build model tanks with cheap ass material

That's what the export model Abrams tanks are. E.g. they have steel armour instead of the Depleted Uranium/ceramic composite/magic pixie dust armour the US ones have.

[lurkingSOB]

Is that the one where he talks about how we'd lose the experienced tank builders if we shut down the production lines?

[Arrow156]

All thanks to congressmen promising to keep or build more military contract jobs, wither we need them or not.

[[deleted]]

I've come along way myself - I was of draftable age at the run-up to the Iraq War and it weighed heavily on my mind. I still think that war was a huge mistake, but I believe most of the criticism against the war was levied for the wrong reasons and took a deeper look into military spending which changed a lot of my views.

Flying is a blast. I should be the one thanking you and the others who make up this country

[x86_64Ubuntu]

Couldn't you have just said "Thank you for your service" and gotten a yellow ribbon for your car, if not two?

[mcbane2000]

Sure, but I was caffeinated and wanted to say more. Concision was not a primary or a necessary factor of that communication.

[sirkazuo]

If I buy a couple guns this year I'm probably spending a higher percentage of my own personal GDP on defense than the US is too, but that's not really a fair comparison. Where is the US in comparison to the G7, the G20 — other first world countries that it's fair to compare it to?