The US Military Budget should be reduced...

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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Russian military doctrine has long been quantity over quality. Or as they put it, quantity is quality.

That was certainly true in WWII and some time thereafter. But I’m not sure that’s been true in recent decades.

Andrew Marshall, strategic advisor to the US Secretary of Defense for decades, taught about the concept of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) over three decades ago. And the concept actually came out of the USSR. His office studied examples of how RMA’s came about as technology advances make existing doctrines obsolete. Aircraft carrier versus battleship in WWII is only one example. Tanks in WWI are another. The German blitzkrieg tactics a third. Jets vs prop planes, nuclear weapons, on and on.

This is the scenario I’m thinking about. As the collapsing economy of the USSR finally lead to its dissolution Russia realized that quantity over quality could no longer compete with the West. The USSR collapsed because it was spending 25-40% of GDP on defense. What could Russia do with a smaller economy?

So, having already built up enormous supplies of lower effectiveness “quantity” weapons, they started putting more emphasis on RMA’s. Think their advanced tank, cyber warfare, hypersonic weapons, autonomous submarines that could cause tsunamis with nuclear weapons near coastlines, nuclear powered cruise missiles with unlimited range, etc. All attempts at super weapons, not unlike Germany in WWII. (How much they’ve succeeded is an open question. So far they haven’t shown they have the money to produce them. Or even how well they work. But they make public threats as their position in the Ukraine continues to decline.)

Meanwhile their conventional forces suffered decline from lower funding - compounded by corruption - resulting in lower training, less pay, poor existing weapons maintenance, poorer command, et. al. And the same doctrine of command from the top down in a warfare world where fast, correct, local decisions based on info and well trained but fewer troops had evolved. (See the first Iraq war.)

But the myth of their invincible ground forces continued, probably even within. Who wants to tell their boss that they can’t perform. And who in the West would trust that they were a hollow shell?

Then came the poor decision to use them in an invasion that would not justify super weapons unless the West intervened. And that the threat of their super weapons would prevent that from happening.

So now they’re stuck fighting a local war with inferior equipment and personnel while their super weapons aren’t available without triggering WWIII. Very scary with an egomaniac in control of Russia.

Just a different hypothesis that I’ve been thinking about - triggered by the book about Andrew Marshall and his strategic thinking. I’ve mentioned it before - it’s called The Last Warrior.

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Please go on with more posts, as you seem knowledgable about RMA and the deeper connections between WAR and TECH.

david fb

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His office studied examples of how RMA’s came about as technology advances make existing doctrines obsolete.

Very interesting concept.

Would cyber warfare be an example of such a Revolution? We seem to hear a lot about things like Russian troll farms as modern distributors of propaganda. And the US seems to be working on more malicious forms of cyber attacks. (Fiddling with nuclear centrifuges, perhaps?) So the idea is certainly out there.

That would also fit in well with the constraints on the Russian economy since the breakup of the USSR. They can’t afford big standing armies, or lots of high tech weaponry. But a group of skilled hackers sitting in a small Siberian town could do all sorts of disruptive things on a comparatively small budget.

—Peter

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I think this episode speaks to your point that being prepared is invaluable. This war was won or lost years ago. But the fallacy is that preparedness can be measured in the number of dollars spent…

Dollars are what you spend; value is what you get for the dollars. If every US government department that does a lousy job of spending and value for the dollar was due for budget freezes or reductions ( as some have suggested for the military), then Medicare/Aid and tons of others are also candidates.

Does the military have tremendous waste, etc. ? Yep!

Do many other government departments? Yep!

The solution is to change the system to cut the waste, while maintaining/increasing output of what we need from them.

It all starts with Congress, a hot bed of political favoritism, from being able to insider trade on stocks to being able to get a job with folks they were supposed to be regulating/overseeing.

Term limits is the answer, along with prohibitions about jobs after they leave Congress. If the President has term limits, why not the Congress Critters? Maybe then, we will get more accountability and less waste. Add in a less onerous way to get rid of poorly performing “civil servants” and maybe we can get more bang for our bucks in lots of areas.

Cheers!
Murph
BL Home Fool

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Murph,

It is not up to anyone but the congressperson’s district to decide who they hire or fire.

If I went to congress and said TMF has older workers we need a law to kick them out of work at age 50 to make room for people who do not know what they are doing?

We do not need demagogues who are young and do not know what they are doing just because representatives get older.

If you poll people they hate everyone in congress except one person. They like their own representative. It is a friendly competition for resources and over perceived honesty. Of course I am against your rep and sen. They want my stuff. They are not honest ever. Or are they?

My female rep and male sen are actually quite good. I got what I wanted. Or I will happily see them fight for what I want. Oh wait you do not like that, I want your stuff now.

The US constitution gears the presidency in war time towards dictatorial powers. That is why term limits matter for the executives.

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It is not up to anyone but the congressperson’s district to decide who they hire or fire.

Leap, I was referring to Federal civil servants in my post.

Cheers!
Murph

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Term limits is the answer, along with prohibitions about jobs after they leave Congress. If the President has term limits, why not the Congress Critters?

Murph,

You forgot what you wrote.

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Leap, here is what I wrote in full:

Term limits is the answer, along with prohibitions about jobs after they leave Congress. If the President has term limits, why not the Congress Critters? Maybe then, we will get more accountability and less waste. Add in a less onerous way to get rid of poorly performing “civil servants” and maybe we can get more bang for our bucks in lots of areas. (Bold added)

When you mentioned “hiring and firing”, I thought you were referencing the bolded part.

Sorry.

Now, as to term limits being focused on old age versus young age, that is not the case; it simply relates to the number of years one can serve in the Congress regardless of age.

Given our Congressional age distribution now, might that result in a younger congress in the short/midterm? Possibly.

But there is no doubt that Congress Critters amass great fortunes while there…and it is NOT because of the salaries…and the longer they are there, the more detached they become from real life. Why? Because they really live in a different life than their constituents…often declaring themselves immune from the very laws the rest of us have to live under.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The longer one is in the Senate or the House, the more likely one is to be “corrupted”, in that the rules don’t REALLY apply to them…and that they know what is best for us, despite the fact they don’t live in the real world.

I remember George McGovern, after he left the Senate and ran a small business, saying that, had he really known how all the laws he helped get passed affected businesses and people, he would never have helped pass many of them.

Yes, everyone always likes their Congress Critters and dislikes others. Term limits at least would dampen that affect.

Just my $.02, having been a small business employee, in the large/medium “corporate wars”, a franchisee, an entrepreneur and small business owner, and a retired person…and a person who has seen the politicians of both parties come and go in my almost 76 years.

Cheers!
Murph

Your mileage may vary

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Murph,

They go go congress wealthy. It takes time to run, people need to be able to take the time off from work.

I am for greater ethnical scrutiny but you are using that as an excuse to fire those who learn how to operate in the sprawling bureaucracy for people who at best are barely knows and know very little about operations. It is an invitation for bull artists to lie more than they already do. It seems there are American citizens who out and out opt for complete liars. I have to believe they know they are opting for the biggest liars they can find. So demagoguery should not be a surprise.

Anyway it is not up to some sort of off the cuff remarks to effect who I hire by voting to the job. If I am happy with my rep who is anyone else to get in the way? Are you from CT?

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I’m going to agree with Murph on this. Even if they go to Congress wealthy, they can increase moderate wealth by an order of magnitude if they stay there long enough to learn how to manipulate the system. Term limits would mean it would be difficult to be there long enough to get too far up the gravy train. Of course, it might increase the power/importance of the two major parties - something I think is part of the cause of our problems right now.

Jeff

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Murph

I think you are wrong as to remedy, not problem.

A few senators actually are powerful, but very few Congressmen are. Who has the real power? The mostly nameless professional money bag party minders who pick most of the candidates by choosing who to back. Who do they want to back? People who can get elected (height, teeth both matter a lot, but real military service might help), but the crux is being sufficiently malleable that you will do as you are told without your knowing that anyone told you anything. Stupid is sometimes key, but narcissistic does well.

The long term dangeous corruption are the never dying cabals of the moneyed and powerful.

Progressives have recently had some breakthroughs of actual independent thinkers getting nominated (their main fight usually), but the Dems will quickly adust by finding qualified pretty people who can mouth the progressive line but not think as sharply.

Term limits removes those few members who have vision and guts, but does not improve the rest of the mix. Better to reform first my focusing on reforming elections structurally (shift to list voting), money in politics (reverse the extravagantly stupid Supreme Court rulings anchored in Corporation = Person and Money = protected Speech), and most importantly shift a scary amount of power to localities, cities, and counties. Retail face to face democracy about local problems with access to real power trains both citizens and pols from dog catcher up, and provides a far better pool of candidates that can be judged by more than their grin and their malarkey.

david fb

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Dollars are what you spend; value is what you get for the dollars. If every US government department that does a lousy job of spending and value for the dollar was due for budget freezes or reductions ( as some have suggested for the military), then Medicare/Aid and tons of others are also candidates.

Does the military have tremendous waste, etc. ? Yep!

That’s not what I’m talking about. Everybody is against waste. I’m talking about policy. Let me give an example: One leg of US nuclear deterrence during the cold war was threat of penetrating Soviet air space and delivering a nuclear weapon. The other two legs were sea and land. In the 1960 and early 1970s a supersonic bomber was seen as the best way to do that, and out of that thinking came the B-1 bomber. But at roughly the same time, the US developed stealth technology and cruise missiles, both of which served that role better than the B-1. So sober analysts killed the B1 in favor of the better options.

But there was a big political outcry that cutting spending was the same as cutting preparedness and the B-1 program was reinstated. The Cold War ended and the US no longer needed a supersonic bomber to penetrate Soviet airspace. Along came Gulf War I where the B-1 sat on the sidelines because it was designed to deliver nuclear weapons and the US didn’t need that. So Congress allocated money to refit the B-1 as a conventional bomber. In subsequent conflicts it has been fine in the role of a bomb truck, but the venerable B-52 also works fine as a bomb truck. We don’t and didn’t need a whole new system to fill that role. Accordingly, the Pentagon has tried to either kill or reduce the program several times and Congress has refused.

Question: Why are we paying for stuff the Pentagon doesn’t want or need?

I may have posted this before, but it seems appropriate here. Try to guess which Secretary of Defense made this statement:

Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you’ve squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don’t fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You’ve directed me to buy more M1s, F14s, and F16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them.

If you guessed Dick Cheney, you’d be right! One of the most hawkish politicians of our era complaining about too much defense spending. We have to divorce ourselves of the notion that spending lots of money is the same is a strong defense. Spending smart is a strong defense. Spending smart is a policy decision. We need smart policy.

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Everybody is against waste.

Not Waste Management (WM)

https://www.wm.com

The Captain

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Question: Why are we paying for stuff the Pentagon doesn’t want or need?

“Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you’ve squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don’t fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You’ve directed me to buy more M1s, F14s, and F16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them.”

If you guessed Dick Cheney, you’d be right! One of the most hawkish politicians of our era complaining about too much defense spending. We have to divorce ourselves of the notion that spending lots of money is the same is a strong defense. Spending smart is a strong defense. Spending smart is a policy decision. We need smart policy.

What I see is a complaint that Congress is at fault for forcing spending that Cheney said the military did not need…but I’ll bet there were other, more far-sighted things we did need that he would have spent the money on if Congress had stopped trying to protect jobs making things we didn’t need.

So, whose fault is that: the Congress or the military?

Yes, despite the above, strategic-decision mistakes and poor spending practices exist in the military and its procurement areas…and always will. Using that to justify freezing/cutting budgets…versus rooting out the poor practices so we get more bang for our military buck…is not the answer, in my opinion.

Back to my previous point: we don’t cut budgets of social programs that have been shown to have poor decision making and tremendous waste (nor do we root out the causes and fix them, other than lip service).

The fact is that most politicians don’t want to look in the mirror and see that they rarely tackle the tough, unglamorous job of preventing/minimizing waste; they would much rather announce/take credit for new programs and spend more money to buy votes.

Cheers!
Murph

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The private sectors of the US economy are built on a lot more waste than the Pentagon.

Coke, healthcare insurers, bank loans, investment bankers who take 1% of our economy every year in pay, tech companies for the most part - there are very few that are actually successful, retail stores up against Walmart and Amazon, super markets throwing out half of their produce, mcmansions on every block in my area, ICE cars with TV screens for the passengers, airflights to islands just because, cruise ships, disney world, TV to sit by and get fat, food in fridges being thrown out because it got old, tools on work benches rusting but with the best of intent, stereo systems dating back to the 1980s that we never throw out, vinyl record albums then CDs then downloads then streaming only to return to vinyl, bankrupt companies that just reorganize their debt, bankers and credit card companies writing off their losses,…,…,…,…

Tell me what in American society is not a waste? This should be a short list.

The entire exercise is in not being a dirt farmer. Like most other places on the globe that are very poor.

Before pointing a finger at someone else look in the mirror. I know I have. I see an artist. Where would we be without artists? LOL

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The fact is that most politicians don’t want to look in the mirror and see that they rarely tackle the tough, unglamorous job of preventing/minimizing waste; they would much rather announce/take credit for new programs and spend more money to buy votes.

One man’s waste is another man’s treasure. Suppose you are a congressman and F14 production provides a bunch of jobs to your constituency. Ending the F14 contract may be good nationally but bad locally. So what do you do? Do you increase the unemployment rate of your constituency to reduce the national debt? Not an easy question.

Probably why it is a good thing to have brought back earmarks. It is a net positive to replace manufacturing of unnecessary F14s with government subsidized production of wind turbines. Good ol’ political horse trading.

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If we cut enough waste imagine!

There would be no American economy.

Crazy savings we would have. Incredible.

We need congress to act!

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But at roughly the same time, the US developed stealth technology and cruise missiles, both of which served that role better than the B-1. So sober analysts killed the B1 in favor of the better options.

But there was a big political outcry that cutting spending was the same as cutting preparedness and the B-1 program was reinstated. The Cold War ended and the US no longer needed a supersonic bomber to penetrate Soviet airspace.

There’s a bit more to the story as detailed in The Last Warrior book about Andrew Marshall.

After the B-1 was originally killed to save money, Marshall pointed out that the USSR was paranoid about air defense of their borders. And that they would spend far more in added air defense to defend against the B-1 bomber than it would cost the US to produce and deploy it. This was part of a larger strategy to force the USSR to overspend on defense and ruin their economy.

And it worked - from both the B-1 bomber and other programs like “Star Wars” defense against ICBMs. That effort also forced the USSR to respond.

It was a deliberate strategy move.

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It was a deliberate strategy move

The Pentagon is a racket, they’ve been leading Americans by the nose for decades.

We’re winning in Vietnam
we keep troops in Poland, Germany, Korea, and on Islands all over the world to make you feel safe
We’re winning in Afghanistan, we just need another 10 years

The United States spends more on Our Military Budget in four weeks than Russia spends all year…

It’s a deliberate strategy move

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