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Recently, New York Times reporter Eric Lipton produced a remarkable piece on a group of small, supposedly fleet (as in speedy) U.S. naval vessels called littoral combat ships. Produced by Fincantieri Marinette Marine in partnership with Lockheed Martin, one of the five weapons-making giants of the military-industrial complex, their final cost proved to be $500 million each -- about $280 million dollars more than initially proposed. In a way, all you need to know from Lipton's report is that, after just four years, the Pentagon recently decided to retire nine of those vessels. No matter that they were designed to last a quarter of a century, "operate in coastal waters, and hunt down enemy submarines, destroy anti-ship mines, and repel attacks from small boats like those often operated by Iran."
Why? Reasons abound. Their engines proved flawed. They are anything but speedy and incredibly vulnerable to anti-ship missiles or mines. They're also "gas hogs," which limits their range, and remarkably incapable of hunting down submarines. In short, those littoral combat ships are all-too-literal floating disasters. No wonder they've been dubbed by some in the Pentagon "little crappy ships." So, the Navy decided retirement was in order.
But wait! That's anything but the end of Lipton's tale. On hearing of the Navy's decision, he writes, "A consortium of players with economic ties to the ships -- led by a trade association whose members had just secured contracts worth up to $3 billion to do repairs and supply work on them -- mobilized to pressure Congress to block the plan, with phone calls, emails and visits to Washington to press lawmakers to intervene." They targeted "members of Congress who represent communities with large Navy stations and have collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the same military contractors that help maintain and operate these ships."
And I know you'll be shocked by this, but it worked. Congress added amendments to the 2022 spending bill that stopped the Navy from retiring at least five of those nine ships.
Now, in the context of the military-industrial (and yes, you can indeed add -congressional to that) complex, consider Lipton's article a perfect parable for our all-American world of 2023. And with that in mind, let Pentagon experts and TomDispatch regulars Julia Gledhill and William Hartung take you on a balloon ride " oops, sorry, that's probably the wrong image to use right now" over that very complex and the waste and wasteful weaponry it routinely produces (with a distinct helping hand from Congress and your tax dollars). Consider what follows, in fact, a parable from hell. Tom
Merger Mania in the Military-Industrial Complex
Tackling Pentagon Waste Means Battling the Big Weapons Makers and Asking More of Congress
By Julia Gledhill and William D. Hartung
It's early in the new Congress, but lawmakers are already hotly debating spending and debt levels. As they do so, they risk losing track of an important issue hiding in plain sight: massive Pentagon waste. At least in theory, combating such excess could offer members of both parties common ground as they start the new budget cycle. But there are many obstacles to pursuing such a commonsense agenda.
Pentagon waste is a longstanding issue in desperate need of meaningful action. Last November, the Department of Defense once again failed to pass even a basic audit, as it had several times before. In fact, independent auditors weren't even able to assess the Pentagon's full financial picture because they couldn't gather all the necessary information to complete an evaluation. In some ways, that should have been devastating, the equivalent of a child receiving an incomplete on an end-of-year report card. No less alarming, the Pentagon couldn't even account for about 61% of its $3.5 trillion in assets. Yet the last Congress still approved $858 billion in defense programs for fiscal year 2023, a full $45 billion more than even the Biden administration requested.
Spending levels aside, poor financial management has a serious negative impact on both service members and taxpayers. Last month, for example, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that the Pentagon can't account for at least $220 billion worth of its property, including such basics as ammunition, missiles, torpedoes, and their component parts. For its part, Congress (and so the average taxpayer) doesn't have the faintest idea how much it's spent on weapons or their components distributed to contractors for maintenance and upgrades. Worse, the GAO reports that the $220 billion in unaccounted-for equipment and parts is "likely significantly understated."
Such irresponsible financial management also applies to Pentagon weapons purchases, creating another set of problems. The Department of Defense commits staggering numbers of taxpayer dollars to new weapons programs without doing its due diligence, all too often resulting in dysfunctional systems. The GAO has reported on this issue for 20 years and yet there's been little discernible change in Pentagon behavior.
There is a better way, though. For example, in its most recent Annual Weapons Systems Assessment Report, the GAO notes that obtaining basic information at critical points in the weapons-buying process produces better cost and delivery outcomes. In defense-speak, this is called "knowledge-based acquisition." Of course, requiring crucial information about a program before proceeding to its development stage should be a no-brainer. Yet the Pentagon has wasted untold billions of dollars on ill-functioning weaponry like the F-35 combat aircraft by proceeding to the development stage without faintly adequate information.
And the status quo guarantees future disasters like the F-35. According to the GAO, more than half of the major defense-acquisition programs it reviewed in fiscal year 2022 "did not demonstrate critical technologies in a realistic environment before beginning system development." That's like buying a house without checking whether the water pressure is adequate or the roof leaks -- or, in the case of the F-35, a few thousand houses. An independent assessment of that fighter jet in fiscal year 2021 found more than 800 unresolved deficiencies, six of which are so serious that they may cause death or serious injury to those operating the plane, or critically restrict its capabilities in a combat setting. In the 20 years since the program began, the Pentagon has yet to approve that deeply deficient, wildly expensive plane for full production. Put another way, it has already spent nearly $200 billion on a system that may never actually be fully ready for combat.
Aside from the fact that the F-35's engine doesn't work, the main reason the Pentagon hasn't gone full speed ahead on production is that even its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, can't assess the aircraft's performance. Why? Because the company hasn't finished developing the simulator required to properly test it. Still, the money keeps flowing and, by current estimates, the program's lifecycle cost will exceed $1.7 trillion, making it one of the most expensive weapon programs in Pentagon history.
Looking Down from the (Capitol) Hilltop
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