How the Pentagon Wasted $10 Billion On Military Projects

schwit1 writes: In the past decade, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has wasted $10 billion on defense projects that were either impractical and impossible. It's hard to choose a single quote showing the absurd stupidity of these projects — the article is filled with too many to choose from. Read it all and weep. However, here's one quote that typifies the attitude:

"Henry A. Obering III, a retired director of the Missile Defense Agency, said any unfulfilled expectations for SBX and the other projects were the fault of the Obama administration and Congress — for not doubling down with more spending. 'If we can stop one missile from destroying one American city,' said Obering, a former Air Force lieutenant general, 'we have justified the entire program many times over from its initiation in terms of cost.'"

We get the government we deserve. Until we stop electing candidates (from either party) who promise pork, we will continue to get pork, and waste, and a society that is steadily going bankrupt.

Comments

Re:only government?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

A mere $10 billion?

The IMF, European Central Bank and the EU wasted 330€ billion on keeping Greece in the Eurozone, which is both impractical and impossible.

Although the 330€ billion is officially loans, that money ain't no never be coming back. And Greece will have to leave the Eurozone. Although the majority of Greeks would like to stay in the Eurozone, the fiscal policies of Greece's Prime Minister Tsipras and Finance Minister Varoufakis can only work if Greece has it's own currency to devalue. So the game is for Greece to exit the Eurozone, and that each side can blame the other for what happened.

Anyway, the politicians in the EU sold this 330€ billion bailout package to the public as necessary for the "security" of the Eurozone. In the US, the politicians sell the $10 million on failed projects as necessary for US military superiority . . . in other words, also as necessary for "security" of the US public.

$10 Billion is a drop in the bucket

[Required Snark]

This is like worrying about dirty dishes when the house is on fire. You're concerned about stupid government spending, just contemplate the Iraq War.

The costs of the 2003-2010 Iraq War are often contested, as academics and critics have unearthed many hidden costs not represented in official estimates. The most recent major report on these costs come from Brown University in the form of the Costs of War, which totaled just over $1.1 trillion. The Department of Defense's direct spending on Iraq totaled at least $757.8 billion, but also highlighting the complementary costs at home, such as interest paid on the funds borrowed to finance the wars.

So $757.8 billion is the low ball amount that even the Pentagon can't hide. It seems a lot more likely that the Brown figure of $1.1 trillion is a more realistic number. No one at Brown has a personal stake in fudging the figures, unlike those in the military-industrial complex who live and die by the defense budget.

And that $757.8 billion is just the down payment. You want to see the real big bucks, look at the long term costs.

According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report published in October 2007, the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion by 2017 when counting the huge interest costs because combat is being financed with borrowed money. The CBO estimated that of the $2.4 trillion long-term price tag for the war, about $1.9 trillion of that would be spent on Iraq, or $6,300 per U.S. citizen.

A 2013 updated study pointed out that U.S. medical and disability claims for veterans after a decade of war had risen to $134.7 billion from $33 billion two years earlier.

Remember, the Iraq War was completely voluntary. It was a war of choice. The two justifications used to start it were both completely wrong. First, Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. It was Al Qaeda, and had nothing to do with Sadam Hussein. Second, there were no weapons of mass destruction, except for the left-overs from the Iran-Iraq war. These were the chemical weapons that the US helped Iraq obtain when they were fighting a proxy war for the US against Iran.

So upwards of $2 trillion has been spent on a war that we started for the wrong reasons. That's real serious government waste.

And it's not just the money. If you want to get really upset, check out the Casualties of the Iraq War. It will make you sick to your stomach.

Missile waste? Look at the F-35 aircraft

[Antique Geekmeister]

The anticipated, and constantly rising, cost of the F-35 aircraft is approximately $300 million each for the expected 32 aircraft of the _testing_ manufacturing run. The attempt to use the same airframe with different versions for all three military branches and their very different needs has made it so expensive that it's next to useless and many times the cost of a normal aircraft for _any_ of the planned roles. It has incredibly expensive "stealth" technology that does not work, it's incredibly fast but it cannot turn in air combat, and it's so overmuscled and heavy that the $1500/each tires keep failing when it lands.

Re:only government?

[Talderas]

yeah it's a mercenary army, they're all getting paid and benefits and none of them were forced to be there at the moment

They're professional, or regular, soldiers rather than conscripts and certainly not mercenaries. Mercenaries are defined by the Geneva Conventions.

Art 47. Mercenaries
1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.
2. A mercenary is any person who:
      (a) is especially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
      (b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
      (c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
      (d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
      (e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
      (f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

Opinion from a scientist

[xanthines-R-yummy]

I am a scientist in real life (yes, biomed PhD and everything) and I would like to offer a different opinion. We spent all this money on something that didn't work. Ok, that's less than desirable. However, I think it's inaccurate to call it a complete waste. For one, it employed people and secondly and maybe most importantly, it funded research, which is almost always a good thing. The only way this would be a complete waste, is if they did not use what they learned from these projects to take with them to the next. That's my real fear: we'll keep spending money in a very inefficient way. My only beef with the whole thing, is that they should have given that $10B to the NIH, NSF, NASA, universities, etc...

Training

[sjbe]

Here's an idea for how to spend the next 1 trillion in USA military better: just fucking educate your troops better, make the grunts have 3 year training.

I defy you to find a national army with meaningfully better training than the US military. Seriously. I have many criticisms of the US military but their training of troops is not one of them. They take it very seriously and for the business of war-fighting they do an outstanding job overall. Nobody wants to go toe to toe with the US military in a conventional war and training is a huge part of that.

frigging conscript armies have longer training and they don't even expect to go to war.

Name one conscript army with meaningfully better or longer training than the US military.

where as your grunts basically get just bootcamp and then it's to another culture to act effectively in the role of police, so it's rather ridiculous that the training hasn't been geared towards that.

If you think troops are sent overseas right out of boot then you know nothing about how the US military functions. They get quite a lot more training than that before they are sent in harms way.

it's rather ridiculous that your mercenary grunts have such short and shoddy training(yeah it's a mercenary army, they're all getting paid and benefits and none of them were forced to be there at the moment).

The US military is by definition not a mercenary unit. They are the military arm of the US government. They do not fight battles in exchange for private financial gain. The French Foreign Legion is a mercenary unit. The US Army is unequivocally not a mercenary unit.

Uggg

[Maury Markowitz]

While I've long been a critic of all ABM programs, and so should in theory agree with the basis of this post, but this article downright stinks. It is clear the author doesn't really understand any of the technical issues he writes about with feigned authority. The baseball analogy section is particularly laughable, picking apart a dumb offhand statement while utterly missing the entire point of the analogy, and failing to consider the issue that the radar can't possibly do what it claims to anyway.

For those of you interested in all of this, I suggest you read the Wiki article on Nike Zeus. The problems with decoys were well known in 1958, and panel after panel of the super-smart (including nobel laureates) examined the issue in depth and basically said that a good decoy is literally impossible to distinguish from the warhead. Why? Because you can put the warhead in a mylar balloon and launch several similar balloons on nearby trajectories, and that's basically that.

Everyone has been aware of this issue ever since. Nike-X and LOADS were invented to work at much lower altitudes, where the decoys were no longer a factor (they're balloons, they begin to float once they start to re-enter), while the PRESS series attempted to find differences in ionization or other physical effects of the earliest stages of reentry to the same end. Both ultimately failed - Nike-X could be overwhelmed with MIRV for almost zero cost, and PRESS demonstrated that no such measurable difference actually exists.

No amount of engineering can fix this. All you can do is hope that the decoys have bad trajectories or tumble, with the later being of zero use if it's spherical. It is entirely possible that North Korea has bad decoys, but given that the UK built really good ones in the 60s as part of Chevaline, its certainly not a $10 billion bet I'd make. And then there's the killer problem - you deliberately launch the RV on a "bad" trajectory so its not a threat, and then maneuver after the midcourse onto the target. This problem killed Hardsite, and it only had to work over about 10 miles, not 10,000.

I'm not saying that BMD is a bad idea, but everyone should be perfectly aware that any BMD can be penetrated with some degree of ease. The question, as it has been since the 50s, is whether by spending XXX dollars on improving the defense can be offset by spending XXX on better penaids. NK is a poor country so its a question to ponder, but for anyone else the answer is, and always has been, that it's about 20 times cheaper to penetrate the BMD than build it.