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America’s Military Can’t Repair Its Own $1.7 Trillion Jet

Posted by M. C. on October 16, 2023

Only about half of the U.S.’s fleet of F-35 fighter jets is operational at any time due to difficulties with repairs, which must go through contractors.

When something breaks on the F-35, it takes the Pentagon an average of 141 days to repair it. That’s a long time for a jet to be grounded, but it’s actually an improvement from the last time the GAO conducted the survey in 2017. Back then it took the DoD 172 days to fix a piece of the jet.

Not an anomaly. The pentagram has conned most of NATO into buying into this nightmare. The new Ford class aircraft carrier is in the same situation. The Marine’s tilt rotor aircraft is called the “widow maker”.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3w5ay/america-cant-repair-its-own-dollar17-trillion-jet

by Matthew Gault

Like Apple’s new iPhone, America’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is expensive and hard to repair without intervention from the original manufacturer. According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a bipartisan watchdog group in D.C., F-35s are only available for missions about half the time. A whole lot of these expensive jets are sitting in storage because they’re waiting on repair parts.

The F-35 is a troubled aircraft that’s been on the GAO’s radar for years. Its new report on the jet, “DOD and the Military Services Need to Reassess the Future Sustainment Strategy,” drilled down into why the aircraft spent so much time on the tarmac and not in the skies. “The F-35 fleet mission capable rate—the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions—was about 55 percent in March 2023, far below program goals,” the GAO said. “The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired.”

Right now, the care and upkeep of F-35s has been contracted out to third parties. If something breaks on an F-35, it’s usually fixed by a defense contractor and not military engineers. This is part of why the jet is so expensive. “DOD has estimated overall costs for the program at more than $1.7 trillion over its life cycle, with the majority of the costs, about $1.3 trillion, associated with sustaining the aircraft,” the GAO said.

The goal has long been for the Pentagon to take over routine maintenance of the aircraft, but it’s not going well. When something breaks on the F-35, it takes the Pentagon an average of 141 days to repair it. That’s a long time for a jet to be grounded, but it’s actually an improvement from the last time the GAO conducted the survey in 2017. Back then it took the DoD 172 days to fix a piece of the jet. The goal is to get that number down to 60. “Program officials anticipated having greater repair material starting in the second half of 2023, helping to steadily improve repair times,” the GAO said. “These officials also told us that they were still years away from achieving the program’s goal.”

Other indicators have gotten worse, not better. In 2019, there was a backlog of 4,300 parts waiting on repair. In 2023, that number is up to 10,000, but the GAO did say that some of this is due to an increased number of F-35s overall. The problem of waiting on repair parts has gotten so bad, however, that the DoD is simply buying new parts instead of waiting to repair old ones. 

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Israel to Get New Fleet of F-35s Financed by US Aid

Posted by M. C. on July 3, 2023

The deal is for 25 planes and is estimated to cost $3 billion

The Israeli arms industry will also benefit from the deal. The Israeli Defense Ministry said that as part of the agreement, Lockheed Martin and the engine manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney, have “committed to involving Israeli defense industries in the production of aircraft components sold.”

Feel your wallet get thinner? The only thing Israel has given US is 34 dead crewman on the Liberty.

antiwar.com

by Dave DeCamp

The Israeli Defense Ministry said Sunday that Israel will acquire a third fleet of Lockheed Martin-made F-35 fighter jets using US military aid funds.

The deal for 25 F-35 fighter jets is estimated to cost about $3 billion and will be purchased through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), a US State Department program that gives foreign governments money to buy US arms.

The Israeli arms industry will also benefit from the deal. The Israeli Defense Ministry said that as part of the agreement, Lockheed Martin and the engine manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney, have “committed to involving Israeli defense industries in the production of aircraft components sold.”

“This new agreement will ensure the continuation of cooperation between American companies and Israeli defense industries in the production of aircraft parts,” the Israeli Defense Ministry added.

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‘This Changes Everything’ – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2022

As with 12 year old technology and the underwhelming F-35 engine, the B-21 Raider is part of a US security strategy that offers little security for our country, and reflects a strategy from the 1960s

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.  I could not get over the fact that he comes from this same military industrial establishment – and played a sad caricature of what he is – not a patriot, not a visionary, not a strategic thinker, but just a guy who understands that weapons like these, funded by the taxpayers, make a lot of people a lot of money. 

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/12/karen-kwiatkowski/this-changes-everything/

By Karen Kwiatkowski

The unveiling of the new Northrup Grumman B-21 “Raider” long-range bomber, with its stealthy design, app-style updates, and $2 Billion price tag, was pure Hollywood.  If you want to watch it, the CEO begins her spiel at minute 39.

B-21 technology is capped at 2010 standards; it flies with F-35 engines.   The planes (two have been built) will fly for the first time this spring – 18 months behind schedule.  These real secrets were not unveiled yesterday, nor was how much the US taxpayer has paid and will pay for these bombers.  No doubt, this would have spoiled the fun.

The mantra “This Changes Everything” was repeated several times by several speakers, indicating the opposite must be true  – it changes nothing.  As with 12 year old technology and the underwhelming F-35 engine, the B-21 Raider is part of a US security strategy that offers little security for our country, and reflects a strategy from the 1960s, where the US was freshly nurturing the biggest economy in the world, a golden reputation for governance, and global military domination.

Some 60 years later, the US has shifted from manufacturing to financialism.  Previously low government debt and spending exploded to obscene and uncontrolled levels.  The US today is one bad government decision away from collapse and tyranny.  Our reputation for good governance has evaporated, whether we look at law and order in our formerly beautiful cities, transparency of government at any level, political oligarchies, cronyism, and corruption, or at the increasingly obvious deficiencies in our elections. Our vision of global military domination – once linked rationally to our economic and technological productivity and a liberty-oriented and tolerant value system – is today linked to nothing but a “technological elite” that has morphed into a grifting MICIMATT that lies, cheats, steals, and uses the full power of the state to intimidate and silence critics and skeptics at home and abroad.

The reality of the US has changed, but its military strategy has not.  It isn’t fair of me to judge the event by the peccadilloes of the various speakers, but I was put off by the constant lip-licking of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.  I could not get over the fact that he comes from this same military industrial establishment – and played a sad caricature of what he is – not a patriot, not a visionary, not a strategic thinker, but just a guy who understands that weapons like these, funded by the taxpayers, make a lot of people a lot of money.  He also verbally stumbled a bit when he spoke of the B-21’s nuclear payload, probably the result of thinking he was offending someone.  To his credit, he seemed like he wished he was somewhere else.

The B-21 requires the same extensive ground support – long runways and wide hangars – as its predecessor the B-2.  It is part of an old-fashioned and largely obsolete array of force projection capabilities – reluctantly and jealously “shared” between the five branches of the US military and its various global combined commands.  None of this has worked make the world a safer place, or to win a war, but I guess that’s not the point.  It has, however, demonstrated the clear advantage in global logistics that the US Air Force and Navy to some extent can bring to bear – and the bizarre speech a few months ago by Air Mobility Commander General Mike Minihan indicates that this actual success is apparently not fully appreciated by the rest of the defense establishment.  Instead of reflecting on what this might mean in terms of US security and leadership – he claims the piles of the dead for himself, for the Air Force.

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William Hartung, Mission (Im)possible — and You’re Paying for It

Posted by M. C. on February 4, 2022

When all else fails, the Pentagon’s fallback argument for the F-35 is the number of jobs it will create in states or districts of key members of Congress. As it happens, virtually any other investment of public funds would build back better with more jobs than F-35s would. Treating weapons systems as jobs programs, however, has long helped pump up Pentagon spending way beyond what’s needed to provide an adequate defense of the United States and its allies.

As it happens, though, there are just a few teeny, weeny glitches with it. For one thing, it reportedly can’t reliably either launch or retrieve the planes that make it an aircraft carrier. And for good measure, according to Bloomberg News, it can’t defend itself effectively from incoming missiles either. 

https://tomdispatch.com/what-a-waste/

Whatever the U.S. military may be considered, it isn’t usually thought of as a scam operation. Maybe it’s time to change that way of thinking, though. After all, we’re talking about a crew with a larger “defense” budget than the next 11 countries combined (and no, that’s not a misprint). Mind you, I’m not even focusing here on how a military funded, supplied, and armed like no other on this planet has proven incapable of winning a war in this century, no matter the money and effort put out. No, what’s on my mind is its weaponry in which American taxpayers have invested so many endless billions of dollars.

For example, take the latest, most up-to-date, most expensive aircraft carrier in history, the USS Gerald Ford. (Yes, it’s named after the president everyone’s forgotten, the one who took over the White House when Richard Nixon fled town in disgrace.)  Hey, what a bargain it was when Huntington Ingalls Industries delivered that vessel to the Navy for a mere (and no this isn’t a misprint either) $13 billion — $20 billion, if you’re including the aircraft it carries. And it only represents the first of a four-ship, $57-billion program.  You might imagine that, with $13 billion invested in a single ship, you’d be getting the sort of vessel that would do Star Trek proud, a futuristic creation for at least the 21st, if not the 22nd century of war.

As it happens, though, there are just a few teeny, weeny glitches with it. For one thing, it reportedly can’t reliably either launch or retrieve the planes that make it an aircraft carrier. And for good measure, according to Bloomberg News, it can’t defend itself effectively from incoming missiles either.  After “cannibalizing” parts from another aircraft carrier under construction, it is, however, finally being deployed, only four years late.

Honestly, it would be easy enough to think that I was writing a ridiculous parody here, but no such luck. And, remarkably enough, as TomDispatch regular and Pentagon expert William Hartung points out today, that ship is anything but alone in the U.S. arsenal. Just see his comments below on the F-35 jet fighter for another obvious example. In fact, as you read Hartung, ask yourself whether this boondoggle — and just about the only thing that Congress can agree on with remarkable unanimity — turns out to be a “defense” version of Watergate. So, where’s Gerald R. Ford when we really need him? Tom

What a Waste!

$778 Billion for the Pentagon and Still Counting

By William Hartung

2021 was another banner year for the military-industrial complex, as Congress signed off on a near-record $778 billion in spending for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy. That was $25 billion more than the Pentagon had even asked for.

It can’t be emphasized enough just how many taxpayer dollars are now being showered on the Pentagon. That department’s astronomical budget adds up, for instance, to more than four times the cost of the most recent version of President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which sparked such horrified opposition from Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and other alleged fiscal conservatives. Naturally, they didn’t blink when it came to lavishing ever more taxpayer dollars on the military-industrial complex.

Opposing Build Back Better while throwing so much more money at the Pentagon marks the ultimate in budgetary and national-security hypocrisy. The Congressional Budget Office has determined that, if current trends continue, the Pentagon could receive a monumental $7.3 trillion-plus over the next decade, more than was spent during the peak decade of the Afghan and Iraq wars, when there were up to 190,000 American troops in those two countries alone. Sadly, but all too predictably, President Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops and contractors from Afghanistan hasn’t generated even the slightest peace dividend. Instead, any savings from that war are already being plowed into programs to counter China, official Washington’s budget-justifying threat of choice (even if outshone for the moment by the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine). And all of this despite the fact that the United States already spends three times as much as China on its military.

The Pentagon budget is not only gargantuan, but replete with waste — from vast overcharges for spare parts to weapons that don’t work at unaffordable prices to forever wars with immense human and economic consequences. Simply put, the current level of Pentagon spending is both unnecessary and irrational.

Price Gouging on Spare Parts

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Funding Israel and Her Enemies, with Grant F. Smith

Posted by M. C. on November 19, 2020

Use link to access interview

https://mailchi.mp/28782d715dc3/whens-the-last-time-you-got-scammed?e=de2d0eded6

Did you know that the United States makes a lot of money selling weapons to the Middle East? A lot of money is exchanged, and U.S. weapons are used to fuel Middle East wars. But all the best con artists make the dupe feel like a winner. 
“Just by understanding the scam that is the QME, you can also better understand the scam that exists on a much broader level.” —Grant F. Smith
What is the scam? And how do we protect ourselves from being ripped off?

Grant F. Smith describes the QME scam in detail, involving the United States selling F-35 fighter jets to both sides of an arms race. Listen to the discussion by clicking the link below.

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Forget Huawei, US spying on Denmark shows the real threat for European countries comes from Washington — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2020

The purpose was to gather information on Denmark’s fighter jet acquisition program, with Washington aiming to secure Copenhagen’s procurement of Lockheed Martin F-35s at the expense of European defense firms.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/506964-huawei-us-spy-denmark/

Tom Fowdy is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.

Revelations that America engaged in surveillance on Denmark should come as no surprise. It has consistently spied on its allies, and its efforts to vilify Huawei are simply an attempt to create a smokescreen.

Denmark’s public broadcaster DK has revealed, citing anonymous sources, that the US National Security Agency (NSA) cooperated with the country’s intelligence services in spying on the Danish ministries of finance and foreign affairs.

The purpose was to gather information on Denmark’s fighter jet acquisition program, with Washington aiming to secure Copenhagen’s procurement of Lockheed Martin F-35s at the expense of European defense firms. 

The story, while covered in Denmark and the Netherlands, was largely ignored in the English-speaking international media. The espionage scandal comes at a time when Washington is aggressively pushing the idea of a “clean network”, demanding that European countries exclude the Chinese firm Huawei from their telecommunications networks amid allegations that it is an “espionage risk.” 

However, that isn’t what is happening here. The “clean network” isn’t really clean at all, and the threat to European countries lies far closer to home than Beijing. The US has a long, well-established history of utilizing its intelligence agreements to spy on European countries for commercial reasons, not least when it comes to the bidding of the ‘military-industrial complex.’ Yet, instead of being concerned about this, the public and media have lost themselves in hysteria about a single company, Huawei, whose alleged complicity in espionage has never been proven.

What is the military-industrial complex? The term refers to an oligarchy of American multinational aerospace and defense contractors which constitute the backbone of the US military, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon, to name a few. These companies exert a disproportionate influence over American politics in order to uphold their enormous profit margins. 

They employ a number of strategies to do so, which include the funding of think tanks that actively promote aggressive and military-led foreign policies, such as the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). But more alarmingly their representatives and lobbyists are immersed within the Washington DC system itself. Take for example Nikki Haley, who was until recently a member of Boeing’s executive board. What does she know about aerospace engineering? Nothing. What does she know about promoting war and neo-conservative policies? Plenty. 

Yet this isn’t all. What this revelation in Denmark reminds us is that the military-industrial complex also coordinates with US intelligence to promote their interests, even undermining competitors within allied countries.

For example, in 1994 it is publicly documented that the US Echelon program undermined a deal between the European firm Airbus and Saudi Arabia in order to secure a $6 billion contract for Boeing. Likewise, it was revealed several years ago that the NSA had spied on Germany’s Chancellery for decades. What has happened in Denmark is not new, it’s part of a trend. 

Despite the US spying on European countries with a view to promoting military-industrial complex interests, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s backing for the “clean network” comes with claims that the scheme promotes privacy and data security by excluding “untrusted vendors.” But it’s obvious that such a network does not exist because the US is able to infiltrate it at will; it is a disingenuous façade. 

The real reason the US seeks to exclude Huawei is not on legitimate security grounds, but to uphold its strategic monopoly over the global internet and network surveillance. Whether Huawei spies or not – and nothing has ever proved it does –  it is nonetheless a company which is not under the political control of the US and its intelligence partners, which makes its networks harder to infiltrate and subvert. 

The US hasn’t aggressively promoted its anti-Huawei campaign because it cares and acts in good faith. It has done so because there is an obvious set of interests which the rise of the Chinese company challenges, and Huawei’s growing influence also brushes against the military-industrial complex as well as America’s various internet surveillance efforts, such as Prism. 

Thus, the message should be this: forget China, the US is the biggest, most advanced and most unrivaled advocate of global surveillance in the world, much of it publicly documented and verified. Not only does America frequently spy on countries it claims to be its allies, but it also seeks to undermine their commercial interests to ensure the global monopoly and profit margins of the military-industrial complex are sustained. 

Therefore, what is described as “the clean network” is little more than hypocrisy from Pompeo, a packaged lie designed to sustain a status quo which favors Washington, and which a Chinese telecommunications firm poses a threat to.

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Israel Demands F-35s As Part Of $8 Billion Military Aid Package | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on September 20, 2020

Israel DEMANDS!

Flooding the ME with weaponry.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/israel-demands-f-35s-as-part-of-8-billion-military-aid-package/

by

With the United States set to use the peace treaty as a chance to sell F-35 warplanes to the United Arab Emirates, Israel has been pushing for a bunch of free U.S. equipment based on pledges for a region-wide qualitative edge. On Wednesday, Israel offered its first list of demands.

The way Israel envisions this going down, they’ll get some $8 billion in equipment, mostly advanced U.S.-made aircraft. This would include an entire squadron of F-35s, the very plane that was supposedly the cause of all this.

While Israel was previously objecting to the sales to the UAE as threatening their military edge, officials are now revising it, based on the reality that they’re not going to get their way on blocking sales.

Now, Israeli officials say that the F-35 sales are expected to start a new region-wide arms race, and it is the arms race for while they need all these new arms. They did not elaborate on this, but also said that they expect leadership changes in some Gulf countries.

Israel offered nothing publicly on why they would expect an arms race, or who would be involved. The reality is that the UAE doesn’t have a lot of military rivals, especially not the sort that would be able to afford an arms race. Though Iran is the catch-all excuse, Iran would never be able to afford a slew of advanced warplanes to counter the F-35s, nor would they be likely to try, given their military doctrine is based on deterrence and retaliatory capabilities.

This article was originally featured at Antiwar.com .

About Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is the News Editor for Antiwar.com, your best source for antiwar news, viewpoints and activities. He has 10 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times and the Detroit Free Press.

 

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Coronavirus Senate Republicans’ $1 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Bill Includes Billions for New Fighter Jets, Attack Helicopters, and Missiles

Posted by M. C. on August 4, 2020

The Trump administration only slashed the budget for the Navy’s procure P–8A Poseidon aircraft by $180 million, but is now seeing its funding increased by $1 billion, reports the Post.

In the best spirit of never letting a  good crisis go to waste we had coronavirus relief money going to diversify corporate boards in the first go around.

Now we  are helping the pentagram fight coronavirus.

I see a gap in college “studies” programs. We need coronavirus studies program to help fill the giant employment gap in professors that teach studies programs.

Still, I am relieved government is on top of this situation.

https://reason.com/2020/07/28/senate-republicans-1-trillion-covid-19-relief-bill-includes-billions-for-new-fighter-jets-attack-helicopters-and-missiles/

The $1 trillion coronavirus relief package released by Senate Republicans this week includes billions of dollars for new weapons and defense projects that appear to have little to do with fighting the pandemic.

Part of the Senate Republicans’ relief package—collectively known as the Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection and Schools (HEALS) Act—is a $306 billion appropriations bill authored by Sen. Richard Shelby (R–Ala.). That legislation includes close to $30 billion in defense spending, with a good chunk of that money allocated to purchasing new aircraft, ships, and missiles.

“I believe we need to act with a sense of urgency. The American people are fighters, but the accumulated strain of this pandemic is a serious burden on folks,” said Shelby, who chairs the Senate’s Appropriations Committee, in a press release. “With the additional resources this legislation provides, I believe we can give them greater confidence that we are getting our arms around this virus.”

Speaking of arms, Shelby’s bill includes $283 million for the Army through the end of 2022 “to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally” on the condition that money be spent on acquiring AH–64 Apache attack helicopters made by Boeing.

The legislation also gives the Army another $375 million for upgrading its complement of Stryker armored personnel carriers, which are made by General Dynamics. The Army reportedly awarded the company a $2.48 billion contract to build new, more mine-resistant Stryker vehicles in June. The text of the HEALS Act says that this funding will come in addition to any money that’s already been allocated.

The Air Force, meanwhile, will get $686 million to purchase more F-35As, a fighter plane made by Lockheed Martin. Its development has been plagued by cost overruns and delays. The bill will also put $720 million into funding buying more C-130J military transport aircraft, in addition to $650 million to pay for replacement wings for the Air Force’s A-10 aircraft.

The Navy will get its beak wet too, receiving $1 billion to purchase P–8A Poseidon aircraft, plus $1.4 billion for new medical ships, $260 million for a new Expeditionary Fast Transport vessel, $41 million for new Naval Strike Missiles and launchers (made by Raytheon), as a well as close to $50 million for submarine-detecting “sonobuoys.”

The Washington Post reports that many of these programs had their funding repurposed to help pay for President Donald Trump’s border wall. Republicans’ coronavirus legislation replaces that funding, and then some.

The Trump administration only slashed the budget for the Navy’s procure P–8A Poseidon aircraft by $180 million, but is now seeing its funding increased by $1 billion, reports the Post.

The Department of Defense is hardly the only recipient of generous line items in the Senate GOP’s relief bill. The Trump administration reportedly requested that the legislation include $1.75 billion for a new FBI headquarters building (although the Wall Street Journal reports that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) has come against that particular item).

Whether all this defense pork will end up being passed by the Senate remains to be seen.

Given that the Senate just last week approved a $740 billion defense spending bill, and the federal government ran an $864 billion budget deficit last month, one could argue now is not the time to spend more money on the military.

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How many ways can Israel wage war on Iran before the media reports Israel is waging war on Iran? – Mondoweiss

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2020

So, although The New York Times was wrong, it was right. The illusory event did not add another physical act of war to Israel’s resume. It added another new kind of war to the resume: missile attacks, bomb attacks, cyber attacks, assassinations, political assassinations and, now, economic warfare. How many different ways can Israel wage war on Iran before it is transparent that Israel is waging war on Iran?

https://mondoweiss.net/2020/07/how-many-ways-can-israel-wage-war-on-iran-before-the-media-reports-israel-is-waging-war-on-iran/

By

Israel just bombed Iran. And no one noticed.

On July 2, 2020, two explosions erupted in Iran, and both seem to have been ignited by Israel. Neither explosion attracted much reporting, and what reporting there has been remains thin and confused.

The first report came out on the afternoon of July 3. The Jerusalem Post picked up a story from Kuwait’s Al-Jarida, reporting that a fire had broken out at Iran’s civilian Natanz nuclear enrichment site. The Kuwaiti report says that an unnamed senior source informed them that the fire was caused by an Israeli cyber attack. They suggest that Iran will need about two months to recover from the attack. Iranian officials have since confirmed that, though none of the underground centrifuges were damaged, the above ground damage is extensive, and that their centrifuge program has been substantially set back.

The second attack exploded near Parchin, at a site claimed to be a missile production facility. Citing the same Kuwaiti paper, The Times of Israel attributed the Parchin explosion to missiles dropped by Israeli F-35 stealth fighters.

The Parchin story has drawn little further attention and remains undeveloped, but the Natanz story has confusingly evolved. Though unnamed Iranian officials seemed at first to side with the cyber attack theory, some experts sided with a different theory: that the Natanz explosion was not a cyber attack but an actual, bolder physical attack. In a rare piece of mainstream reporting, The New York Times seems to confirm the physical attack theory. Relying on a “Middle Eastern intelligence official with knowledge of the episode,” the Times reports that the Natanz nuclear complex was not hit by a cyber attack, as it has been previously, but by a “powerful bomb.” The intelligence official added that “Israel was responsible for the attack.” The Times report supports the intelligence source by adding that a “member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who was briefed on the matter also said an explosive was used.” According to the Revolutionary Guards source, it is likely that someone carried the bomb into the building.

These two attacks seem to add dropping missiles from the sky and walking bombs in on the ground to Israel’s resume of acts of war on Iran. And the resume is long.

Cyber Attacks

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Lawmakers’ Military Earmarks Are Exploding Like Fireworks | The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on July 6, 2020

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/lawmaker-military-earmarks-are-exploding-like-fireworks/

Thought these congressional goodies were banned? Wait until you see the latest National Defense Authorization Act.

ungvar/Shutterstock
Ross Marchand

It’s that time of year again, when lawmakers, Pentagon officials, and observers on the sidelines quibble over what should—and should not—be in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Two weeks after the Senate Armed Services Committee advanced their version of the 2021 NDAA, the House Armed Services Committee advanced their own NDAA. Passions have been high and policymakers have tried inserting everything from base naming requirements and stricter “Buy American” provisions to (much-needed) transparency changes.

But regardless of how the House and Senate reconcile their respective NDAA versions, there’s the lingering inevitability of hundreds of earmarks worth billions of dollars being added as the legislation moves from authorization to appropriation. Typically, the earmarks range from $100,000 for research projects to billions of dollars for unrequested weapons systems. If lawmakers are serious about fixing waste, fraud, and abuse at the Department of Defense (DoD), they’ll need to keep earmarks out of the budget. It won’t be easy for Congress, but taxpayers deserve better than pet projects and endless deficits and debt.

When the media reports DoD spending figures, it’s tempting for them to focus on the topline numbers such as the fiscal year (FY) 2020 budget of $738 billion, which amounts to nearly $6,000 for each American household. Annual DoD spending has increased roughly $200 billion over the past five years, and easily matches (or exceeds) what the U.S. was spending on Defense during the Iraq War 10-15 years ago. But in the grand scheme of things, the media often neglects the disturbing trend of Congress lavishing earmarks onto the Pentagon that were never requested by DoD. Last year, for example, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance found the FY 2020 Defense bill contained an astounding 785 earmarks totaling $16.1 billion(click here for the full list).

Unsurprisingly, the top two slots on the list were taken by the F-35 program, which has an estimated lifetime cost of $1.5 trillion. Despite well-documented dysfunctions with the F-35, lawmakers threw an extra $2 billion in taxpayer money toward the ailing program. For example, the fighter jet’s sea search mode is only capable of examining a small sliver of sea surface while pilots have been complaining about barotrauma and sinus pains while onboard.

Even the supply chain for procuring parts is out-of-whack. The Government Accountability Office notes, “to keep aircraft flying despite parts shortages, from May through November 2018 F-35 squadrons cannibalized (that is, took) parts from other aircraft at rates that were more than six times greater than the services’ objective…personnel at F-35 squadrons are pulling parts off of other aircraft that are already unable to fly instead of waiting for new parts to be delivered through the supply chain.”

Despite these well-documented problems, lawmakers are all-but-certain to request more for the program than Pentagon officials say they will need.

And if the past is any guide, the volume of earmarks will continue to increase. FY 2020’s total of 785 earmarks represented a 15.6 increase from FY 2019’s total of 679 earmarks. This doesn’t seem possible, since there’s supposedly been a ban in place on earmarks since 2011. But lawmakers have ignored the ban and just gotten sneakier, cobbling vague language into bills that doesn’t (strictly speaking) benefit their districts.

But when situations arise such as Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) securing hundreds of millions of dollars for body armor production, taxpayers can’t help but wonder if the funding serves the country, 3M (which is based in Saint Paul, Minnesota), or Rep. McCollum’s reelection bid.  Body armor is undoubtedly important, but a competitive grants process (not earmarks) would be the best way to ensure money is spent wisely.

Clearly, a ban on earmarks hasn’t been enough to deter the self-serving behavior that sows mistrust of Washington, D.C. So, it’s up to lawmakers, taxpayers, and advocacy organizations to call out this behavior and hold members of Congress accountable for wasteful spending. And with the 2020 federal deficit approaching $4 trillion, it’s more important than ever to end these shenanigans. Policymakers shouldn’t let all the intrigue on Capitol Hill get in the way of discipline and accountability.

Ross Marchand is the Vice President of Policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. 

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