Gates To Take On Military Big-Ticket Procurement

By Steve Hynd

The Boston Globe says that SecDef Bob Gates is ready to carry through on his often-promised transformation of the US military into a force orientated towards "small wars" rather than big ones - and in the process will be cutting big-ticket procurements beloved by pork-barrel politicians, think-tankers paid to think by folks who build tanks (and jets and ships) and turf-guarding senior officers.

Two defense officials who were not authorized to speak publicly said Gates will announce up to a half-dozen major weapons cancellations later this month. Candidates include a new Navy destroyer, the Air Force’s F-22 fighter jet, and Army ground-combat vehicles, the officials said.

More cuts are planned for later this year after a review that could lead to reductions in programs such as aircraft carriers and nuclear arms, the officials said. […]

“Let’s be honest with ourselves,” Gates told the National Defense University last September. “The most likely catastrophic threats to our homeland — for example, an American city poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack — are more likely to emanate from failed states than from aggressor states.”

Matt Duss calls this "welcome news". Democracy Arsenal says Gates is serious but "the services are not." But I want to inject a note of caution for progressives - this plan doesn't necessarily mean that the military budget will be smaller or that the U.S. will become less inclined towards military interventionism to solve intractable foreign policy problems. In fact, the reverse might be true.

Firstly, as Matt writes, this isn't about reducing the overall military budget - it's about repurposing it. While shiny toys are to get the axe (presuming Gates and the Obama administration can overcome recalcitrance from lawmakers and officers as well as intense industry-funded lobbying) there's still going to be a lot of stuff to spend lots of money on. 

The U.S. Army and Marines are to collectively add about 92,000 personnel, an increase of about 12% in manpower but since most will be slated for active duty combat brigades it is likely to mean more like a 20% ($30 billion) increase in annual running costs and an initial stand-up bill of about $80 billion. Standing up these new troops will be far better stimulus spending than any other kind of defense spending but don't expect to get clear answers about costs from the Pentagon or White House. Those figures are back-of-the-envelope estimates based on what is known of current costs but no military department has ever done a full assessment of the cost of sustaining its operations so they have to be estimates.

Then there's all the other military spending Obama and Gates intend - the transformation of the military into a COIN force as promised on WhiteHouse.Gov: "civil affairs, information operations, and other units and capabilities that remain in chronic short supply; invest in foreign language training, cultural awareness, and human intelligence and other needed counterinsurgency and stabilization skill sets; and create a more robust capacity to train, equip, and advise foreign security forces." None of that is cheap, especially when you're talking about tens of thousands of people to be trained. Add in "greater investment in advanced technology ranging from the revolutionary, like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and electronic warfare capabilities", increasing the number of Maritime Pre-Positioning Force Squadrons and investing in more small ships to see even more savings being swallowed up by the military machine instead of going to solve other problems. Add in the expenses for Iraq until withdrawal and the expected one to two decades in Afghanistan that no COINdinista really wants to talk about, neither of which will be funded by supplementals anymore, and the bill could easily swallow any savings from cutting F-22 and other big-ticket programs.

Add in another costly intervention using all that expensive COIN training and you can forget the military seeing any reduction in budget - an increase would be more likely.

An that's my second problem with Gates' transformation. He doesn't see it as a money saver but as a means to, as Matt Duss puts it, "provide both short-term and long-term all the capabilities necessary to fight and win conflicts such as we are in today.” And if the U.S. thinks it can win COIN conflicts, no matter how lengthy and costly they are expected to be, there will be a distinct establishment tendency to reach for the COIN hammer. Sure, there's no point in having an army deliberately designed to fight poorly but it's hardly a new insight to say the U.S. overuses its military, COIN or no COIN. Expecting these projected cuts in the "shiny toy" budget to affect either the overall bill for the military or America's interventionist tendencies would be an overstretch.