Toward a Sustainable Defense Posture

The Project on Defense Alternatives has a report out, "Toward a Sustainable Defense Posture" arguing for some modest reductions in America's currently gargantuan defense budget. Specifically, they say that "Cutting two air force fighter wings and two navy fighter wings (along with their associated aircraft carriers) can save the nation more than $60 billion over the next five years." More than enough to finance America's share of a global universal education plan with plenty left over for mosquito nets or clean drinking water or whatever else you like.

UPDATE: Now with working links!

Comments

Could you please provide an actual link to the report? Thanks.

Posted by klafldsjas | August 6, 2007 4:36 PM

Right. Because none of the Santa Claus party's proposals (e.g., universal health care) will cost more than $60 billion over the next five years.

Here's a modest suggestion: if we are going to throw money at boil-the-ocean fantasies like educating the world, why don't we take that money out of our domestic education budgets instead of out of our defense budget?

Posted by Fred | August 6, 2007 4:40 PM

Gee I don't know... maybe because our defense budget is absurdly large and our education budget is quite small?

Posted by DJ | August 6, 2007 4:43 PM

oooh. and if we'd get the fuck out of Iraq, we could save $100B/year !

so, we could keep our fancy fighter jets, and have $440B left over!

Posted by cleek | August 6, 2007 4:49 PM

The rather obvious strategy for a Democrat to cut the Defense budget is to INCREASE the number of uniformed personnel, at the expense of (Republican) private contractors and weapons development.

So, you increase the nominal size of the uniformed units. Some of those units have more people peeling potatoes and taking care of logistics and communications and the like, which is now performed at great expense by the Republican patronage machine known as the 'private' sector.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | August 6, 2007 4:56 PM

Fred:

If the term "Santa Claus party" is to have any meaning, it needs to be applied to the party that, for a good 25+ years now, has been arguing that deficits don't matter and that you can cut taxes and increase spending with impunity. The GOP has peddled this political equivalent of the perpetual motion machine (or cold fusion) with no shame.

In reality, most Americans would welcome universal health care, particularly if it was accompanied by a raise from their employer of $5-10k.

Posted by space | August 6, 2007 5:08 PM

Fred, representing the party that's spent about $1.5 trillion on an unsuccessful war of choice, believes that it's the otherparty that spends recklessly . . .

Posted by rea | August 6, 2007 5:22 PM

I find it hard to believe that one could obtain such massive cost savings by marginal reductions in Air Force and Navy fighter wings (i.e., reductions at the margins -- the number of planes in four fighter wings is not marginal in the sense of tiny). For weapons systems like state-of-the-art fighters, the costs of development are massive and the additional costs of building one more plane are relatively low. (In bygone days, manufacturers could make their money selling more planes over time to foreign countries, but there are fewer countries willing and able to buy top-of-the-line air superiority fighters from us, and the numbers they'll buy are smaller and smaller.) This suggests that truly large costs savings are to be found in cancelling entire weapons systems, rather than in cutting back a little on the number of planes made. The problem with doing that, however, is that it gets you accused of being soft on defense.

Posted by Tyrone Slothrop | August 6, 2007 5:37 PM

Um, what is the threat our air force is going to fight?

Posted by Gore/Edwards 08 | August 6, 2007 6:43 PM

Regarding jet fighters the proposed FY2008 Defense Authorization Bill includes 20 F-22 at $3.2 billion, 18 EA-18G at $1.3 billion and 33 F/A-18E/F at $2.6 billion. (These figures exclude apportioned R&D costs, which are also in the bill.) That makes the unit production costs of these aircraft: $160, $70 and $78 million respectively.

The F-22 costs have become hideous but the contractors have wisely spread the contracting into about 200 congressional districts so it's unstoppable.

Posted by Don Bacon | August 6, 2007 6:56 PM

Threat? Rumsfeld didn't see any conventional threat.

"This is a different world we're in today. It's unconventional instead of conventional; it's asymmetric instead of symmetric; it's irregular instead of regular; and it is so different for us that we need to get adjusted to it in this new century and learn to fight this battle as effectively as we were successful with respect to the Cold War.

"You know if you think about it normally one thinks of a war or a conflict of big armies and navies and air forces competing against each other. That's been the history. But that is something that is not taking place today. We're up against networks of people who operate in the shadows, who don't have nations to defend, who don't have bureaucracies to manage, people who are determined to reestablish a caliphate in this world and to take out moderate governments and to change the lives of free people."

Posted by Don Bacon | August 6, 2007 7:10 PM

Pretty stupid idea. Try to transfer US taxpayer funds to educate 3rd Worlders to a level of Mohammed Atta, Sheikh Nasrallah, Koumeini, OBL, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed by mothballing two carrier battle groups as China races to build a blue-water fighting fleet with more subs than we have and Russia just making a strategic decision to rebuild elements of its blue water Navy and is building 5th Gen fighter jets better than all but our F-22.

Of course such a move makes sense to long time Leftists who hate our military (but LOVE and SUPPORT the troops soooo much, doncha know!)

BTW, the US completed it's investigation on Beauchamp and his charges of monstrous behavior by Alpha Company, 1/18, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division. Colonel Steve Boylan, public affairs officer to Commanding General, Iraq, David Petreaus, reported that: [All members of Beauchamp's platoon and company were interviewed. No one could substantiate his claims. PVT2 Beauchamp was confronted on discrepencies between himself and all other soldiers in his company and platoon, and incidents that purportedly took place while it was impossible Beauchamp could have witnessed them from his recorded place and duties. He was unable to explain with any clarity the events, or provide an explaination. The investigation concluded the allegations were false.]

Of course, this apparant vindication will be a huge relief to the Lefties that LOVE and SUPPORT our troops like their own best friends, children, gay lovers...
TNR is on vacation now.
Can't wait to see the next phase as they pit their fact checkers reputation after they had "multiple anonymous sources" confirm Beauchamp - with the official Army interviews of all soldiers involved that point to Beauchamp being a bad soldier and pathological liar..

Posted by Chris Ford | August 6, 2007 7:55 PM

Chris, I realize it's hard for you guys to talk about anything else, but really, this thread's not about Beauchamp.

Posted by cleek | August 6, 2007 8:51 PM

Damn straight! We gotta keep them towel heads poor and illiterate or else they'll all become terrorists huh Chris?

You angling for a gig in Tancredo's cabinet?

Posted by DJ | August 6, 2007 10:43 PM

"...can save the nation more than $60 billion over the next five years." More than enough to finance America's share of a global universal education plan with plenty left....

So, in Matt's universe borrowing $60 billion less from China over the next 5 years = "saving more than $60 bilion over the next 5 years".

And sure, we can't police the world, but by golly we can educate it, never mind we haven't yet figured out how to educate a lot of our own people.

Honestly, is this what passes for thinking these days?

Posted by kafka | August 6, 2007 11:06 PM

"And sure, we can't police the world, but by golly we can educate it, never mind we haven't yet figured out how to educate a lot of our own people."

The vast bulk of our population is educated efficiently. It is the most difficult to educate segment that is expensive, difficult and prominent in the news. A significant portion of the world's population can be educated cheaply and efficiently. In the potentially targetted countries, teaching labor costs and rents are low.

About 75-90% of US exports are targetted toward advanced countries with educated populations.

Posted by Njorl | August 7, 2007 9:19 AM

"Try to transfer US taxpayer funds to educate 3rd Worlders to a level of Mohammed Atta, Sheikh Nasrallah, Koumeini, OBL, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "

The point would be to set up something to compete with the madrassas. Quite a lot of money flows out of Saudi Arabia to set up extremist education facilities in poor countries. Sometimes they are the only schools around.

Posted by Njorl | August 7, 2007 9:22 AM

Besides, think of the PR benefits. For too many people, their main contact with the US is seeing US troops killing people on the news. Imagine if there were an American School in every major town in Pakistan. Think that might affect people's attitudes? For, say, under $500,000 per school per year, you could make a real impression.

Posted by ajay | August 7, 2007 9:36 AM

The problem is things like the F-35 Lightning are SO FREAKIN' COOL, and we're getting closer to using lasers and other neat stuff....

Posted by MNPundit | August 7, 2007 1:03 PM

but those jets are just so fucking cool

Posted by jonathan | August 7, 2007 1:49 PM

Cancel the F35A purchase. replace with smaller numbers of of f22s. A-air force version. Navy and marines need their b and c versions.

decreasing the # of carriers and make up for the loss with rotating crews and raise the deployment to over a year on station.

keep the number of a-10's in service high.

lower the DDX buy.

Posted by aaron | August 8, 2007 2:52 AM

From the June 14th Economist:

"Rear Admiral William McRaven, head of the [US] special forces now operating in the Sahara, says his men are much more likely to drill boreholes and build houses than to shoot at anyone. “I don't want a fragile state collapsing any more than Greenpeace or USAID does,” he says."

This is not to say our Special Forces should be poking holes in the ground. It is to say USG needs to consider means other than just shooting people to win hearts and minds, and that the biggest ROI comes from helping provide safe drinking water.

Posted by John Oldfield | August 8, 2007 8:46 AM