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Costs a Bundle and Can't Fly
by Jason Vest
For the past decade, numerous career military officers and defense analysts--whose
politics run the gamut from left to right--have held that U.S. combat in the
twenty-first
century probably won't mean grand, conventional battles with large standing armies.
And September 11 suggests that these experts are right: Rather than a "rogue state"
raining down ballistic missiles on us, or hordes of Red Chinese flexing regionally
hegemonic muscle, low-tech operatives of an unorthodox army turned airplanes into
bombs. For its part, the United States, in taking the fight to the parastatal entity
behind the terrorist attacks, won the first round with a combination of highly mobile
special- operations forces and the venerable B-52.
So what does the Bush administration do? Ask for a jacked-up defense budget: an
increase of $120 billion over the next five years (an extra $48 billion for fiscal year
2003 alone). The increase exceeds any other nation's entire war chest. It includes
tens of billions of dollars for weapons systems that aren't likely to see any action,
because they're rooted in a long-gone era and, to make matters worse, they won't
roll off the assembly lines for some time. "For 45 years of the Cold War, we were in
an arms race with the Soviet Union," says retired Admiral Eugene Carroll of the
Center for Defense Information. "Now it appears we're in an arms race with
ourselves."
Of course, it would be nice if the administration funneled some tax dollars into
programs that are of real use to troops or into new systems that would actually work
on today's altered landscape of war. After all, as Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld said last year, "every dollar squandered on waste is one denied to the war
fighter." No such luck. Indeed, in one case, the misappropriated dollar is not only
denied the soldier but goes to a weapon more lethal to us than enemy ordnance.
The V-22 Osprey, a tilt-rotor aircraft under the aegis of the U.S. Marine Corps, has
killed more Marines than the Taliban has. It's perennially in an "experimental" stage.
Four prototypes have crashed in the past 10 years, killing a total of 30 men, including
the program's most experienced hand. Not long after the last crash, which occurred
in December 2000, a report from the Pentagon understated in calling the Osprey
program "not operationally sustainable." Even Dick Cheney, as defense secretary
under the elder George Bush, tried to quash it. The current administration could have
followed the March 2000 recommendation by the Congressional Budget Office to find
safer and better applications for the technology developed in the program--a move
that the CBO estimated would save $6.6 billion over the next decade. President
Bush, however, wants Congress to give the Marines another $2 billion for the
program. Meanwhile, the Air Force has requested $124 million for work on its own
version of the disaster-prone aircraft.
How exactly this represents "transformation" of the U.S. military is unclear. But
arguably even more puzzling is the blizzard of new dollars for the Army's $9-billion
Crusader self-propelled artillery system. This 42-ton behemoth--meant to replace the
Paladin self-propelled howitzer--is a screaming contradiction to the doctrine of
"maneuver warfare" that Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki espouses. It is so unwieldy
that neither the C-5 Galaxy nor the C-17 Globemaster, the two biggest aircraft in the
military's cargo fleet, can carry a complete Crusader system. Although the CBO and
the General Accounting Office (GAO) have reported that there is a more cost-
effective alternative in the German-made Panzerhaubitze (PzH) 2000 self- propelled
howitzer--replacing the Crusader with the PzH 2000 would save taxpayers $6.7
billion--the Crusader proceeds apace with an additional $467 million.
Elsewhere in the Pentagon, if anything's ripe for a cutting, it's the Air Force's F-22
Raptor program. Already drowning in $9 billion worth of cost overruns, the plane that
holds the dubious distinction of being the costliest fighter aircraft ever built does
not,
in the view of most experts, do anything very different from the Joint Strike Fighter,
also in development. Nor is it a huge improvement on the existing F-15's and F-16's.
While the Center for Defense Information believes that the F-22 program is too far
along to eliminate altogether, a strong case can be made for reining it in, as the cost
of each aircraft has ballooned by 24 percent in the past year alone. According to the
CBO, restricting production of F-22's and relying more on existing F-15's would save
$10 billion over the next decade. For 2003, however, the Air Force wants $5.3 billion-
-an increase of $1.3 billion--for 23 new pairs of Raptor wings.
When it comes to cost-prohibitive aircraft, the Air Force doesn't have a corner on the
market. The Bush administration has also rewarded the ineptitude of the Army's
Comanche helicopter project, which is currently in its sixth incarnation. Initiated in
1983, the Comanche program has yet to deliver much in the way of results; at one
point, hopes were high that an aircraft might actually be produced by this year, but
the latest estimate is that the rotors may turn by 2004. As far as the GAO can tell,
the
only thing about the Comanche that flies is its price of production--and soar it has,
from $43.3 billion in 1999 to $48.1 billion in 2001. The CBO estimates that buying
new models of helicopters that are proved to work would enable the Army to save
$6.3 billion and still meet its mission requirements. The Bush administration,
however, is pumping another $910 million into the Comanche--prompting one senior
Pentagon analyst to wonder if "this money can be followed and frozen by law
enforcement as part of the war on terrorism, as the program is clearly as much a
threat to the U.S. military as any marauding armed force in the world."
Indeed, it is curious that Bush--who professes outrage at the dubious dealings of
Enron and Arthur Andersen--feels so confident asking Congress for all this and more
(don't forget the $7.8-billion request for additional work on missile defense) when the
Pentagon's accounting practices make Enron and Andersen look like sticklers for
detail. In recent years, the GAO and the Defense Department's inspector general
have found trillions of dollars' worth of unsupportable accounting adjustments; the
books are in such disarray that the Defense Department can't even be effectively
audited. And it isn't just the Bush administration that's culpable. Members of
Congress from both sides of the aisle are enabling punch-drunk procurement by
voting to keep and even expand programs in the name of local jobs--all at the
expense of the national interest.
Jason Vest
Copyright � 2002 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Jason Vest,
"Costs a Bundle and Can't Fly," The American Prospect vol. 13 no. 5, March 11,
2002 . This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of
any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about
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