The Economist on the US's biggest military problem
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From: Ferrara
The Economist on the US's biggest military problem
From a long article this weekend:-
America’s defence budget, at over $800bn a year, is far and away the world’s biggest, but allocating it is a ludicrously slow and political process. In theory, the administration lays out its defence strategy, the service chiefs tell the secretary of defence what they need to fulfil those goals and the administration then requests the sums necessary from Congress. In practice, things are not nearly so simple. Service chiefs sometimes lobby Congress directly to approve pet projects. Lawmakers often prevent the Pentagon from retiring obsolete weapons if their home state will be harmed. And Congress micromanages, allowing the Pentagon to move around no more than $6bn within the budget, and even then only with the approval of senior members of Congress for each slice of $15m or more.
The most baleful consequence of all this is interminable delay.
Drones in Ukraine have their software, sensors and radios swapped out every six weeks or so. Year-old AI is archaic. Yet the gap between the start of the Pentagon’s budget process and any money appearing is—at a minimum—two years. ................................
... In August 2023 Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defence at the time, announced that the Pentagon planned to buy “multiple thousands” of easily upgradeable drones to be ready within two years. T...................... “Replicator is delivering a lot of capability fast at a low relative price point.” .................drones with a pricetag of $17,000 apiece in 2018-22 now cost less than a tenth of that.
But to talk Congress into allocating just $500m to Replicator—about half of one percent of the defence budget—Ms Hicks and her team had to conduct nearly 40 briefings. Another example is Other Transaction Authority (OTA), a procedural innovation that allows departments to buy things without getting bogged down in the Federal Acquisition Regulation, a 2,000-page Talmudic set of rules that has spawned a priesthood of procurement officers. The Pentagon has spent $86bn via OTAs to date, mostly over the past five years, notes Austin Gray, who runs a defence startup. But their use has now “plateaued”..........................................
America’s defence budget, at over $800bn a year, is far and away the world’s biggest, but allocating it is a ludicrously slow and political process. In theory, the administration lays out its defence strategy, the service chiefs tell the secretary of defence what they need to fulfil those goals and the administration then requests the sums necessary from Congress. In practice, things are not nearly so simple. Service chiefs sometimes lobby Congress directly to approve pet projects. Lawmakers often prevent the Pentagon from retiring obsolete weapons if their home state will be harmed. And Congress micromanages, allowing the Pentagon to move around no more than $6bn within the budget, and even then only with the approval of senior members of Congress for each slice of $15m or more.
The most baleful consequence of all this is interminable delay.
Drones in Ukraine have their software, sensors and radios swapped out every six weeks or so. Year-old AI is archaic. Yet the gap between the start of the Pentagon’s budget process and any money appearing is—at a minimum—two years. ................................
... In August 2023 Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defence at the time, announced that the Pentagon planned to buy “multiple thousands” of easily upgradeable drones to be ready within two years. T...................... “Replicator is delivering a lot of capability fast at a low relative price point.” .................drones with a pricetag of $17,000 apiece in 2018-22 now cost less than a tenth of that.
But to talk Congress into allocating just $500m to Replicator—about half of one percent of the defence budget—Ms Hicks and her team had to conduct nearly 40 briefings. Another example is Other Transaction Authority (OTA), a procedural innovation that allows departments to buy things without getting bogged down in the Federal Acquisition Regulation, a 2,000-page Talmudic set of rules that has spawned a priesthood of procurement officers. The Pentagon has spent $86bn via OTAs to date, mostly over the past five years, notes Austin Gray, who runs a defence startup. But their use has now “plateaued”..........................................
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From: UK
From a long article this weekend:-
America’s defence budget, at over $800bn a year, is far and away the world’s biggest, but allocating it is a ludicrously slow and political process. In theory, the administration lays out its defence strategy, the service chiefs tell the secretary of defence what they need to fulfil those goals and the administration then requests the sums necessary from Congress. In practice, things are not nearly so simple. Service chiefs sometimes lobby Congress directly to approve pet projects. Lawmakers often prevent the Pentagon from retiring obsolete weapons if their home state will be harmed. And Congress micromanages, allowing the Pentagon to move around no more than $6bn within the budget, and even then only with the approval of senior members of Congress for each slice of $15m or more.
etc.
America’s defence budget, at over $800bn a year, is far and away the world’s biggest, but allocating it is a ludicrously slow and political process. In theory, the administration lays out its defence strategy, the service chiefs tell the secretary of defence what they need to fulfil those goals and the administration then requests the sums necessary from Congress. In practice, things are not nearly so simple. Service chiefs sometimes lobby Congress directly to approve pet projects. Lawmakers often prevent the Pentagon from retiring obsolete weapons if their home state will be harmed. And Congress micromanages, allowing the Pentagon to move around no more than $6bn within the budget, and even then only with the approval of senior members of Congress for each slice of $15m or more.
etc.
Leader article "Will Donald Trump and Elon Musk wreck or reform the Pentagon?" [archive.ph]: https://archive.ph/PPx1J
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From: Oil Capital of Central Scotland
The problem is probably not the Pentagon, but appears to be the American Political System and national hierarchy of towns, counties, states etc. as a whole is no longer fit for purpose. Its response time was still probably OK when it took a couple of days to cross the country with news of a new development, but now that a new technological development can be in place and be on its third or fourth commercial revision inside a couple of months just blows the speed of response out of the water.
This isn't something that's particularly unique to the US systems (deliberate plural) of Government that are currently in place. [I recall a Sci-fi novel that had a galaxy wide "Bureau of Sabotage" whose role was to slow down developments and law making to allow Government & Technology to co-exist].
Is it likely that something will change in the systems of Government to allow themto be fixed any time soon? unlikely.....
This isn't something that's particularly unique to the US systems (deliberate plural) of Government that are currently in place. [I recall a Sci-fi novel that had a galaxy wide "Bureau of Sabotage" whose role was to slow down developments and law making to allow Government & Technology to co-exist].
Is it likely that something will change in the systems of Government to allow themto be fixed any time soon? unlikely.....
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From: Texas
This "problem' has been very well known for about 40 years.
I suggest you look at how long it took to get UTTAS from "this is what we require" (in about 1970) to IOC in about 1978.
For those unaware, this is the comparatively uncomplex weapons system known to the world as UH-60 Blackhawk.
(One of our Rotorheads contributors, John Dixson, was on that project).
If you look at the degree of complexity increase for something like F-35 (and the long competition between two major aircraft manufacturers to get a 'win' on that program) it only gets more difficult.
F-18 was another classic case of "this took a while" and what we got in the F-18 A/B was not great.
Subsequent variants were better.
We also had the problem of buying an overprice piece of dog mess, the LCS.
I suggest you look at how long it took to get UTTAS from "this is what we require" (in about 1970) to IOC in about 1978.
For those unaware, this is the comparatively uncomplex weapons system known to the world as UH-60 Blackhawk.
(One of our Rotorheads contributors, John Dixson, was on that project).
If you look at the degree of complexity increase for something like F-35 (and the long competition between two major aircraft manufacturers to get a 'win' on that program) it only gets more difficult.
F-18 was another classic case of "this took a while" and what we got in the F-18 A/B was not great.
Subsequent variants were better.
We also had the problem of buying an overprice piece of dog mess, the LCS.
Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 17th February 2025 at 22:03.
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From: Europe
This "problem' has been very well known for about 40 years.
I suggest you look at how long it took to get UTTAS from "this is what we require" (in about 1979) to IOC in about 1978.
For those unaware, this is the comparatively uncomplex weapons system known to the world as UH-60 Blackhawk.
I suggest you look at how long it took to get UTTAS from "this is what we require" (in about 1979) to IOC in about 1978.
For those unaware, this is the comparatively uncomplex weapons system known to the world as UH-60 Blackhawk.
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From: Texas
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From: USA
The depth of FAR is because people get very concerned when money is stolen and just as concerned when a project doesn't pan out. They complain that public money should be unerringly spent on only exact and narrow problems and fail to notice that in no other field of endeavor is that anywhere close to being true. It gets worse in peace time because everyone has some ideas about threats. Some feel like there is no threat because there is no war and others want to brace against a foe that has infinite resources backed by diabolical geniuses. The latter leads to such as our side building to stop an army that Russia never had as a stop-gap momentary slow-down to an all-out thermonuclear exchange. So we have the F-35 and the stealth fighter and bomber to attack a country that keeps getting hit by the equivalent of a Cessna 172 with some dynamite as cargo. I won't disapprove of the advanced fighters against that sort of paper defense which mean that the pilots are coming home, but there is a cost to that level of performance.
In spite of this it is still possible to bring a bulk carrier sized vessel alongside one of the most costly ships to ever be constructed and ram into it (and vice versa) and what if that bulk carrier was filled with TNT and a detonator? The carrier would have evaporated.
People are just terrible at making predictions when little is going on. Ukraine has rapid development of drones because they can see what the threat is and that threat is waves of meat, mainly on foot or riding golf-carts, with a few weakly armored vehicles. The Ukranians can readily adapt because they can see what works and what fails to work. They can create inexpensive solutions because the problems are pinpoint in extent. Like when the bouncing bomb was developed in WWII - it didn't solve any but a single problem - a dam.
In peacetime everyone wants the most for their money and instead of the uneconomical solution of building 5,000 different lines of aircraft, each tailored to a single mission, they try to cram solutions to every imaginable problem into one or two; the price goes up and the demand to cover one more facet of warfare increases each time.
For example, in a war with Russia, is it better to have an air superiority fighter to meet their best pilots in aerial duels or to have a large number of low-observable, kamikaze drones that obliterate the fuel dumps required to operate those Russian jets? I expect the drones are far less expensive to end that air war, but it's not going to be popular as a DoD contract.
There is a tendency to put a lot of eggs into a basket and then up-armor the basket. And then not use the eggs because the eggs are too expensive.
The economics are tougher. The US spends a lot on the military and it is easy to think that money somehow evaporates. But look at the parking lots around defense contractor facilities. That money isn't just buying military equipment, it's buying cars, houses, shopping centers, fire stations, groceries, hospitals, and all of those create jobs for other people. It's a huge economic pump that keeps a bunch of smart people occupied and out of trouble in a society that has decreasing use for that talent and it provides for a huge number outside of the initial footprint.
I may be biased, but this country doesn't like to spend money on infrastructure which is one place to absorb engineers, and it has incentivized moving manufacturing off shore by bad taxation policies; defense is one of the few that demand US-made items; where would the defense engineers go? I knew a few retired to sell real estate.
Other nations, as part of their industrialization, have spent a lot on educating their engineers and building their production capacity while the US has spent a lot on getting the majority of wealth into as few hands as possible.
In part, being involved in stupid little wars is a benefit; it gives the chance to see what works and what doesn't. MRAPS didn't appear before dealing with insurgents. The trick is to do so, for the USA, is to do so without getting Americans crippled or killed.
What we send to Ukraine is worth every dime and we should send more. But, instead of setting up to mass manufacture cheap FPV drones, the US is taking the wrong lesson and, political stupidity aside, hasn't set up the raw manufacturing capacity to build the components necessary to even build suitable drones. I expect the majority of electronics and the rare-earth magnets come from China. Even the FAA is working to undercut the development of civilian interest in hobby drones, decreasing the available pilots in case of a real crunch and the vibrant problem solving necessary for adapting to conditions.
Overall, my level of worry is not too high. The last time a few Navy ships got sunk America responded with an atomic bomb. Whatever suck there is in preparing, the US makes up for by spending money on revenge. But what the USA won't have is a force sufficient to stop attackers by the threat of US intervention because we are dialed in to fight wars that won't happen.
In spite of this it is still possible to bring a bulk carrier sized vessel alongside one of the most costly ships to ever be constructed and ram into it (and vice versa) and what if that bulk carrier was filled with TNT and a detonator? The carrier would have evaporated.
People are just terrible at making predictions when little is going on. Ukraine has rapid development of drones because they can see what the threat is and that threat is waves of meat, mainly on foot or riding golf-carts, with a few weakly armored vehicles. The Ukranians can readily adapt because they can see what works and what fails to work. They can create inexpensive solutions because the problems are pinpoint in extent. Like when the bouncing bomb was developed in WWII - it didn't solve any but a single problem - a dam.
In peacetime everyone wants the most for their money and instead of the uneconomical solution of building 5,000 different lines of aircraft, each tailored to a single mission, they try to cram solutions to every imaginable problem into one or two; the price goes up and the demand to cover one more facet of warfare increases each time.
For example, in a war with Russia, is it better to have an air superiority fighter to meet their best pilots in aerial duels or to have a large number of low-observable, kamikaze drones that obliterate the fuel dumps required to operate those Russian jets? I expect the drones are far less expensive to end that air war, but it's not going to be popular as a DoD contract.
There is a tendency to put a lot of eggs into a basket and then up-armor the basket. And then not use the eggs because the eggs are too expensive.
The economics are tougher. The US spends a lot on the military and it is easy to think that money somehow evaporates. But look at the parking lots around defense contractor facilities. That money isn't just buying military equipment, it's buying cars, houses, shopping centers, fire stations, groceries, hospitals, and all of those create jobs for other people. It's a huge economic pump that keeps a bunch of smart people occupied and out of trouble in a society that has decreasing use for that talent and it provides for a huge number outside of the initial footprint.
I may be biased, but this country doesn't like to spend money on infrastructure which is one place to absorb engineers, and it has incentivized moving manufacturing off shore by bad taxation policies; defense is one of the few that demand US-made items; where would the defense engineers go? I knew a few retired to sell real estate.
Other nations, as part of their industrialization, have spent a lot on educating their engineers and building their production capacity while the US has spent a lot on getting the majority of wealth into as few hands as possible.
In part, being involved in stupid little wars is a benefit; it gives the chance to see what works and what doesn't. MRAPS didn't appear before dealing with insurgents. The trick is to do so, for the USA, is to do so without getting Americans crippled or killed.
What we send to Ukraine is worth every dime and we should send more. But, instead of setting up to mass manufacture cheap FPV drones, the US is taking the wrong lesson and, political stupidity aside, hasn't set up the raw manufacturing capacity to build the components necessary to even build suitable drones. I expect the majority of electronics and the rare-earth magnets come from China. Even the FAA is working to undercut the development of civilian interest in hobby drones, decreasing the available pilots in case of a real crunch and the vibrant problem solving necessary for adapting to conditions.
Overall, my level of worry is not too high. The last time a few Navy ships got sunk America responded with an atomic bomb. Whatever suck there is in preparing, the US makes up for by spending money on revenge. But what the USA won't have is a force sufficient to stop attackers by the threat of US intervention because we are dialed in to fight wars that won't happen.
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From: Texas
The FAR is a necessary reaction to something well known in the US, called by some "war profiteering," that traces its roots back to the Civil War, and perhaps further back than that.
It is a necessary tool of congressional oversight. (Warts and all). How the public purse gets divvied up is of political interest. (The F-35 program's cleverness included 109 Congressional districts being involved in production of one bit or another).
I'll agree about 50-60 percent on what Mech has presented, and also agree that once the bullets start flying, some stuff gets accelerated procurement and production.
MRAP and Stryker come to mind.
So too a variety of UAVs and Drones in the past 20+ years. I watched that capability blossom in the first five years of "The War Against Terror" (T.W.A.T.) and it's been continuing on since then.
(The unmanned, carrier-born, refueling aircraft is getting close to IOC...)
It is a necessary tool of congressional oversight. (Warts and all). How the public purse gets divvied up is of political interest. (The F-35 program's cleverness included 109 Congressional districts being involved in production of one bit or another).
I'll agree about 50-60 percent on what Mech has presented, and also agree that once the bullets start flying, some stuff gets accelerated procurement and production.
MRAP and Stryker come to mind.
So too a variety of UAVs and Drones in the past 20+ years. I watched that capability blossom in the first five years of "The War Against Terror" (T.W.A.T.) and it's been continuing on since then.
(The unmanned, carrier-born, refueling aircraft is getting close to IOC...)
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From: Everett, WA
I'll agree about 50-60 percent on what Mech has presented, and also agree that once the bullets start flying, some stuff gets accelerated procurement and production.
MRAP and Stryker come to mind.
So too a variety of UAVs and Drones in the past 20+ years. I watched that capability blossom in the first five years of "The War Against Terror" (T.W.A.T.) and it's been continuing on since then.
(The unmanned, carrier-born, refueling aircraft is getting close to IOC...)
MRAP and Stryker come to mind.
So too a variety of UAVs and Drones in the past 20+ years. I watched that capability blossom in the first five years of "The War Against Terror" (T.W.A.T.) and it's been continuing on since then.
(The unmanned, carrier-born, refueling aircraft is getting close to IOC...)
One popular example is - between December 1941 and August 1945 - less than four years - the US produced a simply mindboggling amount of military hardware and new technology (not least of which being the A-Bomb and the B-29 to carry it), not to mention mobilizing millions into the military.
It took four years to bring the Obama Care website online - and it didn't work for
when they first brought it online.Joined: Oct 2006
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From: Too far South
It isn't just a Pentagon problem, there are things about the federal bureaucracy that I can understand Trump and Musk's frustration over.
Take the US Postal service procuring new delivery trucks.
The USPS needed 160,000 new greener delivery trucks and, because of the way they deliver mail directly into the mailbox at the bottom of the yard, these all had to be right hand drive rather than the US standard left.
Rather than buying an off the shelf product from Ford, (ie modified UK spec Transits) or other vehicles designed originally for sale in RHD countries instead congress insisted on a unique new design to be built in the US at an initial cost of $6bn (about $60k per vehicle)
If they had just bought something like the Transit costing from $40k per vehicle and have had a choice of fuel types and access to a global pool of spares for many years to come.
How much money was wasted between the initial tender in 2015 and the first vehicles being delivered in 2024? How much could have been saved by buying an off the shelf product that could have been delivered in weeks not years?
It isn't just the US either - how often do we laugh (because it is too painful to cry) at taxpayer money being squandered no matter where our home country is because of the fiddling of politicians trying to get re-elected or line their own pockets somehow.
Terry Pratchett was right, all politicians should be sent to jail as soon as they are elected, as it save time in the long run.
Take the US Postal service procuring new delivery trucks.
The USPS needed 160,000 new greener delivery trucks and, because of the way they deliver mail directly into the mailbox at the bottom of the yard, these all had to be right hand drive rather than the US standard left.
Rather than buying an off the shelf product from Ford, (ie modified UK spec Transits) or other vehicles designed originally for sale in RHD countries instead congress insisted on a unique new design to be built in the US at an initial cost of $6bn (about $60k per vehicle)
If they had just bought something like the Transit costing from $40k per vehicle and have had a choice of fuel types and access to a global pool of spares for many years to come.
How much money was wasted between the initial tender in 2015 and the first vehicles being delivered in 2024? How much could have been saved by buying an off the shelf product that could have been delivered in weeks not years?
It isn't just the US either - how often do we laugh (because it is too painful to cry) at taxpayer money being squandered no matter where our home country is because of the fiddling of politicians trying to get re-elected or line their own pockets somehow.
Terry Pratchett was right, all politicians should be sent to jail as soon as they are elected, as it save time in the long run.
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From: USA
The postal acquisition is for vehicles that will be in use for 30+ years. In that time there won't be a Transit from Ford. Nor will many parts remain available. They cannot customize to maximize the efficient use as a postal vehicle because the Transit isn't designed to Drive 100 feet. Stop. Drive 100 feet. Stop. Drive 100 feet. Stop, 500 times a day, 6 days a week and be useful for handling in-truck package storage with minimum wear and tear on the postal worker who is handling it all. Also, UK Spec Transits won't comply with US DOT requirements, so even more customizing.
They could buy "this year's" vehicles and have 30 years worth of differing support tools, differing maintenance schedules, not to mention that each purchase is accompanied by a competition among the providers, not only for the vehicles, but also the customizations required for each one.
Note that Amazon has custom trucks and so does UPS. The one for Amazon is $80,000.
Of all the government agencies getting equipment the USPS has been the best and most efficient. They have to be. The volume of material they handle would fill entire warehouses in just a few weeks if they started to fall behind. They need systems that are tough and reliable and have been at this job longer than there has been a standing army in the US.
They could buy "this year's" vehicles and have 30 years worth of differing support tools, differing maintenance schedules, not to mention that each purchase is accompanied by a competition among the providers, not only for the vehicles, but also the customizations required for each one.
Note that Amazon has custom trucks and so does UPS. The one for Amazon is $80,000.
Of all the government agencies getting equipment the USPS has been the best and most efficient. They have to be. The volume of material they handle would fill entire warehouses in just a few weeks if they started to fall behind. They need systems that are tough and reliable and have been at this job longer than there has been a standing army in the US.
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At compounding interest rates over four years, from about $850 billion (US) at present, what does that leave on the table at the end of his term?
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At 5% inflation rate I think it is the equivalent of a cut to $500B in today's dollars**; 60% of current spending. I have no idea what the current spread is on salaries, non-wage costs to operate bases and ships, costs of spares, cost of procurement, and (not a complete list) cost of new development. I am sure there are others. Is VA under that umbrella?
This is the sort of decrease that will either see the number of people reduced or a lot of suppliers go bankrupt while also weakening the ability of the US to respond to Russia and China.
Whatever could the underlying reason be for trimming a tree by turning it into a stump?
** 850* (.92*.92*.92*.92)/(1.05*1.05*1.05*1.05)
This is the sort of decrease that will either see the number of people reduced or a lot of suppliers go bankrupt while also weakening the ability of the US to respond to Russia and China.
Whatever could the underlying reason be for trimming a tree by turning it into a stump?
** 850* (.92*.92*.92*.92)/(1.05*1.05*1.05*1.05)
