The Real Problem with Defense Contracting

Op-Ed by Glen Milner*

Representative Kilmer’s op-ed, “Fix broken defense contracting,” failed to address the real problem with defense acquisition (Seattle Times, April 23, 2015)

Kilmer stated that the defense sector is an economic driver in Washington State and that Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) and Naval Base Kitsap combine for more than $12 billion in economic impact per year. But this figure belies the fact that the two bases (not including 324,000 acres for JBLM at the Yakima Training Complex) take up 97,400 acres of prime real estate in Pierce and Kitsap Counties including valuable waterfront on Puget Sound. This is more acreage than the entire City of Seattle and would likely bring a greater economic gain if used by the private sector.

We are told that greater efficiency for defense acquisition will benefit our local economy. First on Kilmer’s list is to fully reverse automatic spending cuts known as sequestration for the military. However, no mention is made of the tax increases and/or cuts to social programs needed to end sequestration and increase funds for military programs.

Kilmer and other members of Congress are promoting a six-year process to streamline acquisition that will “maximize the capabilities and strengths of our military.”

The bigger problem with defense acquisition is the promotion and procurement of multiple weapons programs that become more expensive with each successive year. Nuclear weapons programs provide an example. The Air Force is currently planning for new long range nuclear bombers and replacement intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) while the Navy is building a replacement SSBN-X nuclear submarine.

These nuclear weapons delivery systems and other plans to upgrade our nuclear arsenal will cost nearly $1 trillion over the next 30 years. Many of these long range programs have already begun even though their combined costs are too expensive to complete.

 

Kilmer is a strong proponent of the Navy’s Trident nuclear submarine base in his 6th Congressional District. According to a 2015 Congressional Research Service report, the projected budget for the SSBN-X replacement submarine program for FY 2016 is $1.39 billion with the planned procurement of the first submarine in 2021. The 12 replacement submarines are expected to cost nearly $100 billion with the last submarine being placed into service in 2042.

The $100 billion for replacement submarines does not include the $1.2 billion the Navy is currently spending each year for upgrades to the existing Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. By 2042, the end of the service life of the D-5 missiles, new missiles will have to be designed, tested, and deployed. The Navy has not publicly discussed the cost for the replacement missiles for the new SSBN-X submarines.

Last year Congress created a new military account for the replacement submarines, called the “National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund.” Congress has yet to allocate funds to the account.

Never mind if our nation actually needs more advanced weapon systems. As Kilmer and other members of Congress ponder ways to simplify and streamline the acquisition process for the military, costs will continue to spin out of control.

The way to fix defense acquisition is to start making cuts in defense spending, the sooner the better.

*Glen Milner lives in Lake Forest Park and is a researcher and activist with Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo. See www.gzcenter.org. Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action is also on Facebook.

A partial list of references:

http://choosewashingtonstate.com/why-washington/our-key-sectors/military-defense

http://www.defenseone.com/management/2015/04/pentagon-we-cant-afford-replace-aging-icbms-bombers-subs/110134

http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/fix-broken-defense-contracting

http://kilmer.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/major-defense-bill-passes-house-with-kilmer-backed-initiatives

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2015/02/obamas-trillion-dollar-nuclear-weapons-gamble/104217

http://www.dodbuzz.com/2015/01/07/pentagon-ohio-replacement-funding-300-ship

http://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R41129.pdf

http://www.armscontrol.org/blog/ArmsControlNow/2015-03-12/Nuclear-Weapons-Could-Require-10-percent-of-Defense-Budget

http://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_acres_is_the_city_of_Seattle  Seattle is 91,200 acres compared to the 97,400 acres for the two military bases. I checked this figure with the 142.5 square miles at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle and other sources.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate on the Arms Trade Treaty

From The New York Times Opinion Pages

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Don't Arm Thy Neighbor

By ÓSCAR ARIAS SÁNCHEZ

Published: October 23, 2013

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica — I am not one of those who believe the United States’ days of world leadership are behind us. All my life I have been an admirer of our northern neighbor. I believe its strengths — its democracy, its founders’ wisdom, its people’s ingenuity and diversity — give it unique authority in the world. But many of its citizens and their leaders seem to take such authority for granted now, as if it were American property. The truth is, it must be earned, and today the United States is passing up opportunities to earn it.

The Arms Trade Treaty, approved by the United Nations in April, is one such opportunity, and it must not be allowed to slip by. Last month, Secretary of State John Kerry signed it. Given the enormous presence of the United States in the international arms market, the treaty’s ratification, which requires a vote of two-thirds of the Senate, is essential to its success.  

But the treaty will face stiff opposition. Two Republican Senators, James Inhofe and Jerry Moran, have gleefully pronounced the treaty “dead on arrival” and argue that the United States should not ratify it because North Korea, Syria and Iran declined to sign it. To do otherwise, they assert, would leave the United States “handcuffed.”

Oscar Arias Sanchez

Gentlemen, you have it backward. The United States would not be handcuffed by a treaty that prevents the sale of conventional weapons to individuals or states that would use them to violate human rights. If the Senate fails to ratify the treaty, your country will be handcuffed by its own reluctance to lead. The United States, which claims to desire a safer, more peaceful world, would shrink from moving toward that goal unless the rest of the world acted first.

Yours is the country that stood alone in the world’s first and only use of nuclear weapons; the country that stood nearly alone in invading Iraq; the country that seemed ready to stand alone at the brink of unilateral action against Syria.

So why should it be afraid to lead in matters of peace? One reason, clearly, is the extraordinary influence of the National Rifle Association over U.S. elected officials. I have rarely spoken out about the N.R.A., since I believe its position on gun control within the United States is for the American people and government to resolve. But I have campaigned for a treaty to control the international arms trade since the mid-1990s, after Costa Rica, having abolished its own army decades before, witnessed the carnage caused by unrestricted armies’ sales to other nations of Central America.

In opposing the Arms Trade Treaty, the N.R.A. now seeks to impose its agenda on the rest of the world, and I can no longer be silent. Its reckless argument that the treaty violates U.S. sovereignty is simply without any basis in fact. It is shameful to think that any definition of national sovereignty could include a right to sell arms for the violation of human rights in other countries.

To the N.R.A., I say: Inflict your agenda on your own nation if you must, but spare the rest of us. Spare us the notion that the interests of a single interest group, in a single nation, should trump the rights of all other nations to protect their citizens. Spare us your misguided references to a Constitution whose brilliant authors would be aghast to see you equate the right to put a rifle in your gun case with the right to put an AK-47 in the hands of a child soldier.

You should, instead, read the treaty with the seriousness it deserves. You would see that it supports the very causes you endorse: the safety of all citizens, and freedom from fear and oppression.

Ratification would also support a renaissance of U.S. leadership on the world stage. Your country is responsible for nearly half of the world’s outrageous $1.7 trillion military spending, and home to the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. It has unparalleled economic power to attack the root causes of terrorism and unrest by fostering human development, regulating the arms flow to terrorists and dictators, and pursuing the dream of a world without nuclear weapons. But America keeps waiting for someone else to make the first move.

If leadership toward these goals does not come from Washington, only the most arrogant American could think it would never come from somewhere else.

Óscar Arias Sánchez, a former president of Costa Rica, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987.

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Editor's Note:  Paragraphs in BOLD font are my emphasis only.

Source URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/opinion/international/dont-arm-thy-neighbor.html?_r=0

The High Price of US Nukes

By William Hartung - July 13, 2011Originally published by TalkingPointsMemo

As President Obama and Republicans in Congress go down to the wire in negotiations over a package of budget cuts that would clear the way for raising the debt ceiling, we shouldn't lose sight of one key source of reductions: military spending. Although it was not mentioned in the President's press conference earlier this week, there has been a press report suggesting that the budget negotiators may have considered cuts of up to $700 billion over ten years -- a healthy sum if it represents real reductions, not funny money projections based on misleading estimating techniques.

As Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund has demonstrated in a piece that ran today on the web site of the Atlantic magazine, one area ripe for cuts is the nuclear weapons budget. Current projections call for the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade on maintaining and upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal, including everything from new nuclear weapons factories to new bombers and ballistic missile submarines.

Here are just a few examples of nuclear weapons-related projects that could be done without at a time when nuclear arsenals are on the decline:

--One hundred new bombers, at a currently estimated price of $55 billion;

--A dozen new ballistic missile launching submarines, at a cost estimated by the Congressional Budget Office at $8.3 billion each, for a total of nearly $100 billion;

-- A Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) facility at Los Alamos National Laboratories that would produce plutonium "pits" or triggers, an essential component for building a nuclear weapon, at an estimated price of up to $6 billion;

--A Uranium Processing Facillity at the NNSA's Oak Ridge, Tennessee site, at a cost estimated by the Army Corps of Engineers of up to $7.5 billion.

At this stage in history, U.S. nuclear weapons serve no useful purpose other than preventing another nation from using nuclear weapons against the United States. And a study by two professors of military strategy at U.S. military colleges has suggested that that mission could be accomplished with roughly 300 warheads, compared with the 1,550 deployed warheads permitted under the New START treaty, and the roughly 5,000 currently in the U.S. stockpile if one counts all categories of non-deployed weapons. Going down to these levels would save additional billions in reduced operating and maintenance costs for the arsenal as a whole.

Not only have a growing list of former secretaries of state and defense, presidents and prime ministers, scientists and retired military officials called for the elimination of nuclear weapons, but if pushed by budgetary realities so would many current U.S. military leaders. While they won't say so publicly, if forced to choose between nukes and major conventional systems it is my bet that nukes would lose out in that particular budget battle.

So as the president and the Congress continue to look for places to reduce spending, the nuclear weapons budget should be high on the list.

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books).