Peace Economy Project Report
By Charlie Kindleberger
What a Month!
The horror of the “no tolerance immigration” program with its separation of children from parents. President Trump finally reversed the policy, but confusion remains, not least of which is how to reunite families in an environment with apparently little accurate record keeping as to who is staying where.
The encouraging, if bizarre meeting in Singapore between the President and Kim Jung un, the “Supreme Leader” of North Korea. Far better to have civil, even friendly language between the two, as opposed to ”fire and fury”; but there is so little clarity as to what comes next.
First steps towards a trade war with higher tariffs not just on Chinese goods, but products from long-time allies, including Canada. These nations have begun to retaliate. The economic implications are not good.
On-going efforts via deregulation and legislation to further damage the nation’s safety net – proposals to further dismantle the Affordable Care Act, make it harder to obtain “food stamps”, reduce the amount of money for housing subsidies, and cut back the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Medicare.
Continuing ethical and perhaps legal issues among members of the Trump Administration, led by Scott Pruitt, the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Previous articles have focused on the giant increase in US military expenditures for this and next year. Below the focus shift to one particular branch – the US Army.
The US Army -What does it want? What does it need?Given the current federal budget, this fiscal year (2018) and the one that begins next October (2019) provide huge increases for the military – $700 Billion and $716 Billion respectfully. Many of those funds will go the Navy as it strives to build new, $13 billion dollar Ford Class aircraft carriers, $7 billion dollar Columbia Class submarines, and an array of other ships all moving towards a 350 ship navy. The Air Force will purchase the F-35 Strike Fighter at around $130 million a plane, a project estimated to cost around $1.4 trillion over the life of the project.
(The Wall Street Journal calculated that this amount could have presented 20 years of free college education for all US students.)However, this story is about the Army, an organization that claims to need more troops, more training, more ammunition, and more equipment.
Troops. The Pentagon would like to increase the active Army by about 4000 a year to 495,000 by 2021. Combined with the National Guard and the Reserves, they have an overall target of around 1,040,000 soldiers in 2023.
Operations and Maintenance. More money is to be spent, especially on the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI), formerly known as the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI). Last year two Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFAB) were created. In FY 2019, the army wants 3 more such brigades, all able to train and assist partner nations, and if necessary to rapidly transform into Brigade Combat Teams. Underlying this thinking is the prepositioning of equipment in Europe, so that the US could respond quickly, if increasing pressures from Russia were forthcoming.
Ammunition. In the previous five year plan (FY 2018 – FY 2022) the Army was going to spend $13. 3 billion for ammunition. The proposed FY 2019 – FY 2022 plan envisions $22 billion! That is a lot of bullets.
Procurement. Still another on-going challenge is deciding how much off-the-shelf equipment should be purchased now, versus waiting for the design, testing and development of new versions of the equipment. For example:
Abrams Tank. Named after the renown General Creighton Abrams, the original M1 tank is 40 years old. It was followed in 2007 by a new version (M1A2), and now there is a third version (M-1A2SEPV3). In recent years, Congress has pushed around $500 million for upgrades to earlier tanks at the cost of $7.5 million each, despite the Army claiming not to want them. Now they are interested in building a thousand new tanks (better gun accuracy, armor, and fuel efficiency) but the cost is reportedly around $20 million each.
Bradley Fighting Vehicle. This vehicle comes in two versions – M2 troop carrier (3 person crew and 6 troops) and the M3 Calvary vehicle. Modernization funds are proposed to improve mobility and lethality. Named after General Omar Bradley, several efforts have been made to replace the system. Reportedly around 150 were destroyed during the Iraq war primarily because improvised explosive devices, thus leading to development of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle preferred by many.
Stryker Combat Vehicle. This 8 wheel troop carrier has recently been the subject of a $259 million grant to shift from a flat bed to a v-shape hull, thereby improving its ability to resist IED’s.
The FY 19 Military Procurement fund of $30 billion is 3.3 billion over last year amount,
Research and Development.
Much of the FY 19 $10.2 R and D funds will be devoted to “Big Six” Modernization Priorities. However, the Pentagon claims to need an additional $2-$3 billion per year if this work is to continue into the 2020s. Moreover, the $13 billion they propose to spend over the next 5 years, does not seem to jive with their stated priorities.
Air and Missile Defense is deemed the 5th priority, yet during the next 5 years, projects in this category would receive more than half the money.
Command, Control and Communications Networks would receive about a quarter of the money ($3 billion). It has a 4th priority designation.
The top three priorities (Long Range Precision Firepower, Future Vehicle Lift and Next Generation Combat Vehicle) would receive 12, 4 and 3 percent respectively of the monies. The sixth priority (Soldier Lethality) would get 6 percent.
The conclusion seems to be that lower priority projects are ready, or close to ready, to going into production. Alternatively, before we can do much about new vehicles, planes and artillery/missiles a lot more time needs to be spent in the lab.
Longtime PEP members will recall a similar struggle fifteen years ago between upgrading current equipment versus striving to design and implement a new generation of Army weapons. “Future Combat Systems” was a large-scale initiative to integrate a series of manned and unmanned weapons via a sophisticated communications network. Begun in the early 2000s, this extremely ambition program anticipated costs of $340 billion over the life the program. In part because of Hurricane Katrina and the cost and nature of the Iraq war, but even more because of the technical complexity involved, President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates terminated the program in 2009.Summary. Five years ago we were bringing the Army back from Europe, now there is pressure to rebuild our deterrence strength. Granted that Russia has acted in a provocative way in the last few years, but is it conceivable that a few more US armored divisions in Europe will convince them to better behave themselves?
Russia has 20,000 tanks, many that are older. However, the US has only 5900 tanks not in mothballs, and the great majority of them are in North America. Even our largest transport planes can only carry a minimal number of heavy tanks, thus the argument for large scale prepositioning.
Let us hope the new proposed “Futures Command” builds on an understanding of what the Future Combat Systems did right and did wrong. We need especially to understand the importance of diplomacy. There remains a great danger that our thoughts and policies regarding deterrence, could be perceived as provocation. The results could be disastrous.
