The Pentagon received a whopping $150-billion improve within the finances invoice handed by Congress and signed by the president July 4. That may push subsequent 12 months’s proposed Pentagon finances to greater than $1 trillion. Most of that big quantity will go to weapons producers.
A brand new report by the Quincy Institute and the Prices of Warfare Venture at Brown College discovered that for the interval from 2020 to 2024, greater than half of the Pentagon finances — 54% — went to non-public corporations. That determine has climbed significantly for the reason that instant post-Chilly Warfare interval of the Nineties, when the contractor share was 41%.
The surge of spending on the Pentagon and its major weapons suppliers gained’t essentially make us safer. It might simply enrich army corporations whereas subsidizing overpriced, underperforming weapons programs, even because it promotes an accelerated arms race with China.
Whereas weapons companies will fare nicely if the brand new finances goes by as deliberate, army personnel and the veterans who’ve fought in America’s wars on this century is not going to. The Trump administration is searching for deep cuts in personnel, services and analysis on the Veterans Affairs, and tens of hundreds of army households have to make use of meals stamps, a program lower by 20% within the finances invoice, to make ends meet.
The $150 billion in add-ons for the Pentagon embody tens of billions for the Trump administration’s all-but-impossible dream of a leak-proof Golden Dome missile protection system, a aim that has been pursued for greater than 40 years with out success. Different large winners embody the brand new F-47 fight plane, and the army shipbuilding business, which is slated for an enormous infusion of latest funding.
The query of tips on how to allocate the Pentagon’s orgy of weapons spending is sophisticated by the truth that there are actually two highly effective factions throughout the arms business combating over the division’s finances, the normal Large 5, composed of Lockheed Martin, RTX (previously Raytheon), Boeing, Basic Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, and rising army tech companies reminiscent of SpaceX, Palantir and Anduril.
The Large 5 at present get the majority of Pentagon weapons spending, however the rising tech companies are catching up, profitable profitable contracts for military-wide communications programs and antidrone expertise. And there will probably be extra such contracts. Even after the general public falling out between Elon Musk and the president, the rising tech companies have a determined benefit, with advocates reminiscent of Vice President JD Vance, who maintains shut ties along with his mentor and political supporter Peter Thiel of Palantir, and dozens of employees members from army tech companies who are actually embedded within the nationwide safety and finances bureaucracies of the Trump administration.
In the meantime, the tech sector’s guarantees of a brand new, revolutionary period of protection made attainable by artificial-intelligence-driven weapons and different applied sciences are nearly actually overstated. If previous observe tells us something, it’s that new, advanced high-tech weapons is not going to save us.
The historical past of Pentagon procurement is plagued by “miracle weapons,” from the digital battlefield in Vietnam to Ronald Reagan’s “impenetrable” Star Wars missile defend to networked warfare and precision-guided bombs used within the Iraq and Afghan wars. When push got here to shove, these extremely touted programs both didn’t work as marketed, or had been irrelevant to the sorts of wars they had been being utilized in.
Only one instance: Although the Pentagon spent nicely over $10 billion to discover a system that might neutralize improvised explosive units in Iraq and Afghanistan, solely modest progress was made. Even after the brand new expertise was deployed, 40% of I.E.Ds couldn’t be cleared.
Know-how is a software, however it’s not the decisive think about profitable wars or deterring adversaries. An efficient army ought to be primarily based on well-trained, well-compensated and extremely motivated troops. Meaning taking a few of that 54% of the Pentagon finances that goes to contractors and investing in supporting the people who find themselves really tasked with combating America’s wars. However to be actually secure, we have to battle fewer wars by adopting a extra sensible technique that emphasizes diplomacy and shut cooperation with allies, and that resorts to pressure solely when there’s a main, direct menace to U.S. safety. A extra balanced technique could be a lot much less prone to put U.S. troops in high-risk conditions just like the nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As a substitute of letting company particular pursuits distort our overseas and army insurance policies, we have to press for an strategy that places strategic concerns first. That may imply taking steps to cut back the facility of the arms makers, new and previous, by steps reminiscent of stronger measures to restrict the revolving door between authorities and business. And we have to convey extra impartial voices into the Pentagon’s finances discussions. Lockheed Martin, Palantir, SpaceX and different corporations shouldn’t have undue affect over choices on how a lot to spend on our army, and what to spend it on. That’s no option to make a army finances, and no option to defend a rustic.
William D. Hartung is a senior analysis fellow on the Quincy Institute for Accountable Statecraft and the co-author, with Stephen Semler, of the report “Income of Warfare: Prime Beneficiaries of Pentagon Spending, 2020 to 2024.”
