Death Star Petition

This petition makes as much sense as many of the defense projects we pay for with our tax dollars each year.


White House Petition: Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016

Another Day, Another $678 Million Stealth Jet Wrecked

Defense cuts

Obama goes on offense over defense cuts

"Partly motivated"

Navy Special Forces units: How many are needed?

It is great to see that the Navy is adapting to the 21st Century and increasing its focus on special operations. One thing I was shocked to read in the Pincus article linked to above is:

The Navy has other groups prepared to take part in irregular warfare. One is the Coastal Riverine Force, whose roots go back to the Vietnam War. In June, it merged with the Maritime Expeditionary Force to create units that perform “core maritime expeditionary security missions in green and brown waters . . ."

The great blue water U.S. Navy is actually improving its ability to operate in the littorals! Pretty amazing given the service culture.

Romney calls for a 17 percent increase to the DoD budget

Romney wants defense spending to be much, much higher. The public doesn’t.

My only comments here are, "Why?!," and "With what money?" See graphs below:

Lockheed Martin: Price of F-35 going up

U.S. seeks to ease concerns over F-35 delays, costs

The U.S. Defense Department is restructuring for a third time its $382 billion F-35 program with Lockheed Martin Corp to allow more time for development and testing.

And we need a new fighter jet that costs this much because  ???

More DoD waste... but fraud being investigated!

Fraud investigation targets recruiting program for Army National Guard, Reserve

On its face, I thought this program was wasteful when my Nattie G brigade mandated that everyone sign-up to become Recruiting Assistants. Now, my instincts have been proven correct.

Basically, Soldiers were "hired" (hired = signed himself up for the program) as 1099 employees of DOCUPAK and given the title Recruiting Assistant (RA). Soldiers (aka newly hired RAs) in the ARNG could bring in recruits, ask them a few questions, submit a form online, and then hand them off to a local recruiter. If the recruiter signed a recruit up, then the Soldier/RA who brought the recruit into the recruiting pipeline got paid. It seems that despite all of the warnings given to the Soldiers/RAs when they signed up for the program about how they could not split any of the money they received for recruiting someone, it occurred. The cases cited in the article probably represent only a small portion of the fraud that was actually committed. One case mentioned outlines a blatant fraud. First, a local recruiter would recruit someone and not enter any of the recruit's information into their recruiting database. Instead, they would tell an RA to input the recruit's information into the DOCUPAK recruiting website. Next, the recruiter would receive a referral from the DOCUPAK website and then sign the recruit up... this made the RA qualify to receive a payment for recruiting a Soldier. In this particular scheme, the local recruiter and the RA opened up a joint bank account to which the RA's commission was paid, clearly violating the policy that you cannot split the proceeds paid by DOCUPAK. These idiots didn't even try to hide what they were doing - they opened up a joint bank account allowing the authorities to track the payments electronically!

Waste undoubtedly occurred elsewhere within the program. For example, RAs received points to order recruiting items that could be used to help market the ARNG and entice potential recruits to a recruiting table... this too must have cost the Army millions. I wonder how much of the marketing budget allocated to each RA was actually used to recruit Soldiers and not just used by the RAs to get free tchotchkes to give to their friends and relatives, who were anxious to say they knew and supported someone involved in the war effort being waged by less than one percent of the American population? Now, keep in mind, this program was started when the Army could not recruit enough Soldiers and junior officers were leaving the Army in droves, but still, how could someone not have figured out from the beginning how wasteful this program would be? It operated outside of the military chain of command and the RAs never even met with or saw anyone from their new employer, DOCUPAK. How sad.

Congressional hearings on the defense budget can be a bore . . .

Defense budget hearings: Lots to learn for those who pay attention

The Revolving Door

Retired general had no conflict of interest, Panetta says

Robertson had been the top officer at U.S. Transportation Command and Air Mobility Command before retiring in 2001. He went to work for Boeing, retiring as a vice president in 2010. He did not respond to a request for comment.

A USA TODAY investigation in 2009 found that 80% of 158 mentors, retired officers hired as advisers, had ties to the defense industry, including Roberson. Panetta assured McCain the Pentagon has taken "many steps" since then to "impose controls on senior mentors." Among them: They must disclose business ties and have had their pay capped, and they are subject to confict-of-interest rules. Those restrictions were not in place in 2008, when Robertson participated in the war game.

Absolutely Shocking!!!

Pentagon, Lockheed see price of F-35 going up

The Next Generation of Warfare

A cyber risk to the U.S.

If this doesn't scare you, I don't know what will.

Though the Pentagon has a cybercommand, it does not cover the domestic civilian economy, including vital infrastructure systems such as the electric power grid, water supplies and the financial system. Many of the computers controlling those utilities lack adequate security measures and could be devastated by viruses launched by hostile states or even hackers. As it is, U.S. companies, from defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin to e-mail carriers such as Google, are under continual assault from China and Russia, which seek to steal industrial or national security secrets and probe for infrastructure weaknesses.

Unfortunately, instead of more adequately funding programs that can protect the U.S. from cyber attack, our elected leaders continue to choose to fund wasteful programs like the Joint Strike Fighter, dubbed The Wild Blue Squander by The New York Times.  Here is a GAO chart illustrating the cost history of the Joint Strike Fighter:

Goodbye, HMMWV

Army Kills Humvee Upgrade Program; Shifts Dollars To JLTV

General Dynamics completes acquisition of Force Protection

General Dynamics doubles down on blast-resistant military vehicles

MRAPs are the type of technology that is needed in Afghanistan to save lives; hopefully this merger will allow General Dynamics to produce them quickly and cheaply. Well at least produce them cheaper than the F-35, which shouldn't be too hard...  compared to the Joint Strike Fighter program, MRAP is cheap.
"The FY 2012 Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget requests $3.2 billion for sustainment, upgrade, and overhaul of MRAP vehicles."

Here is a graph showing funding for the top 30 acquisition programs in DoD:

Japan orders Joint Strike Fighters and Lockheed Martin applauds

Pentagon hails Japan's F-35 order

Sure, now that we have spent all of our money on R&D for this unneeded new stealth jet fighter, let's just share it with the entire world!  During FY2011, we spent
$11.4 Billion on the Joint Strike Fighter
and it still is not complete and has many problems with it.

Again, when is the next war, in which we will need such advanced technology and participate in dog fights ala World War I, going to occur?  With our current technology, I am positive Snoopy will still defeat the Red Baron.

Why are we funding this program, but are considering cutting counter-IED research while troops die in Afghanistan?

More Costly Technological and Performance Problems with the Joint Strike Fighter

More problems with F-35 joint strike fighter are revealed

With all of the problems this expensive project has had, the only reason this project is still being allowed to go forward is:  1.  R&D money, and 2. "Lockheed has 6,100 people working directly on the F-35 program in Fort Worth. About 3,000 are production workers, and the rest are in development and support. Without increased production, employment at the plant won't grow and may decrease as development and engineering work winds down."

Again, when do we plan on fighting a fighter jet on fighter jet war?  Is there one on the horizon that I don't see?  Why do we need such an advanced fighter jet?  Oh, but funding for counter-IED research needs to be cut while troops die in Afghanistan.  Right.

Boeing may exceed aerial tanker cost ceiling by $500 Million

Does this surprise anyone?

Budget cuts will mean troop cuts, chiefs say

Boy do I miss Secretary Gates (pbuh)...

I've said this a million times, but we need to focus on the current conflicts (and end them and not get into any more of them unless our national survival is imminently at risk) and keep personnel, while cutting R&D spending. We don't need "a leap ahead" defense policy. "Steady as you go" is all we need right now. We don't need to support an entire industry dedicated to war. The reason end-strength and personnel are cut and not R&D is this:
In large numbers, and with few rules, retiring generals are taking lucrative defense-firm jobs

See previous posts:

Republican hawks use sharp rhetoric to fight deeper Pentagon cuts

President Obama's Defense Cuts

Gates: The Pentagon's Accountability Cop

A Single-Minded Focus on Dual Wars

"It's been like pulling teeth."

Republican hawks use sharp rhetoric to fight deeper Pentagon budget cuts

They should cut weapons programs first, not end-strength. This is utter idiocy. Instead, politicians will keep the weapons programs because they are beholden to the defense industrial complex and their donations. It takes years for us to build effective combat leaders... the military should be about people, not weapons systems. Given the 10-year strain on our already combat weary force if we cut end-strength we will never be able to give the troops a break at home. Mental health disorders will get worse, even more divorces will happen, and our military will be hurt further.

Here is a quote from the article:

The GOP staff goes so far as to warn that more Defense Department budget cuts “could force America to return to the draft” because the Army and Marine Corps would collectively shed 200,000 troops to cut costs.

Defense cuts could lead to military draft, House Armed Services chairman says

I seriously doubt this will happen, but it would end the wars pretty quickly if you ask me. Suddenly people would care a little more because they could have some skin in the game... e.g. their children.

Defense Dept. needs to change spending culture

This is something that I have been talking about for over three years on this blog. Unfortunately when he ran for president in 2008, Sen. McCain didn't describe the DoD culture as a "culture that has allowed massive waste of taxpayers’ dollars," as he did last Tuesday during a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee.