Not Enough Nukes

They call it a system upgrade, and the notion is to have a new arsenal of nuclear warheads and modern delivery systems – bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles as well as strategic submarines and aircraft carriers (with the surrounding, ultra-modern, vessels to protect the carriers) – that will find value into the next half century. Old vessels, warheads and missiles are increasingly obsolete or simply past their functional usefulness. We need more. And given our rather massive store of older planes, rockets/missiles, ships and warheads, if we really want to continue to replace it all, Americans should ignore former President Dwight David Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex and invest heavily in it. Even with cutbacks, the expected expenditures in this sector, to maintain a military force that equals the combined expenditures of the next ten largest military budgets on earth, will make many an investor’s heart beat fast.

Do you think it is by accident that virtually every major congressional district in the United States has a local defense contractor or subcontractor? And in a period of severe unemployment and under-employment, how hard do you think those representatives work to keep those jobs intact?  I’ll point out some nasty specifics below, but there are hard realities we just aren’t facing today.

We currently have a massive deficit and enough weapons to blow up the rest of the earth. Yeah, but they’re getting old. But we haven’t used a nuclear weapon since World War II. Yeah, but our massive strike force has been the deterrent from anyone else using one. Never know when we will need to nuke someone, and better and newer weapons are an even better deterrent. But we are bankrupting the country we are trying to protect when we need that money to build infrastructure, education our young and conduct job-creating research so we will have a future worth protecting. Yeah, but think of all those jobs the military will create and the supporting research that might not cure cancer, but they sure come in handy when we want to sell weapons overseas and make even more money for the contractors. But by having all those military assets flaunted in the world, we become the natural king of the hill that terrorists need to take down to build their reputations… making us spend even more on Homeland Security. Yeah, but how else are military officers going to get enough combat experience to rise through the ranks?

Writing for the December 17^th Washington Post, Walter Pincus addressed just the tactical submarine thang: “Start with the Navy’s plan for 12 new SSBN-X strategic submarines to replace the 14 Ohio-class subs now in service. A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on the program, released Dec. 10, asks whether the Navy can stay within the cost targets for their procurement ($4.9 billion each) and whether each sub should carry 16 or 20 missiles... But shouldn’t the questions be more basic, such as who is the enemy and how many subs would be needed to deter that enemy?...There will be at least four or five warheads on each of the 16 ICBMs carried on each of the new subs. Their destructive power will be eight to more than 20 times that of the atomic bomb that all but destroyed Hiroshima in 1945...

“The Cold War created a mindless U.S.-Soviet Union nuclear arms race in which both sides forgot the power of the weapons they were building and believed that whoever had the largest number was the strongest. Numbers on both sides went close to 20,000 bombs and warheads. It took just two to end World War II in the Pacific, and the threat of using one ended the 1962 Cuban missile crisis... Since 1991, when the Iron Curtain fell, both the United States and Russia have sharply reduced not just their overall stockpiles but their deployed weapons. According to a study released last week by Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, both sides are down to roughly 4,500 strategic warheads and bombs apiece, and by 2018 will have just 1,550 operationally deployed as required by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which took effect Feb. 5, 2011...Ironically, after signing the treaty, the two countries began modernizing their nuclear forces.

“By the end of the decade, the deployed U.S. force may be 400 single-warhead, land-based ICBMs; 240 submarine-launched ballistic missiles with three to five warheads each; and 60 strategic bombers, which each count for only one warhead though they carry more than one bomb. Beyond that, there are to be some 1,600 stockpiled warheads or bombs, Kristensen says... Why do we need that size of a nuclear arsenal for the next 50 years?... Why 12 and not 10 subs, for example? Under construction plans, the Navy will go down to 10 operational boats between 2029 and 2041, as old Ohio-class submarines are retired before new ones are finished, according to the CRS study. What new threat requiring another 90 sub-launched warheads will be arising after 2041?”

But even when the Defense Department wants to make cuts in military systems, the political pressure and horse-trading to keep military programs alive “in my district and I’ll take care of yours too” pushes unnecessary expenditures through the roof. The military industrial complex has our Congress “by the balls.” Examples? On December 19^th, addressing the National Press Club, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta outlined discussions with Congress to cut defense spending. He noted, nevertheless, that political realities “had diverted about $74 billion of what we asked for in savings in our proposed budget to the Congress, and they diverted them to other areas that, frankly, we don’t need.”

More? Walter Pincus again (Washington Post, December 19^th): “For example, the conferees approved more than $500 million to continue the Global Hawk Block 30, high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft that have integrated imagery, radar and intelligence sensors. The Pentagon had decided to risk terminating this version of Global Hawk (there are others in use and being built) and noted that it would save $800 million in fiscal 2013 and $2.5 billion over the next five years.

“Two other congressional add-ons illustrate members’ desire to keep plant production lines open — and jobs filled. They were $136 million to upgrade the M1 Abrams tank and $140 million to modify the M2 Bradley armored vehicle. And $45 million was added to funds to purchase F-18s to hold open ‘the option of buying more’ in fiscal 2014. In the nuclear area, Congress added $70 million toward construction of a $3.7 billion building for research on plutonium at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico that the administration wanted to delay for two more years.

“Two other congressional favorites got boosts beyond what the Pentagon approved. One was an added $152 million for missile defense; the other, for $143 million, went to Special Operations Command for an imagery intelligence program its commander wanted but higher-level officials vetoed. The conferees’ message: What Special Ops wants, it gets... One compromise reached over the past month involved the administration’s controversial plan to reorganize military air transport assets that affected Air National Guard bases around the country, a step that mobilized opposition not just from Congress but from governors of the states involved. The solution was to halt the retirement of 26 C-5A aircraft, ‘holding the strategic airlift total at 301 aircraft, until the Defense Department completes a comprehensive study of air mobility requirements,” according to the House committee. In addition, the Air Force will maintain an additional 32 C-130 or C-27J tactical airlift aircraft, some of which were going to be retired.’

We are looking at hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade to build and maintain the new delivery systems on the boards. Is this really how we need to spend that money? Do we really need that much to deter? Do these bigger delivery systems really accommodate the explosion of smaller conflicts in the world? And will we be protecting a nation of under-educated food service and hotel workers, impoverished farmers living in the new dust bowl and construction workers repairing massive damage that could have been prevented with a sufficient commitment to building and repairing infrastructure? Oh and the defense workers and the folks who invested in them?

This proves beyond the slightest doubt that all this talk about deficit reduction and the fiscal cliff is just that – talk. It is nothing more than ideologues eliminating the government programs they don’t like and pushing the ones they do. As I have said before, if you cut taxes long enough and vote for wars in the interim without funding them, the national borrowings you know you are absolutely going to create will eventually give you the “gift of a deficit so big” that you can argue for the reduction of the programs you have always wanted to get removed. Yeah, as far as I can throw them...

I’m Peter Dekom, and exactly how much is “enough”?