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Edius pro 8 xavc s11/10/2022 However, Bill Clinton will no longer be president when those defense increases would occur, so his budget projections for those years carry little political weight. 118, 120 United States Congress, Congressional Budget Resolution (April 1999). Source: Executive Office of the President, Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables, Fiscal Year 2000 (February 1999), pp. Department of Energy’s spending on nuclear weapons. Note: QDR Requirement is the author’s estimate of what is needed to sustain the QDR force and the weapons modernization agenda of the Pentagon’s 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review. In fact, President Clinton’s latest budget plan would provide adequate funding by the middle of the next decade (see Figure 2). So why can’t defense spending increase? After all, the nation is enjoying budget surpluses for the first time in three decades, and both political parties are pledging to put some of that surplus toward defense needs. (Indeed, Lane Pierrot of the CBO recently estimated that the Pentagon may need to spend as much as $90 billion a year on procurement to meet current plans.) Meanwhile, further savings from base closures, reductions in the Pentagon’s civilian workforce, and other economies would free up a maximum of $10 billion a year-meaning that most of the desired boost in procurement would have to come from higher defense spending. As a result, to meet the Pentagon’s wish list, annual procurement spending would need to increase by a whopping $30 billion in the years ahead, roughly from $50 billion to $80 billion, and then remain at the higher real level indefinitely. The Pentagon, however, plans to replace its current weapons with far more expensive ones. New defense needs, such as anti-missile systems, other types of homeland defenses, and chemical and biological weapons gear, would also be shortchanged.Īfter a decade on “procurement holiday,” the Pentagon does need to buy new equipment to replace aging systems. The Pentagon would have to make some or all of the following tough choices: reduce military pay or benefits, scale back training, allow more equipment to sit idle awaiting repair, or skimp on research and development. If defense systems such as the F-22 are bought in large numbers, necessities such as military readiness will almost certainly suffer. military spending does not appear likely during a period of relative peace. Given these attributes, the Raptor’s high production price tag-$125 million per aircraft, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate-is not unreasonable.īecause it features a number of expensive weapons systems like the F-22-not to mention Joint Strike Fighters, F/A-18 E/F fighters, improved Army attack helicopters, and new Navy submarines-the Pentagon’s budget plan requires annual defense spending to increase by at least $20 billion in real terms in the future. Notably, enemy radars would have much more trouble picking up the F-22 than detecting current fighters (see Figure 1). Control of the air has been a prerequisite to military victory in most wars of the last sixty years, and the F-22 boasts speed, stealth, computer capabilities, and avionics more advanced than anything we have today-and anything the rest of the world will be able to build in the next couple of decades. The Air Force and Secretary Cohen do have some arguments on their side. Funding priorities such as troop readiness and advanced all-weather munitions are considerably more important. Given these resource constraints, the F-22 is not needed badly enough to justify the scarce dollars the Department of Defense intends to spend on it. However, the Pentagon’s support for the Raptor ignores a basic budgetary fact: that despite a good deal of recent pro-defense rhetoric from the White House and Congress, military spending is unlikely to increase substantially in the years ahead consequently, the Pentagon will not be able to afford everything it wants. Veto threats are already in the air, should a September House-Senate defense appropriations conference uphold the House vote. Whitten Peters, for example, said that killing the program would “be wrong for national security” and “put American service members at unnecessary and unacceptable risk.” Defense Secretary William Cohen wrote Congress that he was so “dismayed” by the House’s recent decision not to provide production funding for the aircraft in the year 2000 budget that he “could not accept” it. In the Air Force’s view, many of these individuals simply need a “better education” about the F-22’s capabilities. The Air Force is mounting an all-out lobbying campaign to rescue the F-22 Raptor from attacks by Representative Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and other critics in Congress.
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