Why the Super Bug is no substitute for the F-35: a technical comparison

Extrapolating on the Super Bug’s decisive inferiority to the F-35 (including its B and C variants), and in response to ignoramuses at POGO and elsewhere who delude themselves and others that the Super Bug is a substitute for, or even a plane superior to the F-35 (as POGO falsely claims), here’s a side to side technical comparison of all 3 F-35 variants with the Super Bug on a number of key characteristics:

Criterion	F-35A	F-35B	F-35C	Super Bug
Stealthy	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Dry thrust (kN)	125	125	125	62.3
Thrust w/afterb. (kN)	191	191	191	97.9
Internal fuel cap. (lb)	18,480	13,500	19,750	13,000
Service ceiling (ft)	60,000	60,000	60,000	50,000
Max takeoff weight (lb)	70,000 class	60,000 class	70,000 class	66,000
Combat radius (nmi)	584	469	615	390
T/W w/50% fuel	1.07	1.04	0.91	0.93
G limit	9G	9G	9G	7.6G

As you can clearly read from the table, the Super Bug is decisively inferior to all three F-35 variants on all counts, except that it has a slightly higher thrust/weight ratio with a 50% fuel load than the C model and its maximum takeoff weight is 6,000 lb higher than the B model’s (but still 4,000 lb lower than the F-35A’s and C’s).

Other than that, it is decisively inferior to all three F-35 variants – in terms of the G limit, combat radius, internal fuel capability (i.e. how much fuel can it carry internally, without external fuel tanks, which increase its RCS), dry thrust, thrust with afterburner, and stealthiness (and thus survivability), which is necessary to survive in today’s threat environment infested with modern IADSes and fighters. Also, while all three F-35 variants can pull 9Gs with a full combat load, the Super Bug can pull only 7.6Gs and only in a clean configuration – that is, without any missiles, conformal fuel tanks, jamming pods, or any other external stores. If any external stores are added, it can pull even fewer Gs.

But why do the characteristics other than stealthiness matter?

Thrust, and more importantly, T/W ratios affect planes’ speed, maneuverability, climbing ability, and other aerodynamic performance. Internal fuel capability affects the plane’s combat radius, and as we see from the table, all three F-35 variants have a combat radius significantly larger than the meagre CR of the Super Bug, which is only 390 nm. The F-35 can also fly much higher than the Super Bug, and therefore, launch its missiles from a much higher altitude to increase these missiles’ range significantly. A higher G limit means the F-35 can withstand higher forces of gravitation, and therefore more violent maneuvers, than the Super Bug.

Cancelling the F-35 and using the Super Bug and the F-16 instead would practically be a death sentence for the USN, USMC, and USAF pilots who would be flying these aircraft against the enemy, just like flying the Brewster Buffalo, the F4F, and the P-38 against the Japanese was a death sentence for the unfortunate pilots flying those aircraft. By suggesting that the USN and the USMC go down this route, POGO and NTU hacks are effectively showing their utter disdain and contempt for USN and USMC pilots and demanding that they be consigned to death.

It is utterly unacceptable to force brave American pilots to fly such inferior aircraft and consign themselves to a certain death from enemy fighters. They deserve the best aircraft available – and for the USMC and the USN, this means the F-35B/C.

The Super Bug is, plainly, no substitute for, let alone a plane superior to, the F-35. Not even close. Making such claims only reveals the utter ignorance of those who make them.

If all people around the world who pontificate about issues they know nothing about would shut up, this would be a much better and much quieter world.

The sources: for the F-35 and for the Super Bug.

Rebuttal of POGO’s/CodePink’s lies

The extremely leftist, anti-defense group calling itself the “Project on Government Oversight” (“POGO”) has teamed up with other leftist anti-defense organizations such as George Soros’s Code Pink and written a letter to members of Congress hailing the Mulvaney-Frank Amendment to the FY2013 Defense Approps bill (which cut the bill by over $1 bn) and calling for deeper defense cuts. In that letter of July 19th, they made a number of utterly false claims. Here’s a brief rebuttal of them.

1) They claim that the “Pentagon budget” is “bloated” and that defense spending is “runaway”.

But the fact is that the DOD budget is anything but “bloated” or “runaway”. It (including both the base defense budget and OCO spending and the DOE’s defense-related programs) amounts to just 4.21% of America’s GDP (which is $15.29 trillion according to the CIA World Factbook) and 17.43% of the total federal budget ($3.699 trillion in FY2012). Throughout the entire Cold War, except FY1948, the US devoted a larger share of its economy and federal budget to defense. America’s military budget is at a historic low today, both as a percentage of GDP and as a share of the total federal budget. Even the CSBA says that it’s affordable and “consistent with long-standing national priorities.”

No honest person can look at the military budget, look me in the eye and tell me with a straight face that a 4.21% portion of America’s national wealth is “bloated”.

2) They claim that military spending has grown by 95% since 2001.

Although this is a popular myth (which has appeared in many variations), it’s completely false. The FY2001 budget was $291.1 bn in nominal dollars, i.e. $387.93 bn in today’s money (adjusted for inflation, which erodes the value of the dollar). Today’s military budget is $645 bn, representing only a 65% increase. The base defense budget, $531 bn, represents growth of only 35% since FY2001.

And it is important to know the CONTEXT of the FY2001 defense budget. It was adopted at the nadir of the defense cuts of the 1990s and was very widely recognized to be woefully inadequate – by Clinton’s own Joint Chiefs of Staff, by CSIS, and even by longtime budget hawks critical of the DOD such as John Kasich (R-OH), who said “We need to put more money into the Pentagon”. Kasich recommended a $50 bn annual defense budget increase; the CSIS, a $100 bn annual budget increase (both figures in CY2000 dollars).

3) They claim that deep cuts are “needed”.

But they are not needed. They would, in fact, be disastrous, damaging to America’s national defense and national security, and foolish. Nor would they do anything meaningful to balance the budget: $66 bn per year will be a big cut for the DOD, but it won’t come even close to balancing the federal budget. And as the budget plans of Congressman Paul Ryan, the RSC, and Sens. Toomey and Lee have shown, you can balance the budget (within 5-8 years in the latter three plans’ case) without deep defense cuts. So such draconian defense cuts are NOT necessary.

The Joint Chiefs, other senior officers, many retired officers, the DOD’s civilian leaders, and many outside experts have stated that sequestration would be disastrous. So regarding the Joint Chiefs and other senior military officers, there are only 3 possibilities: a) they’re blatantly lying to scaremonger the public; b) they’re ignorant hacks blathering nonsense about stuff they know nothing about; or c) they’re actually right about sequestration. Which is it, folks?

4) They claim majority of Americans supports defense cuts to the tune of $103 bn per year.

But the only “poll” they cite in support of their claim is a rigged poll by two biased, liberal organizations – the NPR and the CPI* – both of which advocate deep defense cuts. Two other polls show that a majority of Americans OPPOSE defense spending cuts, one of them by Gallup, arguably the most accurate pollster in America, and one done for OpenCongress. See here. Also see here.

“When Gallup asked Americans last summer whether they favored defense cuts as a way to reduce the deficit, 47% were in favor and 51% opposed.”

Even if the rigged poll’s result was accurate, however – which it is not – it would be irrelevant. America is NOT a democracy; it is a Constitutional Republic with a federal government assigned limited functions (the foremost of which is national defense). It doesn’t matter what  a majority of Americans wants; what matters is what the Constitution says.

The Constitution REQUIRES the federal government to provide adequately for the common defense. Entitlement and welfare programs, however, along with the Departments of Education, Energy, Labor, Agriculture, Transportation, HUD, and HHS are unconstitutional.

Yet, if the federal government proceeds with sequestration, it will utterly fail to provide adequately for the common defense, for neither the funding nor the force structure will be even close to adequate, and most modernization programs will be cancelled for a lack of funding.

Quite simply, POGO’s and CodePink’s letter to members of Congress is full of false claims. Members of Congress should completely ignore it.

*The CPI is widely considered to be “progressive” and liberal. The NPR’s leftist orientation is widely known.

Three cheers for the Navy’s carriers

The US Navy is currently building its new class of aircraft carriers, and of course, the proponents of a weak defense have not spared it from their baseless, ridiculous attacks. They claim that aircraft carriers are almost useless, can be replaced by cruise missiles, and are easy to sink. Bloomberg reports that:

“The ships’ rising costs are drawing scrutiny from lawmakers at a time when the military faces cuts in personnel and funding for new weapons. Critics see the new Gerald R. Ford-class carriers as big targets for rival militaries expanding their arsenals of ballistic and cruise missiles, undersea mines, submarines, drones and cyber weapons.

“Our future adversaries are developing a set of capabilities specifically for the purpose of attacking our aircraft carriers,” Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said in an interview.

Although it’s still about five years from entering the fleet, the price tag for the USS Gerald R. Ford, the first carrier in the class being built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. (HII), based in Newport News, Virginia, already has climbed about 18 percent in four years to $12.3 billion, according to Defense Department data. (…)

The Navy should have kept buying the proven Nimitz-class carriers, McCain said. The last carrier in the Nimitz class, the USS George H.W. Bush, was commissioned in 2009.

The number of aircraft regularly launched from the new carriers, or the sortie rate, will increase to 160 a day from 120 a day now on the Nimitz class, according to the Navy. The number of sorties can surge to 270 from 192 on the older carriers.

Sub-Launched Tomahawks

Dispatching more jets from a carrier doesn’t provide a tactical advantage in an age of precision-guided weapons and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from submarines, according to Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and author who has been a consultant to secretaries of the Navy.

“Do we need a new class?” Polmar said in an interview. “The answer is absolutely not. You want to kill someone’s airfield, you launch 20, 30 Tomahawks, which go farther and are more accurate than planes, and you do not risk pilots.”

While a missile-armed submarine can move alone beneath the sea, a carrier must travel with a strike group that typically includes a guided-missile cruiser, two guided-missile destroyers, an attack sub and a combined ammunition, oiler and supply ship, according to a Navy fact sheet.

(…)

Some critics of the Ford class’s rising cost, including McCain, say carriers remain the invaluable, and virtually unsinkable, centerpiece of U.S. naval strategy.

Others say carriers, like wooden men-of-war and steel battleships before them, aren’t as useful as they once were. With the proliferation of drones and satellite imagery, carriers become easier to locate and thus potentially more vulnerable, according to Polmar.

While the Ford carriers are going to be “very formidable,” the ships “may not be able to get close enough to a future enemy that has precision-guided anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles,” Gunzinger said.

China is fielding DF-21 anti-ship missiles that may force U.S. carriers to operate 1,000 nautical miles or farther from an enemy’s coastline early in a conflict, according to Gunzinger. Carrier-based jets with a heavy load of weapons are designed to strike at about 300 nautical miles without refueling, Polmar said.

China also is developing weapons to attack satellites and computer networks, disrupting long-distance U.S. military sensors and communications networks, Gunzinger wrote in a report last year for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Iran’s arsenal includes ballistic missiles that can reach targets across the Persian Gulf region, Gunzinger wrote. Iranian officials have threatened to use anti-ship cruise missiles, smart mines that can sense their targets and swarms of small, fast-attack craft to exert their control over theStrait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf shipping lanes, he wrote. The strait is about 21 miles (34 kilometers) across at its narrowest point, with the shipping lane in either direction only two miles wide, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Gunzinger said carriers should be equipped with stealth drones that can be launched undetected from greater distances to find and attack their targets.”

The critics are wrong, however. These claims about carriers are nothing new – critics have been claiming they’re too vulnerable and too easy targets for years – and they have already been refuted many times. However, critics unfortunately continue to restate their false claims no matter how many times they are refuted. So let’s refute their claims once again.

Firstly, Tomahawk missiles (or any other missiles for that matter) are no substitute for aircraft. Most of them are not stealthy, and they’re very expensive (one Tomahawk costs over a million dollars), so they cannot be used in large numbers, e.g. against large-sized or numerous targets. They can affordably be used only against a small number of highly-lucrative targets. Moreover, they cannot be used against fleeting targets, because they can’t track and follow them. If a target is mobile and easily relocatable, such as a mobile SAM or ballistic missile launcher, it can quickly relocate and the missile will miss its target.

Worst of all, cruise missiles cannot at all be used against buried or hardened targets due to the small sizes of their bodies and warheads. This relegates them solely to striking soft, static, immobile targets. To attack anything else, you need aircraft. There is no way to avoid this fact.

So dispatching aircraft DOES provide a significant advantage. Submarines and their cruise missiles are no substitute for flattops.

Secondly, carriers are not much more vulnerable or easier to locate than they were two decades ago. They are not easy targets at all. As Lexington’s Loren Thompson and Ronald O’Rourke of the CRS point out, tracking and sinking a carrier is a very difficult job, even today. To be able to attack it, you need not only to locate it, but to continually track it and guide your weapons accurately towards it. When a carrier is detected off your shores, you need to continually track it, relay the information up the chain of command, engagement decisions have to be made, and weapons have to be dispatched and guided towards the carrier. Meanwhile, the vessel is moving, and moving, and moving.

Thirdly, sinking it, even with China’s weapons, is not easy, although China’s military buildup, including its acquisition of anti-access/area-denial weapons, is a cause for serious concern. I’m not saying they can’t sink an aircraft carrier – just that it would be difficult. Cruise missiles could be intercepted by the carrier’s escort ships and the carrier’s own defense systems, including the Sea Sparrow and RAM missiles and the Phalanx CIWS. Submarines can be detected by SH-60 Seahawk helicopters and the escort ships’ towed sonars. Ballistic missiles could possibly be intercepted by the escort ships’ SM-3 ABM interceptors. (It is not known if they already possess this capability, but if they don’t, they likely could be adapted to do so.) Fighters pose the greatest danger, especially since they can carry large loads of cruise missiles of their own. However, while the Navy’s Super Bug fighters are clearly inferior to Chinese aircraft, the Navy will, later this decade, acquire the F-35C, which is and will be superior to any fighter China owns or is designing, including the J-20.

While the Navy’s current Super Bugs can strike targets only 390 nmi away without refueling, the F-35C’s unrefueled combat radius will be 650 nmi, making it the longest ranged fighter ever operated by any Navy.

These fighters will enable the Navy not only to strike distant targets, but also to meet incoming enemy fighters far from the carrier and shoot them down before they can launch their cruise missiles against the carrier. (China’s shore-based cruise missiles all have a range of less than 500 kms; most have a range less than 200 kms.) It will thus enable the Navy to kill both the archer and the arrows. The F-35C’s 650 nmi combat radius, which can be extended with aerial refueling, will also enable the Navy to destroy cruise missile launchers on the ground.

Attacks on satellites and communications’ networks would slightly degrade the carrier’s ability to gain information, but not impair its operations in any significant manner.

Moreover, while I support the development of long-range carrier-capable drones suggested by Gunzinger, it’s pointless to hide behind a naval Maginot line, whether 500 or 1000 nmi away from China’s shore. China’s longest-ranged anti-ship weapons – the DF-21D “carrier-killer” missile, nuclear submarines, and H-6K bombers armed with cruise missiles – can operate thousands of miles away from the shore. Nuclear subs can venture anywhere in the world, even to San Diego.

So hiding behind a naval Maginot line – staying outside the range of China’s anti-ship weapons – would effectively mean forfeiting Guam (and all of Asia) to China, withdrawing to Pearl Harbor, never daring to venture west of Hawaii, and foregoing any operations in the Western Pacific. That is exactly what China wants, but do Gunzinger and Polmar really want the USN to do so?

Let’s not kid ourselves. There is no alternative to operating in the Western Pacific – yes, within the range of many Chinese anti-ship weapons. The key here is to SURVIVE – to protect one’s own carriers against these weapons. Currently, the Navy does so very well, and will get even better at doing so in the future if the requisite investmens are made.




Rebuttal of Mark Thompson’s lies

On July 20th, Mark Thompson published an utterly ridiculous blogpost on his blog in the Battleland section of the Time magazine’s website. It used two graphs taken from this CBO report to “prove” that the sequester would not make any real cuts to defense spending at all – just keep it flat. But the first of these graphs utterly disproved him, which means his claim is a lie. Below is the response I posted on that blog:

Mr Thompson, your blogpost, which was clearly intended to downplay sequestration and mislead the American people into thinking that it wouldn’t mean any real defense spending cuts, has utterly failed to do the job. If anything, it provides additional evidence that sequestration would be disastrous.

Look at your own graph at the top. It shows how high defense spending would be with sequestration, without it, and without First Tier BCA-mandated cuts. Your own graph, borrowed from the CBO, shows that WITH sequestration, defense spending would be much lower than without it.

Moreover, it shows that under sequestration, defense would be cut immediately, in FY2013, to $491 bn and be kept essentially flat. By FY2022, a full decade from now, it would still be only $500 bn in constant dollars. The deep cut would occur in FY2013, at the beginning of the FYDP, and only AFTER that big cut would defense stay flat (throughout the rest of, and after, the FYDP).

That IS a big and real spending cut. It’s akin to punching someone so that he’ll fall onto the ground, then stomping on him to keep him down. That is exactly what will happen to defense under sequestration.

The debate about sequestration is NOT just about its impact in the FYDP window; it’s about its impact throughout the entire next decade, including, and especially, the first FY, in which defense spending would have to be cut from $531 bn today to $491 bn (Larry Korb says $472 bn) in FY2013.

Those are real cuts. And such deep cuts cannot be made with pure efficiencies and “waste elimination”; they would unavoidably entail deep cuts to needed military capabilities and crucial modernization programs. That, in turn, will make America dramatically less safe.

The FY2006 defense budget was inadequate even then, and would be even more inadequate now. And it was passed over 6 years ago, for goodness sake! Setting defense spending by six (or more) years would be a big cut. And setting DOD spending levels arbitrarily according to what was spent in a given past year is dumb – regardless of whether defense spending was lower or higher at the time.

Regarding your second graph, it’s apparent that not only can’t you read a simple graph, you don’t even read what you write. By your own admission, the 2nd graph depicts what procurement spending (a minority part of the defense budget) would look like WITHOUT sequestration.

If sequestration is avoided, the DOD might very well be able to increase procurement investments at the expense of something else (O&M, the force structure, or health programs). The nation has been on a procurement holiday since the end of the Cold War. The vast majority of the military’s equipment is obsolete and worn out. The bill for replacing it is now coming due.

But that scenario can transpire ONLY if sequestration is avoided.

But this whole debate is about what will happen if sequestration DOES OCCUR. And if it does (God forbid), your second graph will become immediately irrelevant and the procurement plan it represents will go out the window.

Mr Thompson, you are completely wrong, as usual. Sequestration WOULD represent a draconian and immediate cut, and any ambitious procurement plans can be implemented ONLY if it is avoided. As your own graphs prove.

Since then, I’ve uncovered additional facts found in the CBO report from which those graphs were taken. In there, the CBO states:

1) That the procurement holiday needs to end now and the bill for modernizing and replacing obsolete and wornout equipment is now coming due: “The costs of replacing and modernizing weapon systems would grow sharply during the next several years, from $168 billion in 2013 to $212 billion in 2018 in real terms—an increase of 26 percent. Acquisition costs would remain fairly steady at that level until 2025 before declining.”

2) That under sequestration, defense spending will decline sharply as a percentage of GDP: “The growth in DoD’s costs would be less than the growth of the economy, so costs would decline as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). Spending for DoD’s base budget was 3.5 percent of GDP in 2010 and would decline to 3.0 percent of GDP in 2017 and to 2.5 percent in 2030.”

3) That sequestration would mean real, draconian cuts to the defense budget – cuts even deeper than I expected. Specifically, Table 1-4 on page 11 of the report shows how deeply defense spending would be cut by the first round of BCA-mandated cuts and by sequestration.

Even without sequestration, the base defense budget would be cut from $531 bn today to $521 bn next year and not return to its present level until FY2018.

But WITH SEQUESTRATION, defense spending would be drastically cut, from $531 bn this FY down to just $469 bn in FY2013 (the lowest level in a decade). After that draconian cut, it would remain essentially flat – the “growth” that sequestration would permit would be so slow that defense would barely reach $493 bn ($38 bn less than what it is today) by FY2022, a decade from now.

In other words, under sequestration, defense spending would be cut drastically and immediately, down to $469 bn, and would not reach even $500 bn a decade from now. And it would not return to its present level ($531 bn) for more than a decade, if ever.

Don’t take my word for it. Read the report yourself. The table stating this data (Table 1-4) is on page 11. Also see the graph posted in this CBO summary of its own report, which puts these numbers in an illustrated version.

This utterly refutes, discredits, and belies the false claims that sequestration’s defenders and other proponents of massive defense cuts have been peddling for a long time: 1) that sequestration would represent only a cut in the rate of growth; and 2) that the sequester’s cuts would not be massive nor draconian.

Proponents of massive defense cuts have been spreading these and other lies for a long time. They may have succeeded in misleading some politicians and voters who don’t know better. But the truth is on my side, as proven by this CBO report.

POGO’s “spend less, spend smarter” policies would gut defense and jeopardize nat sec

One of the most vociferous leftist groups demanding deep defense cuts is the self-styled Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a group of leftist anti-defense hacks who spend the majority of their time writing garbage propaganda about defense spending and garbage proposals to cut it deeply. (They probably have nothing better to do and don’t have a life.) It was founded by Dina Rasor, a pacifist who, by her own admission, “find[s] weapons repulsive”, and who, during the 1980s, protested against the Reagan buildup and called for the cancellation of the M1 tank and cruise missiles. The group is allied with other leftist anti-military groups, such as Code Pink and “Just Foreign Policy”. Among their “analysts” are lifelong defense-cutter Winslow Wheeler (of the George-Soros-funded CDI) and self-avowed feminist and nuclear disarmament advocate Mia Steinle. POGO itself is co-funded by George Soros, to the tune of 300,000 in 2011 alone.

Founded in 1981, POGO was initially established in opposition to the production of the M1 Abrams tank, which it deemed “wasteful” and “unneeded”, even though it was absolutely needed and has, since its introduction, proven itself superbly in conventional and irregular conflicts alike.

But probably the stupidest thing that POGO has ever written (of the tons of garbage they’ve produced over the years) is this list of proposals of deep defense cuts  (written together with the so-called “Taxpayers for Common Sense”) which, if implemented, would eliminate many vital military capabilities and modernization programs and thus gut America’s defense. It proves that they don’t wan’t a strong defense and don’t want to keep America safe – they want to weaken the US military as badly as they can. And that would be the effect of their proposals.

http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/reports/national-security/ns-wds-20120508-national-security-defense-savings.html

What’s wrong with their proposals?

To start with, EVERYTHING.

Let’s go through the most prominent and most damaging ones and I will explain why they’re wrong and damaging.

But before I do, let me remind you that while they claim in the introduction to the list that they found “much waste”, the truth is that the vast majority of what they call “waste” are actually needed military capabilities and crucial modernization programs which the US military cannot do without. Moreover, their proposals reveal their appalling, abysmal ignorance of defense issues, as they equate completely disparate weapon systems and claim they are interchangeable.

So let’s review their proposals, program by program.

Cancelling the Next Generation Bomber

POGO (and specifically, the nuclear disarmament activist Mia Steinle) falsely claims that the bomber is not needed. That’s a lie.  There is a clear and URGENT need for it. The USAF’s B-1 and B-52 bombers – which make up the vast majority of its small bomber fleet – are nonstealthy, have large RCSes, and are therefore easy to detect by modern radar and easy to shoot down for any enemy. (Modern IADSes have proliferated from Russia and China to Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and many other countries, and can effortlessly shoot down these nonstealthy bombers.) These bombers’ upgrades, which POGO mentions, are no substitute for stealthiness and cannot overcome this huge vulnerability, which stems from their nonstealthy design. They furthermore lack any defensive armament. Moreover, the cost of maintaining them (especially B-1s) is significant and rising due to their old age. A few years ago, the USAF considered retiring half of the B-1 fleet due to these costs.

That the B-52 and B-1 have decades of service lives remaining is irrelevant, as they are unsurvivable in any contested airspace, easy to shoot down even for legacy Soviet SAM systems like the SA-5,  and therefore utterly useless. Furthermore, projections of them serving until the 2040s are based on peacetime usage rates, not the wartime rates seen in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Even then, keeping these bombers in service, especially until 2045, will require costly upgrades.

These old nonstealthy bombers are also easy to shoot down and therefore unsurvivable in any environment except the most permissive ones, where the enemy is an insurgency or a weak country unable to contest control of the air. Yet, this kind of war environments is scarce and becoming even less frequent. Countries such as China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela have advanced Integrated Air Defense Systems (imported and indigenous ones) and, in China’s, Russia’s, and Venezuela’s case, advanced fighterplanes.

These heavily-defended theaters will be those in which the USAF will be forced to operate in the future in almost any contingency. Yet, the only current USAF bombers capable of surviving in such an environment are a handful (20) of B-2s. 20 aircraft are insufficient to deal with anyony but a trivial opponent, due to, among other things, the sheer number of sorties that would have to be generated in a conflict with China or Iran. And even they won’t remain stealthy forever: their stealth technology is 1980s’ vintage. By the 2020s or the 2030s at the latest, they will lose their ability to penetrate enemy airspace as well.

As Jamestown’s Dr Carlo Kopp writes:

“China’s air defense system is maturing into the largest, most capable and technically advanced in Asia, and will be capable of inflicting very heavy attrition on any aircraft other than upper tier U.S. stealth systems. Until the U.S. deploys its planned “New Generation Bomber” post-2020, the United States will have only 180 F-22 Raptors and 20 B-2A Spirit bombers capable of penetrating the PLA’s defensive shield. This may not be enough to act as a credible non-nuclear strategic deterrent.”

Delaying/cancelling the NGB would emasculate the USAF, making it (except its small B-2 fleet) unable to operate in anything than very benign, permissive environments where opponents lack meaningful SAM systems, and thus make China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela sanctuaries for America’s enemies, allowing them to husband their assets from harm. It would send a signal to America’s enemies that Washington won’t be able to bomb them.

Delaying, or even worse, cancelling the development of the Next Generation Bomber would cause the Air Force to completely lose its already small (due to the small size of the B-2 fleet) long-range penetrating capability by the time B-2s lose that capability. This, in turn, would cause the USAF to be unable to strike any targets protected by modern IADS and/or fighters, thus creating huge sanctuaries for America’s enemies – a scenario that America cannot accept.

It is therefore imperative to begin the NGB’s development NOW – not a year from today, not in 2023, not in 2024, but NOW – and to complete it BEFORE the B-2 loses its penetrating capability. Especially since it’s the centerpiece of the AirSea Battle strategy of defeating China if need be.

POGO complains about the cost ($6.3 bn over five years), but its own figures show that this would be just a few hundred million dollars in the first 2-3 FYs, and only a few billion in FY2016-FY2018. The Air Force, with an annual budget of ca. $150 bn, can certainly afford such tiny expenditures, even if it has to cut spending elsewhere. Even the entire $6.3 bn sum is small – especially given that it would be paid over five years, not one FY – which, on average, amounts to just $1.26 bn, which is a rounding error in the DOD’s   budget. The DOD can certainly afford it. But killing the NGB would mean foregoing an urgently NEEDED capability in exchange for puny savings (just $6.3 bn over 5 years). It would be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

POGO falsely claims that “deferring costly weapons systems is low-risk”, but their proposals – especially this one – would be very high-risk, as they would entail losses of crucial capabilities and equipment, and the NGB, at $550 mn per copy, would be cheap for a bomber.

If procured, the NGB will frequently be called into action, as have been the three existing bomber types, which have seen extensive action in the First Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. It won’t spend much time in hangar. The demand for USAF bombers vastly outstrips the supply.

To sum up, the Next Gen Bomber is, contrary to POGO’s lies, absolutely needed, and needed now, and even if POGO’s numbers are correct, it will cost only peanuts to develop – a tiny price to pay compared to how much almost every other DOD weapon program costs, and compared to the overwhelming bias in the DOD’s budget in favor of short-range weapons (e.g. the F-35) and against long-range strike weapons, which the nonpartisan CSBA says amounts to a 20:1 ratio.

I am hardly the only person saying that the NGB is necessary. Successive SECDEFs from Rumsfeld to Panetta have said the same, as have the current CSAF and SECAF, their predecessors, their colleague Adm. Greenert, former LTG David Deptula, numerous former Air Force Secretaries, Chiefs of Staff, Generals, and other officials, and numerous outside experts from the CSBA[1][2][3], Air Power Australia, and the Heritage Foundation. (Please read their studies; they explain very well why the NGB is absolutely needed.) This requirement has also been validated by two successive QDRs – those of 2006 and that of 2010[4] – and by Secretary Gates, who started it and said that China’s A2/AD weapons will put a premium on America’s ability to strike from the horizon and demand a family of long range strike systems. As Gates rightly said in January 2011:

“It is important that we begin this project now to ensure that a new bomber can be ready before the current aging fleet goes out of service.  The follow on bomber represents a key component of a joint portfolio of conventional deep-strike capabilities – an area that should be a high priority for future defense investment given the anti-access challenges our military faces.”

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley (appointed by Gates) has recently reaffirmed the need for the NGB, while also demonstrating how little this program, and bomber programs in general, cost compared to the USAF’s total modernization budget:

“The new Long-Range Strike bomber is one of our top priorities and encompasses approximately two percent of Air Force investment. An additional three percent over the next five years goes to sustain and modernize the B-52, B-1, and B-2 bombers to ensure these aging aircraft remain viable.”

Similarly, AirPowerAustralia’s peer-reviewed analysis shows that:

“Advanced Russian technology exports present a major strategic risk for the US, whether operated by China, or smaller players like Iran or Venezuela. These systems will deny access to most US ISR and combat aircraft, with only the B-2A, the “2018 bomber” and the F-22A designed to penetrate such defences. With its compromised X-band optimised stealth, the F-35 JSF will simply not be survivable in this environment.

The fallback position of standoff bombardment with cruise missiles is not viable. Only a fraction will reach their targets through such defences, and the economics of trading $500k cruise missiles for $100k interceptors, or hundreds of dollars of laser propellant, favour the defender. Time of flight is problematic given the high mobility of air defence targets, and targeting the cruise missiles no less problematic given denial of ISR coverage. (…) Current planning for 180 F-22As and the legacy fleet of 20 B-2As is simply not credible given the diversity of roles and missions, and sheer sortie count required to deal with anything above a trivial opponent.”

Likewise, CSBA expert Thomas Erhard warned in 2009 that without a Next Gen Bomber:

“The proliferation of sophisticated Russian air defense systems means the only US systems that can reliably penetrate and maintain a high survivability rate in the presence of integrated air defenses populated by SA-20B and SA-21 surface-to-air systems and modern Russian or Russian derivative (e.g., Su-35BM) fighters will be the F-22 and the B-2.” [2]

Had POGO had its way, not even one F-22 or B-2 would’ve ever been fielded, thus denying the USAF the capability to survive, let alone prevail, in any contested airspace. Because these programs were closed prematurely at insufficient orders, the USAF has only 184 and 20 of these aircraft, respectively – not enough to defeat China, Russia, or even Iran or Venezuela.

The fact is that the Next Generation Bomber is needed – and fast.

Cancelling the USMC and Navy variants of the F-35, buying Super Hornets instead

POGO falsely claims that the Super Bug has “many capabilities that rival those of the F-35″. That is completely false; the Super Bug has no such capabilities. Not turning capability, not thrust, not TTW ratio, not speed, not range and combat radius, not stealthiness (and thus survivability), and not weapons possible for integration (the F-35 can, for example, be fitted with Meteor A2A missiles; the Super Bug cannot). And the Super Bug’s combat radius (350 nmi) is DECISIVELY inferior to that of the F-35B (450-500 nmi) and F-35C (650 nmi, making the F-35C the longest-ranged of the 3 F-35 models). Range and endurance are absolutely vital for strike aircraft, as is stealthiness, because it determines survivability, which is key to winning ANY war. If a plane is not survivable, it’s worthless – and that’s exactly true of the Super Bug. And as stated above, stealthiness is necessary for any aircraft due to the proliferation and sophistication of enemy air defense systems.

The “proven” Super Bug, like B-1s and B-52s, has “proven itself” only in permissive environments (Afghanistan and Iraq) where the only opponent is an insurgency unable to contest control of the air. It is useless for any war theaters in which the enemy is a country with advanced IADS and/or fighters. It’s not even fit for any real A2A combat (and has not partaken in any), because it’s not a real fighter, but rather an attack jet, and is decisively inferior against current and projected enemy fighters by all criteria.

And it doesn’t have the STOVL capability required to take off from and land on amphib ships and primitive airfields, which is an absolute non-negotiable USMC requirement, as confirmed by USMC Commandant Gen. Amos. Without the F-35B, the Marines won’t have their own air cover when disembarking from ships and the Nation will lose 50% of its carrier-based strike aircraft fleet when the Harrier retires. Furthermore, cancelling the F-35 would relegate Marine and Naval Aviation solely to COIN environments, emasculating these services and barring them from any contested airspace – the kind of environment American servicemen will face in the future.

Put simply, the Super Bug is not an alternative to, or even a substitute for, the F-35. It’s a facelifted model of an attack jet that first flew in the 1970s. The F-35 is a 21st century strike fighter. Both are strike aircraft with jet engines… and that’s where the similarities end.

Cut the aircraft carrier fleet from 11 to 10, and the number of carrier air wings from 10 to 9

POGO, once again exposing its ignorance, claims that the cut is justified because “America has as many carriers as the rest of the world combined.” But the USN’s flattops are not meant to fight other carriers (although they could); they serve as mobile airfields providing airpower wherever and whenever needed – ESPECIALLY when in-theater ground bases can’t be used for whatever reason.

With 11 carriers, 7 are operational and 4 are in drydock or in homeport at any one time. 7 is barely enough to provide enough carrier strike groups where they’re needed. CENTCOM’s commander has requested a third carrier group (to deter Iran), which leaves just four for use elsewhere, e.g. in the WestPac.

But if the carrier fleet is cut to 10 (and they’ve suggested cutting it to just 9, by retiring the George Washington and foregoing CVN-80′s construction), no more than 6 carriers will be available for duty at any given time. Assuming that CENTCOM will get the 3 carriers it says it needs, that leaves 3 flattops for duty elsewhere, e.g. in the WestPac. Now, suppose that China starts a war over the oil/gas fields in the South China Sea at the same time that CENTCOM needs to deter (and possibly strike) Iran? That ain’t a farfetched scenario – China is close to provoking a war right now, and the time for eliminating Iran’s nuclear program is running out. [2] Yet, if POGO gets its way, the Navy would have only 3 carriers to deploy to the WestPac to deter/defeat China… unless you deny CENTCOM the 3 carriers it needs.

Carriers have participated prominently in every war the US has partaken in since WW2: Korea, Vietnam, Operation Eldorado Canyon, the two Gulf Wars, the Afghan War, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the bombing of Libya. There’s a huge demand for them. Without carrier air wings and intercontinental bombers, the US wouldn’t have been able to strike Afghanistan after 9/11.

In short, it would be a deep cut in America’s military strength and capability to defend itself. It epitomizes POGO’s destructive proposals.

Cancelling any further V-22 orders, buying CH-53s and SH-60s instead

The V-22 is an excellent VTOL plane capable of flying twice faster and twice farther than any helicopter. It has served extensively in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. It has amassed over 150,000 flight hours. It is also much more survivable than helicopters – if you crash, you’ll likely survive. Its problems have been solved long ago.

Yet, POGO (following Barney Frank’s SDTF) demands that it be killed and says CH-53s and SH-60s can be bought instead. But these helicopters are NOT interchangeable nor comparable with the V-22.

Not only are they inferior to it (in terms of speed, range, and survivability), the H-60 is too small, too slow, and too light to do the V-22′s tasks (which include CSAR), while the CH-53K is too big and too heavy (indeed, when it enters service, it will be the US military’s heaviest helicopter ever). The CH-53 is also twice as expensive as the V-22 ($128 mn per copy, vs only $69 mn for a V-22), costs twice as much to operate as the Osprey ($20,000 vs $10,000 per flight hour), and it won’t be available until 2018. These 3 designs represent 3 completely different weight and duty classes of VTOL aircraft and are meant for different duties. Only a totally ignorant person would equate them and suggest they are interchangeable.

The Marines are, by the way, buying the CH-53K… but to replace their older CH-53 Sea Stallion heavy helos, not the V-22 or the CH-46 (the V-22′s predecessor). The CH-53K is designed for a totally different mission than the V-22.

The V-22 is an excellent, unmatched aircraft, as validated unanimously by all USMC leaders past and present, including the current Commandant, who is a Naval Aviator by trade. He, the expert, should be listened to – not anti-defense POGO hacks. It has proven itself in three wars in three different countries – Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. (When an F-15E crashed in Libya, it was a pair of V-22s that rescued the pilots.) It underwent its baptism of fire in Iraq in 2007, during the fiercest fighting there. POGO’s claim that it is “neither cost- nor operationally-effective” is a blatant lie.

Most importantly, its primary users, Marine pilots, like it. Just listen to them. And watch this film about how the V-22 proved its mettle, proved itself to be far more capable and useful than any helicopter (its speed and service ceiling really matter in combat zones), and what the Marines say about it. Also listen to USMC Commandant Gen. James Amos, a Naval Aviator by trade, who has strongly praised the V-22 and urged its continued production. (Whom will you believe – a real Marine general or armchair generals?) Also listen to his predecessor, Gen. James Conway.

And as defense expert Dr. Robbin Laird writes:

“The beauty of the speed of the Osprey is that you can get the Special Operations forces where they need to be and to augment what the conventional forces were doing and thereby take pressure off of the conventional forces. And with the SAME assets, you could make multiple trips or make multiple hits, which allowed us to shape what the Taliban was trying to do.

“The Taliban has a very rudimentary but effective early warning system for counter-air. They spaced guys around their area of interest, their headquarters, etc. Then they would call in on cell or satellite phones to chat or track. It was very easy for them to track. They had names for our aircraft, like the CH-53s, which they called ‘Fat Cows.’

“But they did not talk much about the Osprey because they were so quick and lethal. And because of its speed and range, you did not have to come on the axis that would expect. You could go around, or behind them and then zip in.”

As Dr. Laird rightly writes, the V-22 isn’t just a great performer, it has revolutionized warfare and the way Marines think about it. (Please read his entire article.)

As experts have stated, the V-22 is the most capable VTOL aircraft ever, and nothing provides even comparable capability. “It has the best characteristics of a helicopter and a conventional propeller-driven aircraft”, says Peter Caddick Adams of the Royal College of Military Science. “And because it can do both, it exceeds the capabilities of either. It’s so versatile, there is nothing in the world which can match its capability.” From a cold start, it can get to a flight configuration in just 11 seconds.

Freezing funding for the Ground-based midcourse defense system; not installing any new interceptors in the US or Europe

The GMD is an absolutely crucial part of America’s missile defense, protecting the US against IRBMs and ICBMs from North Korea. There are 30 interceptors deployed in Alaska and California. POGO wants their funding frozen and any plans to deploy any new interceptors – in America or in Europe cancelled. This would mean no interceptors on the East Coast to protect against future Iranian ICBMs (which the US intel community says will emerge in 2015); no interceptors in Europe, Alaska, the East Coast (despite numerous scientific reports calling for an East Coast interceptor base) or anywhere else. This would leave America and Europe totally unprotected against these Iranian missiles unless SM-3 missiles are made capable of intercepting IRBMs and ICBMs, which, by itself, would require investments.

Cut off funding for MEADS

MEADS is a necessary replacement for the outdated, 1980s PATRIOT BMD system, which lacks 360 degree radar capability among others. Yet, the DOD, until recently, planned not to procure MEADS, only to develop it and let Germany and Italy buy it. Yet, POGO wants to cut off even that funding, leaving America’s partners on ice, and the US Army without a modern BMD system. Perhaps they believe the military should use obsolete, archaic weapons indefinitely.

Cut off funding for B61 warhead modernization unless Europeans pay for half of its cost

Some B61 warheads are deployed in Europe as a tactical nuclear umbrella against Russia’s vast tactical nuclear arsenal. But B61s are also useful for tactical deterrence in any other region, including the WestPac and the Middle East. Yet, POGO wants funding for B61 modernization (B61s are aging) to be cut in half unless the debt-stricken Europeans pay half of the modernization cost.

Cut the SSBN fleet from 14 to 8 boats

The DOD plans to replace its 14 Ohio class SSBNs with 12 new boats. POGO wants the order to be cut to just 8 (which will significantly increase the unit cost and possibly lead to program cancellation – which is what POGO presumably wants) and the Navy’s SLBM and warhead arsenal to be kept down to the inadequate New START limit of 1,024. But the New START treaty should’ve never been ratified; its weapon ceilings are too low; and a fleet of just 8 SSBNs would be wholly inadequate. With such fleet, only 6 boats at most would be on patrol at any given time (the 2 others would be in homeport or in overhaul), carrying no more than 960 warheads, and 6 boats would be very easy for enemy ASW platforms to find. The USN needs a large SSBN fleet around which it can disperse its SLBMs and warheads for survivability.

Like the carrier fleet cut proposal, this one also epitomizes POGO hacks’ ignorance and the disastrous consequences they proposals would have.

Close the M1A2 production/upgrade line

America’s 1980s M1A2 Abrams tanks, worn out after two wars, need to be repaired and upgraded. So what does POGO propose? To close the only line (and lose the skilled workforce) that can do the job. And they have to gall to call it waste, when closure of its line and its reopening in FY2017/2018 to produce other vehicles would cost MORE than keeping the line open. But again, for POGO, even genuine military requirements constitute “waste”. And let’s remember that POGO was originally established in 1981 in opposition to the M1 tank. Since 1981, it has routinely called for the killing of crucial, needed weapon systems. It called for the M1′s cancellation and wanted the Army to use the obsolete M48 and M60 tanks that were smashed and decimated effortlessly by Soviet tanks in the Yom Kippur War. Maybe there’s a pattern here: the worse for America, the better for POGO (and whoever finances that group besides George Soros, who donated 300,000 to it in 2011 alone).

Cancel the construction of the Chemical and Metallurgy Research Replacement Center in Los Alamos, NM, and the new Uranium Production Facility in Oak Ridge, TN

POGO calls for the cancellation of both, officially on the grounds that they’re too costly and “unneeded” in POGO’s opinion. In their defense, they invoke the opinion of the pro-nuclear-disarmament Obama Admin, which has delayed the CMRR project by five years, and House Appropriations, who have zeroed out the funding for it.

The CMRR would be a new facility used to produce a large number of plutonium pits – crucial components for nuclear warheads – and to develop and produce new nuclear weapons. The UPF would produce highly-enriched uranium, which is absolutely necessary for uranium-based warheads.

While existing facilities might, for a few more years, be able to produce limited quantities of these materials (although that’s doubtful, given their dilapidated state), they aren’t capable of producing them in sufficiently large quantities. Yet, the US needs a LARGE nuclear arsenal to deter all of its potential adversaries (Russia, China, etc.) and to protect its allies. According to former STRATCOM commander Gen. Kevin Chilton, and the current commander, Gen. Bob Kehler, the nuclear stockpile authorized by New START is exactly the size needed by America to deter its enemies (IMO, it’s not sufficient), and these facilities are absolutely necessary.

So what you think of the CMRR and the UPF depends on how big you think the nuclear arsenal should be. If, like me, Gen. Chilton, and House and Senate Republicans, you believe it needs to be large – that numbers matter – the CMRR and the UPF are absolutely necessary to produce sufficient quantities of materials to replace America’s current, obsolete warheads. If, like Barack Obama, Mia Steinle, and other disarmament advocates you believe the US should dramatically cut its nuclear arsenal and eventually disarm itself, there’s no need for such facilities if you’re going to disarm yourself.

But that only proves that POGO supports nuclear disarmament, including, apparently, the unilateral version. This is what cancelling the CMRR and the UPF would amount to.

UPDATE on 9/16/2012: As this article in the Washington Post – no bastion of conservative thought – proves, the condition of the current CMR and UPF facilities is so dilapidated, and merely renovating them would be so uneconomical and insufficient, that building replacement facilities – which POGO opposes – is an absolute necessity, no matter how big you think the US nuclear arsenal should be. There is NO alternative to replacement facilities.

UPDATE ON 9/23/2016: It turns out that the only people (besides POGO and TCS anti-defense hacks) protesting against the construction of these new CMR and UPF facilities are pacifist, anti-nuclear groups which seek America’s nuclear disarmament, and for them, the new facilities’ construction cost is merely a pretext to protest against them. POGO and TCS may have a similar motive (POGO’s Mia Steinle supports nuclear disarmament), and thus it’s likely just using the facilities construction cost as a pretext to lobby for these projects’ cancellation. The cost growth, BTW, was caused by repeated political delays to the program (most recently, by the Obama Admin), by inflation, and by the necessity to incorporate safety measures against earthquakes and other natural disasters (in NM). Moreover, the cost of one of these facilities will only be $5 bn and the other’s will be $7.5 bn, both spread over many years even though they constitute a tiny fraction of (indeed, a rounding error in) the annual defense budget, not to mention the total annual federal budget. If $7.5 bn is spread over 5 years, that amounts to just $1.5 bn; if $5 bn is spread over 5 years, it amounts to just $1 bn.

Moreover, the current CMR facility at Los Alamos can produce no more than 20 plutonium pits per year, whereas the Institute for Defense Analyses says at least 125, and possibly up to 200, pits need to be produced annually. The new CMRR facility will make that possible, making the new facility NECESSARY.

Withdraw 50% of American troops stationed in Europe (40,000) and demobilize them, thus cutting the force structure by a further 40,000 beyond what the DOD already plans

This would do double damage to national security. Firstly, it would significantly reduce Army, Air Force, and Navy (depending on which exact units would be withdrawn – POGO does not specify this, as they don’t know spit about defense issues) force structure beyond the cuts already announced by Sec. Panetta earlier this year. Secondly, it would deprive these units of close-in bases in Europe from where they can easily and quickly deploy wherever they may be needed – be it the Middle East, North Africa (as was the case in September 2011), or Eastern Europe to keep the region’s new democracies free of Moscow’s yoke. When American consulates in North Africa were attacked, reinforcements (Marines) came not from the CONUS but from Rota, Spain, only a couple of hours away from Benghazi by plane. As Heritage Foundation’s Luke Coffey rightly writes:

“forward basing U.S. troops in Europe is just as important today as it was during the Cold War, albeit for different reasons. U.S. military bases in Europe provide American leaders with increased flexibility, resilience, and options in a dangerous world. The garrisons of American service personnel in Europe are no longer the fortresses of the Cold War, but the forward operating bases of the 21st century.

The U.S. military presence in Europe deters American adversaries, strengthens allies, and protects U.S. interests—the U.S. reduces the number of these troops at its peril. U.S. can project power and react to the unexpected because of its forward-based military capabilities in Europe. Reducing these capabilities will only weaken America on the world stage.”

So POGO’s proposals would, if implemented, “only weaken America on the world stage.”

CONCLUSION

POGO’s proposed defense cuts would produce only puny savings ($688 bn per decade, i.e. $68.8 bn per year), but they would constitute a huge defense budget cut and, being targeted at crucial, necessary defense programs, would do huge, irreparable damage to national security. For those reasons alone, they should be rejected completely.

I could go on and on about their destructive proposals all day. But these examples should suffice to illustrate how destructive POGO’s proposals would be if they were implemented (God forbid), and simoultaneously, how ignorant POGO hacks are. Only totally ignorant people would equate completely disparate aircraft and suggest that the Navy’s carriers exist to fight other carriers Midway-style.

So not only are they clamoring for disastrous policies, they’re showing their utter ignorance while doing so.

[1] Mark Gunzinger, Sustaining America’s Advantage in Long Range Strike, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Washington DC, 2010. Available online here.

[2] Thomas Erhard, An Air Force Strategy For the Long Haul, CSBA, Washington DC, 2009, pg. 83.

[3] Robert Haffa and Michael Isherwood, Long Range Conventional Strike: A Joint Family of Systems, Joint Force Quarterly issue #60, 1st quarter of 2011, National Defense University, Washington DC, 2011, available online here.

[4] According to retired LTG David Deptula, the need for a next-gen bomber was validated as early as the 2001 QDR, pointing to anti-access/access-denial threats and to contested airspace in particular. See here.

It’s official: John Hawkins is an anti-defense liberal, not a conservative

For years, oversized blogger John Hawkins of “RightWingNews.com” has been pretending to be a conservative, and many people believed him.

But this week, he finally dropped the conservative mask and revealed who he really is: just another anti-defense liberal masquerading to be a conservative. He wrote a garbage blogpost endorsing Sen. Rand Paul’s libertarian anti-defense views and Paul’s call on the Congress to retain the $600-$700 bn in defense cuts scheduled to begin next January.

That blogpost is, of course, garbage, which only proves that he’s an anti-defense liberal and not a conservative or a right-winger.

Firstly, the cuts that the sequester would make would be DISASTROUS for the military and for national security, as agreed by lawmakers, officials, and outside experts from the moderate left to the right. Only those on the fringes disagree.

NOTHING that would gut America’s defense. Yet, this is exactly what you are calling on the Congress to do by calling for sequestration to proceed.

Secondly, the defense budget has already been subjected for deep cuts even w/out sequestration. The First Tier of the BCA mandates $487 bn cuts to the defense budget starting this October, which means real cuts in the size of the defense budget. Before that, over 50 crucial weapon systems were killed, the New START treaty was passed, and Secretary Gates designed $178 bn in efficiencies. These cuts, combined with those mandated by the First Tier of the BCA but excluding New START, add up to $920 bn – almost a trillion dollars. This is the DOD’s contribution to deficit reduction.

Since 2009, the DOD has contributed far more to deficit reduction than any other government program or agency. Most of them have not contributed ANYTHING WHATSOEVER.

Cutting defense equally with all other government programs without any prioritization and without looking at what you’re cutting is the dumbest way to budget. And it is NOT fiscally responsible. A truly responsible, CONSERVATIVE approach would be to prioritize federal spending according to the principles set by the Constitution: fully fund Constitutional priorities (including defense), and cut back on all nonpriority programs. That’s what a true conservative would do.

If America cannot afford to pay for its own defense, that means America can no longer afford to pay for anything. Which means that if defense is to be cut, everything else should be cut even DEEPER, because according to the Constitution, defense is to be the federal government’s #1 priority.

If the goal here is to punish Republicans, then REPUBLICANS, not the US military, should be punished. Denying our brave troops the pay, healthcare services, equipment, training, and quality base infrastructure and housing they deserve is unjust, dumb, and treasonous. Yes, I dare call it treason.

As for Sen. Rand Paul, who is evidently pandering to his father’s loony supporters (I guess he has to repair his credentials with them after endorsing Mitt Romney), he’s also completely wrong. Firstly, as stated above, the defense budget topline will be smaller even WITHOUT sequestration. But with sequestration, it will be way too small. Secondly, contrary to Paul’s claims, one does not have to cut the defense topline – and certainly not by $100 bn per year – to make efficiencies and savings. Ronald Reagan made them while increasing the overall size of the defense budget. Thirdly, liberals will never agree to any significant cuts in domestic spending, even with massive defense cuts (for proof, see sequestration). And making a “compromise” with liberals that entails deep defense cuts is absolutely unacceptable.

But thanks, Mr Hawkins, for proving to the whole world, that you are both an idiot and a strident anti-defense liberal! You are not a conservative (nor a right-winger) and you never were. You are just another anti-defense leftist pretending to be a conservative.

POGO exposed: the “government watchdog” is just another anti-defense liberal group

The Project On Government Oversight claims it is, and is described by others, as an independent government spending “watchdog”. Yet, a close scrutiny and analysis of its biased “reporting” and its ridiculous blogposts and articles reveals that it is anything but. It is, in fact, just another anti-defense liberal group whose mission seems to be to spread anti-defense propaganda and campaign for deep defense cuts.

Its Director, Danielle Brian, was fiercely rebuked by me many months ago for downplaying the disastrous impact of, and lying about, sequestration (which POGO still supports), and POGO’s Ben Freeman was rebuked by me several weeks ago for calling for the cancellation of the F-35 B and C variants.

And it’s clear that deeply cutting – and gutting – defense is the foremost goal on POGO’s agenda. Not only do they clamor for deep defense cuts (including sequestration), the vast majority of the defense budget “waste” they whine about is not waste at all, but crucial military capabilities and weapon systems they call for terminating!

See, for example, this list of deep defense cuts they demand. The vast majority of the “waste” they single out for termination is not waste, but needed military capabilities: the aircraft carrier fleet, upgrades to the dilapidated 1980s’ tank fleet, the V-22 Osprey (the most capable VTOL aircraft ever built, with 150,000 flight hours under its belt), the SSBN fleet (they call for cutting it to just 8 boats, down from 14 today), the Next Generation Bomber program, the SBIRS, the PTSS, the B and C variants of the F-35, highly-enriched-uranium-inventories, nuclear weapon production facilities, the MOX facility at Savannah, and any further development of and additions to the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System. (What weapons do they want the military to use? Muskets?)

Such cuts and eliminations would gravely weaken the US military and disastrously jeopardize national security.

But not only do they advocate such irresponsible, dangerous defense cuts; in so doing, they prove their utter, abysmal ignorance about defense issues.

A case in point is this blogpost by POGO anti-defense hacks Ben Freeman and Mia Steinle, both of whom have long been clamoring for deep, damaging defense cuts. In this one, they call for a 10-year delay of the development of the Next-Gen Bomber and a cancellation of the Marines’ F-35B fighter variant.

What’s wrong with those proposals?

To start with, everything.

First, the Next Generation Bomber. There is a clear and URGENT need for it. The USAF’s B-1 and B-52 bombers – which make up the vast majority of its small bomber fleet – are nonstealthy, have large RCSes, and are therefore easy to detect by modern radar and easy to shoot down for any enemy. They furthermore lack any defensive armament. Moreover, the cost of maintaining them (especially B-1s) is significant and rising due to their old age.

These old nonstealthy bombers are easy to shoot down and therefore unsurvivable in any environment except the most permissive ones, where the enemy is an insurgency or a weak country unable to contest control of the air. Yet, this kind of war environments is scarce and becoming even less frequent. Countries such as China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela have advanced Integrated Air Defense Systems and, in China’s, Russia’s, and Venezuela’s case, advanced fighterplanes.

These heavily-defended theaters will be those in which the USAF will be forced to operate in the future in almost any contingency. Yet, the only current USAF bombers capable of surviving in such an environment are a handful (20) of B-2s. And even they won’t remain stealthy forever: their stealth technology is 80s’ vintage. By the 2020s or the 2030s at the latest, they will lose their ability to penetrate enemy airspace as well.

Delaying, or even worse, cancelling the development of the Next Generation Bomber would cause the Air Force to completely lose its already small (due to the small size of the B-2 fleet) long-range penetrating capability by the time B-2s lose that capability. This, in turn, would cause the USAF to be unable to strike any targets protected by modern IADS and/or fighters, thus creating huge sanctuaries for America’s enemies – a scenario that America cannot accept.

It is therefore imperative to begin the NGB’s development NOW – not a year from today, not in 2023, not in 2024, but NOW – and to complete it BEFORE the B-2 loses its penetrating capability.

POGO complains about the cost ($6.3 bn over five years), but its own figures show that this would be just a few hundred million dollars in the first 2-3 FYs, and only a few billion in FY2016-FY2018. The Air Force, with an annual budget of ca. $150 bn, can certainly afford such tiny expenditures, even if it has to cut spending elsewhere. Even the entire $6.3 bn sum is small – especially given that it would be paid over five years, not one FY – which, on average, amounts to just $660 mn, which is a rounding error in the DOD’s budget.

To sum up, the Next Gen Bomber is, contrary to POGO’s lies, absolutely needed, and needed now, and even if POGO’s numbers are correct, it will cost only peanuts to develop – a tiny price to pay compared to how much almost every other DOD weapon program costs, and compared to the overwhelming bias in the DOD’s budget in favor of short-range weapons (e.g. the F-35) and against long-range strike weapons, which the nonpartisan CSBA says amounts to a 20:1 ratio.

I am hardly the only person saying that the NGB is necessary. Successive SECDEFs from Rumsfeld to Panetta have said the same, as have the current CSAF and SECAF, their predecessors, their colleague Adm. Greenert, and numerous outside experts from the CSBA and the Heritage Foundation[1]. This requirement has also been validated by two successive QDRs – those of 2006 and that of 2010. The fact is that, contrary to POGO’s lies, the Next Generation Bomber is needed – and fast.

Now, the F-35B. POGO falsely claims that the Super Bug has capabilities that “rival” those of the F-35. That is completely false; the Super Bug has no such capabilities. Not turning capability, not thrust, not TTW ratio, not speed, not range and combat radius, not stealthiness (and thus survivability), and not weapons possible for integration (the F-35 can, for example, be fitted with Meteor A2A missiles; the Super Bug cannot). The Super Bug’s combat radius (350 nmi) is DECISIVELY inferior to that of the F-35B and F-35C. Yet, range and endurance are absolutely vital, as is stealthiness, because it determines survivability, which is key to winning ANY war. If a plane is not survivable, it’s worthless – and that’s exactly true of the Super Bug.

The “proven” Super Bug, like B-1s and B-52s, has “proven itself” only in permissive environments (Afghanistan and Iraq) where the only opponent is an insurgency unable to contest control of the air. It is useless for any war theaters in which the enemy is a country with advanced IADS and/or fighters. It’s not even fit for any real A2A combat (and has not partaken in any), because it’s not a real fighter, but rather an attack jet. And it doesn’t have the STOVL capability required to take off from and land on amphib ships and primitive airfields, which is an absolute non-negotiable USMC requirement.

In short, Ben Freeman and Mia Steinle have, like other POGO anti-defense hacks, once again proven their utter ignorance, and not “waste” in the defense budget. And contrary to their pious denials that

“These amendments would result in savings without compromising security…”

The fact is that the amendments delaying the NGB and cancelling the F-35 would GRAVELY compromise security by undermining America’s airpower and its ability to operate in A2/AD environments and penetrate defended airspace. These amendments were rightly rejected. They shouldn’t even have been considered.

POGO is just another anti-defense liberal group, composed of anti-defense liberal political hacks whose sole agenda is to deeply cut, and gut, America’s defense. The vast majority of the programs they call “waste” are actually needed military capabilities and weapon systems crucial to ensuring America’s national security and winning the wars of the future. Furthermore, in their drive to gut defense, they’ve buddied up with some of the most leftist groups in the country, including Code Pink and “Just Foreign Policy”[2], some of which are funded by George Soros.

POGO’s goal is not to eliminate “waste”. Their sole goal is to gut America’s defense.

Footnotes:

[1] See e.g. Mark Gunzinger, Sustaining America’s advantage in Long-Range Strike, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Washington DC, 2010.

[2] Just Foreign Policy is an extremely leftist group which calls for, among other things, an immediate defunding of the Afghan war, creating a Palestinian state unilaterally (through the UN), and deals with the Iranian mullahs and the Taleban; it also denies that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and bombards any media outlet which says Iran is developing them with thousands of emails. This is the kind of groups that POGO and the NTU have buddied up with.

Rebuttal of Obama’s blatant lies about his defense record

On Monday, Obama delivered a fiercely-partisan speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), a speech which was simply a litany of blatant lies. He lied about his record on defense issues while ridiculously accusing Republicans (!) of putting the military in jeopardy, when in fact HE is the one who has put it in danger by first demanding the inclusion of very deep defense spending cuts in the debt ceiling deal, and now threatening ANY effort to undo at least a part of these cuts. Meanwhile, Republicans are the ONLY ones who have put forward and passed any solutions to the problem, namely, the Ryan Budget Plan (H. Con. Res. 112) and the Sequester Reconciliation Act.

Worse yet, the Washington Times reprinted all of his ridiculous propaganda.

That Obama, a defense weakling, is now trying to portray himself as strong on defense (which he has never been) is downright laughable. But why did the WaTimes publish that Obama propaganda piece?

“Mr. Obama told the VFW audience that America has “the best trained, best led, best equipped military in history, and as long as I am commander in chief, I am going to keep it that way.”

That’s a lie. The US military is currently using, for the most part, obsolete, worn-out, unsurvivable equipment dating back to the 1960s and the 1970s. Yet, Obama has already killed over 50 crucial modernization programs, cut back many others, cut the size of the military, and began deep unilateral cuts to the US nuclear arsenal, which is already at a historic low. If his further defense cuts – including the $487 bn cuts mandated by the First Tier of the BCA and sequestration – go through, the military will be gutted, and HE will be responsible for it. Here is a list of the consequences of sequestration.

“Mr. Obama said the blame for the impasse lies with Republicans insisting on tax cuts for the wealthy, though the White House has said Mr. Obama would veto a bill that did not end the Bush cuts for families earning more than $250,000 per year. “Instead of making tough choices to reduce the deficit, they’d rather protect tax cuts for some of the wealthiest Americans, even if it risks big cuts in our military,” Mr. Obama said of Republican lawmakers. “I’ve got to tell you, VFW, I disagree. If the choice is between tax cuts that the wealthiest Americans don’t need, and funding our troops that they definitely need to keep our country strong, I will stand with our troops every single time. So let’s stop playing politics with our military.””

Utter garbage! Firstly, Republicans want to prolong tax cuts for EVERYONE – not just the wealthy. Secondly, the wealthy have the same right to keep the money they’ve earned as everyone else. Thirdly, raising taxes on the wealthy would only prompt them to leave the US and thus cause the Treasury to LOSE, not increase, its tax revenue. In other words, it would make the budget deficit problem worse. That’s what happened in Britain when it instituted a 50% personal income tax rate. Fourthly, Obama earlier threatened to veto ANY effort to undo sequestration, even WITH tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans.

Furthermore, Obama will not side with the military and has never sided with it. Let’s remember that those deep defense cuts are in the BCA because OBAMA and CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS demanded them during the debt ceiling deal negotiations, and that even BEFORE there were any deal talks, and before anyone even saw the need to raise the debt ceiling, Obama demanded another $400 bn in defense cuts. In short, it was HIM who demanded deep defense cuts, well before the start of the debt ceiling talks, and HE demanded that they be included in the debt ceiling deal.

Republicans are the ONLY proponents of a strong defense in America. When the Super Committee failed to do its job – thanks to the Dems’ insistence on massive tax hikes on working Americans – the House passed a fiscally responsible budget and a separate bill that would address the problem of sequestration. But Obama continues to threaten to veto it and any other bill that does not contain massive tax hikes on hardworking Americans – a demand that Obama knows full well Republicans will not cave in to.

““As president, I’ve continued to make historic investments to keep our armed forces strong,” he said. “Guided by our new defense strategy, we will maintain our military superiority. It will be second to none as long as I am president and well into the future.””

That’s a blatant lie. “Historic investments? Please. America’s base defense budget now stands at just 3.63% of GDP and less than 15% of the tot. federal budget; total military spending adds up to 4.41% and less than 19% of the TFB. Obama’s defense cuts (even without sequestration) would take defense spending even lower, as the following graph from the Heritage Foundation proves.

Among the consequences of Obama’s pre-sequester FY2013-FY2022 defense cuts would be: a dramatic cut (of 16 ships, including one DDG and one Virginia class sub) in the already-inadequate shipbuilding plan; a cut in the amphib ship fleet to just 29 vessels, well short of the 34 required to ferry 2 Marine Expeditionary Brigades ashore simoultaneously; the retirement of the Navy’s 7 youngest Tico class cruisers (equivalent to losing the entire firepower of the British Royal Navy); the retirement of dozens of C-130, C-27, C-26, and C-5 airlifters, hundreds of A-10 attack aircraft, and squadrons of F-15s and F-16s; cuts in the R&D programs of cutting-edge technologies such as laser and other directed energy weapon programs; cuts in funding for bomber upgrades; cuts in the orders for JHSVs, V-22 Ospreys, P-8 Poseidon MMAs, E-2D Hawkeye AEW aircraft, and other vital weapons; further delays of the F-35; closure of the M1 Abrams tank production line and foregoing tank upgrades; cuts in funding for nuclear modernization; and a cut of the deployed US nuclear arsenal down to just 1,000 warheads, while Russia is allowed to have 1,550 and China to have an indefinite number (it has up to 3,000 nuclear warheads, deployed and nondeployed, most of them hidden in underground tunnels).

The US military is already well on its way to being decisively inferior to the militaries of China and Russia. If Obama is reelected, this slide into inferiority will be accelerated and completed. He has deeply and unilaterally cut the US nuclear arsenal and plans to do so further – down to just 1,000 or fewer warheads – while failing to modernize whatever remains of that arsenal. He will also have no qualms about giving up on missile defense – reelection will provide him with the necessary “flexibility” to do so, as he has already promised to the Russians. And he will continue to make deep cuts in America’s conventional capabilities.

Don’t believe Obama, folks. He’s a liar. It’s HIM who demanded deep defense cuts – even before the debt ceiling deal talks began; it’s him who insisted on their inclusion in the deal; and it’s him who now threatens to veto any solution to it. And he has made deep, reckless cuts in the US nuclear deterrent.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/23/obama-blames-gop-looming-defense-cuts/?page=all#pagebreak

Rebuttal of the rigged CPC/Stimson Center “poll”

As I reported here a while ago, there are a few rigged polls purporting to show that a majority of Americans support deep defense spending and force structure cuts. One of them has been jointly produced by the leftist “Center for Public Consultation” and the also leftist Stimson Center.

The CPC has recently repackaged that poll and delivered a “press briefing” (read: “propaganda show”) on its subject on Capitol Hill, trying to mislead members of Congress and their staffers and induce them to keep the disastrous deep defense cuts mandated by the BCA (which, including sequestration, total over $100 bn per decade).

Hope Hodge of HumanEvents reports that:

“Last week, the Center for Public Consultation repackaged a recent survey on defense spending to show that American citizens–Republican as well as Democrat–favored significant cuts to the Department of Defense, and that even those from military-heavy regions often opted to cut deeply.

President Barack Obama’s $525 billion request for Defense Department spending in 2013 is down from $530 billion in 2012, in keeping with an already-programmed slate of $487 billion in reductions to be taken across the next decade, before any additional sequester cuts are exacted.

Given a few paragraphs of information arguing for and against more spending and a blank box with a dollar sign, the 665 respondents the center polled crafted a defense budget on average 18 percent below current spending levels.

“Portraying this as a partisan difference to me doesn’t seem to be true,” survey co-creator Matt Leatherman of the Stimson Center said during a presentation of the data on Capitol Hill.

In reality, especially on defense issues, public answers change every time pollsters ask the questions. Gallup, which surveys public opinion on defense spending levels annually, charts a careening line graph showing often dramatic changes in American thought on the subject every single year.

The question is especially relevant given the prospect on Capitol Hill of sequestration: an added half-trillion in cuts to be exacted from the Defense Department automatically if Congress does not act to avoid them. While Defense leaders say the cuts will create a “hollow force” unable to respond to contingencies, the perception of a permissive American public could make Congress less anxious to take action.

Spending evidently hit a sweet spot in 2005, when equal percentages of respondents thought the Defense Department was spending too much and too little; since then, anywhere between 31 percent and 44 percent of Americans have wanted to cut defense spending, while between 52 percent and 65 percent of respondents have wanted to raise it or keep it the same.

A national security strategist with centrist think tank Third Way, Mieke Eoyang, said her research has shown that answers on spending change based on how questions are phrased and what context is given.”

As I explained a while ago, such polls should be treated with more than a grain of salt, and polls by the CPC and the Stimson Center should actually be treated very skeptically. Depending on how you word the questions, you could find that Abraham Lincoln, John Paul II, Adolph Hitler, and Joseph Stalin would’ve answered them the same way. The poll was also likely rigged in order to produce the predetermined result which the CPC and its spokesman Matt Leatherman desired.

The Stimson Center is a leftist “think-tank”, as is the CPC, so their polls cannot and should not be taken seriously. They’re already done one poll earlier this year (or maybe Hodge is talking about the same poll) purporting to “show” that a majority of Americans supports deep defense cuts. Funny, because two polls done within the last several months – one by Gallup and one by OpenCongress – show that a majority of Americans OPPOSE defense cuts, even as a deficit reduction measure.

Besides, the result of any poll depends on how you word questions, and whether, in advance of the poll being made, you feed the respondents with negative information about defense. The Stimson Center guy has openly admitted that before the questions themselves were asked, respondents were fed with negative information purporting to show how “big” and “bloated” the defense budget is, DESIGNED to mislead those people and to induce them to support deep defense cuts. The poll’s questions, likewise, were worded in a biased manner.

Lastly, and most importantly, Hodge needs to realize that it doesn’t matter what the public (the voters) want – what matters is what the CONSTITUTION says. If even 99% of Americans said they wanted deep defense cuts, or wanted to maintain the federal Department of Education, that would not matter one iota. What matters is what the Constitution says. America is a REPUBLIC, not a democracy. Democracies destroy themselves.

And as for the statement that

“Given a few paragraphs of information arguing for and against more spending and a blank box with a dollar sign, the 665 respondents the center polled crafted a defense budget on average 18 percent below current spending levels.”

Oh really? A few paragraphs of information arguing for and also just a few paras of “info” arguing against more spending? Or was it a little information in favor of current levels of defense spending and tons of false “information” (i.e. leftist propaganda) arguing for deep defense cuts?

Besides, the debate over the cuts mandated by the BCA (including sequestration) is NOT about MORE defense spending. It’s about preventing massive CUTS to the defense budget, cuts which could total over $1 trillion over a decade, or more than $100 bn every year from now until FY2022. So the poll evidently asked the wrong question. Those of us who want to prevent these massive defense cuts are not advocating more defense spending. We just want to prevent massive reductions of it.

A group of 665 respondents is supposed to be representative? Please. A truly representative poll would have to be done on a sample of AT LEAST 1000 people.

That poll is nothing more than a hatchet job, a rigged, biased propaganda piece designed to produce the predetermined result, produced by leftists like Leatherman who want to see deep defense cuts. Congress should completely disregard that poll.

Providing for a strong defense is a Constitutional DUTY of the federal government. Financing entitlements, welfare programs, or Departments of Education, Energy, Labor, Agriculture, HHS, HUD, or Homeland Security is unconstitutional, because the federal government has only very limited prerogatives, which do not include any of the foregoing other than defense.

Yet, at present, the federal government is FAILING to fulfill its Constitutional duty. Today, defense spending is at a record low – 3.63% of GDP and less than 15% of the total federal budget. Even adding the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t change that – that adds up only to 4.41% of GDP and less than 19% of the TFB.

The $487 bn cuts mandated by the first tier of the BCA are already deep enough and will cut beyond fat and into the muscle, eliminating any wasteful spending. America cannot afford to cut its defense investments further without serious adverse national security consequences.

http://www.humanevents.com/2012/07/23/dont-try-this-at-home-crowdsourcing-national-defense/

Rebuttal of the MSNBC’s lies about defense spending

On July 19th, the day the Defense Appropriations Bill was passed, MSNBC did a hatchet job on defense spending during its Morning Joe show (hosted by pseudoconservative liberal saboteur and over Ron Paul supporter Joe Scarborough). The program was, as could be expected of MSNBC (and in particular, of Joe Scarborough), irredeemably biased, utterly ridiculous, and designed to mislead the public about defense spending and the military’s structure.

Joe Scarborough opened the show by claiming that the US spends more its military than the next 16-17 combined. That is false. According to the SIPRI, as of last year, the next 9 countries (China, Russia, France, the UK, Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia) combined spent more than the US if PPP differences are accounted for – and that’s even if one accepts the SIPRI’s woefully understated figures for China and Russia. (The DOD says that China’s 2011 military budget was $186 bn, yet SIPRI falsely claims it was only $143 bn.)

Scarborough further revealed his total ignorance when he falsely claimed that the US military’s structure is still the same as it was in 1947. That is not true. The military’s structure today is totally different than it was back then. At that time, the USAF and the DOD were just being established (in late 1947; the DOD was created under the name ‘National Military Establishment’), the size of the four Services was far larger than it is today (although the military was in a post-WW2 drawdown), there were no ICBMs (or indeed any ballistic missiles) in the military’s inventory (and therefore no SSBNs either), and there were no Combatant Commands – the Service Chiefs were in the chain of command. In fact, the size of the military today is far smaller than it was in 1991, when the Cold War ended.

During the show, the following message was displayed at the bottom of the screen:

“HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

GROWING MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX”

Growing military industrial complex? Are they kidding? The US spends only 4.41% of GDP and less than 1/5th of the federal budget on the military. The figures for the base defense budget are just 3.63% of GDP and less than 15% of the TFB. Weapon orders are lower than ever. The military is much smaller than it was at the end of the Cold War. The US nuclear arsenal is the smallest since the Eisenhower era at 5,113 warheads.

And what is the influence of that supposedly hugely influential and growing “military industrial complex” that MSNBC and so many opponents of a strong defense allege exists? It hasn’t stopped the closures of over 50 weapon programs in 2009 and 2010, the ratification of the New START nuclear disarmament treaty, the Gates Efficiencies and Cuts initiative of 2011, or the Budget Control Act, which mandates a $487 bn cut in defense spending starting this October 1st and a sequestration of defense spending to the tune of $600 bn starting on January 2nd.

Where was the big bad Military-Industrial Complex when Gates was killing over 50 weapon programs, when the Senate was ratifying New START in a lameduck session, when Gates was cutting $178 bn in defense expenditures, when Obama was demanding at least $400 bn in further defense cuts, and when the Congress passed the Budget Control Act (with first tier cut and sequestration provisions in it)?

Nowhere, because it doesn’t exist, except in the fantasy world of liberals like MSNBC propagandists.

When President Eisenhower delivered his Farewell Address of 1961, he wasn’t arguing against a large standing military or a large defense budget (and America’s current defense budget is not large). He was merely warning not to give the uniformed military nor the defense industry excessive influence – whether sought or unsought. And context matters. When President Eisenhower delivered his warning, defense spending consumed almost 10% of GDP and more than half of the entire federal budget. Now these figures are much lower.

And what guests did they invite to the show? Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) and Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) – both of whom support deep defense cuts. Barney Frank is a well-known longtime supporter of deep defense cuts, which he regularly votes for, as does Mick Mulvaney, as recorded by the Roll Call Votes cited on this blog on Friday. Moreover, last year, he proposed a $250 bn annual cut in military spending (including a $150 bn cut in the annual base defense budget), and last year, he, along with Reps. Paul and Jones and Sen. Wyden, sponsored a pseudo-non-partisan, overwhelmingly biased, “Sustainable Defense Task Force” which called for deep defense cuts across the board.

During the show, Frank lied again, claiming that the US no longer needs a nuclear triad. The fact is that it does, because it confronts two nuclear-armed peer competitors, Russia and China, both of whom have large nuclear arsenals and nuclear triads of their own. Russia has over 100 Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers, almost 400 ICBMs, and 14-15 SSBNs, including one capable of launching 20 SLBMs. It also has several times more tactical nuclear weapons than the US does. China has up to 3,000 nuclear warheads according to Professor Philip Karber of Georgetown University, and a nuclear triad consisting of H-6K bombers, DF-5, DF-31, and DF-41 ICBMs, and SSBNs armed with the JL-1 and JL-2 SLBMs (not to mention its numerous IRBMs, MRBMs, and SRBMs). Most of China’s warheads and missile launchers are probably based underground in the 3,000 miles of tunnels that China has built for that purpose.

To protect itself against these threats, America NEEDS a large nuclear deterrent (no smaller than the one it currently has) and a nuclear triad, which offers maximum survivability.

For his part. Rep. Mick Mulvaney falsely claimed that sequestration, if it were to go through, would represent the first round of defense cuts (he presumably meant “first round of defense cuts since 9/11). But that’s a blatant lie, because since 2009, numerous rounds of defense cuts have been implemented, as stated above. But even if he meant “first real-term cuts in defense spending”, i.e. a reduction from the level of defense spending from the past year, that still doesn’t help him: even without sequestration, the defense budget for FY2013 will be SMALLER than the one for FY2012 (i.e. the current fiscal year), which is $531 bn. That is mandated by the first tier of the BCA (which the program’s guests and hosts ignored, probably deliberately). That is the law. By virtue of the first tier of the BCA, the defense budget must get smaller next year, in real terms – and that means tough choices for the DOD. The results of these choices, as mandated by these real-term budget cuts, were announced by the DOD in January: ship and aircraft fleet cuts, personnel number reductions, healthcare and retirement program reforms, efficiencies, etc.

In short, the July 19th Morning Joe program was, as usual, a litany of blatant lies aired by an extremely liberal TV channel. All decent Americans should boycott that channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN6Wly00vwk