Welcome to the defense death spiral

A basic truth in Washington is that almost every single new weapon system ends up costing significantly more than the one it is replacing.

As the cost of weapons increases, the number of systems produced decreases. That’s how the United States ended up with only 21 B-2s, 187 F-22s, and three Zumwalt-class destroyers, rather than the 132, 750, and 32 respectively the military initially promised. This phenomenon creates what is known as the Defense Death Spiral, when the unit cost of new weapons outrace defense budgets.

John Boyd and his friends in the Military Reform Movement during the late Cold War years warned us about the military industrial congressional complex 50 years ago. This small band of Pentagon insiders saw with their own eyes how the political economy created by the financial and political connections between the military elite, the defense industry, and society’s ruling class wasted precious resources and produced a series of deeply flawed weapons.

President Eisenhower elegantly articulated the dangers of the military industrial congressional complex in 1961, several years before Colonel Boyd and his friends began their work. He warned that only “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” This statement remains as true today as it was on that wintery January day 53 years ago.

With all due respect to President Eisenhower, it must be acknowledged that he issued his warning during the final days of his presidency rather than at its beginning – when he could have used his office to do something about it. The participants of the Military Reform Movement sacrificed their traditional careers and the greater financial rewards they could have enjoyed to actively fix the system from within.

President Eisenhower defined the problem for Boyd and his friends. They dissected it, identified the underlying pathologies of the system, and then did all they could to affect meaningful change.

The Death Spiral is one of the main Pentagon Pathologies. The American people devote ever greater resources to their defense while receiving less and less in return. The Air Force had 10,387 aircraft in 1975 when the Military Reformers began their work in earnest. Today the Air Force has 5,288. The Navy had 559 active ships in 1975. Today the fleet has only 296. The Pentagon’s base budget is more than 60% higher today than it was in 1975, when adjusted for inflation. The American people simply spend more and receive much less in return for their defense dollars.

An argument can be made that modern military equipment is more expensive because of the capabilities they provide the troops. That is extremely debatable because many of the high-profile acquisition programs over the past 25 years have been underwhelming at best, and often complete failures. It is difficult to find anyone who will honestly say the Littoral Combat Ship was worth the effort.

Left unchecked, the acquisition Death Spiral’s inevitable destination is unilateral disarmament. Norman Augustine, a former DoD official and Lockheed Martin CEO predicted in 1983, with only a hint of satire, that by 2054, “the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.”

The right way to combat an inevitable fate similar to Augustine’s prediction would be to stop business as usual in defense procurement. Service leaders should abandon the practice of pursuing the most technologically advanced weapons possible. Rather than trying to add every conceivable gadget to each airplane, ship, and ground vehicle, the military should simplify designs. A quality weapon is one that is just capable enough to perform the intended task.

The Pentagon should only approve programs for development when the component technologies have already been proven effective. That is how the Pentagon can avoid another acquisition debacle like that of the F-35, for which development work continues 23 years after Lockheed Martin won the contract.

Lawmakers and defense officials constantly say the acquisition system needs to be updated to speed weapons to the warfighters at the “speed of relevance.” That is a worthy goal, but it doesn’t require new laws and regulations to achieve. The only thing required is a more realistic design approach.

Unsurprisingly to many people, realism is not the approach of the national security establishment. The establishment’s leaders want to combat the Death Spiral by throwing more money at the problem. Senator Roger Wicker wants to drastically increase defense spending to 5% of GDP. Such an increase would add an additional $5 trillion in Pentagon spending over the next ten years over the already eye-watering $9.3 trillion currently projected over the same period.

Something clearly must give. The United States needs an effective military force to defend its interests. But if the country is bankrupted in the pursuit, then what is the ultimate point? The good news is that the solution to the Death Spiral conundrum doesn’t require additional legislation and will save countless billions of taxpayer dollars. All that is really required is true leadership to instill the necessary discipline to the process.

Finding the right leaders is the only real challenge to be faced.