Report: Congress should cut $62 billion of Cold War weapons programs
Non-partisan study recommends using money to improve homeland security, halt spread of nuclear weapons.
A new report by the
Task Force on a Unified Security Budget for the United States says that Congress should cut $62 billion out of cold war weapons programs and use that money to for homeland security needs, efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons, and diplomatic measures that would better serve America's national security interests.
Knight Ridder reports that the non-partisan think tank's study is designed to provide "a systematic, comprehensive examination of security spending and a search for
the right balance of security tools." The report comes as Congress is about to debate President Bush's $439 billion defense budget, the largest in the nation's history.
The report ... singles out such programs as the F-22 stealth fighter jet, the Virginia-class submarine, the DD(X) destroyer, the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and the C-130J cargo plane as having "scant relevance to the threats we face" and recommends that they be eliminated or reduced significantly. The group also recommends: Slashing the US nuclear arsenal from 6,000 to 600 operational warheads, while keeping another 400 in reserve; Eliminating the Trident II nuclear missile; Halting further deployment of a national ballistic-missile defense system, but maintaining a basic research program; Canceling further research into space-based weapons. Other suggestions include slowing development of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Army's Future Combat System and deactivating an Air Force fighter wing and a Navy aircraft-carrier battle group.
The group which wrote the report consists of defense and non-proliferation experts. In the report, it suggests that Congress shift some of this military spending to items like increasing the amount of money spend on port security, provide more resources for first responders like police and fire fighters, and to improve diplomatic measures like foreign aid and non-proliferation efforts, such as continuing to fund measures to safeguard nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union.
Even though defense spending has increased 27 percent since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, excluding nuclear weapons programs and war spending, the United States remains vulnerable because spending priorities don't reflect actual threats, the study argued. For example, the Bush administration proposes to spend more next year on missile defense than it does on the Coast Guard, Korb said.
Missile defense is a system of interceptor missiles that would be fired at ballistic missiles that were attacking the United States. Many of its tests have failed, and critics say it isn't technologically feasible. "We're in much greater danger of someone sneaking a weapon of mass destruction in at one of our ports than shooting it with a return address," [Lawrence J. Korb, a Pentagon official during the Reagan administration and one of the principal authors of the study,] said.
The
Inter Press News Service reports that the group thinks the current spending ratio of six dollars on the military to every one for homeland security is inappropriate, and that a three-to-one ration is "
reasonable and well within reach."
That view has recently received additional support from a growing number of conservative commentators, such the former chief of the US Central Command, Gen. Anthony Zinni, and foreign policy intellectual Francis Fukuyama who, in his recent book, "America at the Crossroads", criticized US policy as over-militarized. The
Virginian-Pilot reports, however, that Congress is
preparing to add billions of dollars to the amount already requested by President Bush. The House Armed Services Committee Wednesday night added more than $5 billion for new weapons programs and for increased military pay. The Senate Armed Services committee also is expected to make some additions to the budget.
Wednesday's House committee actions included approval of a 2.7 percent pay increase for service members, one-half of one percentage point more than Bush requested. The additional pay would add $300 million to the overall budget, but Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., said it would mark the eighth consecutive year in which Congress has increased military pay by more than the rate of inflation.
The House panel also delivered a victory to military retirees, blocking until at least the end of 2007 a Pentagon plan to dramatically increase health insurance premiums paid by retirees under age 65. In the meantime, the committee wants to create an "independent task force" to study the military health system and its finances.
The Pentagon hoped to save more than $700 million in health care costs by greatly increasing premiums and forcing some retired service members out of the program, specifically retirees who take civil jobs that also provide health insurance.
Finally,
United Press International reports that late last week Army Secretary Francis Harvey said that the Army's ambitious Future Combat System (FCS) was still on track. Mr. Harvey's comments came as
Congress grew increasingly wary about the development and the cost of the program. The
FCS website
describes the project as "a family of manned and unmanned systems, connected by a common network, that enables the modular force, providing our Soldiers and leaders with leading-edge technologies and capabilities allowing them to dominate in complex environments."
Military.com reports that in a blow to the program, members of the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee voted to remove $325 million from the $3.9 billion requested by the Pentagon for the program, and more important, also voted to
give the Army a 2008 deadline to decide on a "go/no go" for the entire program.
Ranking subcommittee member Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D) of Hawaii said the cut to FCS was needed, in part, to help fund other service priorities.
"We recognize that the Army is carrying the heaviest burden in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms [of] lives lost and dollars spent," Abercrombie said. "The problem is that the Army simply has too many bills to pay and not enough funding to cover all of them. This subcommittee decided to cut the FCS program because it needed to fund things our troops need today. To me those near-term imperatives have to take precedence over a program like the FCS that will not deliver complete new units for almost 10 years and that faces serious cost, technology and schedule problems," he added.
Rep. Abercrombie said the cuts would not effect the development of the program. He said the schedule was not the issue, but whether some elements of the program can be done properly, or at all.
Also...
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Brandeis University pulls Palestinian art from exhibit (Associated Press)
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Turkish military: No yielding on right to pursue PKK inside Iraq (Turkish Daily News)
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Taliban threat is said to grow in Afghan south (The New York Times)
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