Defence budget planners cannot be too careful. While arbitrary swings in fiscal priorities upset their models, acquisition system failures frustrate their maths. To compensate, they take what the system gives, and dispense with underlying strategy.
The US military's new budget request is a monument to strategic indecision. Caught between shrinking funding and galloping personnel and equipment costs, the budget makers eschewed bold decisions and made do.
Thus, the US Air Force is to "divest" its entire L-3 Communications/Alenia North America C-27J fleet. Most air forces do not know the luxury of owning 38 of probably the world's best small airlifters. But the USAF can dispense of them with a shrug.
Only the USAF has bought 14 high-altitude unmanned air vehicles: Northrop Grumman's RQ-4 Global Hawk Block 30. Only the USAF has decided to retire them before officially declaring them operational.
And only the US military can afford strategic indecision regarding the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. It refuses to kill the programme, but will not allocate the funds required to approach the original ambitions.
The US military has no peer, but perhaps not in the way it is often thought. There is no force on this planet willing or able to waste so much money simply to avoid making hard decisions. The question is: can even the Pentagon avoid them forever?
Leave a comment
Want a user picture? Get a Gravatar!