The Pentagon received a whopping $150-billion improve within the funds invoice handed by Congress and signed by the president July 4. That may push subsequent yr’s proposed Pentagon funds to greater than $1 trillion. Most of that giant quantity will go to weapons producers.
A brand new report by the Quincy Institute and the Prices of Conflict Challenge at Brown College discovered that for the interval from 2020 to 2024, greater than half of the Pentagon funds — 54% — went to non-public corporations. That determine has climbed significantly because the quick post-Chilly Conflict interval of the Nineteen Nineties, when the contractor share was 41%.
The surge of spending on the Pentagon and its major weapons suppliers received’t essentially make us safer. It might simply enrich navy corporations whereas subsidizing overpriced, underperforming weapons methods, even because it promotes an accelerated arms race with China.
Whereas weapons corporations will fare nicely if the brand new funds goes by as deliberate, navy personnel and the veterans who’ve fought in America’s wars on this century is not going to. The Trump administration is searching for deep cuts in personnel, services and analysis on the Veterans Affairs, and tens of thousands of navy households have to make use of meals stamps, a program cut by 20% within the funds invoice, to make ends meet.
The $150 billion in add-ons for the Pentagon embrace tens of billions for the Trump administration’s all-but-impossible dream of a leak-proof Golden Dome missile defense system, a purpose that has been pursued for greater than 40 years with out success. Different large winners embrace the brand new F-47 fight plane, and the navy shipbuilding business, which is slated for an enormous infusion of latest funding.
The query of how you can allocate the Pentagon’s orgy of weapons spending is difficult by the truth that there at the moment are two highly effective factions throughout the arms business combating over the division’s funds, the standard Large 5, composed of Lockheed Martin, RTX (previously Raytheon), Boeing, Normal Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, and rising navy tech corporations akin to SpaceX, Palantir and Anduril.
The Large 5 at present get the majority of Pentagon weapons spending, however the rising tech corporations are catching up, winning lucrative contracts for military-wide communications methods and antidrone know-how. And there can be extra such contracts. Even after the general public falling out between Elon Musk and the president, the rising tech corporations have a determined benefit, with advocates akin to Vice President JD Vance, who maintains close ties together with his mentor and political supporter Peter Thiel of Palantir, and dozens of employees members from navy tech corporations who are now embedded within the nationwide safety and funds bureaucracies of the Trump administration.
In the meantime, the tech sector’s guarantees of a brand new, revolutionary period of protection made doable by artificial-intelligence-driven weapons and different applied sciences are nearly definitely overstated. If previous observe tells us something, it’s that new, complicated high-tech weapons is not going to save us.
The historical past of Pentagon procurement is suffering from “miracle weapons,” from the digital battlefield in Vietnam to Ronald Reagan’s “impenetrable” Star Wars missile shield to networked warfare and precision-guided bombs used within the Iraq and Afghan wars. When push got here to shove, these extremely touted methods both didn’t work as marketed, or had been irrelevant to the sorts of wars they had been being utilized in.
Only one instance: Although the Pentagon spent nicely over $10 billion to discover a system that would neutralize improvised explosive units in Iraq and Afghanistan, solely modest progress was made. Even after the brand new know-how was deployed, 40% of I.E.Ds could not be cleared.
Know-how is a device, however it’s not the decisive think about profitable wars or deterring adversaries. An efficient navy ought to be primarily based on well-trained, well-compensated and extremely motivated troops. Meaning taking a few of that 54% of the Pentagon funds that goes to contractors and investing in supporting the people who find themselves truly tasked with combating America’s wars. However to be actually protected, we have to battle fewer wars by adopting a extra practical technique that emphasizes diplomacy and shut cooperation with allies, and that resorts to drive solely when there’s a main, direct risk to U.S. safety. A extra balanced technique can be a lot much less more likely to put U.S. troops in high-risk conditions just like the nation-building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As an alternative of letting company particular pursuits distort our international and navy insurance policies, we have to press for an method that places strategic issues first. That may imply taking steps to scale back the ability of the arms makers, new and previous, by steps akin to stronger measures to restrict the revolving door between authorities and business. And we have to convey extra unbiased voices into the Pentagon’s funds discussions. Lockheed Martin, Palantir, SpaceX and different corporations shouldn’t have undue affect over selections on how a lot to spend on our navy, and what to spend it on. That’s no approach to make a navy funds, and no approach to defend a rustic.
William D. Hartung is a senior analysis fellow on the Quincy Institute for Accountable Statecraft and the co-author, with Stephen Semler, of the report “Income of Conflict: Prime Beneficiaries of Pentagon Spending, 2020 to 2024.”
