Gates: Pentagon must cut overhead, restrain spending

Gates: Pentagon must cut overhead, restrain spending

www.cnn.com

The Pentagon must hold down its spending and make choices that will anger "powerful people" in an era of economic strain, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a weekend speech in Kansas.

Increasing health care costs, a top-heavy uniformed and civilian management force, and big-ticket weapons systems are swelling the military's budget at an "unsustainable" rate, Gates said. In response, Gates said, he has ordered the Defense Department's military and civilian leaders to find savings of 2 to 3 percent -- more than $10 billion of the Pentagon's roughly $550 billion base budget -- and

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So basically it looks like that the US is going to cut a lot of spending in the weapons technology sector, and shift a lot of military spending focus to fighting the wars.

What is most interesting, is how Gates said that these cuts will "anger 'powerful people'". No doubt he is referring to the kingpins behind the military-industrial complex, as the article even nods at, using Eisenhower's famous speech about its danger and growing power.

Could this possibly be a big blow, and a statement out in the open about taking down or dis-regarding TPTB?

First Goldman-sachs, now this?

Although it isn't anything to get too excited about, I think these are definitely steps in the right direction.

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

You mean all the drug pushing needs to be stepped up by the american government don't you. Get columbia on the phone and do some deals.

Seems a strange choice. I personally would have gone the other way and cut back on overseas military adventures and bases and kept the R&D and manufacturing budgets as high as possible. The best defense the west has is it's superiority in military technology and we should be looking to extend that gap as far as possible, not let the rising powers close it.

These budgets also provide jobs for american companies and workers which can't be underestimated in times like these.

[edit on 9-5-2010 by Chris McGee]

This has got to be one of the smartest moves Gates has made since taking over the role of Sec. Defense after Donald Rumsfeld. I could not agree with him more, that the Pentagon has become one big bloated bureaucracy and a money pit. I think he is highlighting the waste of taxpayer funds by the Pentagon. One prime example would be the disappearance of trillions of dollars before 9-11. The whereabouts of that money remains a mystery to this day.



Rumsfeld was going to have a war on waste and Pentagon bureaucracy but when the War on Terror started, the priorities changed. As long as this overhead can be jettisoned without hindering national security and defense. It is about time and crucial. The government is operating on deficit spending which is pure insanity.

Now, hopefully the Administration and the Congress will take the cue from Robert Gates and cut their grand endeavors. It will be interesting how this is going to be pulled off, given the influence of the defense companies and lobbyists on Capitol Hill. How much can one man do? It may shape up to be a David and Goliath tale when it is all said and done.

[edit on 9-5-2010 by Jakes51]

I wonder sometimes about the "big ticket" items, the carrier battlegroups, the multi-billion dollar B2 bombers etc.

Can't help but think that these items get more expensive, their numbers have to necessarily reduce simply to balance the books. Technology advance can mitigate those fewer numbers by increased capability ... but in a shooting war it matters not whether your ship is state of the art or a bit behind the times ... if it's at the bottom of the sea.

That's where I think the balance is wrong. Smaller & less expensive doesn't have to mean second rate. The German Type 212 submarine, for example, a particularly fine piece of kit ... it's non nuclear, it's tiny by USN standards ... but it's every bit as undetectable as its USN SSN equivalents, every bit as lethal too. But an awful lot less expensive.

The balance is out of kilter too with the British Navy, they're constructing two huge aircraft carriers to replace 3 smaller ones, at the same time as their surface fleet, especially destroyers, is being whittled down to the very bare minimum (many consider they've gone way past that minimum already). And so much of defense spending ends up with the papershufflers, never makes it to the front line.

Yeah, smart move by Gates I think, too.

I was in the Military 20 years. The corruption there is sickening. Every flag officer should have a civilian baby sitter.

At the end of each fiscal year if your unit did not spend its allocated funds they always asked us to come up with things to spend the money on rather than give it back.

What we got was 40 inch plasma TV's for every room, when they cost 8k each. New buildings and furniture for the offices when what we needed was new computers.

What the military has become is a bunch of power hungry, tall, handsome pretty men that get what they want without being accountable to the tax payer or anyone really.

Congress and the President do not help. They take us to wars and are happy to expend the lives of our men and women, our tax money etc...but because its politicaly damaging to them they wont allow wars to be fought with our most powerful and decisive weapons because it might cause some political backwash that would keep them out of office.

We should not go to ANY war unless we are prepared to be ugly because it ultimately costs us more of our men and women and tax money.

War is Ugly. Now they are spending billions on radio controlled "drones" that will eventually, easily be circumvented with jamming or virus attack of the communication medium that controls these things.

Its not that some drones would be useful its that they are buying every drone any company produces rather than doing studies on what they actually need and limiting the new weapons scope to match the mission requirements.

We should not get rid of all the nukes, we should get rid of the billion dollar aircraft.

Nukes are a cheap and effective detterent.

Well, one way to accomplish that is to bring all of the troops home from these unwinnable wars, and put them on the US borders. It would accomplish three things:
1.) Tremendously cut down on weapons and logistics costs
2.) Curtail the flow of drugs and illegals across the border.
3.) Increase the number and wages of jobs in the US for US citizens, including LEGAL immigrants.

There are a lot of points that come to mind.

Reducing military [fraud] spending is essential to fiscal sanity.

I too will note that VERY shortly after Rumsfeld mentioned 2.3 Trillion dollars missing from the Pentagon budget, his 'War on Waste', 911 happened within a day.

The Pentagon sure managed to duck THAT bullet.

Gates is making the sounds of sanity. We will have to see what does or doesn't come of it.

I think a draft is essential to connect us in a real way with the potentially insane actions of this out of control Federal government.

I will say that having a standing army makes war(s) more convenient. It is Very dangerous.

Using mercenaries costs 4 to 5 times the cost of a regular military. Mercenaries are invariably more reckless & much less accountable in regards to their actions.

Using mercenaries makes it seem painless, especially if we rob unborn babies of their economic prosperity even before they take their first breath. Amazing that all the people who CLAIM to care about unborn babies don't seem to mind robbing them for Trillion dollar wars for imaginary things.

We spend almost as much as all other nations on the planet do on our military. We also spend 40 to 50 billion dollars spent spying, a large portion of it completely unconstitutional & illegal despite congressional nonsense to the contrary.
Added together we are squandering vastly more than the rest of the planet on the illegal fascist agenda.

And this 'support the troops' mantra?

How about the troops supporting America & Americans for a change?
Or are they too busy being warfare welfare queens?

Where was the Louisiana National Guard during Katrina? In flipping Iraq.
When Navy helicopter pilots rescued AMERICAN CITIZENS from the flood waters they were reprimanded by their commander.

We are being invaded on our southern border. WTF don't they take care of that REAL problem instead of looking for non-existent windmills in Iraq?

Instead of reducing terrorism our military is insanely CREATING terrorism at every turn possible.
Drone attacks where they KNOWINGLY kill 30-50 innocent civilians just to get one supposed terrorist? Exponentially increasing terrorism rather than reducing it.

The CIA, NSA, FBI & Pentagon WANT TERRORISM, because it is a jobs program for their WELFARE backsides, while we have unemployment of almost 10% here in the United States.

Blackwater is spending money on hookers, strippers, & Erik Prince is fully aware his hired guns are using child prostitutes in the green zone of Baghdad.
The defense dollar goes to buy homosexual orgies at the Kabul embassy.
The congress has made it against the law for the American people & the world to see young men & women being raped at Abu Ghraib & their shrieks of horror.
Blackwater Employees were CONVICTED of smuggling guns into Iraq.

The Pentagon DELIBERATELY dropped almost 9 BILLION dollars in cash in the desert of Iraq, probably so insurgents & gangsters would steal it & make the Iraq fiasco go on forever. They made sure it was an independent agency so it couldn't have any congressional oversight.
www.vanityfair.com...

The CIA is a bunch of mobsters & their gullible idiot front men/women.
The NSA was intentionally & UNCONSTITUTIONALLY created in a manner to have no congressional oversight.

If i were god/king these these agencies full of treasonous parasites would be instantly extinguished on our already unsustainably over crowded planet.