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The new Pentagon budget: Paying more, getting less
The new budget now being trotted out for the Pentagon is a tired old document, bereft of the many significant changes needed to revive our decaying defenses. Worse, the Pentagon's masters and its peanut galleries in Congress, the press, and think tanks opine delusions that anything significant is changing.
Much will be made of a few reluctant acknowledgments of reality and old news painted as noteworthy. The Navy won't plan on, for now, a new cruiser it can't afford even under the wildest budget growth assumptions. The Army will continue redesigning the vehicles for its "system of system" target hunting technologies that we now know can't find even primitive enemies. The Air Force will press on for a new bomber to try, yet again, to attack what it called decades ago "critical nodes." The Marine Corps will declare a return to its amphibious warfare heritage: to fight its way onto hostile shores - something it has not done since 1945.
The new spending level for the Pentagon reinforces the non-change.