I too read the op-ed coauthored by fellow blogger Chris Preble and, like Brian, thought it excellent. For confirmation of their view see this piece by the Project on Defense Alternatives.  Since I have been spending a lot of time recently thinking about the state of the American military and just published a rather large report on it this week allow me to address other aspects; especially since the Pentagon’s FY ‘08 budget request will be rolled out next Monday
 
Yesterday the Security Policy Working Group held a briefing to release their U.S. Security FY08 Budget Report Card. Cindy Williams of the MIT Security Studies Program made these interesting points:

The FY 2008 defense budget is likely to ignore as much as $30 billion in realistic costs.

The Future Years Defense Program for FY 2008-2013 may understate the realistic costs of Bush administration plans by a full trillion dollars, including hundreds of billions of dollars in war costs. By the way, in the interest of irony, I should note that back in the last century Pentagon planners used to call this the Five Years Defense Plan, a sign of Communist like central planning if ever there was one.

Realistic pricing of the administration’s plans could raise by a full percentage point the average annual share of GDP allotted to defense.

Now bear in mind that the coming Pentagon budget request is going to be larger than last year’s and that was already a historic high. While the new Democratic congress may quibble about priorities it is unlikely that they are going to call for significant reductions, even though the U.S. military budget is now higher than all other countries on the planet combined.
 
So one might ask, before giving the Pentagon yet more money, if it is able to spend that money effectively. The answer is simply no.
 
Consider what a past report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, hardly an abode of bleeding heart liberals, said:
 
The US does not effectively program or manage defense spending. It lets costs escalate to the crisis point and then either reduces program costs to fit its budget goals or increases expenditures on a crash basis. It manages through failure. When major equipment purchases or force transformations finally escalate too much in cost, the level of activity is cut back to fit the budget, or parts of the spending are slipped into future years. The DoD has a long history of compensating for undercosted plans by not fully executing the plan or entirely canceling the program. In fact, every major DoD procurement and force transformation plan has been subject to such cuts or deferrals for at least the last quarter century. American defense plans simply do not survive engagement with reality.
 
Okay, the Pentagon flunks Planning 101. But can they at least keep track of their funding? Nope, it can’t do that either.
 
It’s long been obvious, though rarely mentioned (much like the story of the child who noted the King wore no clothes) that the Pentagon’s accounting systems are broken. In 2005, Managing Director Gregory D. Kutz of the Government Accountability Office told Congress that these accounting problems would cost taxpayers approximately $13 billion in 2005. Indeed, the GAO has classified the Pentagon’s accounting systems as “high risk” since the 1990s.
 
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has said that confusing Pentagon accounting procedures, as well as bookkeeping lapses, have complicated the legislative branch’s ability to track billions of dollars that have been spent on military contracts and operations.
 
Simply put, Pentagon management is incompetent. For example, every three months, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rates federal agencies on five measures of governance. The “Executive Branch Management Scorecard” for March 2006 ranks the Department of Defense (DOD) “unsatisfactory,” the worst rating, in three of five categories; in the other two, the best DOD could do was “mixed results.” Of the 25 agencies rated, only Veterans Affairs did worse. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has identified more areas of managerial concern in the Pentagon than in any other cabinet-level department in its “High Risk” series of reports.
 
If your bank handled your money like this the FDIC would shut it down. So do we really want to fork over hundreds of billions of dollars for the next year on the no questions asked, business as usual approach?