De Verenigde Staten en haar problemen

[Elzenga]

http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/external/the-emerging-middle-class-in

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Report: U.S. To Lose Superpower Status By 2030

Dec. 10, 2012   
By DOUG STANGLIN, USA Today

A report by the National Intelligence Council predicts that the United States will lose its superpower status by 2030, but that no country — including China — will be a hegemonic power.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20121210/DEFREG02/312100008/Report-U-S-Lose-Superpower-Status-By-2030

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

IMF: fiscal cliff erger dan eurocrisis

EPA Toegevoegd: zaterdag 8 dec 2012

Het hoofd van het IMF zegt dat men zich internationaal meer zorgen maakt over de Amerikaanse begrotingsafgrond dan over de crisis in de eurozone. "Eerst maakte men zich meer zorgen over de eurozone, maar dat is nu niet meer zo", zei Christine Lagarde in een gesprek met de BBC. " Men is ongerust over de begrotingsafgrond en vraagt zich af wat de oplossing wordt."

Als de Republikeinen en Democraten het niet eens worden over het terugdringen van het begrotingstekort, zullen er begin volgend jaar automatisch zware bezuinigingen en belastingverhogingen in werking treden. Dat zal volgens Lagarde wereldwijd gevolgen hebben.

"De economie van de VS is goed voor 20 procent van de wereldeconomie. Als de Amerikaanse groei wegvalt door de fiscal cliff, merkt men dat wereldwijd", waarschuwt Lagarde. "Als de Amerikaanse economie 2 procent minder groeit, groeien Canada en Mexico een procent minder. In Europa zullen de gevolgen minder zijn, maar de effecten zullen gevoeld worden."

Onderhandelingen

Lagarde spoort de Amerikaanse politici daarom aan een oplossing te vinden. Ze betreurt het dat de onderhandelingen tussen president Obama en het Republikeinse Huis van Afgevaardigden al weken muurvast zitten. "De VS moet zo snel mogelijk alle onzekerheid en twijfel wegnemen."

Bron: NOS

[dudge]

Stevig bedrag. Anderzijds, veel belangen mee gemoed. In vergelijking:

In totaal kosten de verkiezingen ons zo'n vijftig miljoen euro, wat per stemgerechtigde Nederlander neerkomt op zo'n vier euro.

Voor NL is het dus 0,00009% van de economie, voor de VS 0,00014, in verhouding tot de totale economie dus de helft meer.

[dudge]

Verkiezingscampagnes VS kostten twee miljard dollar
Internationaal • Geplaatst door Redactie op 07-12-2012 @ 15:25
print

De campagnes voor de Amerikaanse presidentsverkiezingen hebben meer dan twee miljard dollar (ruim anderhalf miljard euro) gekost. Dat blijkt uit cijfers die donderdag werden vrijgegeven door de Federale Kiescommissie. De campagnes zijn daarmee de duurste in de Amerikaanse politieke geschiedenis.

In de laatste weken voor de verkiezingen kreeg vooral de Republikein Mitt Romney nog veel donaties binnen. Zijn campagneteam en Politieke Actiecomités (PAC's) die hem steunden haalden in die periode 86 miljoen dollar binnen, waarmee het totaalbedrag dat Romney ophaalde boven de miljard dollar uitkwamen. President Barack Obama wist ook iets meer dan een miljard binnen te halen.

Het geld dat werd opgehaald werd vooral uitgegeven aan advertenties en reclamespotjes in de media. Een van de grootste bijdrages werd geleverd door casinobaas Sheldon Adelson. Hij steunde de Republikeinen met 95 miljoen dollar.

bron

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Amerikaanse senaat keurt begroting defensie goed

De Amerikaanse Senaat heeft unaniem het voorstel voor de begroting van de Amerikaanse defensie goedgekeurd.

Na maanden van onderhandelingen stemden alle 98 wetsmakers voor het voorstel om het budget voor defensie op 631 miljard dollar (481 miljard euro) vast te stellen voor het jaar 2013.

De onderhandelingen verliepen stroef, omdat er een grote politieke impasse was ontstaan over de bezuinigingen op defensie. Er moest uiteindelijk 5 dagen lang over de voorstellen gedebatteerd worden en honderden amendementen worden doorgevoerd, voordat de begroting kon worden vastgesteld.

http://www.rtl.nl/components/actueel/rtlnieuws/2012/12_december/05/economie/sentaat-vs-keurt-begroting-defensie-goed.xml

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Time to Remove the Pentagon from Its Pedestal

November 19, 2012

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, EINNEWS.com

It's past time to knock the Pentagon off its iconic pedestal.

The U.S. military has become a pseudo religion. Lawmakers kneel at its budget's alter. The media seldom let questioning words pass through its keyboards or be uttered through its electronic lips.

But all isn't right with the Pentagon or those who run it.

In a bizarre turn of fate, some angry emails from an apparently jealous woman are turning a sharp focus on those who manage the military, and the way that largest of government agencies is managed. As with most scandals, the Petraeus affair has created an insatiable appetite for the story itself and ancillary events related to it, events that otherwise may have had little attention.

Like the lifestyles of the stars---the four stars, that is. The notoriety given Generals Petraeus and Allen prompted the Washington Post to develop an in depth article about the many perks of those who rise to Army's top echelons. The private jets. The enlisted men who clean their dirty laundry, rake their yards, and bend to their every whim. It's a lifestyle that, according to David Barno, a retired three-star general who commanded U.S. troops in Afghanistan can "become corrosive."

"You can become completely disconnected from the way people live in the regular world, and even from the modest lifestyle of others in the military," Barno said. "When that happens, it's not necessarily healthy either for the military or the country."

Which leads to another development that is getting a lot of attention as the spotlight is being shined on the military's top brass---the exquisitely timed release of "The Generals," a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas A. Ricks.

In "The Generals," Ricks traces military leadership from World War II to the present and concludes that today's Army general staff is like college professors with tenure. No one gets fired. Accountability is thin.

Not since Vietnam, his research revealed, has any general been removed by military authority for incompetence in the field. A civilian Secretary of Defense or a President might do that occasionally, but not the general staff. As Ricks points out, during World War II combat generals wore short leashes. Perform well quickly or be gone.

Ricks blames much of the disastrous aftermath of the initial Iraq and Afghanistan actions on generals who had no idea what to do next and were too slow to adapt to changing conditions on the ground. "A culture of mediocrity has taken hold within the Army's leadership rank," said Ricks. "If it is not uprooted, the country's next war is unlikely to unfold any better than the last two."

Those who run the Pentagon not only manage troops and equipment in field, but develop and sign off on expensive new weapon systems. One of the most expensive of those systems is the F-22 combat fighter, a project costing upwards of $80 billion which to date, despite U.S. involvement in two wars and action in Libya, has never been used in combat.

One of those F-22s crashed in Florida the other day. No cause for the failure has been given but it would not be surprising if it had something to do with the aircraft's oxygen supply system. That was the cause of an earlier fatal crash. This time the pilot safely ejected.

In April, Sen. John McCain, a former combat pilot, told ABC News that the jets, which the Air Force call the future of American air dominance, are a waste of money and serve no role in today's combat environment.

According to a report in the magazine Combat Aircraft Monthly, in annual training games earlier this year the F-22 performed no better than the much less expensive Eurofighter Typhoon manned by German pilots when matched in close-range one-on-one combat.

The F-22 excels at engaging hostile aircraft beyond the pilot's vision—up to 20 miles away. But as McCain also told ABC News, "I don't think the F-22 will ever be seen in the combat it was designed to counter, because that threat is no longer in existence."

This new focus on those who call the shots at the Pentagon, and how they do it, comes just as Congress is being forced to turn a critical eye on military spending for the first time in decades. If Congress fails to act before year's end, the Pentagon faces a 10 per cent across the board spending cut, in addition to the 8 per cent future spending cut already in the Obama budget. Many claim this will make the U.S. less safe. Others paint even darker doomsday scenarios.

But away from the dysfunctional legislative arena, most military experts believe the Pentagon spends too much, wastes, too much and manages too little. The Government Accounting Office long ago called the Defense Department "unauditable."

Lawrence J. Korb, a former assistant defense secretary for President Reagan points out that the U.S. has just gone through an enormous defense buildup, with budget increases for an unprecedented 13 straight years between 1998 and 2012. Also, he notes, the proposed cuts are smaller than they seem. Even if the Pentagon has to swallow all the cuts now on table spending levels would go back only to those in 2006.

Kori Schake a research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution and a veteran of the Pentagon, the National Security Council and the State Department, agrees, and believes billions can be cut from personnel costs, manned fighter aircraft and active-duty Army strength.

Schake says enlisted military pay and benefits are 90 percent more than private sector workers of similar age and education; officer pay exceeds 83 percent of civilian counterparts. Benefits for military personnel add 50 percent over the cost of their salaries, whereas the civilian average is around 30 percent.

"Even accounting for the special dangers and needs of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines," she says, "that suggests room for some reduction."

There are always lonely voices calling for cuts in the military budget. But now Congress has backed itself into a corner where more cuts seem inevitable, not unpatriotic. That day of reckoning has come just as Generals Patraeus and Allen have found themselves unfortunate catalysts for serious overview of the Pentagon and those who manage it.

After all the books, reports, conferences and promises about the need to get serious about military spending, it appears that some angry emails from a jealous woman may be providing the public focus needed to get it done.

http://uspolitics.einnews.com/column/124081086/time-to-remove-the-pentagon-from-its-pedestal

[dudge]

CNN Breaking News "US invades Texas".

De reden zal dan uiteraard niet zijn vanwege de olie maar iets met normen en waarden en democratie herstellen etc 

Zo'n vaart zal het niet lopen. Met de 75.000 handtekeningen die ze nu hebben blijft het een klein groepje, de staat heeft immers iets van 25 miljoen inwoners. En er zullen er vast heel wat meer zijn dan die 75.000 die dit een goed plan lijkt, maar al met al zal het echt niet ook maar in de buurt van een meerderheid komen. Althans, op dit moment.

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

DoD Could Save Billions With New Military Strategy

Nov. 15, 2012 - 07:48AM   
By MARCUS WEISGERBER 

The U.S. Defense Department could save hundreds of billions of dollars if it revamps its military strategy and makes its forces more expeditionary, according to a new think tank report.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20121115/DEFREG02/311150001?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[Ros]

CNN Breaking News "US invades Texas".

De reden zal dan uiteraard niet zijn vanwege de olie maar iets met normen en waarden en democratie herstellen etc 

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

En wat als Texas zich nu eens afscheidde van de Verenigde Staten?

15 november 2012

Meer dan honderdduizend Amerikanen uit twintig verschillende staten hebben petities ondertekend om het recht van secessie te vragen voor hun staat. Één van de petities, die voor de staat Texas, heeft bijna driemaal zoveel handtekeningen verzameld als de 25.000 die nodig zijn om een officiëel antwoord van het Witte Huis te kunnen eisen.

De meeste van de twintig staten in kwestie kozen bij de verkiezingen van begin november voor de Republikeinse kandidaat Mitt Romney. De petities citeren de eerste zin van de Onafhankelijkheidsverklaring die Amerikaanse burgers het recht geeft 'om de politieke banden te verbreken en een nieuwe natie te vormen'. Verder hekelen de petities de 'flagrante inbreuken' op de rechten van Amerikanen.

De Amerikaanse Grondwet geeft de staten nergens het recht om de Unie te verlaten en de laatste maal dat dit werd geprobeerd, kwam het tot de Amerikaanse Burgeroorlog. Doch, volgens Business Insider is het idee nog niet zo gek, althans niet in het geval van Texas:

✓ Texas bezit een vierde van de nationale oliereserves en een derde van de nationale gasreserves. Meer nog: 95% van de V.S. ontvangt olie en gas via pijpleidingen uit Texas.

✓ De Texaanse economie blaakt van gezondheid. In de voorbije tien jaren creëerde Texas een miljoen jobs, meer dan alle andere staten samen. Het is ook de thuisplek van de meeste Fortune 500-bedrijven. Als onafhankelijke staat zou Texas de op negen na grootste economie ter wereld zijn (Canada zou dan nummer elf worden).

✓ Texas is de enige staat met een eigen energienetwerk.

✓ Met de Texas State Guard, de Texas National Guard, de Air Guard, de legendarische Texas Rangers, twee van de grootste militaire basissen en een tot de tanden bewapende bevolking is Texas zonder twijfel in staat om voor haar eigen defensie in te staan.

✓Texas verklaarde in 1836 zijn onafhankelijkheid van Mexico en scheidde zich nogmaals af in 1861. En zelfs in 1864, op het einde van de burgeroorlog, had het Noorden ondanks de vele pogingen nog geen enkele vierkante meter Texaans grondgebied veroverd.

Veel Amerikanen zijn duidelijk misnoegd over de richting waarin de federale regering evolueert. Het debat over secessie laait hoog op en de gemoederen raken snel verhit. De laatste ontwikkeling is een tegenpetitie die oproept om de mensen die de petities ondertekenden 'vredelievend te deporteren'.

Ook deze petitie is goed op weg om een respons van de president af te dwingen. Wordt ongetwijfeld vervolgd.

http://www.zita.be/business/nieuws/2001758_en-wat-als-texas-zich-nu-eens-afscheidde-van-de-verenigde-staten.html

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Army Leader Abroad Fears Unbalanced National Security

Emelie Rutherford

The head of the U.S. Army in Europe said he is concerned budget cuts will upset the United States' balance among military, diplomatic, and economic power.

Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, told reporters yesterday he's seen European nations scale back on military spending and doesn't want to see the United States follow them.

"When you take a look at national security, it's a three-legged stool that concerns military power, diplomatic power, and economic power," Hertling said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington. "And my biggest concern is we're going to have an unbalanced stool, if you will, with one leg being more important than the other two."

Thus, he said his greatest worry regarding issues Washington politicians are weighing is "that the economic crisis we're in would cause too much of a reaction in one area, which would harm us in other areas."

Hertling, who works with 51 European nations, said such an unbalanced approach would be akin "to some of the things our European allies are doing."

"And they're making mistakes by doing it," he said.

Hertling joined other U.S. officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in criticizing most NATO nations for not heeding the organization's goal for each country to spend 2 percent of its gross domestic production (GDP) on defense.

"That is a good goal, I think, for all of them," he said.

Only five of the 28 NATO national meet that 2 percent goal. Hertling, though, said Estonia and Latvia are working toward reaching that level.

The general said that while some countries are improving their military capabilities, others, namely Germany and the United Kingdom, are "drastically" reducing the size of their forces.

"The threats that currently face Europe need, I believe, some adjustments in approach by the various militaries of Europe," he said.

Hertling said the major threats he sees today in Europe are related to "trans-national terrorism, transit through the Shengen Zone (of Europe where passports are not required for cross-border travel), human trafficking, criminal networks, cyber, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and missile defense."

The U.S. Army's presence in Europe is receding, with one brigade combat team recently inactivated and another slated to be cut next year.

http://www.defensedaily.com/open/national_security/

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

Drones: Undeclared and undiscussed

By Geoff Dyer

Whoever wins the White House will face pressure to be transparent about America's use of secret military tools

If there is such as a thing as an "Obama doctrine", it was prob­ably first suggested by the advice of Robert Gates, defence secretary for the first two and a half years of the administration.

"Any future defence secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa," he said shortly before leaving office, "should have his head examined."

Given President Barack Obama's political and economic aversion to launching new wars with lots of ground troops, it is perhaps no surprise that he has latched on so powerfully to the use of armed drones to go after suspected terrorists. US officials claim al-Qaeda's leadership has been "decimated" over the past few years.

The surprise is that the subject has hardly come up in the course of a long election campaign – even one dominated by a sluggish economy – because it ignores one of the more remarkable and controversial aspects of the Obama administration. The president has made such extensive use of secret military tools that he would have provided himself with years of seminar material were he still a constitutional law professor.

"It is arguable that, through covert wars, this administration has violated the sovereignty of more countries, more times, than any other administration," says David Rothkopf, chief executive of Foreign Policy magazine and a former Clinton administration official.

Mr Obama, a Nobel Peace laureate, did not invent the new approach but he has dramatically expanded it. The use of targeted killings was authorised one week after the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, and in the next seven years the administration of George W. Bush ordered about 50 operations. Mr Obama has signed off on more than 350.

And while the Bush administration began the planning for what later became known as the Stuxnet computer virus, it was Mr Obama who ordered for the first time a cyber attack on the infrastructure of another nation – in this case, Iran's nuclear programme.

These ventures in modern warfare have been conducted in almost complete secrecy, with little congressional oversight and almost no discussion with the public.

The political logic of the campaign explains much of the silence about Mr Obama's covert wars. Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, has used every opportunity to accuse Mr Obama of being weak: high-tech bombings of alleged al-Qaeda ringleaders do not fit very well into this attack line.

Yet the administration's widespread use of drones is starting to come under the sort of sustained criticism that the next president will find it hard to ignore.

Presidential debate: the Mideast still matters

If Washington is a town that wants to think about Asia and the future but spends its days talking about the Middle East, that is borne out by the topics picked for Monday's presidential debate on foreign policy.

The bulk of the debate will be taken up by Iran, terrorism in the Middle East – which occupies two of the six points on the agenda – and the war in Afghanistan. The two candidates will finish with a discussion of "China and tomorrow's world".
To continue reading, click here
A flurry of legal challenges is calling into question the ethics of using unmanned combat aircraft to kill terrorist suspects. There are also growing questions about their long-term effectiveness in targeting terrorism. Whatever the outcome of the November 6 vote, the next president is likely to find himself under intense pressure to discuss the subject more openly.

Under Mr Obama, drones have killed targets in at least six countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia and Libya. Their use has become so extensive in Somalia that there have been reports of commercial air traffic being disrupted.

In the absence of official disclosure, researchers have used local news to try to put together a picture of the programme. According to the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 1,907 to 3,220 people since 2004, of whom between 1,618 and 2,765 were reported to be militants. It calculates that 15-16 per cent of those killed are "non-militants".

When drone strikes were an occasional option, questions about their legality were easier to set aside. But the dramatic increase in their use has pushed those questions centre stage.

Legal critics, including legal campaigners, constitutional law academics and libertarians such as former presidential candidate Ron Paul, argue that the only place where the US is officially at war is Afghanistan – and that the use of drones in countries such as Yemen or Somalia is therefore illegal under US law. They also question whether the secret decisions about who to place on the "kill list" prepared by White House lawyers and officials meet the legal standard of due process.

For several years, the American Civil Liberties Union has been trying to use lawsuits to push the administration into greater disclosure. In its latest action, launched last month, the ACLU is accusing it of abandoning legal due process in the killing last October in Yemen of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of an alleged al-Qaeda leader, and believed to be the third US citizen to have died in targeted killings.

In the face of mounting pressure, John Brennan, Mr Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, has given two speeches this year on the policy. His April speech was the administration's first public acknowledgment of its drone strikes. He has countered legal criticism by saying the US is in an "armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces". The White House believes that defining the enemy in such broad terms – similar to those of the Bush-era "war on terror" – provides the legal basis for pursuing terrorists in other countries.

Mr Brennan also insists that the administration adopts "rigorous standards and process of review" when deciding who to target "outside of the 'hot' battlefield of Afghanistan". The New York Times has reported that Mr Obama personally approves the names on the "kill list".

Even if these arguments prevail in court, they have left a lot of observers deeply uncomfortable with the way the "war on terror" can be used to blur the terms of where and when the US is at war. As Georgetown University legal scholar Rosa Brooks put it recently: "That amounts, in practice, to a claim that the executive branch has the unreviewable power to kill anyone, anywhere, at any time, based on secret criteria and secret information discussed in a secret process by largely anonymous individuals."

While Mr Brennan has attempted to address the strikes against alleged terrorists, he has largely avoided the issue of "signature strikes", where the targets are individuals whose identities may be unknown in an area where terrorist activity is believed to be taking place. According to critics, the large number of recent strikes means not all the targets can have represented an imminent threat to the US.

The White House has not spoken about allegations that the US, in the belief that any rescuers are likely to be connected to the alleged terrorist has, conducted follow-up strikes after bombings. Christof Heyns, UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings, said this year that if it was true that "there have been secondary drone strikes on rescuers who are helping [the injured] after an initial drone attack, those further attacks are a war crime".

The legal waves are being felt in the UK, where a High Court case brought on behalf of the relatives of a Pakistani man killed in a drone strike alleges that British security services provided intelligence information used in US drone strikes, which could be deemed illegal under UK law.

Amid the legal questioning, there is also growing unease in Washington foreign policy circles about the long-term effectiveness of drone strikes. Even some observers who have worked in the counter-terrorism field who support their deployment against terrorist groups believe they are being overused.

"In lots of ways, drones have taken the place of US strategic decision-making," says Joshua Foust, a former intelligence official now at the American Security Project think-tank. "People think if there is a problem and it is difficult to get to, then let's use drones to solve the problem."

Mr Romney has said little about how he might use drones but in a speech two weeks ago he echoed some of this criticism, saying they were "no substitute for a national security strategy for the Middle East".

In recent months international opposition has become harder to ignore. In April the Pakistani parliament unanimously called for an end to drone strikes within its borders. In Yemen, a series of witness accounts suggests that the increased pace of US drone attacks has contributed to a rise in anti-Americanism and could be encouraging recruitment to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the local affiliate of the terrorist network. "Drone policy at its current tempo does put the US at the very top of the bad-guys list," says Will McCants, a former counter-terrorism official at the state department.

However, in an August speech about Yemen, Mr Brennan dismissed such suggestions. "Contrary to conventional wisdom, we see little evidence that these actions are generating widespread anti-American sentiment or recruits for AQAP," he said.

There are growing calls, particularly among Democrat-leaning foreign policy experts, for the next administration to establish clearer rules about exactly how drones can be used. Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was head of policy planning at the state department in the first two years of the Obama administration, compares the situation to the early years of nuclear weapons, when the US was first to develop the system but other countries soon caught up. "We do not want a world where we are saying that we can decide who a drone can take out," she says. "We will suffer enormously for setting this precedent. I do not want to be in a world where China can decide who to target."

Supporters of drones say that whatever the moral and legal problems of targeted strikes, the alternative policies are much worse. When Pakistani authorities launched an offensive in 2009 against insurgents in the Swat valley, the UN estimated that as many as 1.4m people were displaced in the violence and instability that ensued.

In an era of tighter defence budgets, drones are also cheaper than fighter jets. A new-generation F35 fighter jet is expected to cost about $130m, for example, whereas a new Reaper armed drone costs about $53m. Given the large number of highly trained people needed to operate them, however, the cost advantage is less than the price tags suggest.

Those who back drones also say the administration could address many of the criticisms about the identity of targets and the number of casualties if officials provided much more information about their activities. Only more disclosure, they say, will fend off mounting criticism of targeted strikes.

"Even drone-supporters like me will benefit from [ACLU] lawsuits, because evidence is what we are all looking for," says Christine Fair, a Pakistan expert at Georgetown University. "Without doing this, the drone programme will simply not be sustainable."

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7a4114be-19ce-11e2-a379-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2A03r0oD1

[jurrien visser (JuVi op Twitter)]

10/19/2012
Air Force Seeks Escape From Acquisition Death Spiral

By Sandra I. Erwin

The U.S. Air Force plans to spend more than $30 billion annually on new weapons. That is a hefty budget, even by Pentagon standards. But the Air Force nonetheless will have to pare down its wish list because most of that funding will be consumed by a handful of programs whose costs keep rising.

To illustrate the Air Force's shrinking buying power, Lt. Gen. Charles R. Davis showed Pentagon contractors a list of 10 acquisition programs. Those systems alone will gobble up $20 billion in 2013, or more than two-thirds of the modernization pot.

If current trends continue, the same 10 weapon systems will devour an even larger share of the budget in the years ahead, Davis warned. This will leave the Air Force with limited options to modernize its aging fleet of combat aircraft, and could delay plans to deploy advanced weaponry that can defeat enemy air defenses in a future conflict.

There are simply too many programs in the Air Force's budget and not enough money to pay for them, said Davis, the military deputy at the office of the Air Force assistant secretary for acquisition.

"Our $35 billion to $36 billion in modernization funding gets to be strained very quickly," Davis told defense industry executives Oct. 17 at the Air Armaments Conference. The gathering was held at the Emerald Coast Convention Center, not far from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.

Air Force leaders are in no mood to commit to acquisitions until current programs are financially sound, he said. "Short of new bombers, there is no desire to start new programs with costly production tails, even when the system is truly needed."

An overambitious weapons-acquisition plan is par for the course at the Defense Department. The Pentagon's appetite tends to always exceed its projected budgets, but the armed services still have managed to keep most of their cherished programs alive by delaying production or reducing the size of the orders. As Pentagon spending doubled over the past decade, there was no reason to stop shoving more programs into future budgets.

With the days of rampant spending coming to an end, Air Force acquisition programs are in the crosshairs. Further, the Air Force leadership is not likely to sign off on many new procurements in the foreseeable future, at least until current program costs are under control, Davis said.

Managing weapons costs, however, is becoming increasingly difficult for the Air Force in the current climate of political gridlock, Davis said.

"We'll have to figure out how we deal with the combined, compounding effects of continuing resolutions" and the paralysis that has gripped the Pentagon over the threat of across-the-board budget cuts that are scheduled for Jan. 2. These sequestration reductions are not expected to affect any acquisition program that already is under contract, but the uncertainty has caused widespread dysfunction across Defense Department procurement programs.

"That's a big problem right now ... the untold amounts of churn and inefficiency, and continual readjustments of programs," Davis said.

In the absence of a long-term budget, he said, it is "all but impossible to execute [programs] with precision and efficiency."

The situation is severe enough that it has drawn the attention of the service's Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh.

Welsh ordered procurement officials to stop the bleeding and find a lasting solution.

"Gen. Welsh is looking for a corporate approach to modernization," Davis said.

A corporate method of managing programs would mean a drastic departure from the traditional way of doing business. It would require dispersed Air Force offices to work together across multiple programs, share technology, eliminate redundant projects and ensure that they have sufficient funding in the budget before any contracts are signed.

"We need to do things more efficiently," Davis said. A case in point is unmanned aircraft. Dozens of programs were launched to meet war demands, but each aircraft was purchased by separate bureaucracies and from different contractors, which resulted in a mixed fleet with incompatible data links and ground control stations. "They should have common software and control systems," Davis said. "We're working this issue quite vigorously."

The Air Force also is feeling added pressure to modernize its fighter fleet in response to the Defense Department's strategic shift to the Pacific. That will require stealthier, more survivable aircraft that can penetrate defended airspace and weapons that might have to be targeted without access to GPS satellite signals.

"We'll be fighting in a contested environment [populated by] air-defense systems," Davis said. "Many areas that we didn't use to consider contested are now contested," he said. "We become a GPS crippled nation to some degree. ... We are trying to reduce our dependency."

The preferred weapon in these scenarios would be the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter. The Air Force regards it as the linchpin of its future fleet. But years of program restructurings and cost overruns have caused significant delays, and JSF will enter service several years later than planned. As a result, the Air Force will have to spend billions of dollars upgrading older F-16 and F-15 fighters. Those are unplanned expenses that the Air Force would have to fund by dipping into other parts of its acquisition budget.

"This is going to be a fairly costly program," said Davis, speaking of the legacy fleet upgrades. "The money is going to be a challenge."

Instead of a comprehensive overhaul of the avionics, radar and survivability systems, the Air Force might pursue an incremental upgrade, one piece at a time.

Because of the JSF delays, said Davis, "This is an important program that we have to take on."

A new long-range bomber is another expensive program that the Pentagon expects the Air Force to acquire.

The bomber is still a highly contentious topic within the Air Force leadership. There is still no consensus on what the end product will be, or how much it should cost. There is too much fear of a B-2 repeat, Davis said, referring to the stealth bomber the Air Force built in the 1980s that ended up costing $2 billion a piece. "The new bomber is not going to have all new avionics, all new engines, all new airframes, it is not going to be developed from the ground up."

The Air Force is more inclined to support programs that "integrate the stuff we have," said Davis. 'We need to do things better with what we have."

All programs from now on will be closely scrutinized, not only for their worthiness but also for potential technological overreach, Davis said. "We have programs with questionable strategies that are put on a very challenging course," he said. Welsh, the chief of staff, wants every program manager to answer these questions: Can I pay for it? If so, from where do I take the money?

The lack of discipline of the past decade has "put us on a course that I don't think is going to be sustainable for any length of time."

Program reviews have to be "more aggressive" upfront to prevent a situation like today's when too many programs are under contract and the budget can't support them, Davis said.

One way to begin rectifying past sins is to better train the procurement workforce, he said. "We have lost talent in government teams to build things," he said. "I worry that our contracting and management workforce does not necessarily have the business skills to have an intelligent conversation with contract officers and managers on the industry side."

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=932

[dudge]

Allowing Sequestration Defense Cuts May Right Our Listing Ship of State

Thursday, 18 October 2012 14:34 By Charles M Smith, Truthout | Solutions

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12194-allowing-sequestration-defense-cuts-may-right-our-listing-ship-of-state

Iets wat in de toekomst mogelijk ook weer in Rusland gaat spelen.
Maar zeer terechte opmerkingen. De immuniteitsgedachte lijkt altijd heel stom, achteraf, maar toch is deze overal om ons heen. Het defensiebudget van de VS is enorm, en een kleine beperking daarin is niet gelijk de grootste bedreiging voor de VS. Slecht onderwijs en infrastructuur is wel een lange termijn bedreiging, voor elk land trouwens. De NAVO omvormen tot een 2e VN lijkt me niks. Al kan ik me voorstellen dat Australië en Nieuw Zeeland lid willen worden.