30 julho 2019,
Resistir.info (Portugal) https://www.resistir.info/eua/orlov_16jul19.html
por Dmitry Orlov
No interior da
vasta burocracia do Pentágono existe um grupo encarregado de monitorar o estado
geral do complexo militar-industrial e a sua capacidade contínua de cumprir os
requisitos da estratégia de defesa nacional. O gabinete para a aquisição e
manutenção e o gabinete para a política industrial gastam cerca de US$100 mil
por ano para produzir um Relatório Anual ao Congresso. Ele está
disponível para o público em geral . Está disponível até para o público em geral e
especialistas russos divertiram-se muito a examiná-lo.
De facto, o relatório encheu-os de optimismo. Como se sabe, a Rússia quer a paz mas os EUA parecem desejar a guerra e continuam a fazer gestos ameaçadores contra uma longa lista de países que se recusam a cumprir suas ordens ou simplesmente não compartilham seus "valores universais". Mas agora verifica-se que aquelas ameaças (e sanções económicas cada vez mais sem garra) são quase tudo o que os EUA ainda são capazes de oferecer – isto apesar dos níveis absolutamente astronómicos dos gastos com defesa. Vamos ver com o que parece o complexo militar-industrial dos EUA através de lentes russas.
É importante observar que os autores do relatório não pretendiam forçar legisladores a financiar algum projecto específico. Isso o torna mais valioso do que inúmeras outras fontes, cujo principal
objectivo dos autores é encher a
barriga com o orçamento federal e que, portanto, tendem a ser ligeiros acerca
de factos e fortes em publicidade. Sem dúvida, a política ainda desempenha um
papel na forma como vários pormenores são retratados, mas parece haver um
limite para o número de problemas que seus autores podem eliminar e ainda assim
fazer um trabalho razoável de análise da situação e de formulação de
recomendações. De facto, o relatório encheu-os de optimismo. Como se sabe, a Rússia quer a paz mas os EUA parecem desejar a guerra e continuam a fazer gestos ameaçadores contra uma longa lista de países que se recusam a cumprir suas ordens ou simplesmente não compartilham seus "valores universais". Mas agora verifica-se que aquelas ameaças (e sanções económicas cada vez mais sem garra) são quase tudo o que os EUA ainda são capazes de oferecer – isto apesar dos níveis absolutamente astronómicos dos gastos com defesa. Vamos ver com o que parece o complexo militar-industrial dos EUA através de lentes russas.
É importante observar que os autores do relatório não pretendiam forçar legisladores a financiar algum projecto específico. Isso o torna mais valioso do que inúmeras outras fontes, cujo principal
O que provocou risos na análise russa foi o facto de que estes peritos do INDPOL (que, como o resto do Departamento da Defesa dos EUA, adoram siglas) avaliam o complexo militar-industrial dos EUA a partir de uma perspectiva com base no mercado! Você vê, o complexo militar-industrial russo é totalmente de propriedade do governo russo e trabalha exclusivamente no seu interesse; qualquer coisa diferente seria considerada traição. Mas o complexo militar-industrial dos EUA é avaliado com base na sua… lucratividade! De acordo com o INDPOL, ele deve não apenas produzir produtos para os militares mas também adquirir fatia de mercado no comércio global de armas e, talvez mais importante, maximizar a lucratividade para investidores privados. Por este padrão, está a sair-se bem: em 2017, a margem bruta (EBITDA) para os contratantes da defesa dos EUA variou de 15 a 17%, e alguns subcontratados – Transdigm, por exemplo – conseguiram obter nada menos que 42-45%. "Ah!", gritam os especialistas russos: "Encontrámos o problema! Os americanos legalizaram o lucro da guerra !" (Isto, a propósito, é apenas um dos muitos exemplos de algo chamado corrupção sistémica, a qual é abundante nos EUA.)
Seria uma coisa se cada empreiteiro de defesa simplesmente cortasse a sua talhada do topo, mas em vez disso há toda uma cadeia alimentar de empreiteiros da defesa, a todo os quais é legalmente exigido, nada menos, que maximizem os lucros dos seus accionistas. Mais de 28 mil empresas estão envolvidas, mas os verdadeiros empreiteiros de primeira linha junto aos quais o Pentágono coloca 2/3 de todos os contratos de defesa são apenas os Seis Grandes: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, BAE Systems e Boeing. Todas as outras empresas estão organizadas numa pirâmide de subcontratados com cinco níveis hierárquicos, e em cada nível eles fazem o melhor que podem para ordenhar o nível lhes está acima deles.
A insistência em métodos baseados no mercado e a exigência de maximizar a lucratividade acabam por ser incompatíveis com os gastos de defesa a um nível muito básico: os gastos com defesa são intermitentes e cíclicos, com longos intervalos de ociosidade entre as encomendas principais. Isto forçou até mesmo os seis grandes a efectuarem cortes nos seus departamentos de defesa em favor da expansão da produção civil. Além disso, apesar do enorme tamanho do orçamento de defesa dos EUA, ele é de dimensão finita (há apenas um planeta para explodir), assim como o mercado global de armas. Uma vez que, numa economia de mercado, toda empresa enfrenta a opção de crescer ou ser comprada, isto tem precipitado grande número de fusões e aquisições, resultando num mercado altamente consolidado com uns poucos actores importantes em cada área.
Em consequência, na maior parte das áreas, das quais os autores do relatório discutem 17, incluindo a Marinha, forças terrestres, força aérea, electrónica, armas nucleares, tecnologia espacial e assim por diante, pelo menos um terço do tempo o Pentágono tem como escolha exactamente um empreiteiro para qualquer contrato específico, o que faz com que a qualidade e a pontualidade sofram, elevando preços.
Num certo número de casos, apesar de seu poder industrial e financeiro, o Pentágono tem-se deparado com problemas insolúveis. Especificamente, verificou-se que os EUA têm apenas um estaleiro naval capaz de construir porta-aviões nucleares (por isso o USS Gerald Ford não é exactamente um êxito). Este é o Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding, em Newport, Virgínia. Em teoria, esta empresa poderia trabalhar com três navios em simultâneo, mas dois deles estão permanentemente ocupados por porta-aviões existentes que exigem manutenção. Não se trata de um caso único: o número de estaleiros capazes de construir submarinos nucleares, destróieres e outros tipos de navios também é exactamente de um. Portanto, no caso de um conflito prolongado com um adversário sério no qual uma parcela significativa da Marinha dos EUA tenha sido afundada, será impossível substituir os navios em qualquer período de tempo razoável.
A situação é um pouco melhor quanto à fabricação de aeronaves. As fábricas que existem podem produzir 40 aviões por mês e poderiam chegar aos 130 por mês se pressionadas. Por outro lado, a situação com tanques e artilharia é absolutamente desanimadora. De acordo com este relatório, os EUA perderam completamente a competência para construir a nova geração de tanques. Não se trata mais da perda da fábrica e do equipamento; nos EUA, uma segunda geração de engenheiros que nunca projectou um tanque está a aposentar-se. Seus substitutos não têm ninguém com quem aprender e só sabem acerca de tanques modernos a partir de filmes e videogames. No que diz respeito à artilharia, há apenas uma linha de produção remanescente nos EUA que pode produzir canos superiores a 40 mm; ela está totalmente lotada de serviço e seria incapaz de aumentar a produção em caso de guerra. O empreiteiro não está disposto a expandir a produção a menos que o Pentágono garanta pelo menos 45% de utilização, uma vez que isso não seria rentável.
A situação é semelhante para todas as áreas da lista; ela é melhor para tecnologias de uso duplo que podem ser obtidas junto a empresas civis e significativamente pior para empresas altamente especializadas. O custo unitário de cada tipo de equipamento militar aumenta ano após ano, enquanto os volumes sendo adquiridos tendem continuamente a baixar – por vezes até zero. Ao longo dos últimos 15 anos, os EUA não adquiriram um único tanque novo. Eles continuam a modernizar os antigos, mas a uma taxa que não vai além de 100 por ano.
Devido a todas estas inclinações e tendências, a indústria de defesa continua a perder não só pessoal qualificado como também a capacidade de realizar o trabalho. Peritos do INDPOL estimam que o défice em máquinas ferramenta atingiu os 27%. No último quarto de século os EUA cessaram de fabricar uma grande variedade de equipamentos manufactureiros. Apenas metade destas ferramentas pode ser importada de aliados ou nações amigas; para o resto, há apenas uma fonte: a China. Eles analisaram as cadeias de fornecimento de 600 dos mais importantes tipos de armas e descobriram que um terço delas tem rupturas ao passo que outro terço arruinou-se completamente. Na pirâmide subcontratada de cinco níveis do Pentágono, os fabricantes de componentes são quase sempre relegados ao nível mais baixo e os avisos que eles emitem quando cessam a produção ou encerram completamente tendem a afogar-se no pântano burocrático do Pentágono.
O resultado final de tudo isso é que teoricamente o Pentágono ainda é capaz de efectuar pequenos ciclos de produção de armas para compensar perdas contínuas em conflitos localizados de baixa intensidade num período geral de paz, mas hoje mesmo isto está no extremo final das suas capacidades. No caso de um conflito sério com qualquer nação bem armada, tudo com que poderá contar é o stock existente de munições e peças sobressalentes, a quais serão rapidamente esgotadas.
Uma situação semelhante prevalece na área de elementos extraídos de terras raras e outros materiais para a produção eletrónica. No momento, o stock acumulado destes materiais necessários à produção de mísseis e tecnologia espacial – sobretudo os satélites – é suficiente para cinco anos à taxa de utilização actual.
O relatório classifica especificamente como terrível situação na área das armas nucleares estratégicas. Quase toda a tecnologia para comunicações, direccionamento, cálculos de trajectória e armamento das ogivas dos ICBM foi desenvolvida nos anos 1960 e 70. Até os dias de hoje, os dados são carregados a partir de disquetes floppy de 5 polegadas, as quais eram produzidas em massa há 15 anos atrás. Não há substitutos para elas e as pessoas que as conceberam estão mortas. A opção está entre comprar pequenas quantidades de produção de todos os consumíveis a um custo extravagante ou desenvolver a partir do zero toda a tríade estratégica baseada na terra, ao custo de três orçamentos anuais do Pentágono.
Existem muitos problemas específicos em cada área descrita no relatório, mas a principal é a perda de competência entre a equipe técnica e de engenharia causada por um baixo nível de encomendas de substituição ou para o desenvolvimento de novos produtos. A situação é tal que novos desenvolvimentos teóricos promissores provenientes de centros de investigação como o DARPA não podem ser realizados, dado o actual conjunto de competências técnicas. Para uma série de especializações chave, há menos de três dúzias de especialistas treinados e experientes.
É expectável que esta situação continue a deteriorar-se, com o número de pessoas empregadas no sector da defesa a diminuir 11-16% ao longo da próxima década, devido principalmente à escassez de jovens candidatos qualificados para substituir aqueles que se reformam. Um exemplo específico: o trabalho de desenvolvimento do F-35 está quase pronto e não haverá necessidade de desenvolver um novo caça a jacto até 2035-2040. Nesse meio tempo, o pessoal envolvido em seu desenvolvimento ficará ocioso e o seu nível de competência deteriorar-se-á.
Embora no momento os EUA ainda liderem o mundo em gastos com defesa (US$610 mil milhões dos US$1,7 milhão de milhões em 2017, que é cerca de 36% de todos os gastos militares no planeta), a economia dos EUA já não é capaz de suportar toda a pirâmide tecnológica mesmo num tempo de relativa paz e prosperidade. No papel, os EUA ainda parecem como um líder em tecnologia militar, mas os fundamentos da sua supremacia militar foram corroídos. Os resultados disso são claramente visíveis:
·
Os EUA
ameaçaram a Coreia do Norte com acções militares, mas foram forçados a recuar
porque não têm capacidade para travar uma guerra contra ela.
·
Os EUA
ameaçaram o Irão com acções militares, mas foram forçados a recuar porque não
têm capacidade de travar uma guerra contra ele.
·
Os EUA
perderam a guerra no Afeganistão para o Taliban e quando o mais longo conflito
militar na história dos EUA finalmente estiver acabado a situação política ali
voltará ao status quo ante com o Taliban no comando e campos de treino
terrorista islâmico em operação.
·
Mandatários
dos EUA (sobretudo a Arábia Saudita) que combatem no Iémen provocaram um
desastre humanitário, mas têm sido incapazes de prevalecer militarmente.
·
As
acções dos EUA na Síria levaram a uma consolidação do poder e do território
pelo governo sírio e à posição regional agora dominante da Rússia, Irão e
Turquia.
·
A
segunda maior potência da NATO, a Turquia, comprou os sistemas de defesa aérea
S-400 da Rússia. A alternativa dos EUA é o sistema Patriot, o qual é duas vezes
mais caro e realmente não funciona.
Todos estes pontos apontam para o facto de que os EUA já
não são mais uma potência militar de todo. Isto é uma boa notícia pelo menos
pelas quatro seguintes razões.
Primeiro, os EUA são de longe o país mais beligerante da Terra, tendo invadido grande número de países e continuado a ocupar muitos deles. O facto de não poderem mais combater significa que oportunidades para a paz devem aumentar.
Segundo, uma vez entendida a notícia de que o Pentágono é nada mais do que um autoclismo para fundos públicos, seu financiamento será cortado e a população dos EUA poderá ver o dinheiro que actualmente está a engordar os aproveitadores de guerra a ser gasto em estradas e pontes, embora pareça muito mais provável que todo ele irá servir para pagar a despesa de juros da dívida federal (enquanto durarem os stocks de materiais).
Terceiro, os políticos dos EUA perderão a capacidade de manter a população em estado de ansiedade permanente em relação à "segurança nacional". Na verdade, os EUA têm "segurança natural" – dois oceanos – e não precisam de todo de muita defesa nacional (desde que se mantenham a si próprios e não tentem criar problemas aos outros). Os canadianos não vão invadi-lo e, embora a fronteira do sul precise de alguma guarda, isso pode ser cumprido ao nível estadual/municipal por alguns bons rapazes usando armas e munição de que já dispõem. Uma vez que esta "defesa nacional" macaca de US$1,7 milhão de milhões esteja fora das suas costas, cidadãos americanos comuns poderão trabalhar menos, brincar mais e sentirem-se menos agressivos, ansiosos, deprimidos e paranóicos.
Por último mas não menos importante, será delicioso ver os aproveitadores da guerra reduzidos a rasparem sob as almofadas do sofá para conseguirem uns trocados. Tudo o que os militares dos EUA têm sido capazes produzir durante longo tempo até agora é miséria, cujo termo técnico é "desastre humanitário". Olhe-se para as consequências do envolvimento militar dos EUA na Sérvia/Kosovo, Afeganistão, Iraque, Líbia, Síria e Iémen e o que se vê? Só se vê miséria – tanto para os habitantes locais quanto para os cidadãos americanos que perderam membros da sua família, tiveram suas pernas amputadas ou agora sofrem de PTSD ou lesão cerebral. Seria justo se essa desgraça voltasse àqueles que lucraram com isso.
Primeiro, os EUA são de longe o país mais beligerante da Terra, tendo invadido grande número de países e continuado a ocupar muitos deles. O facto de não poderem mais combater significa que oportunidades para a paz devem aumentar.
Segundo, uma vez entendida a notícia de que o Pentágono é nada mais do que um autoclismo para fundos públicos, seu financiamento será cortado e a população dos EUA poderá ver o dinheiro que actualmente está a engordar os aproveitadores de guerra a ser gasto em estradas e pontes, embora pareça muito mais provável que todo ele irá servir para pagar a despesa de juros da dívida federal (enquanto durarem os stocks de materiais).
Terceiro, os políticos dos EUA perderão a capacidade de manter a população em estado de ansiedade permanente em relação à "segurança nacional". Na verdade, os EUA têm "segurança natural" – dois oceanos – e não precisam de todo de muita defesa nacional (desde que se mantenham a si próprios e não tentem criar problemas aos outros). Os canadianos não vão invadi-lo e, embora a fronteira do sul precise de alguma guarda, isso pode ser cumprido ao nível estadual/municipal por alguns bons rapazes usando armas e munição de que já dispõem. Uma vez que esta "defesa nacional" macaca de US$1,7 milhão de milhões esteja fora das suas costas, cidadãos americanos comuns poderão trabalhar menos, brincar mais e sentirem-se menos agressivos, ansiosos, deprimidos e paranóicos.
Por último mas não menos importante, será delicioso ver os aproveitadores da guerra reduzidos a rasparem sob as almofadas do sofá para conseguirem uns trocados. Tudo o que os militares dos EUA têm sido capazes produzir durante longo tempo até agora é miséria, cujo termo técnico é "desastre humanitário". Olhe-se para as consequências do envolvimento militar dos EUA na Sérvia/Kosovo, Afeganistão, Iraque, Líbia, Síria e Iémen e o que se vê? Só se vê miséria – tanto para os habitantes locais quanto para os cidadãos americanos que perderam membros da sua família, tiveram suas pernas amputadas ou agora sofrem de PTSD ou lesão cerebral. Seria justo se essa desgraça voltasse àqueles que lucraram com isso.
16/Julho/2019
Ver
também:
A perda da supremacia militar e a miopia do
planeamento estratégico dos EUA (II)
O original encontra-se em cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/07/war-profiteers-and-demise-of-us.html
O original encontra-se em cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/07/war-profiteers-and-demise-of-us.html
War Profiteers and the Demise of the US Military-Industrial Complex
July 16, 2019, Club Orlov (USA) http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/07/war-profiteers-and-demise-of-us.html
Dmitry Orlov
Within the vast
bureaucratic sprawl of the Pentagon there is a group in charge of monitoring
the general state of the military-industrial complex and its continued ability
to fulfill the requirements of the national defense strategy. Office for
acquisition and sustainment and office for industrial policy spends some
$100,000 a year producing an Annual Report to Congress. It is available to
the general public. It is even available to the general public in Russia,
and Russian experts had a really good time poring over it.
In fact, it filled them with optimism. You see, Russia wants peace but the US seems to want war and keeps making threatening gestures against a longish list of countries that refuse to do its bidding or simply don’t share its “universal values.” But now it turns out that threats (and the increasingly toothless economic sanctions) are pretty much all that the US is still capable of dishing out—this in spite of absolutely astronomical levels of defense spending. Let’s see what the US military-industrial complex looks like through a Russian lens.
It is important to note that the report’s authors were not aiming to force legislators to finance some specific project. This makes it more valuable than numerous other sources, whose authors’ main objective was to belly up to the federal feeding trough, and which therefore tend to be light on facts and heavy on hype. No doubt, politics still played a part in how various details are portrayed, but there seems to be a limit to the number of problems its authors can airbrush out of the picture and still do a reasonable job in analyzing the situation and in formulating their recommendations.
What knocked Russian analysis over with a feather is the fact that these INDPOL experts (who, like the rest of the US DOD, love acronyms) evaluate the US military-industrial complex from a… market-based perspective! You see, the Russian military-industrial complex is fully owned by the Russian government and works exclusively in its interests; anything else would be considered treason. But the US military-industrial complex is evaluated based on its… profitability! According to INDPOL, it must not only produce products for the military but also acquire market share in the global weapons trade and, perhaps most importantly, maximize profitability for private investors. By this standard, it is doing well: for 2017 the gross margin (EBITDA) for US defense contractors ranged from 15 to 17%, and some subcontractors—Transdigm, for example—managed to deliver no less than 42-45%. “Ah!” cry the Russian experts, “We’ve found the problem! The Americans have legalized war profiteering!” (This, by the way, is but one of many instances of something called systemic corruption, which is rife in the US.)
It would be one thing if each defense contractor simply took its cut off the top, but instead there is an entire food chain of defense contractors, all of which are legally required, no less, to maximize profits for their shareholders. More than 28,000 companies are involved, but the actual first-tier defense contractors with which the Pentagon places 2/3 of all defense contracts are just the Big Six: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynmics, BAE Systems and Boeing. All the other companies are organized into a pyramid of subcontractors with five levels of hierarchy, and at each level they do their best to milk the tier above them.
The insistence on market-based methods and the requirement of maximizing profitability turns out to be incompatible with defense spending on a very basic level: defense spending is intermittent and cyclical, with long fallow intervals between major orders. This has forced even the Big Six to make cuts to their defense-directed departments in favor of expanding civilian production. Also, in spite of the huge size of the US defense budget, it is of finite size (there being just one planet to blow up), as is the global weapons market. Since, in a market economy, every company faces the choice of grow or get bought out, this has precipitated scores of mergers and acquisitions, resulting in a highly consolidated marketplace with a few major players in each space.
As a result, in most spaces, of which the report’s authors discuss 17, including the Navy, land forces, air force, electronics, nuclear weapons, space technology and so on, at least a third of the time the Pentagon has a choice of exactly one contractor for any given contract, causing quality and timeliness to suffer and driving up prices.
In a number of cases, in spite of its industrial and financial might, the Pentagon has encountered insoluble problems. Specifically, it turns out that the US has only one shipyard left that is capable of building nuclear aircraft carriers (at all, that is; the USS Gerald Ford is not exactly a success). That is Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport, Virginia. In theory, it could work on three ships in parallel, but two of the slips are permanently occupied by existing aircraft carriers that require maintenance. This is not a unique case: the number of shipyards capable of building nuclear submarines, destroyers and other types of vessels is also exactly one. Thus, in case of a protracted conflict with a serious adversary in which a significant portion of the US Navy has been sunk, ships will be impossible to replace within any reasonable amount of time.
The situation is somewhat better with regard to aircraft manufacturing. The plants that exist can produce 40 planes a month and could produce 130 a month if pressed. On the other hand, the situation with tanks and artillery is absolutely dismal. According to this report, the US has completely lost the competency for building the new generation of tanks. It is no longer even a question of missing plant and equipment; in the US, a second generation of engineers who have never designed a tank is currently going into retirement. Their replacements have no one to learn from and only know about modern tanks from movies and video games. As far as artillery, there is just one remaining production line in the US that can produce barrels larger than 40mm; it is fully booked up and would be unable to ramp up production in case of war. The contractor is unwilling to expand production without the Pentagon guaranteeing at least 45% utilization, since that would be unprofitable.
The situation is similar for the entire list of areas; it is better for dual-use technologies that can be sourced from civilian companies and significantly worse for highly specialized ones. Unit cost for every type of military equipment goes up year after year while the volumes being acquired continuously trend lower—sometimes all the way to zero. Over the past 15 years the US hasn’t acquired a single new tank. They keep modernizing the old ones, but at a rate that’s no higher than 100 a year.
Because of all these tendencies and trends, the defense industry continues to lose not only qualified personnel but also the very ability to perform the work. INDPOL experts estimate that the deficit in machine tools has reached 27%. Over the past quarter-century the US has stopped manufacturing a wide variety of manufacturing equipment. Only half of these tools can be imported from allies or friendly nations; for the rest, there is just one source: China. They analyzed the supply chains for 600 of the most important types of weapons and found that a third of them have breaks in them while another third have completely broken down. In the Pentagon’s five-tier subcontractor pyramid, component manufacturers are almost always relegated to the bottommost tier, and the notices they issue when they terminate production or shut down completely tend to drown in the Pentagon’s bureaucratic swamp.
The end result of all this is that theoretically the Pentagon is still capable of doing small production runs of weapons to compensate for ongoing losses in localized, low-intensity conflicts during a general time of peace, but even today this is at the extreme end of its capabilities. In case of a serious conflict with any well-armed nation, all it will be able to rely on is the existing stockpile of ordnance and spare parts, which will be quickly depleted.
A similar situation prevails in the area of rare earth elements and other materials for producing electronics. At the moment, the accumulated stockpile of these supplies needed for producing missiles and space technology—most importantly, satellites—is sufficient for five years at the current rate of use.
The report specifically calls out the dire situation in the area of strategic nuclear weapons. Almost all the technology for communications, targeting, trajectory calculations and arming of the ICBM warheads was developed in the 1960s and 70s. To this day, data is loaded from 5-inch floppy diskettes, which were last mass-produced 15 years ago. There are no replacements for them and the people who designed them are busy pushing up daisies. The choice is between buying tiny production runs of all the consumables at an extravagant expense and developing from scratch the entire land-based strategic triad component at the cost of three annual Pentagon budgets.
There are lots of specific problems in each area described in the report, but the main one is loss of competence among technical and engineering staff caused by a low level of orders for replacements or for new product development. The situation is such that promising new theoretical developments coming out of research centers such as DARPA cannot be realized given the present set of technical competencies. For a number of key specializations there are fewer than three dozen trained, experienced specialists.
This situation is expected to continue to deteriorate, with the number of personnel employed in the defense sector declining 11-16% over the next decade, mainly due to a shortage of young candidates qualified to replace those who are retiring. A specific example: development work on the F-35 is nearing completion and there won’t be a need to develop a new jet fighter until 2035-2040; in the meantime, the personnel who were involved in its development will be idled and their level of competence will deteriorate.
Although at the moment the US still leads the world in defense spending ($610 billion of $1.7 trillion in 2017, which is roughly 36% of all the military spending on the planet) the US economy is no longer able to support the entire technology pyramid even in a time of relative peace and prosperity. On paper the US still looks like a leader in military technology, but the foundations of its military supremacy have eroded. Results of this are plainly visible:
• The US threatened North Korea with military action but was then forced to back off because it has no ability to fight a war against it.
• The US threatened Iran with military action but was then forced to back off because it has no ability to fight a war against it.
• The US lost the war in Afghanistan to the Taliban, and once the longest military conflict in US history is finally over the political situation there will return to status quo ante with the Taliban in charge and Islamic terrorist training camps back in operation.
• US proxies (Saudi Arabia, mostly) fighting in Yemen have produced a humanitarian disaster but have been unable to prevail militarily.
• US actions in Syria have led to a consolidation of power and territory by the Syrian government and newly dominant regional position for Russia, Iran and Turkey.
• The second-largest NATO power Turkey has purchased Russian S-400 air defense systems. The US alternative is the Patriot system, which is twice as expensive and doesn’t really work.
All of this points to the fact that the US is no longer much a military power at all. This is good news for at least the following four reasons.
First, the US is by far the most belligerent country on Earth, having invaded scores of nations and continuing to occupy many of them. The fact that it can’t fight any more means that opportunities for peace are bound to increase.
Second, once the news sinks in that the Pentagon is nothing more than a flush toilet for public funds its funding will be cut off and the population of the US might see the money that is currently fattening up war profiteers being spent on some roads and bridges, although it’s looking far more likely that it will all go into paying interest expense on federal debt (while supplies last).
Third, US politicians will lose the ability to keep the populace in a state of permanent anxiety about “national security.” In fact, the US has “natural security”—two oceans—and doesn’t need much national defense at all (provided it keeps to itself and doesn’t try to make trouble for others). The Canadians aren’t going to invade, and while the southern border does need some guarding, that can be taken care of at the state/county level by some good ol’ boys using weapons and ammo they already happen to have on hand. Once this $1.7 trillion “national defense” monkey is off their backs, ordinary American citizens will be able to work less, play more and feel less aggressive, anxious, depressed and paranoid.
Last but not least, it will be wonderful to see the war profiteers reduced to scraping under sofa cushions for loose change. All that the US military has been able to produce for a long time now is misery, the technical term for which is “humanitarian disaster.” Look at the aftermath of US military involvement in Serbia/Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, and what do you see? You see misery—both for the locals and for US citizens who lost their family members, had their limbs blown off, or are now suffering from PTSD or brain injury. It would be only fair if that misery were to circle back to those who had profited from it.
Research credit: Alexander Zapolskis
In fact, it filled them with optimism. You see, Russia wants peace but the US seems to want war and keeps making threatening gestures against a longish list of countries that refuse to do its bidding or simply don’t share its “universal values.” But now it turns out that threats (and the increasingly toothless economic sanctions) are pretty much all that the US is still capable of dishing out—this in spite of absolutely astronomical levels of defense spending. Let’s see what the US military-industrial complex looks like through a Russian lens.
It is important to note that the report’s authors were not aiming to force legislators to finance some specific project. This makes it more valuable than numerous other sources, whose authors’ main objective was to belly up to the federal feeding trough, and which therefore tend to be light on facts and heavy on hype. No doubt, politics still played a part in how various details are portrayed, but there seems to be a limit to the number of problems its authors can airbrush out of the picture and still do a reasonable job in analyzing the situation and in formulating their recommendations.
What knocked Russian analysis over with a feather is the fact that these INDPOL experts (who, like the rest of the US DOD, love acronyms) evaluate the US military-industrial complex from a… market-based perspective! You see, the Russian military-industrial complex is fully owned by the Russian government and works exclusively in its interests; anything else would be considered treason. But the US military-industrial complex is evaluated based on its… profitability! According to INDPOL, it must not only produce products for the military but also acquire market share in the global weapons trade and, perhaps most importantly, maximize profitability for private investors. By this standard, it is doing well: for 2017 the gross margin (EBITDA) for US defense contractors ranged from 15 to 17%, and some subcontractors—Transdigm, for example—managed to deliver no less than 42-45%. “Ah!” cry the Russian experts, “We’ve found the problem! The Americans have legalized war profiteering!” (This, by the way, is but one of many instances of something called systemic corruption, which is rife in the US.)
It would be one thing if each defense contractor simply took its cut off the top, but instead there is an entire food chain of defense contractors, all of which are legally required, no less, to maximize profits for their shareholders. More than 28,000 companies are involved, but the actual first-tier defense contractors with which the Pentagon places 2/3 of all defense contracts are just the Big Six: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynmics, BAE Systems and Boeing. All the other companies are organized into a pyramid of subcontractors with five levels of hierarchy, and at each level they do their best to milk the tier above them.
The insistence on market-based methods and the requirement of maximizing profitability turns out to be incompatible with defense spending on a very basic level: defense spending is intermittent and cyclical, with long fallow intervals between major orders. This has forced even the Big Six to make cuts to their defense-directed departments in favor of expanding civilian production. Also, in spite of the huge size of the US defense budget, it is of finite size (there being just one planet to blow up), as is the global weapons market. Since, in a market economy, every company faces the choice of grow or get bought out, this has precipitated scores of mergers and acquisitions, resulting in a highly consolidated marketplace with a few major players in each space.
As a result, in most spaces, of which the report’s authors discuss 17, including the Navy, land forces, air force, electronics, nuclear weapons, space technology and so on, at least a third of the time the Pentagon has a choice of exactly one contractor for any given contract, causing quality and timeliness to suffer and driving up prices.
In a number of cases, in spite of its industrial and financial might, the Pentagon has encountered insoluble problems. Specifically, it turns out that the US has only one shipyard left that is capable of building nuclear aircraft carriers (at all, that is; the USS Gerald Ford is not exactly a success). That is Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport, Virginia. In theory, it could work on three ships in parallel, but two of the slips are permanently occupied by existing aircraft carriers that require maintenance. This is not a unique case: the number of shipyards capable of building nuclear submarines, destroyers and other types of vessels is also exactly one. Thus, in case of a protracted conflict with a serious adversary in which a significant portion of the US Navy has been sunk, ships will be impossible to replace within any reasonable amount of time.
The situation is somewhat better with regard to aircraft manufacturing. The plants that exist can produce 40 planes a month and could produce 130 a month if pressed. On the other hand, the situation with tanks and artillery is absolutely dismal. According to this report, the US has completely lost the competency for building the new generation of tanks. It is no longer even a question of missing plant and equipment; in the US, a second generation of engineers who have never designed a tank is currently going into retirement. Their replacements have no one to learn from and only know about modern tanks from movies and video games. As far as artillery, there is just one remaining production line in the US that can produce barrels larger than 40mm; it is fully booked up and would be unable to ramp up production in case of war. The contractor is unwilling to expand production without the Pentagon guaranteeing at least 45% utilization, since that would be unprofitable.
The situation is similar for the entire list of areas; it is better for dual-use technologies that can be sourced from civilian companies and significantly worse for highly specialized ones. Unit cost for every type of military equipment goes up year after year while the volumes being acquired continuously trend lower—sometimes all the way to zero. Over the past 15 years the US hasn’t acquired a single new tank. They keep modernizing the old ones, but at a rate that’s no higher than 100 a year.
Because of all these tendencies and trends, the defense industry continues to lose not only qualified personnel but also the very ability to perform the work. INDPOL experts estimate that the deficit in machine tools has reached 27%. Over the past quarter-century the US has stopped manufacturing a wide variety of manufacturing equipment. Only half of these tools can be imported from allies or friendly nations; for the rest, there is just one source: China. They analyzed the supply chains for 600 of the most important types of weapons and found that a third of them have breaks in them while another third have completely broken down. In the Pentagon’s five-tier subcontractor pyramid, component manufacturers are almost always relegated to the bottommost tier, and the notices they issue when they terminate production or shut down completely tend to drown in the Pentagon’s bureaucratic swamp.
The end result of all this is that theoretically the Pentagon is still capable of doing small production runs of weapons to compensate for ongoing losses in localized, low-intensity conflicts during a general time of peace, but even today this is at the extreme end of its capabilities. In case of a serious conflict with any well-armed nation, all it will be able to rely on is the existing stockpile of ordnance and spare parts, which will be quickly depleted.
A similar situation prevails in the area of rare earth elements and other materials for producing electronics. At the moment, the accumulated stockpile of these supplies needed for producing missiles and space technology—most importantly, satellites—is sufficient for five years at the current rate of use.
The report specifically calls out the dire situation in the area of strategic nuclear weapons. Almost all the technology for communications, targeting, trajectory calculations and arming of the ICBM warheads was developed in the 1960s and 70s. To this day, data is loaded from 5-inch floppy diskettes, which were last mass-produced 15 years ago. There are no replacements for them and the people who designed them are busy pushing up daisies. The choice is between buying tiny production runs of all the consumables at an extravagant expense and developing from scratch the entire land-based strategic triad component at the cost of three annual Pentagon budgets.
There are lots of specific problems in each area described in the report, but the main one is loss of competence among technical and engineering staff caused by a low level of orders for replacements or for new product development. The situation is such that promising new theoretical developments coming out of research centers such as DARPA cannot be realized given the present set of technical competencies. For a number of key specializations there are fewer than three dozen trained, experienced specialists.
This situation is expected to continue to deteriorate, with the number of personnel employed in the defense sector declining 11-16% over the next decade, mainly due to a shortage of young candidates qualified to replace those who are retiring. A specific example: development work on the F-35 is nearing completion and there won’t be a need to develop a new jet fighter until 2035-2040; in the meantime, the personnel who were involved in its development will be idled and their level of competence will deteriorate.
Although at the moment the US still leads the world in defense spending ($610 billion of $1.7 trillion in 2017, which is roughly 36% of all the military spending on the planet) the US economy is no longer able to support the entire technology pyramid even in a time of relative peace and prosperity. On paper the US still looks like a leader in military technology, but the foundations of its military supremacy have eroded. Results of this are plainly visible:
• The US threatened North Korea with military action but was then forced to back off because it has no ability to fight a war against it.
• The US threatened Iran with military action but was then forced to back off because it has no ability to fight a war against it.
• The US lost the war in Afghanistan to the Taliban, and once the longest military conflict in US history is finally over the political situation there will return to status quo ante with the Taliban in charge and Islamic terrorist training camps back in operation.
• US proxies (Saudi Arabia, mostly) fighting in Yemen have produced a humanitarian disaster but have been unable to prevail militarily.
• US actions in Syria have led to a consolidation of power and territory by the Syrian government and newly dominant regional position for Russia, Iran and Turkey.
• The second-largest NATO power Turkey has purchased Russian S-400 air defense systems. The US alternative is the Patriot system, which is twice as expensive and doesn’t really work.
All of this points to the fact that the US is no longer much a military power at all. This is good news for at least the following four reasons.
First, the US is by far the most belligerent country on Earth, having invaded scores of nations and continuing to occupy many of them. The fact that it can’t fight any more means that opportunities for peace are bound to increase.
Second, once the news sinks in that the Pentagon is nothing more than a flush toilet for public funds its funding will be cut off and the population of the US might see the money that is currently fattening up war profiteers being spent on some roads and bridges, although it’s looking far more likely that it will all go into paying interest expense on federal debt (while supplies last).
Third, US politicians will lose the ability to keep the populace in a state of permanent anxiety about “national security.” In fact, the US has “natural security”—two oceans—and doesn’t need much national defense at all (provided it keeps to itself and doesn’t try to make trouble for others). The Canadians aren’t going to invade, and while the southern border does need some guarding, that can be taken care of at the state/county level by some good ol’ boys using weapons and ammo they already happen to have on hand. Once this $1.7 trillion “national defense” monkey is off their backs, ordinary American citizens will be able to work less, play more and feel less aggressive, anxious, depressed and paranoid.
Last but not least, it will be wonderful to see the war profiteers reduced to scraping under sofa cushions for loose change. All that the US military has been able to produce for a long time now is misery, the technical term for which is “humanitarian disaster.” Look at the aftermath of US military involvement in Serbia/Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, and what do you see? You see misery—both for the locals and for US citizens who lost their family members, had their limbs blown off, or are now suffering from PTSD or brain injury. It would be only fair if that misery were to circle back to those who had profited from it.
Research credit: Alexander Zapolskis
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