Halving the Pentagon

Why Half?

That is a good question. I would personally cut a lot closer to 100%, perhaps keeping enough for some Fourth of July fireworks. However, in the world as it is, this is not doable. That said, I did not arrive at a 50% reduction arbitrarily. I start with the final Eisenhower defense budget request of just about $50 billion for Fiscal Year 1961. Consider, this was at the height of the Cold War, and with the USSR, at close to its peak power and influence. Also, no one can claim Eisenhower was a pinko (the John Birch Society does not count). He was the man who lead the Allies to victory in Europe in WWII. If Ike says that $50 billion was enough to defend the US from the Soviet threat, we should take him at his word.

We then take that $50 billion and put into the government’s inflation calculator. The $50 billion in January of 1961 equals just over $538 billion today. That is a little more than half of the Defense Department request before Congress. It is less than half when you factor in the VA budget, which is the cost of past wars, the foreign aid budget, State Department Budget, various spy agencies, and the parts of the Energy Department that oversee the US nuclear weapons stockpile. What follows is an overview of how the US can safely defend itself well withing the inflation adjusted $538 billion budget.

Redefining the Mission

Let me be clear, halving the Pentagon’s budget will not provide enough money to run an empire. That is part of the point. There is no moral reason to engage in such aggressive activities, and there is nothing within the framework of legitimate defense needs that can permit such imperial activities. The empire needs to be rejected wholesale, and dismantled…immediately. This is not simply a walk back from the United States’ financial bankruptcy, but the US moral bankruptcy that has always walked side by side with the empire.

So, if we reject the empire, then what is left? There are only 3 things that a state might possibly consider as defensive. I say possibly, because in the end all states are criminal enterprises possessing no rights whatsoever. However, as I said above, that is not the world as it is. So, we are, as always, looking for harm reduction as the best possible outcome in a fallen world.

The three things a nation might defend are its territorial integrity, its sovereignty, and its transit in international waters. That’s it, and there ain’t no more. So, with these three things in mind let’s construct a defense budget that can satisfy these three areas of defense.

Nuclear Defense

Let’s start with the big defensive umbrella, nuclear deterrence. It is morbid to rely on Mutually Assured Destruction, but that is where the world has been since the 1950s, and it does not seem likely to change. Do not even get me started on the boondoggle that is Trump’s “Golden Dome”. The sane approach would be to negotiate the abolition of all nuclear weapons. That will not happen anytime soon, so the US will need some sort of deterrence to prevent nuclear blackmail, and a loss of its sovereignty as a result. Fortunately, there are substantial savings to be found here. As I wrote earlier this year, all the US needs are one nuclear leg. The main thrust of that post was how safer the US would be, and how the world would be with just a submarine based nuclear deterrent. Yet, the dollar savings would be substantial.

Using the government’s own estimates of the nuclear force costs, submarine based nuclear missile capability would cost $17.4 billion. Add in $5.5 billion for support services (one third of the total), and $14.1 for command, control, early warning, etc. The estimates to upgrade all these systems over the next ten years is about $7.9 billion/year. Divide that by three to reflect only one leg, round up slightly, and you get $3 billion/year. This does not include the naval personnel to man the subs themselves, which will be included in the navy totals below.

Total Nuclear Deterrent Budget: $40 billion

Army

The army would be a shell of its current self. Hurrah! There would be no 800 bases in over 150 foreign nations. There would be only defense of the US itself. Coastal defense and maintenance of the borders with Mexico and Canada would require 175K troops at most. You would likely need less, but I am aiming high to be fair to the other side. The best estimate by a pro-defense publication is that it costs $140K per soldier per year. $140K times 175K equals $24.5 billion. Let us further add in 200K reserves to be called up in case of a dire emergency. Invasion would be the only real reason, but that is extremely unlikely given the distances across the Atlantic or the Pacific as well as the satellite capability that would see them coming almost from the moment of embarkation. They might be useful in some sort of domestic uprising or natural disaster, so we will put it in the budget. According to the military’s estimates the per soldier cost is about $35K per year. This works out to be about $7 billion.

The logistical needs, based on new, reduced strength levels, are as follows: operations and support $25 billion; Procurement $14 billion, Research Development Training Evaluation (RDTE) $11 billion; Miscellaneous based on 2025 request $4 billion.

Total Army Budget: $85.5 billion

Navy

The per person expenditure, as per budget figures, for the US Navy is calculated as follows; 515K personnel divided by $55 billion, equals $110K per person. This will be the number used for the following calculations.

The 14 Ohio class nuclear submarines that serve as the nuclear deterrent have a complement of 155 per sub. You need 2 crews per sub, which works out to 4340 personnel. Double this for support and logistics and you get a total headcount of 8680.

Then you need 50 attack subs for coastal defense. The Virginia class sub has a complement of 135 per sub. 2 crews for each of these subs makes for a personnel count of 13,500. Double for support and logistics and you get 27,000 total.

As part of the mission of keeping transit open in international waters it may be necessary to have some force projection capacity. To that end I would keep a carrier group on each coast. Currently there are 11 carrier groups with total personnel (on ship and support) of 228,000. Reducing this to 2 carrier groups gets us a personnel total of 41,454. Adding up all the personnel for the revamped US Navy gets us to a headcount of 77,134. Times this by the $110,000 cited above and you get personnel costs of about $8.5 billion.

Add to this (all 10% of current spending level), operations and maintenance of $8 billion; procurement $7 billion; RDTE $2.6 billion, and miscellaneous (a generous 25% of current level) $1 billion.

Total Navy Budget $27.1 billion

Air Force

The air force is the branch of the military that is closest to homeland (therefore legitimate) defense. Yet, it too can see significant savings. This is especially true given the decreasing need for manned aircraft. Drones and other unmanned craft are much cheaper both in terms of the hardware, as well as the lack of need to train people. Then there is the lower human cost in not sacrificing humans to a war effort.

Let’s start with small tactical drones that are used primarily for reconnaissance and surveillance. Prices range between $3000-$35,000 per unit, according to a report. Let’s split the difference and call it $19,000 per drone. Somewhat arbitrarily, let’s say the US needs 1000 such drones. That is $19 million.

The next category would be medium-sized tactical drones with a range of up to 125 miles. These range in cost from $250K to $5 million. Again, let’s split the difference and call it $2.6 million per drone. The Chinese navy has 150 ships that can currently operate beyond their coastline. This includes carriers, destroyers, etc. Let us further state that it takes 10 drones to sink a ship. It may take as few as one, depending on the type of ship, and skill of the operator. Again, I am being as liberal as is reasonable here. This would mean that 1500 drones times $2.6 million per drone is a cost of $3.9 billion.

There are of course long-range drones, such as the MQ-9 Reaper that have a range of over 1800 miles. These cost about $200 million apiece. The US currently possesses about 300 of these weapons. The US could get by with half as a long-range tool to hit an invading force well before it came anywhere near the US. So, 150 times $200 million is $30 billion. I am generous here in calculating this need.

The Space Force budget request for FY2025 is $29.4 billion. I will leave that in, as there is a need to at least defend US satellite and communications equipment in space, even if there is no need for offensive space-based weapons.

This all adds up to $63.5 billion. Let’s double that for support, and logistics. That is significantly below the $220 billion 2025 budget request for the Air Force.

Total Air Force Budget: $127 billion

Adding It All Down

Nuclear Deterrent (excluding Navy subs, etc.) $40 billion

Army $85.5 billion

Navy $27.1 billion

Air Force $127.1 billion

Totals $279.7 billion

As you can see this is well below the 50% of current spending I set out to achieve. That total is $538 billion. That leaves $257.4 billion in wiggle room. True enough, I am not a defense policy expert. I may very well have missed something. I think that anything I missed can be found within that $257.4 billion. This is an achievable goal.

Of course, all of this depends upon redefining the mission, and dismantling the empire. That is the case that may need to be made first. However, I think it is important to offer the taxpayers some idea of what the payoff can be for redefining the US role in the world, while providing more than enough resources to defend the homeland. We can grab their attention with these radically reduced numbers and then make the case for a noninterventionist foreign policy. At a minimum we can clearly show that we need not spend anywhere near $1 trillion to line the pockets of the military-industrial complex. As I said, this would represent real harm reduction for a fallen world. If we can do even that, we can go before God, having done the best we could.

Praise Be to God