"A Lean War Machine" - Fixing the US Military

In 2008 alone, the US spent around $700 billion on the military, $500 billion for the Pentagon and ~$200 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. That is twice as much as the next five largest militaries in the world spent combined.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21owens.html?ex=1387515600&en=691aa4520ea30b96&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook

'The claim that continuing extraordinary military expenditures are good for the economy is false. There are much better Main Street investments to end the recession around (public works and education, to name a couple). There is no need to keep military spending level — the money is going largely to maintain a military that is increasingly less effective in meeting future security challenges, and hundreds of millions of dollars are squandered because of inefficiency, poor budgeting and greed.

The saddest thing about this is that the Pentagon tends to make cuts by trying to stretch and shave existing programs. What President Dwight D. Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” is resurgent, this time driven by defense contractors. Their myopic drive to assure quarterly profits stifles innovation. And little changes because they wield inordinate influence through contracts in nearly every Congressional district.

There is a better way, one that turns the necessity of cost reductions into a military more suited to the national security challenges we will face down the road. We need to realize the principles of what military planners called the “revolution of military affairs” of the mid-1990s. To do so calls for innovations in three areas: first, a joint-service perspective that emphasizes the interdependence of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps; second, investment that focuses on cutting-edge information technology systems that allow our forces to work together more effectively, rather than more spending on the complex and expensive major weapons systems of the past; and last, changes in the way the Pentagon goes about assessing its needs and contracting.

“Jointness” can reduce redundancies: by acting separately, the services needlessly duplicate one another’s efforts in logistics, communications, intelligence, medical services and administration — not to mention several areas of war-fighting. Because each service operates its bases independently, we have far too many. Consolidating them into “megabases” would make for greater effectiveness and save tens of billions. Likewise, an emphasis on information technology can increase the strength of the force while it reduces the need for manpower, the single most expensive aspect of today’s military.'