Is ‘Good Enough’ Good Enough for the Pentagon?
William Hartung
Contributor
I am a defense analyst, and cover the economics of Pentagon spending.
Oct 22, 2024,06:55am EDT
Updated Oct 22, 2024, 08:52am EDT
Writing at Responsible Statecraft, the online magazine of my organization, the Quincy Institute, my colleague Dan Grazier of the Stimson Center summarizes the dangers of the “Defense Death Spiral,” a phenomenon first warned of by a courageous group of defense reformers during the Reagan buildup of the 1980s.
The thesis is fairly simple – as each generation of weapons purchased by the Pentagon becomes more expensive and more complex, the U.S. armed forces shrink accordingly. As Grazier points out, the U.S. armed forces have half as many combat aircraft as they did in the mid-1970s, and fewer than half as many combat ships – all on a budget that is 60% higher than it was back then, adjusted for inflation. And contrary to the official story, it’s not clear that the quality of the new generation of weaponry has made up for the reduction in quantity, as evidenced by the subpar performances of major systems like the Littoral Combat Ship and the F-35.
The Pentagon’s attempt to supply weapons to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza while acquiring equipment relevant to a possible conflict with China has laid bare the flaws of the Pentagon’s current system of developing and purchasing new weapons.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhartung/2024/10/22/is-good-enough-good-enough-for-the-pentagon/
