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Comment by FighterMafia | Hacker News Reader

Military policy isn't civilian driven. The Pentagon drives the policy, as well as the weapons decisions. The surprise is when the civilians actually do exert some control--such as in preventing the USAF from scrapping the A-10, fighting the USAF on cancelling the the JSTARs recap, or when they force extra Littoral Combat Ships on the navy against their will :)

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> Military policy isn't civilian driven

Except when a congressman from Ohio decides that they need more tanks so that he can keep his voters employed [1], despite the army saying they have plenty and don't know what to do with them. They have literally thousands of tanks sitting in storage in the desert, and they're rolling tanks straight off the production line into storage.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lima_Army_Tank_Plant

You say that now, but you'll have to eat your words when Canada finally goes mad at your lack of universal healthcare and invades.

I followed the link and came down to 2010s where I couldn't understand the following sentence:

The army did not convince Congress that it did not need more tanks in 2011, so in 2013, Congress funded an additional tanks to be built at a cost of ~$270M.

Usually, the military provides requirement and the civilian administration provides the funds. How can the Congress order the Army to make more tanks when they don't need it? I am not an American, so probably I am missing the entire context here.

This is reasonably common in the US. The military does have requests, but Congress also has opinions, and they can deviate from the military's request in either direction. Sometimes they decide not to fund something the military requests, but other times they might mandate something the military doesn't actually want. This could be driven by a difference of opinion over strategy (ultimately such decisions are supposed to be under civilian control, even if informed by general's requests), or it could be caused by more questionable considerations like the presence of factories in a Congressperson's district that don't want to lose business.

This at least sometimes happens in Europe too... defense procurement is big business and very political, and sometimes European militaries end up in programs (esp. multinational ones) they aren't that enthusiastic about. Another example is conscription. The Swedish military wanted conscription to be abolished for years before it actually happened, but until the civilian government decided to do so, in the meantime the military had to keep taking in and training conscripts they didn't actually want.

Building tanks creates jobs, injecting money into the local economy and making you more likely to be reelected. Nobody wants to be the politician that let the tank factory close, killing hundreds or thousands of jobs.

They're literally making tanks and driving them straight into storage because the army doesn't have anything to use them for or anybody to drive them.

If you are unfamiliar with the American procurement process it is:

1. demand is generated by the military

2. bid out contract

3. selected a bidder (bidders are defense contractors)

4. deliver contracted goods and also maintain inventory parts and tooling for sometimes up to 25 years

5. local economy becomes dependent on this manufacturing income, bidder lobbies their local congressperson directly or indirectly

6. congressperson does these wacky ass requisition appropriations

7. the factory keeps production at the same level and with same employment

8. military gets delivery for goods they never wanted so they go into storage, because what else are you supposed to do with these things? You can't resell them because it contains military secrets, you can't scrap them from both an optics level and the general military logic that having a spare is generally fine.

This happens even moreso when it is navy vessels that are much larger cost investments (submarines and destroyers) as just making one will take years potentially and there are legitimate concerns for stopping the means of production but it really just turns into a jobs/national pride story.

Navy vessels are slightly different though, because you really have to think 10 years ahead when building them. It takes a long time to build and commission a ship.

As an example, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy's new carrier, was ordered in 20089 and laid down in 2014, it was commissioned only last year, and is still undergoing sea trials and isn't operational (they also have no planes to fly off it). It's planned to be in service in 2020, 6 years after being laid down and 12 years after it was ordered.

I agree with this in entirety there is a whole set of production steps that take it from a skeleton to seaworthy to battle ready. The issue from the American perspective is that those shipwrights, technicians, and other workers do not have a job past the conclusion of their phase. After primary construction is done you just don't need as many welders. If the ship has been wired properly to completion you don't need as many electricians, and so on and so forth. This especially holds true because after acceptance by the military most of the maintenance roles will be taken over by enlisted personnel or contractors separate to the production staff. The problem is it turns into 'if we don't order a new ship we're down 5,000 high wage jobs.' So while Ship A is being polished for deployment the original company has a bunch of staff that they don't have any work for. The next contract that comes in provides money to cover those 5,000 jobs to do that primary construction over again to build Ship B.

I'm also not sure in the comparison between foreign governments and US defense contractors but US defense contractors generally only sell to the military markets (domestic or international) so it's not like their facilities are designed to be able to build ordinary commercial goods side by side with the military spec hardware.

One of the troubles is that congress can't trust the army to admit the truth. Congress must guess.

You see, the army is controlled by the president. The president may be from a different political party or even be following his own personal agenda. The army must strictly obey orders according to the chain of command, and the president is at the top.

If the president dislikes tanks, he can order the army to place tanks into storage and claim that the tanks are not wanted. Congress is left wondering if the people in the army are stating their true expert opinions or just following orders.

Here is a real case that leaked out:

https://www.military.com/dodbuzz/2015/01/16/general-praising... https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/26/generals-a10-...

So yes, the military being ordered to lie to congress is a real thing.

What? No. In case anyone wants an update on this case from 2015, that general was fired. He was not implementing some sort of secret presidential policy with his remarks.

The A10 is an example of Congress imposing civilian priorities on the military. Despite its declining military utility, it's a popular plane, so Congress won't let the military sunset it. It has nothing to do with the president ordering the military to lie to Congress.

You're not even legally correct... while the president is the commander in chief, Congress has oversight of military spending under Article I, Section 8. An order to lie to Congress about spending would be an illegal order, and military personnel are not compelled to follow illegal orders.

He was fired, though that isn't proof he got in trouble for what he was doing or that he wasn't ordered to do that. He did things in a ham-handed way and it leaked, causing a PR disaster.

The F22 looks to be a similar case. Here we don't have a crude effort getting leaked, but that doesn't mean the situation was any more legitimate. It very much seems that Obama was pushing to kill the F22 and the military marched to his orders.

Civilians decide the budget (for the DoD and other agencies such as the VA) and when/where to go to war, right?

But you're right and I was wrong. The problem isn't only that politicians / civilians have usurped "supporting the troops" as a shield (as I said), but really any decisions (whether it be made by the military or civilians) cannot be criticized / questioned without a high risk of being labeled unpatriotic.

The weapons producers are where a huge amount of the money goes. From outside, it seems like policy is plenty often decided by what is best for the factory in some influential congressperson’s district (or perhaps to some influential congressperson’s key donor CEOs).

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