I try to avoid been an armchair general but you have to wonder what you could have done by giving NASA $400 billion (equivalent to 15 years of their current budget) and spending the other $600 billion evenly between education, infrastructure and investing in new businesses/re-training.
Sometimes I suffer species embarrassment.
In any case, the trillion dollar price tag is amortized over 55 years. Over that time, at current levels of spending, we'll spend almost $8 trillion on education just at the federal level, almost a trillion on NASA, $44 trillion on social security, $42 trillion on Medicare, etc.
The F35 has been a bungled project, but it's not any basis for feeling "species embarrassment."
[1] Europeans didn't manage to colonize or otherwise subjugate India, Asia, the Americas, etc, because they were so much wealthier or more educated, but because they had vastly superior military technology.
We already have the hardware needed to repel every nation on Earth from our borders several times over. At some point it makes sense to look more closely at how we allocate our tax dollars.
First, the mission of the U.S. military is not just to repel attackers from our own borders. We have, though NATO, made it our mission to do the same for the whole of Western Europe.
Second, I don't know where this idea comes from that we "have the hardware needed to repel every nation on Earth from our borders." Spending $200 billion per year does not mean you can effectively repel two countries that each spend $100 billion per year. There are diminishing returns. We push far along that curve because we're tremendously averse to loss of American life. We don't want to just be able to repel attackers, but do it with minimal U.S. casualties both to military and civilian personnel.
The goal isn't just to win a war against China or Russia. It's to win a war without losing a million Americans in the process. Or: ideally, have such an overwhelming advantage that people the world over start to think of war between major powers as a relic of the distant past, instead of the central aspect of international politics that it has always been.
Perhaps it's time to give the "Department of Defense" a new name. It used to be called the "War Department," didn't it?
Is the F-35 the best use of defense dollars? Probably not. But we spend under 4% of GDP on the military. Given the potential consequences of the loss of American military supremacy, that's not an unreasonable amount.
Correct; specifically, before November 1, 1952. Every dime we've spent on defense since then has gone towards fighting a kind of war that's not ever going to happen again. Either that, or fighting an asymmetrical skirmish somewhere in hopes of changing someone's culture through the application of violence.
Again, there simply is no problem facing the US that projects like this are cost-effective at solving. (And that doesn't even get into the absurdity of a combat aircraft with a human pilot in 2014, much less the 2050+ amortization timeline of the F-35 project.) Build your Maginot Line on your own dime, kthxbye.
The hydrogen bomb does not render obsolete conventional warfare. See, e.g., all the wars nuclear powers have been involved in since 1952. War between nations is a dispute resolution mechanism of last-resort. A weapon that just leaves everyone on both sides dead is inapplicable to that end.
Take, for example, a hypothetical war over some limited resource (take your pick, they're all running out). Is anyone going to use nuclear weapons in such a war? No, but they're not going to handle everything through diplomacy either.
> And that doesn't even get into the absurdity of a combat aircraft with a human pilot in 2014, much less the 2050+ amortization timeline of the F-35 project.)
We have quite a few advances to make in communications technology and AI before human pilots are obsolete. As long as we need human operators, the wireless communications infrastructure is too fragile (susceptible to jamming, etc) to use in combat, and we're nowhere near fully autonomous combat aircraft.
> A single ballistic-missile submarine is enough
> the absurdity of a combat aircraft with a human pilot in 2014
I'm curious to know what are you basing those statements on.
That is because the American military is not a purely defensive construct, having been used far more offensively than defensively.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
-Dwight Eisenhower, 1961
I don't think its credulous to insinuate that we have not sacrificed decades worth of opportunities to grow societal and physical infrastructure at the altar of the very thing Ike was warning us about.
We can absolutely adequately defend ourselves and our allies with much less money.
In any case, the development cost is projected to be about 25% of the lifetime cost ($400 billion out of $1.45 trillion). Of the two items you listed that are comparable to a military expenditure, $400 bn is 5% of the education number and 40% of the NASA number--not trivial in either case.
It happened to the British, it happened to the Chinese, it happened to the Russians, it happened to the Romans, it happened to the Egyptians. It's happened to almost every empire that has at some point enjoyed a large standing force and then had the context that made it make sense change.
What's important seems to be the industrial capacity to quickly create a military force, a culture that allows you to integrate the average man into the command structure, and a core of well trained professionals to head that structure.
But the idea that simply investing in the military will provide us with security is not one I'd subscribe to. It seems to me that, historically, they've been the parties to bet on only within the niche in which they evolved. Outside of that niche, it seems better to bet on the upstarts - those with a reasonable industrial capacity or the ability to acquire one, along with a desperate enough position to go for what works and sufficiently well educated people to see the next few steps.
I'd expect this effect only to become more pronounced as technology advances faster.
tl/dr: People find something that works, and stick with it until it fails - not until it becomes illogical. Funding something creates momentum for that thing in ideological and logistical terms, and military force is not entirely fungible. If you need to adapt to a challenge in a particular area, having funded something for a long time is not necessarily a Good Thing.
False. The smartest play is to not be relevant either to Mark Zuckerberg, or the criminals who steal his stuff.
You are justifying violence, aggression, and theft. This is not really a position I am surprised to see being upvoted, but I am rather disappointed that you haven't had any worthy challengers, either.
The fact of the matter is that the state of nature is utterly arbitrary, now. If we decide not to kill each other, we do not kill each other. We do not randomly kill anyone without actually deciding to do it; failing to acknowledge the culpability of killers, and those who prepare to do killing above all else, is why we have killers.
In an ideal, natural state, equilibrium will be attained, for that is the nature of the universe at large. It takes an obtuse intrusion of life to impede upon the natural entropy of the universe; decide to kill, and then kill, and you'll be doing something that does not happen anywhere else, provably, yet in the wider known universe. It is a unique and utterly self-perpetuating circumstance, murder. It cannot occur without life making the effort to proceed with the act.
And the fact of the matter is, trillions of dollars worth of decisions have been made, by a tragically small elite, in the name of the whole - to kill. This is the responsibility of everyone who allows those dollars to persist as currency in global communication; the fallacy of irresponsibility nevertheless allows for continued acts of overt destruction on the human species.
Decide not to kill, and you need not kill. For every $billion bomber, there could have been 1,000 solutions to the distrust and hatred between those who do not understand each other, sufficiently well enough, to acknowledge the commonality of life, shared. Put the bomber pilot in the middle of the village, and soon enough he'll be grateful for the company of those humans with whom he must drink tea, or perish.
The only reason that the American people have allowed their nation to be subjugated by murders, criminals, the provably insane, is that they (the American people) simply cannot take responsibility - for themselves, nor for others. The idea that American military power is a projection of the willingness to 'do good for others' is an utterly banal fallacy; American military might can only be projected when those who can stop it are driven into an apathy derived from near-total irresponsibility for the results: for the death, for the murder, for the total lack of justice, for the dire export of utter prejudice, and ultimately - hatred.
The budget was allocated on death. It was not spent on life. There are far more potent ways to deliver continued life by those, the living, here and now, than to predict future conflict 'is necessary and natural'. If you are alive today, you can solve this: learn the language of those you pretend not to hate.
I have recently started to believe that most people get the casualty wrong between education/training and industrial advancement. If you want more engineers, spend money in a way that creates more engineering jobs, do not simply educate engineers for jobs that do not exist. If you create the jobs, people will change college majors or teach themselves. Industries will create apprenticeship programs to compensate for the undersupply, etc. I think the U.S. already spends more than enough money to provide enough book learning to meet the demands of industry. Spending more without creating the jobs would be a waste of money. (Note I am not arguing that spending the money on the F-35 was the best use of the money, just that spending money on more education is also not a good use of money).
Personally I think reducing friction to moving elsewhere -- be it across state boundaries or across oceans -- should be prioritized. This would involve supporting/subsidizing public transportation infrastructure on a massive scale, which has benefits that are unrelated to increased personal mobility.
Supporting the the "creation of jobs" is ephemeral by nature -- the need for those jobs is not permanent, however the supporting transportation infrastructure has a far greater sense of permanence.
The dearth of plumbers, electricians, mechanics, welders, and other tradespeople in the US completely disagrees with this. These are very frequently high-paying jobs (even if you judge by the tech industry yardstick) and there simply aren't enough people to fill the jobs. Mike Rowe has been campaigning about this for years now, to try to get people back into the trade, and it's just not happening.
It would certainly depend on location, but BLS average salary data seems to point otherwise:
Plumbers $49K: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/plumbers-...
Electricians $49K: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/electrici...
Mechanics $36K: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/installation-maintenance-and-repair/a...
Welders $36K: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/production/welders-cutters-solderers-...
-VS-
Software Developer $93K: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/s...
Computer Programer $74K: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/c...