Ark of the Lost Angels

U.S. Navy F-14A Tomcat preparing to launch from the USS Enterprise (CVN 65) on Feb. 14, 2000. _{(Credit: Petty Officer 3rd Class Karl L. Peters)}

America spends a great deal on its military. That comes with some upsides.

The American military budget is by no means a simple matter of discussion. It’s easy to make the argument that defense spending is too high and needs to come down. While many voters have made the argument that defense spending should be cut down, most lobbyists and lawmakers have refused to even broach the topic with any amount of seriousness.

Yet, even America’s most left-leaning senator and a self-anointed visionary tapped to jointly run a complete farce of an advisory board masquerading as a legitimate federal agency for the most right-wing president can agree that the American military budget is too high and needs to be dramatically cut. Unfortunately, the idea of blanket slashing spending will probably cause more trouble than its worth. The federal ecosystem is so interconnected that large, blanket cuts to any agency’s programs, much less an entire agency, could be catastrophic for the network of agency functionaries and federal contractors who make their livings by ensuring the federal government can operate.

The Department of Defense only started getting audited in 2018 and has not passed a single audit in whole since then. However, that is due to the labyrinthian number of programs under the Pentagon’s purview, and considering the breadth of its annual budget, this should come as no surprise. The requirement is to get the entire budget to cleanly pass an audit by 2028. At the time of the writing of that article, of the 28 entities under the Pentagon report card, nine have passed cleanly, an additional one has passed through qualified opinion, fifteen have received disclaimers, and three more were outstanding. There is much work to be performed to bring the Pentagon budget in-line with what it should be, but this undoing this level of financial carelessness is a monumental undertaking when taking into consideration the decades where the defense budget was run unchecked.

Oversight is good. Hasty decisions are bad. That isn’t to say the military budget is being spent perfectly as-is, nor does it say it absolutely needs to remain this way. Perhaps the truth is a little less comfortable for the people who have valid stances against US military intervention. The argument against imperialism has a lot of merit. Maybe it says something to have the world’s strongest military and never send it anywhere than if the United States dramatically downsized and packed it all home. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work solely on goodwill and idealism. The simple fact is that much of the military spending permits America to project force across the rest of the world, and helps keep geopolitical rivalries at bay.

Ironically enough, geopolitical rivalries tend to promote the best advances to technology.  

The Science of War

Conflict is human nature. Throughout recorded history, conflicts between organized groups have been a constant. First it was singular, then tribes against tribes, before civilizations took hold and went to war with each other before global conflict became the norm as the world became small enough by the beginning of the 20^th century.

War is the great catalyst for technological advancement. In a conflict, all sides seek an advantage over their adversaries. War accelerates the pace of development, both in terms of which projects get resources, and how many resources they get. The Manhattan Project was the single most expensive undertaking in the history of the United States during the Second World War, and led to the development of nuclear energy, and atomic weapons.

Atomic weapons have no civilian applications, but nuclear reactors bring power to millions worldwide in a much cleaner and environmentally friendly way than nonrenewable fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.

Military advancements will often find civilian applications. World War II, for example, was a great leap forward in technology. Everything from airplane propulsion to medicine was pushed forward by the war.

Penicillin was first discovered during World War II as a way to stop soldiers dying from infections sustained on the battlefield. Its discovery paved the way for antibiotic treatments of the 20^th century that led to such drastic health benefits and higher survivability of infection and other issues.

Radar was also a World War II invention, placed on the ground to detect incoming enemy bombers and on airplanes to aid in their nighttime interdiction of said enemy bombers. Without this, the weather forecasting taken for granted today would have been impossible. Further evolutions of this technology, such as the General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark’s terrain-following radar crossed over to civilian applications.

The F-111 was equipped with terrain-following radar for its role as a low-level strike bomber. According to its former crew members, it was an incredible way to see the world. It doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to believe such technology could be parlayed into occupations like aerial firefighting or mapping the world on low-level flights in extreme detail. Such a detailed map of the world would be useful in navigation, for example.

GPS is another military invention that has had an absolutely undeniable impact on civilian life. What began as a way for soldiers to know exactly where they are has made flight tracking and ground navigation the easiest it has ever been.

The first rockets which took people to space were intercontinental ballistic missiles which had their payloads removed and their trajectories altered. NASA’s Project Gemini launches were all conducted using modified versions of Titan ICBMs. Cold War paranoia also put Americans into Earth’s orbit. Space being achievable through military technology meant that other research to complete the mission was justifiable. While the geopolitical situation could have gone much worse, the truth is that ICBMs have done more to advance human exploration than to hasten its destruction.

During the Cold War, it was necessary to create high-altitude reconnaissance planes which could remain out of the reach of Soviet air defenses. The result was the Lockheed U-2 spy plane. One of the most notoriously difficult planes to fly, the U-2 was deemed to be invincible by virtue of its height.

Until the Soviets shot one down.

Technically, the development of the next generation of spy plane was in place before the USSR shot down Gary Powers in 1960, but the incident highlighted the necessity of having a plane which could fly both higher and faster than its predecessor. The result was the SR-71 Blackbird. The SR-71 is the fastest plane humankind has ever built, setting several speed records during its decades of operation which have yet to be surpassed. The plane was built to fly at Mach 3, and as a result, its body panels didn’t fit together on the ground perfectly. They only sealed once the aircraft got up to speed and the heat expanded the body panels, which also sealed the fuel tanks. The number of aviation advances that came because there was a need undoubtedly moved into other areas of the aviation industry as time went on and the classified details of the SR-71 became less classified, or engineers were able to guess at how the Blackbird did things.

That comes the other part of this equation. Many of the advancements which shape the civilian world may not be fully disclosed as they would be revealing classified information. However, knowing the number of companies which work on military projects, some of the less sensitive advancements quietly making their way into the civilian realm may not be so hard to believe. It fills the mind with a kind of wonder as to what may come next.

Supersonic flight that doesn’t create a sonic boom is the next step for military aviation. This would allow planes to fly faster than the speed of sound while over land. That could cut travel times between New York and Los Angeles to only a couple of hours, and direct flights between America and places in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America by several hours. This would bring the world closer together and make bridging the gaps between cultures even easier. Of course, it’s being researched for its military application: allow aircraft to fly fast, deep into enemy territory to strike without giving away its presence with a sonic boom, and then retreat before enemy air defenses can be scrambled.

The list of military creations which have had a massive impact on civilian life is not small at all, and this will only continue in the future based on advancements attempting to anticipate the next wars which will hopefully never happen.

Spending Better

The greatest swordsman lets their blade rust in its scabbard.

Two factors are at play which affect the practical applications of these technologies. The first is the willingness to put lives in danger for political goals. The second is how to get there.

War should be a last resort, but it should never be off the table. Vladimir Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine is a situation where war, at least for the Ukrainians, is absolutely necessary. To that end, maintaining a strong military should be a priority for any nation. Especially one with neighbors such as Russia. As stated, Russia’s imperial dreams do not end with Ukraine. Putin seeks to reunify the majority of the old Soviet Union in a neo-Russian Empire with himself as the new tsar. NATO exists as a defensive alliance to protect Western Europe, and as communism fell and the Soviet Union dissolved, more of the nations behind the Iron Curtain sought the protection of NATO out of fear of Russia’s imperial ambitions. With NATO protections come the United States’ mighty arsenal. It was dreams of joining NATO and the EU which caused Russia to invade Georgia and spark a border crisis in 2008 which goes on to this day. The same thing happened again in Ukraine in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk before launching the full-scale invasion in February of 2022.

From a paradoxically pragmatic standpoint, the Ukrainian defense of their homeland provides an interesting opportunity to draw down the United States military budget: send them more equipment.

Military aid is reported as being “x dollars” worth, which gives the impression of cash being dropped off by the pallet-load. That’s not the case at all. The military aid is given a numerical figure which corresponds to the value of the equipment being sent over. Ukraine did not get several billion US dollars in hundred dollar bills. The equipment being sent to them is outdated materiel languishing in a boneyard in Arizona which has had to be stored, maintained, and eventually disposed of at the expense of the American taxpayer. Allowing a nation which must defend itself from an aggressor to utilize this equipment for its intended purchase is not only a smart business move, but it’s the morally right thing to do.

It’s one of the few morally correct actions in an industry built on bodies and blood.

The sad, pragmatic reality is that the America of today is not a nation which values science for science’s sake. The American voters will not vote to fund scientific research to build a better future. But America is a nation which not only has the position of being the sole superpower and global peacemaker, but also a population which highly values the ability defend of its homeland. The former role necessitates a large defense industry supporting a powerful military. The second is simply a tragic reality.

To that end, if it takes supporting defense to ensure scientific development isn’t completely abandoned in the United States, so be it.

That’s not to say the budget cannot be spent more effectively. Encouraging NATO allies to up their own spending and contributions should be an easy decision. Subsidizing the defense for several other nations, despite America’s outsized capacity for contribution to its alliances, has given some nations the freedom to become lax on their own defense capabilities because America picks up the slack.

Encouraging friendly nations to offer more aid to countries such as Ukraine and Taiwan will bolster the manufacturing and design industries in other nations while not abdicating the moral responsibility the self-appointed guardian of the free world holds as the sole remaining superpower.

And it isn’t as though the defense spending is at its level at the expense of healthcare, for example.

Fixing the tax code would do more to address the American healthcare system’s inadequacies than massive defense spending cuts. Right now, the wealth inequality in America is staggering, and the largest corporations and richest citizens are not paying their fair share, but receive numerous breaks and benefits not available or useful to the average American. That will solve the budget shortfalls in other areas of the federal government. However, lack of money isn’t entirely the problem.

Access to affordable healthcare is the main issue, but it wouldn’t be solved with a larger account for the Department of Health and Human Services alone. Health insurance is the hot topic in public discourse due to the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO which took place on December 4^th. Many people are cheering on the assassin because of the rather craven way which health insurance does business, and it’s not an entirely unjustifiable point of view to hold.

Health insurers operate under extremely lax rules which allow them to justify denying payment for the care of their customers while raking in record profits each year. Restricting the rights of private insurance to be picky with what they cover will help to solve the fundamental problem with health insurance in the nation. The first step to that end is to elect members of congress who are willing to empower the federal regulatory bodies to regulate. Fixing the foundational issues denying healthcare to millions of Americans is the only way. Throwing money at a healthcare system which is not fit for purpose will only exacerbate the issue.

Downgrading defense spending in America will also affect the economies of every state across the nation. So much of defense spending is not wasteful, excessive, or thievery. Civilian assembly lines do not require the same detailed paper trails which military procurement does. There is a required and detailed accounting of every component in the manufacturing process from inception to final delivery. There needs to be a paper trail for accountability and oversight on every component.

Many expensive military programs such as the F-35 Lightning program employ people from several different states to manufacture different components. For the airplane to be constructed means many states have jobs being created. It’s one of the blessings and curses of these defense programs requiring congressional approval. Factories in the Midwest building tanks being closed down would mean whole towns get rocked economically.

The argument around moving away from fossil fuels and coal mining is easy to make because alternative energies are cropping up everywhere. Despite those forms of energy and the industries required to maintain them being the traditional way of doing things, the world has progressed to the point of them being less efficient than other options. Unfortunately, the world isn’t accepting Starcraft tournaments as an alternative to warfare.

While it is the dream of a world without conflict, it’s a simple truth that the people who do not have the capacity to wage war will always be subject to those who do. The ability to be an equalizer and support self-determination across the world comes with responsibility, a responsibility which the United States has not fulfilled. That responsibility comes with a necessity that the American people choose their leadership with care and diligence, a necessity which they have abdicated. The argument can and should be made for the United States to use its vast amounts of military force more responsibly, not to abandon it all together.

However, some changes can be made which can put the current defense budget to better use. Some normal trimmings and a serious look at operational costs can be assumed. Switching how many of the federal contracts are paid out can help as well. Continuing to move towards firm fixed price contracts rather than cost plus will help hold contractors to their end of the agreed deals. Stricter rules on contractors and harsher penalties for those who choose to play fast and loose will help reign in financial mismanagement.

Ironically enough, easing restrictions on hiring and firing and spinning up work on projects could make the federal government run more efficiently, cutting the need for so many contractors. A drop in the number of federal contractors comes with no longer needing to worry about their profit margins while doing the work. An improvement to the federal pay scale would also help attract the qualified individuals currently employed at contractors to positions within the federal government proper. Properly staffing federal agencies across the board necessitates fewer contractors, saving the taxpayers money.

More of the money saved on administrative issues can be spent on research and development, bettering infrastructure to cut down on the number of targets of interest to enemies of America, or on improving care for veterans. The VA is dramatically underfunded, and individuals signing their lives and bodies over to the US government for national service comes with an implicit contract to take care of them once they’ve completed their time in uniform, as a form of tangible gratitude for their service. If America truly wants to thank its veterans for their service, the least it can do is pick up their tabs at the doctor’s office.

Put frankly, it is better to have an America funding scientific research for military purposes which can eventually be parlayed into the civilian world than having an America which will not fund science at all. There are ways to take the current federal defense budget and use it more effectively. The simple fact of the matter is, America today is not willing to make the difficult choices necessary to improve its government’s functions. America refuses to fix the underlying issues plaguing all issues of the federal government. A high military budget is acceptable to a majority of the nation in the guise of freedom.

If the money’s already in the account, it might as well do some good.