The Pentagon: Unlikely Scenarios Meet Unintended Consequences
“It is part of the Pentagon’s job to imagine unlikely scenarios.” So says an Atlantic article, which is both a long-read, and fascinating. To quote a portion of the article:
“At the Ukraine war’s outset, most analysts in the defense community believed that it would last only days or weeks. Russia would roll over its smaller neighbor, oust Zelensky, and install a compliant regime. Instead, the invasion triggered a valiant defense that rallied the Western world. Two years later, the war has evolved into a stalemate, one that has been called “World War I with technology.” Ukraine’s army has mounted an effective defense in part by the heavy use of artillery, especially howitzers. LaPlante (the narrator) described a recent tour of World War I battlefields and the immediate resonance he felt with the war in Ukraine—the men dug into trenches, the continual bombardment, the relentless attrition. There had been an assumption, that stealth and precision weaponry would somehow preclude this type of warfare, but “it turns out it didn’t.”
It turns out it didn’t.
Another one of those nasty unintended consequences.
It turns out that the single constant in war is shit going wrong
Who would have thought?
In more honest times, the Secretary of War, who headed the War Department, was a Cabinet officer. Those were the days of Harry Truman, one of our too few honest and forthright presidents. Plainspoken, we oldsters might say. But even Harry had his moments. Although the United States had never been attacked before or since Pearl Harbor, Harry allowed the renaming to Secretary of Defense, and Department of Defense, a telltale sign of both changing times, and America’s commitment to war as a national policy.
Our literal dishonesty in that single act, may have helped us lose every such encounter since—Hindus and Buddhists would call it karma
Yet, the Pentagon marched on, stuffed with personnel, and continuing its unequalled losing-streak both in fighting wars, as well as preparing for them. Eight hundred generals and admirals running into one another in the hallways, replaced the eighteen that won us World War Two. Monty Python had arrived, in Arlington, Virginia, courtesy of the Pentagon. In a particularly Monty Moment, that vast wastebin of an agency has never been able, since its inception, to account for its spending.
Really?
Yep, most recently in 2023, sixteen hundred auditors examined the Pentagon's books, at a cost to the agency of $187 million. The audit failed again, unable to account in any way for nearly $4 trillion in assets.
Our annual defense budget is twice the total of the world’s seven largest nations, and we don’t know where the hell 63% of the money went
Yet the Atlantic article, from which I quote, is titled ‘The Crumbling Foundation of America’s Military.’ It states that, An agency, that is unable to account for $4 trillion (four thousand billion dollars) of expenditure over its 81-year history, is crumbling. It’s unable to provide needed munitions for Ukraine, because it has no stockpiles and no reliable manufacturing capability.
No adequate stockpiles, and none but antiquated manufacturing of such things as artillery shells. Money for high-tech and none for low, which are all the recent wars unless we take on China. Thanks, Lockheed, Raytheon and Boeing, no thanks antiquated munitions factories.
Preparing for a land-war by ourselves or an ally simply wasn’t on our to-do list
It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so blatantly criminal.
I’m no accountant, but if I’m not mistaken, $4 trillion is an average of almost $50 billion a year, sniffingly close to $1 billion a week, and hauntingly near to two hundred million dollars a day.
And no apology or denial offered. You’d think that, at the very least, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would turn in (or be ceremoniously stripped of), one of his stars. Our Pentagonists simply do not know how $25 million drifted out under the door each and every hour of an eight-hour day for eighty-one years.
Fortunately, I have a solution.
If the 18 generals we employed when we won WW2, shared a nice, roomy office in Washington, and had Amazon run their warehouse, it would solve the problem, and free up 6 ½ million square feet of prime real estate in Arlington, Virginia
Just think of the advantages. Two-day delivery of weapons to Ukraine, one if they sign up for Prime. Annual accounting that balances income and expenses. Perhaps some vague idea of why the military budget (that portion we are allowed to see) takes up 42% of our discretionary annual federal budget. Maybe a few bucks (or billions of bucks) left over to repair a bridge, build a school, or house some homeless people. And what’s office space worth in Arlington? Put that in the bank as well.
Is it defensible that a nation that can’t afford healthcare, schools, or homes for its citizens, can’t even account for its military?
Nope. But my stripped-down, souped-up solution makes too much common sense to ever get through a congressional subcommittee, much less a well paid-off Senate.
To quote the late, great, Will Rogers, “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
And, in the Pentagon, sometimes even that last one doesn’t work.