Writing in the pages of the WSJ, former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld sounds a cautionary note to his next-but-one successor:
Our country has taken an ax to our national security budget—both the Defense Department and the intelligence community—after every war of the 20th century. And every time we later regretted it. After years of grinding conflict, it can be easy to fall prey to the comfortable fiction that the ugly business of conflict is over and that the U.S. can reduce its military and intelligence capabilities. If we revert to the pennywise policies of the 1990s, we are certain to have to once again scramble to rebuild our defenses in the future. The critical difference between today and past eras, however, is that the proliferation of biological, chemical and even nuclear weapons means that America’s margin for error is considerably more modest.
Defense spending is now 19% of federal outlays and declining. This is the lowest percentage since before World War II. At 4.7% of GDP, the defense budget is dwarfed by the cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which exceed 10% of GDP. Even if President Obama tomorrow brought home each and every troop in Iraq and Afghanistan, tore down the Pentagon, shuttered the CIA and the national security agencies of government, and pink-slipped the three million men and women defending the country, it would not solve America’s financial woes.
Rumsfeld should know whereof he speaks: He came to office in 2001 ruminating about “skipping a generation” of weapon systems acquisitions, and was left a very short time later regretting the necessity of going to war “with the army you have.”
Out in the private economy, defense contractors are left to calculate their own bottom lines:
The aeronautics unit of Lockheed Martin Corp, the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier by sales, said on Thursday that it plans to cut about 1,500 jobs to reduce costs in response to a flattening of U.S. defense spending.
Lockheed cut 1,200 jobs in its space systems equipment division two weeks ago.
Perhaps they can all be re-purposed to those “green” jobs that the president tells us are right around the corner.
Or are they shovel-ready?
I can never keep them straight.
The only thing that is shovel-ready is the pile of cr@p our President is trying to feed us.
I don’t know. His administration is shovel-ready.
Yeah, my German Shepherd has a few “shovel ready” jobs for me to do. They stink, and draw flies, just like Obammunist “shovel ready” jobs.
I’d been away from the site and this thread was posted. I got in and saw that this bunch thinks much like I do.
Do know how scary that is?
Well I’d invite those laid off aerospace workers to head to Boeing’s new plant here in ChuckTown, but Obama’s idiots on the NLRB are trying to close it down and ship everything back to union jobs in Washington state.
Aerospace is one of the few industries in which we are still world leaders, and once those assembly techs and engineers get laid off, they go find more solid prospects, and they don’t come back. Let’s see we will sell F-35 state of the art stealthy 5th gen fighters to Turkey – who is diverging more and more from their secular roots, and we won’t sell F-16s to Taiwan because the Chinks told Obama “you sell, we don’t buy your debt”. Looks to me like war by other means.
Four more years of Obama and we will have earned the appellation of “vassal state” in all but name only, G-man; curring favor with and arming our enemies, shafting our friends and waging “kinetic military actions” ONLY in places where we have NO strategic vital national interests least we dare incur the wrath of our new financial (and perhaps by then well on their way to being military) overlords..
Yeah, but Europe will finally like us right?
On a slightly off hand note, I believe Rumsfeld is to be thoroughly castigated for the “skip a generation” military force structure driven entirely by techno lust and completely devoid of strategic thinking, though to be fair, it did rather predate him (although he, like Gates on F-35, doubled down on a horrible idea when he had the chance to undo it.) We know have JSF, FCS, LPD-17, LCS, no more F-22′s, a fighter gap, no frigates, and an Army that originally couldn’t control a population on the ground in Iraq, not to mention OT&E failures as ignominous as the slipped schedules and overshot budgets that made them to thank for this gem of intellectual philosophy that caught our defense planner’s eye starting in the early ’90′s.
Ooooh . . . shiny ditched the strategist (who, in American history, has never been that hot anyway) and hooked up with the IT guy and roundly proceeded to F@$k away our force structure like a pack of retards trying to impregnate a doorknob. Their “baby” is, to be honest, unsurprisingly about as ugly as it should be.
During the Clinton-era drawdown, the Army’s Mantra was “No more Task Force Smiths.”
They then promptly let all the best and brightest out early, and slashed the training budget, and allowed the administration to trim the force to 10 divisions.
I can see the future, and it bears a remarkable likeness to the past.
The aerospace industry has never been solid. I’ve been telling interns with Company X for years, “Don’t go aero. Go mechanical…” Nobody listens. Hell, when I started in aero, I had an older engineer (prolly my age looking back) saying to me, “You’re wrapped up in the big and fast. Go small. Think telecommunications…” Yet here I sit, still working aero, still worried every 6 mo no more $ will be coming in or that some other budget will be cut.
When I hired into aero in 1988, Martin Marietta was the group that LM owns now in Orlando. They cyclically laid off so often, we all knew not to seek work there if we got laid off. That first 1200 two weeks ago? That was the same area that MM was located. Some things never change.
Don’t let your babies grow up to be aerospace engineers. The job security tanks… afterall, why pay an American engineer the going rate when you can pay one out of Puerto Rico or India $10/hour? Who cares there are four turnbacks until it’s done right? It’s still less than the hourly rate of an American with work force experience… who gets it right the first time. Budget cuts aside… there is way too much foreign outsourcing going on.
+ abunch. But mech ain’t all that hot either. My brother started out in aero and saw the light. Now is a big time mech doing things like $7 billion floating petro plants for Exxon/etc. He constantly laments the outsourced engineers of the subcontractors. Things like they can’t figure out a 4 inch bolt will generally work where a 3 inch is specified, but the reverse doesn’t work, so why are we short 4 inch bolts? Or that concrete footers for a refinery can’t be 18 inches off and when he confronts the engineer the guy responds with “Well Mistah Jim, ah you just need cut all pipes 18 inch shortah”. Too hell with pressures, flow velocities, etc. But the US engineering firm in charge of the idiot is only paying him $35K per year with no per diem. So a big win for them.
Disagree Bou, but I think it varies based on who you work for. I’m not in an OEM shop, so my prospects are better since we don’t have the “next big thing” as our our only in. Then again, I’m of that next generation of engineers (you were hired when I wasn’t even old enough to scribble airplanes in crayon) who has much, much lower expectations of job security.
Stuff is also different here on the GA/Civilian side, I think. I’m only an egg, to turn a phrase.
Also, Boeing got hit hard by doing the outsourcing route. Enough extra cost was incurred in the 787 and 747-8 projects due to outsourcing that Boeing won’t do it again anytime soon. Is Lock*Mart smart enough to learn from others mistakes? I doubt it.
Maybe they should just keep all those workers, even though they are no longer needed.
That’s what the railroads did long ago. I think they called it, “featherbedding.”
Funny… I thought that was called a “union.”
It used to be called “Union Feather Bedding,” after what the unions did.
Flit,
Seeing as you’ve never pounded a spike, changed a retarder, laid ballast, or inspected track in your life, please consider this.
Sarge is 100% correct in that being union caused. The fight to reduce train crews from 3 to 2? Union (Fireman’s Union) to be more specific.
The reason why we have to run a 1000 track-mile division with less people than we’ve ever had in the past and yet can’t even get outside contractors to do the work? Union wages, schedules and best of all, time claims!
Why can’t I walk to the office to pick up the mail for our department that’s been sitting there for a week because the clerk there doesn’t like ours? Union work rules and time claims! (oddly enough, the mail contained more time claims spammed to us by union reps because if we accept one, it becomes precedent and anything that isn’t responded to in 30 days is automatically accepted)
Sorry that I’m flying off the rails on this one, but I’ve seen the damage that Flit’s fellow travelers, in the unions and in govt. (ICC, I’ma looking at you) has done and can do to an industry that gave my family a good living.
GeoSTI – No, I haven’t done those things. But I have shoveled snow for Union Pacific in a blizzard, as a non-union and non-scab, laborer. Does that count for anything?
My apologies for sending you “off the rails on this one.” I know and understand some of the history and the damage. Although a proud, card-carrying union member (and a capitalist too, btw), I can and do sympathize with you on this one. Unions are tools… sometimes used for good, sometimes not so good. Like guns, it depends upon the user, not the tool.
My reference to featherbedding was actually a bit of snide ‘snarkery’. I should not have posted it. Sorry.
Apologies accepted Filt. Your old job would have resulted in a large time claim today. Even as a non-scab, you may still be treated as such. I was lucky as my family name preceded me (in a very good way) and didn’t get some of the bad treatment other “trackpups” did.
For those who’ve had the fortune to not deal with such things, here’s what happens:
I’m the Division Manager for Lex-Rail, located in mostly sunny California. Most of the time, my maintenance crew is sufficient and can do all their jobs in nice 120 man-hour shifts.
One night, we get dumped on by a blizzard. Switch points need to be cleared, access roads need to be plowed, all other various snow related fun needs to be resolved before operations can resume. Now, I task all of my maintenance crew to plowing the access roads around the yards and track, so that we can work around the trains safely. But, I don’t have enough guys to do that and melt the switches in the yard so that the engineer (who is on a 12 hour max time clock, tick tick), can switch up today’s strings.
Any other business could hire contractors (We’ll call this company “Flit-Con”) to do this and other tasks in this emergency, where time is critical.
Railroads can’t. The union representing the crew would instruct them to put in a time claim for all the time the contractors spend doing “their” work. So, if I hired the contractors for 120 man-hours, the union can claim 120 hours in lost wages. This effectively doubles my labor costs, which are already the predominant cost in my department.
So, I need to get the trains rolling or Controller Lex (complete with top hat) will get very cross and call me a “not useful engine.” I’m now forced to now hire Flit-Co and pay out to my crew for the same work.
Not easily sustainable.
+ abunch Bou, + abunch GMan. Flight Managment Software from india. Great coders, don’t know jack about airplanes.
Flit-BYE BYE.
Oh my, how is that getting past RTCA DO-159? (If I remember that one correctly. Me do mechanical controls, me only care of DO-160)
What the Hell are you people all bitching about. We don’t need a stinking military anymore. Didn’t you see that the Great Leader just named a fricking NSA LAWYER as the country’s new counter-terrorism chief? His new plan is to get rid of the military and just sue the bad guys until they can’t afford to buy suicide bomb vests or ammo. Not only will he save some bucks, but his Lefty Lawyer buddies will have even better contingency fees guaranteed.
Well, now that a simpering political hack like Pineta is SecDef, we won’t have a military for much longer anyway.