A basic truth in Washington is that almost every single new weapon system ends up costing significantly more than the one it is replacing.
As the cost of weapons increases, the number of systems produced decreases. That’s how the United States ended up with only 21 B-2s, 187 F-22s, and three Zumwalt-class destroyers, rather than the 132, 750, and 32 respectively the military initially promised. This phenomenon creates what is known as the Defense Death Spiral, when the unit cost of new weapons outraces defense budgets.
John Boyd and his friends in the Military Reform Movement during the late Cold War years warned us about the military-industrial congressional complex 50 years ago. This small band of Pentagon insiders saw with their own eyes how the political economy created by the financial and political connections between the military elite, the defense industry, and society’s ruling class wasted precious resources and produced a series of deeply flawed weapons.
President Eisenhower elegantly articulated the dangers of the military-industrial congressional complex in 1961, several years before Colonel Boyd and his friends began their work. He warned that 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.” This statement remains as true today as it was on that wintery January day 53 years ago.
Read the full article on Responsible Statecraft.
