[When it comes to the Pentagon and the CEOs running a large part
of the arms industry, examples abound of them asking what they can do
to help themselves. Continuing to prioritize the U.S. military will
further weaken the USA public health system.] [[link removed]]

BEWARE THE PENTAGON’S PANDEMIC PROFITEERS: HASN’T THE
MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX TAKEN ENOUGH OF OUR MONEY?  
[[link removed]]


 

Mandy Smithberger
May 3, 2020
TomDispatch [[link removed]]

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_ When it comes to the Pentagon and the CEOs running a large part of
the arms industry, examples abound of them asking what they can do to
help themselves. Continuing to prioritize the U.S. military will
further weaken the USA public health system. _

,

 

At this moment of unprecedented crisis, you might think that those not
overcome by the economic and mortal
[[link removed]] consequences of the
coronavirus would be asking, “What can we do to help?” A few
companies have indeed pivoted to making masks and ventilators for an
overwhelmed medical establishment. Unfortunately, when it comes to the
top officials of the Pentagon and the CEOs running a large part of the
arms industry, examples abound of them asking what they can do to help
themselves.

It’s important to grasp just how staggeringly well the defense
industry has done in these last nearly 19 years since 9/11. Its
companies (filled with
[[link removed]]
ex-military and defense officials) have received trillions of dollars
in government contracts, which they’ve largely used to feather their
own nests. Data compiled by the _New York Times_
[[link removed]]_
_showed that the chief executive officers of the top five
military-industrial contractors received nearly $90 million in
compensation in 2017. An investigation that same year by the
_Providence Journal _discovered that, from 2005 to the first half of
2017, the top five defense contractors spent more than $114 billion
[[link removed]]
repurchasing their own company stocks and so boosting their value at
the expense of new investment.

To put this in perspective in the midst of a pandemic, the
co-directors of the Costs of War Project at Brown University recently
pointed out
[[link removed]]
that allocations for the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health
for 2020 amounted to less than 1% of what the U.S. government has
spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone since 9/11. While just
about every imaginable government agency and industry has been
impacted by the still-spreading coronavirus, the role of the defense
industry and the military in responding to it has, in truth, been
limited
[[link removed]]
indeed. The highly publicized use of military hospital ships in New
York City and Los Angeles, for example, not only had relatively little
impact
[[link removed]]
on the crises in those cities but came to serve as a symbol
[[link removed]]
of just how dysfunctional
[[link removed]]
the military response has truly been.

BAILING OUT THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IN THE COVID-19 MOMENT

Demands to use the Defense Production Act to direct firms to produce
equipment needed to combat Covid-19 have sputtered
[[link removed]],
provoking strong resistance
[[link removed]]
from industries worried first and foremost about their own profits.
Even conservative _Washington Post_ columnist Max Boot, a longtime
supporter
[[link removed]]
of increased Pentagon spending, has recently recanted, noting how just
such budget priorities have weakened the ability of the United States
to keep Americans safe from the virus. “It never made any sense, as
Trump’s 2021 budget had initially proposed, to increase spending on
nuclear weapons by $7 billion while cutting Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention funding by $1.2 billion,” he wrote
[[link removed]].
“Or to create an unnecessary Space Force out of the U.S. Air Force
while eliminating the vitally important directorate of global health
by folding it into another office within the National Security
Council.”

In fact, continuing to prioritize the U.S. military will only further
weaken the country’s public health system. As a start, simply to
call up doctors and nurses in the military reserves, as even Secretary
of Defense Mark Esper has pointed out
[[link removed]],
would hurt the broader civilian response to the pandemic. After all,
in their civilian lives many of them now work at domestic hospitals
and medical centers deluged by Covid-19 patients.

The present situation, however, hasn’t stopped military-industrial
complex requests for bailouts. The National Defense Industrial
Association, a trade group for the arms industry, typically asked the
Pentagon to speed up contracts and awards for $160 billion
[[link removed]]
in unobligated Department of Defense funds to its companies, which
will involve pushing money out the door without even the most modest
level of due diligence.

Already under fire in the pre-pandemic moment for grotesque safety
problems with its commercial jets, Boeing, the Pentagon’s second
biggest contractor, received $26.3 billion last year. Now, that
company has asked for $60 billion
[[link removed]]
in government support. And you undoubtedly won’t be surprised to
learn that Congress has already provided Boeing with some of that
desired money in its recent bailout legislation. According to
[[link removed]]
the _Washington Post_, $17 billion was carved out in that deal for
companies “critical to maintaining national security” (with Boeing
in particular in mind). When, however, it became clear that those
funds wouldn’t arrive as a complete blank check, the company started
to have second thoughts. Now, some members of Congress are practically
begging it
[[link removed]]
to take the money.

And Boeing was far from alone. Even as the spreading coronavirus was
spurring
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congressional conversations about what would become a $2 trillion
[[link removed]]
relief package, 130 members of the House
[[link removed]]
were already pleading for funds to purchase an additional 98 Lockheed
Martin F-35 jet fighters, the most expensive
[[link removed]]
weapons system in history, at the cost of another half-billion
dollars, or the price of more than 90,000 ventilators.

Similarly, it should have been absurdly obvious that this wasn’t the
moment to boost already astronomical spending on nuclear weapons. Yet
this year’s defense budget request for such weaponry was 20% higher
than last year’s
[[link removed]] and
50% above funding levels when President Trump took office. The agency
that builds nuclear weapons already had $8 billion
[[link removed]]
left unspent from past years and the head of the National Nuclear
Security Agency, responsible for the development of nuclear warheads,
admitted to Representative Susan Davis (D-CA) that the agency was
unlikely
[[link removed]]
even to be able to spend all of the new increase.

Boosters of such weapons, however, remain undeterred by the Covid-19
pandemic. If anything, the crisis only seems to have provided a
further excuse to accelerate
[[link removed]]
the awarding of an estimated $85 billion to Northrop Grumman to build
a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs),
considered the “broken leg
[[link removed]]”
of America’s nuclear triad. As William Hartung, the director of the
Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, has
pointed out
[[link removed]],
such ICBMs “are redundant because invulnerable submarine-launched
ballistic missiles are sufficient for deterring other countries from
attacking the United States. They are dangerous because they operate
on hair-trigger alert, with launch decisions needing to be made in
some cases within minutes. This increases the risk of an accidental
nuclear war.”

And as children’s book author Dr. Seuss might have added
[[link removed]],
“But that is not all! Oh, no, that is not all.” In fact, defense
giant Raytheon is also getting
[[link removed]]
its piece of the pie in the Covid-19 moment for a $20-$30 billion Long
Range Standoff Weapon
[[link removed]],
a similarly redundant
[[link removed]]
nuclear-armed missile. It tells you everything you need to know about
funding priorities now that the company is, in fact, getting that
money two years ahead of schedule.

In the midst of the spreading pandemic, the U.S. military’s
Indo-Pacific Command similarly saw an opportunity to use
fear-mongering about China, a country officially in its area of
responsibility, to gain additional funding. And so it is seeking $20
billion
[[link removed]]
that previously hadn’t gained approval even from the secretary of
defense in the administration’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal.
That money would go to dubious missile defense systems and a similarly
dubious “Pacific Deterrence Initiative.”

HOW NOT TO DEAL WITH COVID-19

Along with those military-industrial bailouts came the fleecing of
American taxpayers. While many Americans were anxiously awaiting
[[link removed]]
their $1,200 payments from that congressional aid and relief package,
the Department of Defense was expediting contract payments to the arms
industry. Shay Assad, a former senior Pentagon official, accurately
called it
[[link removed]]
a “taxpayer rip-off” that industries with so many resources, not
to speak of the ability to borrow money at incredibly low interest
rates, were being so richly and quickly rewarded in tough times.
Giving defense giants such funding at this moment was like giving a
housing contractor 90% of upfront costs for renovations when it was
unclear whether you could even afford your next mortgage payment.

Right now, the defense industry is having similar success in
persuading the Pentagon that basic accountability should be tossed out
the window. Even in normal times, it’s a reasonably rare event for
the federal government to withhold money from a giant weapons maker
unless its performance is truly egregious. Boeing, however, continues
to fit that bill perfectly with its endless program to build the KC-46
Pegasus tanker, basically a “flying gas station” meant to refuel
other planes in mid-air.

As national security analyst Mark Thompson, my colleague at the
Project on Government Oversight (POGO), has pointed out
[[link removed]],
even after years of development, that tanker has little hope of
performing its mission in the near future. The seven cameras that its
pilot relies on to guide the KC-46’s fuel to other planes have so
much glare and so many shadows that the possibility of disastrously
scraping the stealth coating off F-22s and F-35s (both manufactured by
Lockheed Martin) while refueling remains a constant danger. The Air
Force has also become increasingly concerned
[[link removed]]
that the tanker itself leaks fuel. In the pre-pandemic moment, such
problems and associated ones led that service to decide to withhold
$882 million from Boeing. Now, however, in response to the Covid-19
crisis, those funds are, believe it or not, being released
[[link removed]].

Keep all of this behavior (and more) in mind when you hear people
suggest that, in this public health emergency, the military should be
put in charge
[[link removed]].
After all, you’re talking about the very institution that has
regularly mismanaged massive weapons programs like the $1.4 trillion
F-35 jet fighter program, already the most expensive weapons system
ever (with ongoing problems
[[link removed]]
galore). Even when it comes to health care, the military has proved
remarkably inept. For instance, attempts of the Department of Veterans
Affairs and the Department of Defense to integrate their health
records were, infamously enough, abandoned
[[link removed]]
after four years and $1 billion spent.

Having someone in uniform at the podium
[[link removed]]
is, unfortunately, no guarantee of success. Indeed, a number of
veterans have been quick to rebuke the idea of forefronting the
military at this time. “Don’t put the military in charge of
anything that doesn’t involve blowing stuff up, preventing stuff
from being blown up, or showing up at a place as a message to others
that we’ll be there to blow stuff up with you if need be,” one
wrote [[link removed]].

“Here’s a video from Camp Pendleton of unmasked Marines queued up
for haircuts during the pandemic,” tweeted another
[[link removed]]. “So
how about 'no'?” That video of troops without masks or practicing
social distancing even shocked Secretary of Defense Esper, who called
for a military haircut halt, only to be contradicted
[[link removed]]
by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, desperate to maintain
regulation cuts in the pandemic moment. That inspired a mocking rebuke
[[link removed]] of
“haircut heroes” on Twitter.

Unfortunately, as Covid-19 spread on the aircraft carrier the USS
_Theodore Roosevelt_, that ship became emblematic of how ill-prepared
the current Pentagon leadership proved to be in combatting the virus.
Despite at least 100 cases being reported on board -- 955 crewmembers
[[link removed]]
would, in the end, test positive
[[link removed]]
for the disease and Chief Petty Officer Charles Robert Thacker Jr.
would die
[[link removed]]
of it -- senior Navy leaders were slow to respond. Instead, they kept
those sailors at close quarters and in an untenable situation of
increasing risk
[[link removed]].
When an emailed letter expressing the concerns of the ship’s
commander, Captain Brett Crozier, was leaked to the press he was
quickly removed from command
[[link removed]]. But
while his bosses may not have appreciated his efforts for his crew,
his sailors did. He left the ship to a hero’s farewell
[[link removed]].

All of this is not to say that some parts of the U.S. military
haven’t tried to step up as Covid-19 spreads. The Pentagon has, for
instance, awarded contracts
[[link removed]] to build
“alternate care” facilities to help relieve pressure on hospitals.
The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences is allowing
its doctors and nurses
[[link removed]]
to join the military early. Several months into this crisis, the
Pentagon has finally used
[[link removed]]
the Defense Production Act to launch a process to produce $133 million
worth of crucial N95 respirator masks and $415 million
[[link removed]]
worth of N95 critical-care decontamination units. But these are modest
acts in the midst of a pandemic and at a moment when bailouts, fraud,
and delays suggest that the military-industrial complex hasn’t
proved capable of delivering effectively, even for its own troops.

Meanwhile, the Beltway bandits that make up that complex have spotted
a remarkable opportunity to secure many of their hopes and dreams.
Their success in putting their desires and their profits ahead of the
true national security of Americans was already clear enough in the
staggering pre-pandemic $1.2 trillion
[[link removed]]
national security budget. (Meanwhile, of course, key federal medical
structures were underfunded
[[link removed]]
or disbanded
[[link removed]]
in the Trump administration years, undermining the actual security of
the country.) That kind of disproportionate spending helps explain why
the richest nation on the planet has proven so incapable of providing
even the necessary personal protective equipment for frontline
healthcare workers, no less the testing needed
[[link removed]]
to make this country safer.

The defense industry has asked for, and received, a lot in this time
of soaring cases of disease and death
[[link removed]]. While there is
undoubtedly a role for the giant weapons makers and for the Pentagon
to play in this crisis, they have shown themselves to be anything but
effective lead institutions in the response to this moment. It’s
time for the military-industrial complex to truly pay back an American
public that has been beyond generous to it. 

Isn’t it finally time as well to reduce the “defense” budget and
put more of our resources into the real national security crisis at
hand? 

_Mandy Smithberger, a TomDispatch regular
[[link removed]],
is the director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project
On Government Oversight
[[link removed]] (POGO)._

_Follow TomDispatch on Twitter [[link removed]] and
join us on Facebook [[link removed]]. Check out
the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the
second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands
[[link removed]],
Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story
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and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War
[[link removed]],
as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The
Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
[[link removed]]
and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since
World War II
[[link removed]]._

Copyright 2020 Mandy Smithberger   Reprinted with permission.

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