Defense Budget 2022 - Good Article

[NowISeetheLight]

A good article from Vox about the 2022 defense budget. The article mentions how congress isn’t listening to the military and instead dumps billions to contractors for outdated legacy projects. Both parties are guilty here.

https://www.vox.com/22840615/us-defense-spending-increase-afghanistan-withdrawal

[paleotn]

1. A congressional jobs program. Not always a defense budget.

Lots of waste for systems and platforms DoD could easily do without. Aircraft carriers for instance. Do we really need 11 supercarriers and 9 STOVL carriers? Sure they're great for projecting power in regional hot spots, but 20 carriers? Most wouldn't survive long in an actual shooting war with the first rate, maritime power. At the same time we've let submarine infrastructure go to pot the last 20 years. Virginia class and upcoming Columbia class boats are expensive, but they're also arguably the most versatile platforms the Navy has. The SSBNs are the really sharp end of the nuclear triad, but the Ohio's are getting very long in the tooth. They're older than the kids operating them. And a big part of the expense problem is we just don't have the submarine construction and maintenance infrastructure we once had.