Argentina's navy searches for missing submarine with 44 on board

[sandensea]

6. That photo must have been from before its refurbishment

Here's one from its relaunching a few years ago:



That said, Argentina does indeed spend what by U.S. standards is microscopic amounts on its military: around $5 billion annually, of which close to 80% goes to pay wages and benefits. The Army gets the lion's share; the Navy, around $1 billion.

This has pretty much been the case since the last dictatorship stepped down in 1983 (when defense budgets were slashed by half in 1984-85, and have stayed there in real terms ever since).

Right-wingers in Argentina, you can imagine, have been fuming ever since.

And they finally found a friend in the new, hard-right president, Mauricio Macri, who named a dictatorship-era official as Defense Minister and tried to go around Congress (illegally, I might add) to secure large hardware purchases from abroad.

His first attempt was called out by Congressman Pete Visclosky, Ranking Member on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, whose office informed Argentine media that Macri had solicited a $2.5 billion military hardware order - around 20 times the annual normal for Argentina. The scandal forced the Argentine ambassador to resign in April.

Having learned his lesson, Macri went to Congress like a good boy and obtained approval for $864 million in naval upgrades. This current tragedy (God bless the victims) might force him to tamp down his militarist impulses a bit.