The press release for the Division of Protection 2025 Finances Request informed one story, a narrative replete with lofty, aspirational objectives expressed within the common summary textual content of DOD finances requests.
Studying the textual content, one would assume the Arsenal of Democracy 2.0 was in excessive gear. Then again, the accompanying Comptroller submissions of the completely different Providers (Military, Navy, Air Power, Marines, and House Power) which are the official numbers from DOD informed a really completely different story. The Service submissions do have the same, flowery textual chapeau laid over the numbers that maybe this time had been serving as a second layer of distraction from the numbers.
The Comptroller numbers don’t lie, the topline variety of the complete Division of Protection was flat, $849.8 Billion, solely $7.8B greater than 2024. $7.8B is so much, however it’s finances mud in DOD world.
That is lower than 1% progress within the DOD finances and taking inflation under consideration, the quantity is a major shrinkage of the DOD topline. The Comptroller numbers revealed that just about each necessary warfighting line merchandise, the numbers of ships, airplanes, and missiles, went down.
The disconnect of the descriptive textual content from the numbers took a couple of days to sink in with many of the consultants. Professor James Holmes stated merely, the “New Defense Budget Makes No Sense”.
Navy will get sunk
The U.S. Navy is heroically serving within the Purple Sea Warfare with the Houthis (who’re proxies of Iran and Iran works for China). The Houthis rely on Iran for his or her rockets, missiles, and drones.
The Iranian regime wouldn’t be in existence if it was not for the large purchases of Iranian gasoline and oil by the Chinese language, a lot of which is in circumvention of American sanctions.
The pallets of money delivered by the Biden Crew are giant, however merely lunch cash for the Iranians in comparison with their gasoline and oil income. As well as, the Chinese language have a really giant footprint of tens of hundreds of advisors and trainers in Iran, bigger than the American glory days of pre-1979 Iran.
The Navy is underneath a authorized mandate to develop to 355 ships (from underneath 300), but in 2025, they’ll solely buy six ships and retire 19 (10 of them sooner than scheduled). In even DEI math, this implies the Navy is shrinking.
If we had a bigger Navy, we may use a number of the Navy to dam the circulation of arms to the Houthis and wouldn’t must play very costly and probably lethal badminton flattening Houthi assaults within the Purple Sea.
One merchandise of word is that the most important share (34%) of the Navy’s $257.6B finances is Operations and Upkeep. O&M is what pays for gas, meals, journey, and different non-capital bills.
This spikes when issues just like the Purple Sea Warfare flare up – this share is probably going under-reporting what’s going on. The Navy Comptroller is scrambling to seek out much more O&M and what occurs (I’ve lived and seen this many instances), they begin pilfering from different piles in artistic methods.
This implies Procurement (which buys ships, planes, and missiles) and Personnel (pay and advantages) is being raided. Whereas our Sailors have an ideal rating within the Purple Sea, they’re being robbed and quick sheeted and can return to their Naval Bases and discover them in poor situation (the pier may even be gone).
Air Power loses lots of of plane
This finances took out 3x to 5x extra fighters and bombers than the Air Power misplaced at Pearl Harbor.
The Biden Crew couldn’t have achieved a greater strafing job if the Air Power had their planes lined up wingtip to wingtip. The massacre was full with 250 aircraft schwacked in a single budget submission.
32 of those are the unimaginable F-22s, the identical ones that shot the Chinese language Spy Balloon within the again because it left American airspace after it spent days over American bomber bases and missile fields. Fret not, the Air Power is shopping for 91 new plane.
As plane age, they grow to be an increasing number of costly to take care of. Because of this Air Power O&M grows relentlessly. In the course of the first Trump time period, Will Roper, a senior Air Force official proposed buying more aircraft faster and never sustaining them into perpetuity (just like the 60 12 months outdated B-52).
This was primarily what was achieved within the Fifties and Sixties the place American aerospace corporations churned out a number of fighters and bombers in near World Warfare II numbers. His modern concept has not been adopted via with.
Sure, the F-22 is a upkeep nightmare and really costly to function, however the Chinese language concern it. If the ballooning O&M is the difficulty, purchase new F-22 replacements.
Kristyn Jones, performing the duties of the Underneath Secretary of the Air Power stated the Air Power core features stay unchanged, “air superiority, global strike, rapid global mobility…” simply with an plane stage that has dropped below 5,000. A quantity not seen since earlier than World Warfare II.
The 2025 DOD finances places Nationwide Protection in reverse
If the Biden Crew had a logical argument the place mass reductions in costly legacy platforms had been being changed by a buzzing protection industrial base spewing out drones, autonomous ships, missiles, and new platforms en masse, the DEI math might be accepted.
The fixed excuse within the finances was the rise in Personnel prices. Unsure how these numbers might be growing when Navy, Air Power, and Military are having a recruiting and retention disaster and are far beneath their approved numbers. Possibly the rise in Personnel Finances numbers is to pay for transgendering, abortion, or unlawful alien well being care.
Securing the Southern Border from the continued invasion is job one – however concurrently eviscerating the U.S. navy solely will increase the probability of worldwide kinetic struggle together with nuclear exchanges with the China led Axis of Evil.
This DOD finances made no sense, and uniformed leaders and their profession civilian colleagues know higher, they deliberately “Milley’d” this finances. Changing all uniformed senior personnel, senior careerists, and others is on the desk after November.
