"Guts the military" is perhaps a bit strong considering how big defense budgets will continue to be. But he did gut or eliminate some useful or important programs. "Cutting" would clearly be correct". Possibly "severely cutting", but "gutting" sounds like he's leaving the military to painfully die from lack of funding.
The headline move was to stop producing F-22s. I can understand why this decision was made, they are very expensive, and while very capable their capabilities aren't going to be very relevant to any war we are at all likely to be in soon. Plus the Joint Strike Fighter is being produced (if that program wasn't active than canceling the F-22s would have clearly been very foolish).
But most of the cost for the F-22 program have already been paid, we don't save on R&D and other startup costs by stopping the program here. The per plane cost would go down from here with further production, and we are likely to be using the F-22 for decades. The F-22 is a more capable air to air weapon than the JSF/F-35. And even for air to ground it has some advantages. It may not hold as heavy of bomb load, but it can supercruise and it is supposedly stealthier. The additional capabilities might not be of extreme importance except in a major war (since we will have all our current F-22s and apparently a large number of F-35s, and maybe some of the "youngest" F-15s and F-16s will be around awhile) and we probably aren't going to have a major war, but we should be prepared for it both because if it happens we want to win (and win with as few American deaths as possible, in such a scenario the F-22 would probably mean fewer American deaths), and also because being prepared deters other countries from taking actions that would lead to such a war.
Although Mr. Gates has rightly decided to end the massive and expensive DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer program
Its a bit unfortunate that it came to this. Compared to the Arleigh Burke and Ticonderoga class ships the Zumwalts have a lot better ground fire capability, are stealthier, have smaller crews (reducing ongoing operations cost) and have radars that are designed to work better along coastlines. But the other cost overruns doomed the project. The older ships designs are cheaper, have ABM capability (I'm not sure the DDG-1000/Zumwalt's don't but I think they don't).
The good news is that Mr. Gates will not to reduce the purchases of the Littoral Combat Ship, which can be configured for missions from antipiracy to antisubmarine warfare. But neither will he buy more than the 55 planned for by the previous Bush administration.
The costs of this program need to go down or it might be next on the chopping block. OTOH with 2 in service, and 2 more being built (and of two different classes so that its really 1 and 1 each for each type of ship) its very earlier in the program, or a relatively new type of naval ships so its possible the bugs will be worked out fine and the costs brought down a lot.
I think the termination of the Airborne Laser program was a mistake. |
