Stardate 20020225.1058

(On Screen): Gary Farber discusses the fact that we ran through a large part of our stockpile of JDAMs in Iraq and have to rest and build up before major operations commence in Iraq.

There are number of reasons why that is. One reason is that it isn't always easy to predict ahead of time what you're going to use a lot of, when you don't actually know what war you're going to be fighting or how. For example, we still have plenty of rifle ammunition and artillery shells, since we didn't use much of that kind of thing in Afghanistan.

Another reason is that in peacetime it makes more sense to stock up on the stuff which has a long lead time. It takes years from budget to delivery for things like jets and tanks; smaller stuff can be replaced much more rapidly.

But those are not the biggest reason why. The real reason is that in peace time Congress likes to spend its money on big-ticket procurements, especially those which will create lots of jobs in key congressional districts. Consumables and spare parts and boring stuff like cargo jets and trucks and training tend to get short shrift. There's more glory in buying a new aircraft carrier than in buying a million rounds of 155 mm ammunition (which costs less, anyway). (Congress also likes to spend its money on useless military bases that the Pentagon doesn't want.)

That said, consumables also have a lifetime and it doesn't actually make sense to stock too much of them because they'll go to waste. In particular, explosives degrade with time and after a certain point they're too dangerous to use and have to be disposed of. Our stockpile of ammunition turns over slowly because the older stuff is used up in training.

Another point is that the state of the art keeps improving, in nearly every regard but especially in the case of electronics like the JDAM. JDAM is a retrofit for "dumb iron bombs" which turn them into smart munitions, but fifteen year old electronics aren't worth having. Stockpile too much of some things and you can get stuck with huge piles of obsolete materiel that has to be dumped and replaced anyway.

Still, I've been concerned for a long time about the way that Congress neglects the important but unsexy stuff. During the Gulf War, the US military deployed less than half its combat divisions to Saudi Arabia, about a quarter of the Air Force and about a quarter of the Navy. It also mobilized some National Guard units, and all of those were transport units. It required nearly every truck the Army had including in reserve to support operations there. That is pretty scary. The situation with cargo aircraft is just as bad. (It may have gotten better since then.)

They were also talking about cutting back on advanced training. At one point they considered closing the Red Flag school, and they wanted to cut back on funding for the National Training Center at Fort Irwin.

These kinds of programs can be very expensive, and the problem for Congress is that they aren't "pork". They don't bring jobs home to the district. But they're essential; indeed, they are more important than procurement. Training is always the most important contributor to the ability of a military to win. The NTC, in particular, paid massive dividends in the Gulf War.