Part 2 on the 50% of our discretionary budget
The point of the first chart, I believe, is that as our navel power decreases Chinese navel power increases. But that aspect needs to be described carefully as the chart does not explain the differences in navies between the two countries.
The point of the second chart is to demonstrate the conundrum of manpower expenses and the rising costs of technology that outstrip resources…ie getting fewer units for a lot more cost.
Augustine’s law
The third and last piece is to discuss a response to the unexplained comments regarding the equations:
That you are not speaking German = FDR, U.S. military forces, and the U.S. defense industry.
That you are not speaking Japanese = FDR, U.S. military forces, and the U.S. defense industry
The fourth aspect is the losing strategy of our lack of cohesive trade policy in some form of national self-interest, which I believe is at odds with the current views of free trade enthusiasts for little federal intervention and reliance on the good graces of multi-national companies and equilibrium theory of some economists. But that is for another post.
I wouldn’t be too concerned about the relative strengths of Chinese and US bellybuttons.
Naval power, on the other hand, might be an important topic.
The only Naval metric worth a damn is torpedoes and missiles carried.
As for not speaking German and/or Japanese, that’s not what WW2 was actually about. Had Germany won WW2 they’d have played the role of the USSR in the latter half of the 20th century, until the Nazi party fell apart, probably around the same time the Communist party did in Russia.
As for the Japanese, their war aims were all about China. They’d have been happy as victors to say establish Hawaii as a neutral state in the Pacific, having evicted us from trade with Asia, at least on our terms.
My rought calculaions (to be chacked by others) seem to say that a US combat aircraft’s cost roughly:
Increases by a factor of 10 every 18 years,
Doubles every 5.4 years
Grows at an annual rate of 13% per year.
Though I don’t have the info to know if this is in, say 2000 “REAL” dollars, or in year of purchase dollars. If the prices is at the time of purchase, then the inflation rate shold be about 3% lower in REAL dollers,
Thanks.
That first chart is pure crap and relies on word games around “Major combatants”. Back in the sixties and seventies the U.S. Navy was constantly putting out comparisons between our combat classifications and those of Russia showing near parity. But our carriers were true blue Navy super-carriers that could land full size jets, theirs were mostly helicopter carriers and in reality were just decked over cruisers. And our helicopter assault ships, fully as capable as those Russian ‘carriers’ were counted in other other classes altogether. Late in the 70’s and certainly under Reagan the U.S. took another tack, they just called new ship classes by a name a size smaller than what they would have been a generation before.
For example compare 70’s era Spruance Class ‘destroyer’ at 521 feet and 8000 tons displacement to a WWII Gleaves Class ‘destroyer’ at 348 feet and 1600 tons or a WWII Light Cruiser at 391 ft and 8000 tons with most of the difference in weight due to running on fuel oil powered boilers and the relatively heavier main armament of ‘bullets’ vs missiles.
And you get the same thing up and down the ship types, what the U.S. calls littoral defense ships when they are in our Navy suddenly become ‘major combatants’ when they are in the Russian or Chinese Navies. Compare the list of ships that seems to correspond to that U.S. number in the chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_ships to that of the PLA Navy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Liberation_Army_Navy right now the PLA has six ballistic subs (one conventional) and 48 attack subs (47 conventional) anyone who thinks they would fare well against the USNs all nuclear fleet has another thought coming. Similarly they have 9 carriers and 26 destroyers and 51 frigates. There largest and most modern (and Soviet made) destroyers are displace 6200 tons are are 156 meters long and of which they have five. Most of the rest of the fleet are variations on the Type 51 which are 132 m and displace 3670 tons. Considering that the U.S. has just about 100% air superiority anywhere out of fighter bomber range of the Chinese coast, the proposition that the Chinese have somehow overtaken U.S. Naval capability by any metric you care to choose is just the standard budget protection tactics used by the Navy for the last two generations. Take an apples to apples, ton to ton, missile to missile comparison while ignoring the deceptive labels and there is simply no comparison at all.
The US Navy has an order of battle, which is much better to track than numboer of hulls: 12 aircraft carriers, biggest naval assets in the world, smaller than most new super tankers and a few cruise ships. New class of acrriers’ flag ship will cost 25B, on order for design, another dozen Amphibious assualt ships, some are comparable to the Brit and French jump jet carriers. 18 Trident subs, 14 still equipented with long range ballistic missiles, and 4 Tridents equipped with cruise missiles for a conventional long attack, like the BB’s (battleships). So when you 200 ship navy includes the largest ships and most immense budget who cares if the Chinese have more patrool boats?
Is there a cold war with China? On what level? What about all those T Bills they hold? Does China read Sun Tzu or Evan Pedone?
During the Cold War the Soviets had a larger ship count than the US by a large margin, and they could bring nothing to the game, except submarines which they had a good number.
Kissinger!!
He is a hint as to where IISS is running. Militarism, fiction for huge weapons programs and watching the US bankrupt itself.
China is supposedly keeping a slowly building navy to “deny access” to its littoral, much of this anti access/area denial (aa/ad) is land based but lacking intell and surveillance they need destroyers, subs and missile frigates with land based air patrols for reconnaisance.
aa/ad is new contrivance tank talk to sell more war amchine spending for fiction.
As Bruce observes: the Chinese navy has a lot of old Soviet models, a rusting USSR attempt at an aircraft carrier in work, as does the Indian Navy for several years on.
Number of boats versus 25 billion aircraft carriers is not fair. Anyone know what the Zumwalt destroyers cost per hull? What they do? Where they do it?
If you go back to Kellogg Briand, a little before my time even, they use displacement as a measure and limited several classes of large displacements, which is why the German pocket battleships were much lighter than UK versions but with just as large guns.
I venture the say: The Chinese defense budget is about 10% of the US andthey have a huge land force. How could you worry about the US Navy’s $230B a year the Chinese defense establishments 60B or so?
Unless you recognize that the Chinese will engage the US in ways the US is not prpepared to meet.
So, what is the worth of 20 odd percent of US outlays not being spent for any threats?
I’d say the practical useful point of the 2nd graph is that only in our dreams will an F35 actually cost what it is estimated to cost. I’d be interested in seeing the estimated costs for the other planes in year t when deployment was scheduled as many years from t as F35 deployment is scheduled from now.
There is nothing sure in life except for death taxes and defence procurement cost over-runs.
Robert,
I have been in the DoD acquiring business for more years than I care to remember.
I have concluded; we should not discusss “cost”, that is an economics concept; we should think “expenses “which is accounting and budgeting. Budgeting is all that matters, spend the money, try to meet some schedule and let the “value” of the object absorbing the expenses float.
So, an example: F-22 in the 1980’s when it looked like the Soviets might threaten the F-15’s massive superiority (never happened, was not on their drawing boards) USAF conceived the YF-23 (Boeing entry) and YF-22 (Lockheed Amrtin entry), flew them off against eachother in 1991. The F-22 won the mini competition.
And immediately gained weight, lost features and rose in expenses consumed to try and meet “objectives”. Hoping the declining expectations of the airplane would be compensated by the fact that MiG and SU are not building anything but new old stuff.
As of Sep 2010 166 of planned 187 are delivered. The Soviets are gone, and the accumulated acquisition budgets for the 187 is $65B. That does not include expenditures to run the F-22 units which will be 3 times accumulated acquisition budgets over 20 years. Interesting the F-22 was supposed to be 750 airplanes at the design to budget and the expenses.
Most other US DoD acqusitions are similarly run with little regard for cost and value, as long as the program manager can change defintions of “capability” and congress keeps throwing money the things are delivered. Budgets expended and profits made.
Everyone is happy except the economists who cannot tell what the stuff cost nor whether the taxpayer would get better value by not payoing for the expenses.
So, economists like logisticians are not invited to help the program managers, who do not want to know about costs, value or how hard the “objective” performance is to keep running.