In a February address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama promised to “cut Cold War weapons systems we don’t use.” By signing today’s $680billion defense authorization bill, it’s remarkable at how well he succeeded.

Trimmed from the budget are more F-22s fighter jets, VH-71 presidential helicopters, and Air Force search-and-rescue helicopters.  In short, we own an acceptable quantity and/or quality of these systems to achieve their stated missions, freeing money money that could more efficiently be spent elsewhere.  The simple message comes down to this:  In the middle of two major military deployments, spending on weapons we don’t need makes America weaker because we’re short-changing those involved in our current fights.

The president has made a solid first step in breaking the iron triangle of defense contractors, congress, and the Pentagon.  However, the war is hardly over.  If you want to dunk your head in a buck of cold water, read Winslow Wheeler’s reality check- he quite compellingly argues that:

In 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year. Despite that, I see signs that we might be on the cusp of a change for the better.

This past week, as the Senate debated the Department of Defense (DOD) appropriations bill, a tiny bipartisan group of senators stood up to fix an important part of the gigantic mess in our defenses. This minuscule bunch lost at every turn when the votes were counted, but for the first time I can remember, senators revealed previously unrecognized aspects of their colleagues’ appalling pork-mongering — and took action against it. In the process, a few supremely powerful senators who have been corrupting the process were exposed as contemptible frauds. Now, if only the press would notice.

The issue at hand is a new tactic in budgetary slight-of-hand.  Sens. Inouye (D-HI) and Cochran (R-MS) have lead a group of Senators in raiding the “Operations and Maintenance” account - a little-noticed fund that pays for things like pilot training and basic equipment up-keep - to pay for home-state weapons projects that even the military says it doesn’t want.

Reforming the weapons acquisition culture is like turning an aircraft carrier 180 degrees.  The White House and Secretary Gates have started, but the next several Pentagon budgets will show us where we really are.

Conservatives absolutely love European missile defense.  Why?  My theory is that it brings them to a happy place, one full of stuffed dolls of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and plastic Millenium Falcons.  Yup, the European missile defense program was a vestige of the Cold War, when conservatives’ gripon national security strategy was tightest.  Why else would the Bush administration have worked so hard to ensure that we had invested so much in the system that it’d be dang near impossible to back away?

So you’ll forgive them if they’re not exactly ready to give it up.  Take House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), for example:

The Administration’s misguided action will cause our eastern European allies to question our commitment to their people and security, while heightening concerns in Israel. The European deployment is the only system that can protect both the U.S. and Europe against the common threat of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them.

Yet Cantor’s statement is just the latest example of how out-of-touch Republicans are with America’s national security needs in the 21st century.

I know it can be counter-intuitive to claim that we’re making America stronger by removing a missile shield.  At first glance, it doesn’t make obvious sense.

The most important thing to remember is that we’re actually improving our missile defense capabilities.  Instead of the land-based, costly, behind-schedule, outmoded system in Europe, the Obama administration is set to emphasize a more accurate, cheaper, near-term, next wave sea-based system.  When comparing the two, think of the choice this way:

If you were going to buy a security system for your house, would you rather spend $1000 on a system that catches 50 percent of the criminals and doesn’t start working until next year, or one that costs $800, catches 80 percent, and starts working next week?

The choice seems easy, right?  Though greatly simplyfied, it isn’t terribly different from the obvious choice the White House just made on the unanimous recommendation from the Defense establishment.

Diplomatically, the choice is also a win-win for a stronger American security.  While the conservative cabal excessively worry about upsetting our Eastern European allies while groveling to Russia.  Take House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH):

“Scrapping the US missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic does little more than empower Russia and Iran at the expense of our allies in Europe,”

Or does it?  While it’s true that there may be some bruised egos in Warsaw and Prague, our relationships with our Eastern European allies is steadfast.  How can I be so confident?  Look no further that the NATO Treaty’s article 5, which states that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all.  That’s the very same article that NATO invoked in the wake of 9/11.

Even better, guess who’s a member of NATO?  If you said Poland and the Czech Repbulic, DING DING, Vanna has some lovely gifts for you.

Furthermore, moving missile defense to a sea-based element removes an unnecessary thorn in the side of US-Russia relations, and helps put Russia in our corner when negotiating with Iran.  Russia’s help isn’t guaranteed, but if it’s possible to have Russia pressure Iran with no adverse effects on our national security, then it’s a no-brainer.

Just like this entire situation:  Conservatives need to wake up to the fact that the Cold War is over and America’s national security needs in 2009 are very different from just twenty years ago.

On July 21, the Senate killed funding for extra F-22s.  This was a huge victory for the White House, and could prove to be the first chink in the armor of the Iron Triangle of defense contractors, the Pentagon, and Congress.  Or was it?

If you need a refresher, here’s how the Iron Triangle works:  Congress controls the power of the purse, and each year crafts a defense spending bill to send to the White House.  Defense contractors spread their offices, warehouses, and factories into as many Congressional districts as possible.  Their presence creates local jobs.  The military services know Congress will eagerly fund any defense project that keeps factories humming, so they request amounts of hardware in excess of what may be necessary for national security.  Contractors keep pressure on Congress through campaign contributions to make sure the services’ requests are funded.

The result is wasteful spending - Congress funds weapons in the name of local employment, and campaign contributions, and not according to our national security needs.

That’s why killing funding for the F-22 looked like such a solid win:  Speaking to a joint session of Congress in February, the President said he would veto any spending bill that continued to buy Cold War weapons systems - like the F-22 - that we didn’t need.  The White House and Pentagon kept up the pressure: we already owned 187 of the plane, we weren’t using them in Iraq or Afghanistan, even the military said it didn’t need any more.  The trick was convincing Congress not to fund more of them in a time of high unemployment.

But was the F-22 a harbinger of the defense acquisition’s future, or a hollow victory as standard weapons acquisition process continues unabated?  Writing in Defense News, Winslow Wheeler fears the latter:

Get out your pen, Mr. President; the porkers in Congress have slathered up the 2010 defense appropriations bill. Your veto threats have not fazed them in the slightest. …

The Obama administration won a titanic victory over pork in the Senate on July 21 with a lopsided 58-40 vote to kill the F-22. Reading the tea leaves, the chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., took money for the plane out of his bill. Surely, Congress’ porkers got the message; their day is done, right? Not hardly.

Murtha and the House added a lot more than the initial batch of three C-17s to get that ball rolling. They added $560 million for the second F-35 engine; $400 million to start buying the presidential helicopter (with the stove); $80 million to save the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (from Murtha’s district); and they added 1,116 other earmarks costing $2.75 billion. The Senate Appropriations Committee even made it clear the president’s F-22 victory was a way station, not an end, to the program; the committee endorsed spending, sure to be high, to modify the F-22 to enable foreign sales. Not exactly chastened, are they?

Not a peep of opposition from the president. Complete surrender. Obama is not standing in the way of pork and waste in defense bills - he is enabling it. He has a chance to get serious when the Senate takes up its version later this month. But so far, it looks like he doesn’t want to stand behind his own rhetoric and put up a real fight.

So the problems roll on.  If the F-22 is a symbolic win, then how do we reform the acquisition system to address these problems at their core?  As luck would have it, Jordan Tama wrote in Memos to the New President for the PPI on just this topic.  He proposed a weapons reform commission styled after the de-politicized Base Realignment And Closure commission to address the weapons purchasing problem because:

[E]ven a reform-minded president and secretary of defense cannot overhaul the acquisition process successfully without some buy-in from the military services and Congress. A commission’s prestigious and diverse membership, careful deliberative process, and persistent advocacy for its proposals can build support for reform among the key constituencies that are part of the acquisition process.

Think the F-22 is gone and buried?  No chance:

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee is urging the Air Force to develop an F-22 Raptor model for export as the Defense Department winds down its demand for the stealthy jet fighter, Reuters reported late Thursday. The Pentagon’s decision to stop purchasing the fighter after the next fiscal year has been controversial in Congress since contractors building and supplying the F-22 have facilities in most states and provide jobs. Japan, Israel and Australia have shown interest in the F-22, but a 1998 law banning the jet’s export to protect its technology would have to be lifted or circumvented.

This is a nifty way to keep jobs in Senators’ states while - theoretically - not burdening the American tax payer with a plane we can’t really use.  Here’s the real question:  how much does it cost to develop the export model?  And is that out-weighed by the number we can sell abroad?

DefenseNews is says a Polish paper - Gazeta Wyborcza - to claim that the controversial Eastern European missile shield program is dead.

If true, it would seem to be a counter-intuitive way to make such a major announcement.  Though the Gazeta Wyvorcza cites “administration officials and lobbyists in Washington” as its sources, who knows those officials’ access to information, so take this news with dose of skepticism for now.  However, leaking the story to a Polish paper could be a creative way to get the story out there — this way, such a huge policy and financial decision won’t blindside the effected parties (defense contractors, the US military, not to mention the Poles, the Czechs, and the Russians - all of whom you’d think were consulted/informed from the get-go) before it’s confirmed in a few weeks or months.

The Obama administration has been long-uncomfortable with the missile shield, on grand strategy and tactical deployment grounds.  If it has been killed, a few questions come to mind:  Did we get something from the Russians for this?  If so, is it a quid-pro-quo with Russia in exchange for pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear capabilities? Was it a good-will gesture towards them?  Or, did we realize that the development costs and probability of successful deterence were too high and low, respectfully?

On the whole, there are plenty of good arguments to abandon a project that was potentially over budget, of questionable accuracy, and a major roadblock in improving relations with Russia.  But I just hope we got something for it.

If this was the SAT, I’d pose the following analogy:

Superman is to Kryptonite as the F-22 is to _______________

a) Chinese surface-to-air missiles

b) puppy dogs

c) Russian MiG 29s

d) rain

Having dutifully taken your Princeton Review class, you’d know that you could up your SAT scores by eliminating the obviously incorrect answers.  That’s why you’d axe the two responses that couldn’t possibility be right in a million years.  So out goes b) puppies and d) rain?

Well hold on there WonderTwins.

If you’d read R. Jeffrey Smith’s fine reporting in the Washington Post this morning, you’d know the answer was actually… and the envelope please… RAIN.  Yes, rain.  IE, small drops of water falling gently from the sky are apparently costing you, Joe Taxpayer, tens of thousands of dollars an hour to keep the F-22 flying.

I haven’t been a fan of the F-22 for quite some time.  Previously, I’ve argued that even though the plane hasn’t flown a single sortie in Iraq or Afghanistan, it was still a technically amazing aircraft.  And while I’m sure it is in many respects, Smith’s article casts wide dispersions on that blanket assumption.

Here’s a partial list of the charges against the F-22:

– The aircraft’s radar-absorbing metallic skin is the principal cause of its maintenance troubles, with unexpected shortcomings — such as vulnerability to rain and other abrasion — challenging Air Force and contractor technicians since the mid-1990s, according to Pentagon officials, internal documents and a former engineer.

– While most aircraft fleets become easier and less costly to repair as they mature, key maintenance trends for the F-22 have been negative in recent years, and on average from October last year to this May, just 55 percent of the deployed F-22 fleet has been available to fulfill missions guarding U.S. airspace, the Defense Department acknowledged this week.

– Pierre Sprey, a key designer in the 1970s and 1980s of the F-16 and A-10 warplanes, said that from the beginning, the Air Force designed it to be “too big to fail, that is, to be cancellation-proof.”

Lockheed farmed out more than 1,000 subcontracts to vendors in more than 40 states, and Sprey — now a prominent critic of the plane — said that by the time skeptics “could point out the failed tests, the combat flaws, and the exploding costs, most congressmen were already defending their subcontractors’ ” revenues.

–We knew that the F-22 was going to cost more than the Air Force thought it was going to cost and we budgeted the lower number, and I was there,” [John] Hamre [the Pentagon's comptroller from 1993 to 1997] told the Senate Armed Services Committee in April. “I’m not proud of it.”

– The Air Force says the F-22 cost $44,259 per flying hour in 2008; the Office of the Secretary of Defense said the figure was $49,808. The F-15, the F-22’s predecessor, has a fleet average cost of $30,818.

The F-22’s defenders have continually moved the goal posts on why the plane should stay in production, calling it everything from essential to national security to a jobs program.  But  inspite of the F-22’s capabilities, it isn’t being used in our current military deployments, doesn’t actually save any jobs, and faces massive maintence costs.

Despite this, Congress is still trying to drain the nation’s precious security resources and buy more F-22s:

The Pentagon’s budgetary war of attrition for fiscal 2010 moved to the House Armed Services Committee, where lawmakers approved a $550 billion defense bill early Wednesday that could keep Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor alive for two more years.

The answer to the prayers of the fighter-jet community came in a last-minute amendment to provide $368.8 million toward the purchase of 12 F-22s in fiscal year 2011, squeaking through the committee early in the morning on a 31-30 vote.

This can’t happen. A few months ago, Secretary Gates says the decision to stop buying more F-22s wasn’t even close.  Yet Congress insists on adding more to appropriations bills.  President Obama should veto a spending bill that buys a single additional F-22.

The GAO released a report this week that highlights the growing threat of cyber-attacks against US government computer and network infrastructure.  The bottom line is that cybersecurity has finally been allowed into the national security conversation.

A few high-profile attacks have demonstrated the issue’s importance, including the mid-April breech of firewalls protecting the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, not to mention Russia’s hack job on the Georgian government’s networks before last year’s invasion.

But I can’t get over a handful of the GAO’s recommendations to increase security.  They be:

Federal Desktop Core Configuration: For this initiative, OMB directed agencies that have Windows XP deployed and plan to upgrade to Windows Vista operating systems to adopt the security configurations developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. The goal of this initiative is to improve information security and reduce overall IT operating costs.

SmartBUY: This program, led by the General Services Administration, is to support enterprise-level software management through the aggregate buying of commercial software governmentwide in an effort to achieve cost savings through volume discounts. The SmartBUY initiative was expanded to include commercial off-the-shelf encryption software and to permit all federal agencies to participate in the program. The initiative is to also include licenses for information assurance.

Read over that again, kids.  As far as I can tell, the GAO wants the entire government to save money by working on the same operating system and buying commercial encryption software.

I’m not computer programmer, but doesn’t that seem a bit odd?  With this kind of standardization, aren’t we making the hackers’ job a lot easier?