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The Discussion That Isn't HappeningWhy isn't Congress asking tough questions about Pentagon spending?

By Fred KaplanPosted Friday, Sept. 21, 2007, at 6:14 PM ET

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This year's military budget includes $102 billion for weapons procurement—up 10 percent from last year's. Among the weapons being procured: $3.1 billion for a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier; $3.5 billion for a DDG-1000 destroyer; $2.7 billion for another Virginia-class submarine; $6.1 billion for 12 F-35 stealth Joint Strike Fighters; and $4.6 billion for 20 more F-22s.

All these programs are legacies of the Cold War. None of them has any real connection to Iraq, Afghanistan, or the global war on terror. And yet the Navy and Air Force keep churning them out as if the Soviet Union were still a menace—or, under updated rationales, as if China were a global military power right now. (Maybe it will become one in 10 or 20 years, but if that's the case, can some of these programs be—not canceled necessarily, but at least cut back a bit or deferred?)

These programs aren't holy writ. They are, in large measure, the product of institutional imperatives and bureaucratic politics. Look at the defense budget from that angle. The Army gets $130.1 billion. The Navy (including the Marines) gets $130.8 billion. The Air Force gets $136.6 billion.

This near-even divvying is no fluke or accident. It's been constant since the mid-1960s. (In no year since then has the split varied by more than 2 percentage points.) There is no principle of national-security policy that requires the money be divided this way. It would be an amazing coincidence if there were. Its origins lie in the truce that the service chiefs reached 40 years ago, and have maintained ever since, to quell the vicious internecine rivalries of the 1950s, when the chiefs battled furiously for every scarce dollar.

It is for this reason that secretaries of defense and seasoned congressional chairmen rarely get entangled in procurement battles. They don't want to reignite the hellfire of interservice rivalries.

There are two other reasons Congress shies away. First, procurement contracts mean money and jobs for at least a few states and congressional districts. Anyone who threatens those constituents will do so at the peril of their own district's projects

Second, the subject is complicated. Back in the 1970s and '80s, Congress engaged in prolonged and passionate debate over big-ticket nuclear weapons and policies—the B1, the MX, cruise missiles, Star Wars, the nuclear freeze. But the nuclear debate was abstract, almost theological. It wasn't very hard to learn the basic arguments. It wasn't quite real; no one had ever fought a two-way nuclear war.

The tactics, strategy, and logistics of conventional warfare are very real. How many and what kind of tanks, fighter planes, and aircraft carriers are needed are questions that take some expertise to calculate and appraise. Committees and key legislators have experts on their staff. And sometimes they'll press for adjustments on the margin or link full funding to certain changes in design. But generally, given all the political risks in challenging, much less slashing, these sorts of weapons programs, the natural tendency is not to bother or even get interested.

And so, the senators aren't debating money, weapons, priorities, or policies. But they did beat up those leftist bullies who were picking on David Petraeus.