The fiscal 2016 U.S. defense budget's details matter less than they should, being part of a plan to drive a wedge between the Republican Party's defense hawks and tax tightwads. But the bigger picture is one of chaos and waste in the 2020s, beyond the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). A five-year plan is useless when programs take 20-25 years from the first big investments to meeting the original operational requirement. A FYDP full of new starts means trouble in the out-years, as the $100 million hatchlings turn into multibil-lion-dollar chicks. If the Pentagon was a family, the parents would be buying new cars every other year and eating out three times a week while blithely planning to put all five kids through Harvard. This is sometimes called the "bow wave," but that's a euphemism for fiscal misfeasance.
展开▼
