The Bunker: A Somber Anniversary, for Two Reasons

The Bunker, delivered to our subscribers Wednesdays at 7 a.m., is a newsletter from the desk of National Security Analyst Mark Thompson. Sign up here to receive it first thing, or check back Wednesday afternoon for the online version.

This week in The Bunker: The 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks highlights the lack of military accountability for the two wars launched in their wake; contractor penalized for continuing F-35 snafus; Navy commissioning first sub built to accommodate women; and more.

THE SCOPE OF THE STEERING PROBLEM

Promoted beyond accountability

Hard to believe it was 23 years ago today that terrorists slammed U.S. airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and — as innocent passengers fought with their hijackers — into a Pennsylvania field. The U.S. response to that terrible day led to a swift invasion of Afghanistan. But that translated into a doomed 20-year occupation of that forlorn land, as well as the misbegotten invasion of Iraq 18 months later.

The conflicts cost U.S. taxpayers $8 trillion and cost nearly 900,000 lives, including those of 6,650 U.S. troops (PDF). Both countries, basically, have returned to the status quo ante bellum — the situation as it existed before the war. The Taliban — who were harboring 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden at the time of the attacks — were driven from the Afghan capital of Kabul shortly after the U.S. invaded. But they returned to power two weeks before the U.S. pulled out of the country in 2021. In Iraq, the U.S. invasion simply swapped the megalomania of Saddam Hussein for the more menacing influence of neighboring Iran.

So, who paid the price — beyond troops and taxpayers — for these two colossal catastrophes? No U.S. president or senior military officer did, that’s for sure. “As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war,” then-Army Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling wrote in 2007. Nothing has changed in the 17 years since.

That struck The Bunker as 9/11’s anniversary approached and the Navy lowered the boom on Commander Cameron Yaste, skipper of the USS John McCain. The Navy said it relieved him of command August 30 “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command the guided-missile destroyer.”

The Navy rarely goes into detail about such firings, leaving it up to reporters to fill in the blanks as best they can. “Navy commander relieved of duty after photo showed him firing rifle with scope backward,” the Associated Press reported. Business Insider had another take: “The US Navy sacked a destroyer captain after a persistent steering problem led to a Middle East near-miss.” Regardless of the root cause for his removal, Commander Yaste was publicly pilloried and punished.

But those who ran the nation’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have never been held accountable. Yet they, pressing on for years in losing causes, were the ones truly staring down the wrong end of the scope. It was their persistent steering problems that ended in strategic humiliation for the United States. As we mourn the nearly 3,000 souls lost 23 years ago today, it’s also important to remember that the U.S. military didn’t redeem their sacrifice.

THE $5 MILLION SODA BOTTLE DEPOSIT

The Pentagon penalizes F-35 builder

Last year, the Defense Department became so fed up with the development woes of Lockheed’s F-35 fighter that it stopped taking delivery of them as they rolled off their Fort Worth assembly line. Since then, Lockheed has partly solved the problem, leading the Pentagon to resume accepting F-35 deliveries in July. These “truncated” planes are good enough for training — but not for war. So, until those fixes happen, the Pentagon will be withholding about $5 million per plane.

The F-35 program took off amid exaggerated threats and incomplete blueprints long before it was ready. “Acquisition malpractice,” the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer called it a dozen years ago. Amazingly, that was only the start of its troubles. The plane, flown by the Air Force, Navy, and Marines, has been plagued with development gremlins ever since. It’s the most costly system in the history of the world: The Pentagon is expected to spend more than $2 trillion to buy and fly its 2,470 F-35s until 2088 (Bunker Bet™: the number to be bought, but not the cost, will dive).

The newly imposed penalty is roughly 5% of the F-35’s advertised $100 million sales price, based on the Pentagon’s peculiar procurement prestidigitation. That rarely includes the full cost of a weapon’s production, which totals $162 million per plane, according to the Pentagon’s most recent formal accounting (PDF), released last month. Nonetheless, that $5 million should be enough dough to force Lockheed to fix the not-up-to-par planes as soon as possible. Just like The Bunker used to hunt down and collect abandoned Coke bottles for the 2-cent refund each one paid.

ALL ABOARD!

First sub designed for mixed-gender crews sets sail

The first U.S. Navy submarine designed from the keel up for female as well as male sailors will be commissioned September 14. The USS New Jersey, a fast-attack submarine, springs from blueprints drafted from the start with berthing compartments and heads — bathrooms — for both men and women. Other modifications to make the boat more accessible to female sailors are more mundane: “lowering some overhead valves and making them easier to turn and installing steps in front of the triple-high bunk beds and stacked laundry machines,” Stars and Stripes reports.

The Bunker, who spent time at sea with the first woman to command a U.S. Navy warship, recalls warnings about allowing women into the “silent service.” “It is the psychological factor that convincingly indicates that women could serve in submarines, but they shouldn’t,” a Navy psychiatrist wrote in Proceedings in 1995. “An environmentally encapsulated submarine crew with both men and women would present far too much of a psychologically complex environment for a submarine officer’s training and role as commanding officer to manage.” But then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates opened the hatches to women in 2010.

Time has proven that Navy shrink — of course it was a him — wrong. Female officers currently serve aboard roughly half of the Navy’s 69 boats, as submarines are called, and 14 boats have female enlisted sailors. In 2022, the first woman was tapped to become a submarine executive officer, the boat’s #2 position. A second was promoted to serve as chief of the boat, the skipper’s senior enlisted advisor. Periscope up! There’s going to be a female commanding officer of a U.S. Navy submarine surfacing on the not-too-far horizon.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ Enough blame to go around

The Air Force’s top weapons buyer blamed the skyrocketing cost of the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile on the Air Force (buying it), the Pentagon (overseeing it) and Northrop (building it), Defense One’s Audrey Decker reported September 5.

→ Oversupplied…

The Army has “too much stuff, too often in the wrong places,” a pair of Army logistics officers wrote September 4 on West Point’s Modern War Institute website.

→ Finally sharp enough

The Air Force Academy, after decades of buying German sabers for its cadets, has shifted to a U.S. blacksmith shop for the gleaming blades, Jennifer Mulson of the Colorado Springs Gazette reported September 9.

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