The Bunker: Wasting Money and Time

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 White House’s flawed scheme to develop a cheap shield to quickly protect the U.S. from all kinds of missiles, drones, cruise missiles, and supersonic peashooters (ain’t gonna happen); the Pentagon pledges to blame the Biden administration, yet again, for the chaotic Afghan withdrawal; and more.

“HAVE IT YOUR WAY”

Pentagon buys a pig-in-a-poke-in-your-eye

Last week, President Donald Trump promised the nation a missile shield with “close to 100% protection” against aerial threats, to be built in “about three years” for “probably ... $175 billion, total cost.” The Bunker hasn’t seen that many whoppers since his last trip to Burger King.

This from a man who said Mexico would pay to build a wall along its border with the southern U.S. to keep migrants out during his first term. Didn’t happen. That he would end the Ukraine-Russia war within 24 hours of taking office for his second term. Neither did that, nor many other pledges and promises he has made. Why should anyone believe him now?

The Bunker has been covering missile defense for more than 40 years. History, physics, and fiscal reality show — and will continue to show — that such a near-perfect shield is a hype dream. He toured the abandoned Safeguard missile-defense system in North Dakota, which shut down after an investment of nearly $6 billion, in 1976 after five months in operation. In the 1980s, he reported on the fitful starts and failures of President Reagan’s much-ballyhooed Strategic Defense Initiative to render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” It did neither, and faded into history following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, after a $60 billion investment.

It was replaced by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (PDF) in 1994, which was replaced by the Missile Defense Agency in 2002. They developed the 44-interceptor Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, the nation’s lone national anti-missile system. It is a dim “Star Wars” relic, designed to destroy only an accidental or rogue state launch (at the top of that list: North Korea, which last week showed it can’t launch a simple warship, never mind a trans-Pacific missile attack on the U.S.). It would be worthless against any major attack from China or Russia. Its success rate in highly-choreographed tests is an anemic 50%.

These schemes have always been impractical. But this latest iteration borders on delusion masquerading as strategy. The nation is primed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars — and perhaps more — on a fanciful quest for invulnerability. “It will likely cost in the trillions, if and when Golden Dome is completed,” Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT) said May 13 as he announced the creation of a Senate Golden Dome Caucus to make it a reality. Trump has announced that he wants $25 billion to begin building the shield. But that sum is “only a small down payment,” says Dov Zakheim, who served as the Pentagon’s top budget official under President George W. Bush. “The program will certainly call for far greater funding as it develops over time. It might well reach the total cost of $2.5 trillion that some analysts have estimated.”

Alas, the quest for a near-invulnerable missile defense system has become a theological imperative in some defense circles. It is fueled by defense contractors eager for an ever-bigger slice of the growing missile-defense pie. The Missile Defense Agency spent $199 billion between 2002 and 2023. It is seeking $55 billion more between 2024 and 2028, a number that will balloon following Trump’s Golden Dome announcement. The Congressional Budget Office recently reported that its space-based elements alone would cost up to $542 billion over the next 20 years. Whatever shield is built will only force potential adversaries bent on attacking the U.S. to employ different tactics.

The U.S. has been shooting down $2,000 Houthi drones over the Red Sea with $2 million missiles. That was unsustainable. But it’s penny-ante compared to the cost-vs.-benefit ratio behind any national missile defense system. They’re calling it “golden” for a reason.

AFGHANISTAN REREREREREREREREVISITED

Alas, there’s plenty of blame to go around

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has created a “Special Review Panel” to document what led to the “Biden Administration’s disastrous and embarrassing" withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. This represents the umpteenth time the U.S. has probed the U.S. pullout and, more importantly, the “disastrous and embarrassing” 20-year war that preceded it. The panel is peculiar, led by Hegseth’s spokesman, and a pair of not-disinterested members. “This team will ensure ACCOUNTABILITY to the American people and the warfighters of our great Nation,” Hegseth said (PDF).

The withdrawal was a fiasco. But then again, so was pretty much everything leading up to it. This latest inquiry, like those before it, will miss the mess and the fundamental flaw that led to the humiliating U.S. retreat. Prior reviews of the war and/or withdrawal include those already done by the Biden White(wash) House (PDF), the Pentagon, the State Department (PDF), House Foreign Affairs Committee Republican members (PDF), House Foreign Affairs Committee Democratic members (PDF), and a pair of reports by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction into the collapse of the Afghan government (PDF) and its military (PDF).

But real responsibility for the Afghan debacle has to start at the top:

• The George W. Bush administration, which invaded Afghanistan 26 days after the 9/11 attacks and spent seven years aimlessly waging war there.
• The Obama administration, which spent eight years adrift in Afghanistan without a clear goal.
• President Trump, who spent the first three years of his first term dawdling before teeing up disaster by negotiating the U.S. military withdrawal with the now-ruling-again Taliban. His administration did so without input from the then-ruling Afghan government that the U.S. had spent $2.3 trillion to install and nurture (perhaps enough to pay for Golden Dome!).
• President Joe Biden, who oversaw the disastrous withdrawal.
• Congress, which ignored its constitutional duty to debate and declare, or not declare, war. The worst kind of chicken hawks, lawmakers went AWOL and gladly let each White House wage the war the way it wanted.
• U.S. voters, who permitted Congress to get away with this abdication.

So when it comes to assigning blame for the outcome of the Afghan war — for all 2,324 U.S. troops who died there, and not just the 13 tragically killed during the shamefully shambolic withdrawal — let’s start the hunt for “ACCOUNTABILITY” by looking in the mirror.

WHAT WE’RE READING

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

→ Contractor robbery

The Pentagon pays approximately $430,000 annually per service contractor (there are 650,000), Marine veteran and ex-Pentagon official Bing West reported May 18 at the Hoover Institution.

→ Another silver bullet

The Air Force will dodge the troubled F-35’s woes with its new F-47 because the service, instead of the contractor, will own more of the fighter’s technology, according to General David Allvin, the Air Force’s chief of staff, Stephen Losey reported May 22 in Defense News.

→ Bang-bang!

Eighteen Army Rangers have been suspended for allegedly firing blanks amid a crowded Florida beach, Jeff Schogol reported May 22 at Task & Purpose.

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