The Bunker: Bombers Astray

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: B-2 bombers buzz the White House; a purported defense-reform bill is anything but; the deadly cost of honing the U.S. military’s combat edge; and more.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA!

A pair of stories with contrasting narratives

Amid the roar of B-2 bombers and other warplanes bizarrely flying over the White House on the 4th of July, President Donald Trump signed his “Big, Beautiful Bill” increasing defense spending by $150 billion and the national debt by $3 trillion. The military hardware was a bow to the U.S. military’s successful June 21 strike on Iran’s nuclear program. Nonetheless, it was a strange way to celebrate the nation’s 249th birthday. Only in today’s Washington could one celebrate dive-bombing the national debt ever closer to $40 trillion.

About $113 billion of that $150 billion is slated for the Pentagon’s 2026 coffers (the rest would be spent later). That has allowed the Pentagon to send Congress a base budget for next year that totals $848 billion, which is actually less than this year’s $831 billion, when inflation is taken into account. But adding the base budget request to the one-time bonus, and other national-security spending, pushes proposed defense spending to roughly $1 trillion in 2026. Where such future $100+ billion annual add-ons will come from remains a mystery.

News outlets that focus on economics wasted no time citing one of the bonus bill’s big winners. “The Pentagon will budget about $150 billion over five years on big-ticket projects such as ships, munitions production and missile-defense systems, including a roughly $25 billion down payment on the planned Golden Dome antimissile shield,” the Wall Street Journal noted. Echoed Bloomberg News: “The package boosts defense spending by $150 billion, with much of the funding going to new weapons systems made by major contractors.”

The troops will get July 4th picnic-table scraps. Only 6% of the $150 billion is earmarked for improving the quality of life for troops and their families. On July 3, Stars and Stripes reported that the Army will save nearly $5 million a year by shutting down a program that for decades has provided mental-health services for children of U.S. troops based overseas. That’s happening despite a May report that said such Pentagon-run schools are overwhelmed by kids with mental health problems.

Army officials said they are eliminating the program because “similar services exist.” Funny how such logic never applies to the redundancy of the Pentagon’s nuclear triad of bombers, ICBMs, and submarines, which cost about $5 million every half hour.

SPEED KILLS

Why wonky weapons-buying changes won’t work

A defense reform bill now slinking its way through Congress is simply the latest in military camouflage, disguising future taxpayer rip-offs as the latest and greatest good-government bromide. This new wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing is the Streamlining Procurement for Effective Execution and Delivery Act — the SPEED Act (PDF), in Capitol Hill lingo. “With the SPEED Act, Congress and industry are yet again setting the stage for another round of decimating changes that will have disastrous results,” Scott Amey here at the Project On Government Oversight said in his July 1 analysis of the proposed legislation.

Amey, a recognized expert in the admittedly wonky arena of government procurement law, warns that the bill:

• Prioritizes speed above the cost to the taxpayer.
• Prioritizes “best value” of rushed requirements above cost efficiency, and risks steering contracts to well-connected or undeserving companies.
• Promotes buying so-called “commercial” products and services, and the general principles of “offered for sale” and “similar,” all of which are misleading and result in overcharges for defense-only solutions because they are exempt from providing certified cost or pricing data that would ensure the federal government gets a fair deal.
• Raises certain monetary thresholds, which results in overcharges.

The SPEED Act, Amey argues, “will take us back 60 years, to a time when companies blatantly took advantage of the federal government … which will lead to new $436 hammers and $10,000 toilet seat covers.”

Excellent! The Bunker is always on the prowl for new material.

R.I.P.

It’s too easy to ignore troop deaths in peacetime

Battlefields and blood are first cousins in combat. The Bunker has done many deep dives over the years into those who voluntarily went into harm’s way in the nation’s uniform, and didn’t get to come home. There’s generally a patriotic predisposition to want to know about these heroes, waging war in our name.

But the deaths of U.S. troops in peacetime is a murkier realm. The U.S. military trains like it fights, which means that over the past decade more troops have died while training for combat than in combat itself. Yet too little attention is paid to their sacrifice. They’re not battling a foe other than inadequate training, or a moment’s inattention that could have saved a life.

The Pentagon noted the deaths of three U.S. troops recently. Their sacrifice should not pass unnoted:

— On July 3, Task & Purpose reported on the July 1 death of Navy Special Warfare Boat Operator 2nd Class Noah Tobin after an unexplained malfunction during a California parachute jump.

— On June 27, Air & Space Forces Magazine detailed how Air Force Captain John Robertson died at a Texas base in 2024 after he failed to fully engage a safety pin on the ejection seat of his T-6 trainer after landing, sending him 100 feet into the air without a parachute.

— On July 1, Task & Purpose reported on the death of Army Specialist Matthew Perez, 20, who died in 2024 after a string of snafus beginning with “an incorrectly tied knot” doomed him while parachuting at a Louisiana post.

Your valor was not in vain.

WHAT WE’RE READING

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

→ Royal Navy

Despite critics who argue that the U.S. Navy’s huge aircraft carriers would be sitting Peking ducks in a war with China, Commander Joshua M. M. Portzer maintained in the July issue of Proceedings that each of them is “a queen on the Pacific chess board.”

→ Speaking of carriers…

The Navy’s newest aircraft carrier faces a 20-month delivery delay because of problems with elevators designed to move munitions around the vessel, Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News reported July 7.

→ Slice of war

The Pentagon Pizza Report, operated by an anonymous computer geek, tracks Google data flowing from pizzerias near the headquarters of the Defense Department to telegraph when the U.S. military might be preparing to strike, the Washington Post reported July 1.

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