The Bunker: Capability inflation

This week in The Bunker: the public’s military myopia; Navy destroyer maintenance soars above projection; time for cheaper weapons; and more. Happy holidays, Bunker buddies: we’re taking a couple of weeks off and will be back January 7, 2026.

WISHFUL SPENDING

’Tis the holiday shopping season, after all!

If you share The Bunker’s generation, you may have turned 16 and dreamed of driving muscle cars like a Ford Mustang, a Chevrolet Camaro, or a Pontiac GTO. Unfortunately, you likely ended up behind the wheel of econoboxes like a Ford Falcon, a Chevy Vega, or a Plymouth Valiant.

Let’s call it the aspiration-actualization gap.

When it came to wheels, it would be up to our parents to keep our dreams in check. Unfortunately, there is no in loco parentis when it comes to defense spending.

There’s an avaricious alliance that stands in the way of such common sense when it comes to combat. It includes the key players in the military-industrial complex, chief among them the Pentagon and the defense contractors that supply it. But they’re an engine that won’t go anywhere without fuel. And that fuel, dear Brutus, is us.

That’s made clear in a just-released survey of Americans by the Ronald Reagan Institute showing that 64% of those polled say the U.S. military “should be sized to fight and win two wars at once.” Incredibly, 44% say (PDF) the U.S. military should be able “to fight wars against China and Russia simultaneously” (and presumably win).

Pssst – Hey America: The U.S. military has never been able to fight and win two wars at once, despite sales pitches to the contrary. We couldn’t do it during World War II — even as the nation dedicated nearly half its economic output to the conflict. We had to defeat Nazi Germany before turning all our guns on Imperial Japan. More recently, we couldn’t prevail in Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion of Iraq 17 months later. “In Afghanistan, we do what we can,” Admiral Mike Mullen, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sighed in 2007. “In Iraq, we do what we must.”

Americans like to think of themselves as rough-and-ready, willing, and able to take on all comers. It’s an admirable attribute, but it should accord with reality. This nation is unwilling to spend what it would take to fight and win two wars at once. It always has been. But this underlying bellicose public support provides the buoyancy needed to keep the nation’s military on a perpetual war footing.

Instead of taking the time to make tough choices, those with the most to gain pump the bellows for more military spending. They never bother to explain the credibility gap between our ways and means. This dynamic is driven by the war-fighting construct the national-security state has embraced for the past 80 years. But we created it, and — get this! — we can change it, too.

“A change in U.S. foreign policy, U.S. role in the world, and U.S. grand strategy (including regional prioritization) could lead to a change in the U.S. force-planning standard, the size and composition of U.S. military forces, and U.S. defense plans, programs, and budgets,” Ronald O’Rourke of the Congressional Research Service points out in his December 8 update to his insightful analysis of the size and shape of the U.S. military. “That U.S. policymakers starting in the 1940s chose to pursue a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia does not necessarily mean this goal was a correct one for the United States to pursue, or that it would be a correct one for the United States to pursue in the future.”

It’s long past time for the nation, on the cusp of its 250th birthday, to sit down with itself and right-size the U.S. military for the 21st Century.

SPEAKING OF SPENDING…

Much less bang for the buck

Amateur defense nerds concentrate on how much we’re spending on the U.S. military — the inputs. Professionals go beyond those numbers to see what we’re getting for those bucks — the outputs. It’s a more complicated calculation, to be sure, but it offers key insights into the hunch that we’re not getting what we’re paying for.

Take the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class of destroyers, which account for about two-thirds of the Navy’s fleet. These workhorses, among other missions, defend aircraft carriers, provide missile defense, and patrol sea lanes around the globe.

In 2012, the Navy projected these destroyers would be available for duty 30.9 years of their expected 35-year service lives, or 88.2%. But the Congressional Budget Office, in an analysis released December 10, estimated that the hulls will actually only be available for 25.7 years. That’s only 73.4% of their service life. In other words, these ships will spend one of every four years of their service lives undergoing maintenance. And that means they’re sailing, or ready to sail, 17% less than planned. That translates into a 17% tax we didn’t know we were paying.

“Chronic delays,” the CBO says, “effectively result in a smaller fleet available for operations and training.” Bottom-dollar-line: We’re not getting the Navy we’re paying for (and it’s not cheap: the Navy spends an estimated $600,000 for each day a DDG-51 is available for duty).

Curious taxpayers will want to know what accounts for such inefficiency. According to the CBO, here’s the roster of reasons (PDF) Navy ships take longer than expected to repair: “Aging ships … postponed maintenance … late inspections and contract awards … unexpected increases in scope of work … delays in obtaining parts and materials … poor integration of modernization work … contract incentives that encourage low costs over timely completion.”

But, other than that, smooth sailing.

TIME FOR CHEAPER WEAPONS

It’s not a question — it’s a must

The U.S. military can’t continue pumping hundreds of billions of dollars annually into weapons that cost too much to buy and maintain. Especially given the run for their money they’re getting from much cheaper options. Take the recent U.S. campaigns against suspected drug smuggling speedboats in the Caribbean, where the USS Gerald R. Ford is steaming, and against Houthi rebels in the Red Sea.

“The cost of the speedboats destroyed is less than the cost of operating the Ford off Venezuela for a single day,” Peter W. Singer wrote December 7 at Defense One. “Each bomb and missile cost 80 to 300 times more that the crew’s pay. If U.S. forces used four munitions for each strike — ‘twice to kill the crew and twice more to sink it,’ — that’s 320 to 1200 times the cartel’s cost. … When the U.S. has to spend orders of magnitude more to neutralize a target than its foe spends to field or replace it, it enters into what businesses call a ‘losing equation’ that often adds up to failure.”

On the other side of the world, the Pentagon has fired nearly $1 billion of munitions to protect Red Sea shipping from low-cost Houthi uncrewed aircraft. “In most cases, the U.S. is launching $2 million defense missiles to stop $2,000 Houthi drones,” The Hill reported. Early this year, the Houthi rebels shot down seven U.S. Reaper drones, together costing over $200 million, in six weeks.

More conventionally (like in a war with China, say), it’s happening in the skies over Ukraine and Russia. “The protracted and apparently intractable Ukraine war has given a clear lesson to weapon strategists worldwide — missiles in their present form as offensive and defensive weapons serve as a deterrent only when tipped with nuclear weapons,” R.N. Prasher noted last month at The Interpreter. “When these carry conventional warheads, their cost as mere delivery systems is prohibitive and unsustainable in a long-drawn war.”

As drones darken the skies, big weapons like aircraft carriers, tanks, and aircraft on the ground — the guts of the U.S. military — are morphing into targets for such cut-rate aircraft. The Pentagon is furiously seeking ways to defeat them.

But math rarely favors defense. Nowhere is that more manifest than in President Trump’s pledge to build a Golden Dome shield to protect the U.S. against all aerial threats. Such a program could cost up to $3.6 trillion over the next 20 years, and its purported protection will no doubt prove illusory. “The most likely impact of Golden Dome is to incentivize America’s adversaries to double down on … destabilizing behavior by further developing long-range cruise missiles, hypersonic systems, undersea platforms, and even space-based offensive weapons systems,” Andrew Facini and Mallory Stewart of the nonprofit Council on Strategic Risks wrote December 11 at War on the Rocks. “Mutual vulnerability is here to stay — whether we like it or not. Rather than seeking exemption from it, the United States should engage more directly with its potential adversaries on this front and use all possible leverage to craft a more stable and secure base from which to navigate future conflict.”

Such wussiness may not be in keeping with the nation’s can-do ethos. But it’s the only road to sanity.

WHAT WE’RE READING

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

→ The Performative Pentagon (PDF)

Defense Secretary Pete “Hands-Off” Hegseth has re-renamed the U.S. military’s “Military Information Support Operations (MISO)” back to “Psychological Operations (PSYOP)” because, let’s admit it, it just sounds cooler. And although he didn’t come right out and say so in his December 2 memo ordering the change, who wants to work for an outfit named for a soup?

→ Grounded by red ink

Austin A. Gruber, an Air Force logistics officer, said December 9 at War on the Rocks that his service puts “engineering risk aversion” above combat readiness.

→ Would you want your loved one aboard?

A pair of new investigations say that “longstanding and deadly mechanical problems with the V-22 Osprey have gone unaddressed for years … and it may take a decade to complete recommended fixes, as risks continue to mount,” Thomas Novelly reported December 12 at Defense One.