Progressive defense requirements - what does the US really need?

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Sunday March 16, 2014 · 3:07 PM PDT

2014/03/16 · 15:07

For the roughly forty years of the Cold War, the defense establishment of the United States had a remarkable degree of stability in terms of defense requirements. Everyone knew who the bad guys were, and the forces needed to prepare for potential conflict in the air, at sea, and on land were the subject of fairly broad consensus. Over those forty years, institutions developed around the allocation of the resources the nation invested in its defense, and those institutions have proved to be far more durable than the Cold War itself. President Eisenhower articulated this concern in his Military Industrial Complex speech, and he proved to be completely correct. We don't just have a large defense department - we have a large arms industry. The combination of the two has been immovable, and now that the Cold War, which led to the development of both a large peacetime military and a large arms industry, is over two decades in the past, we still persist in doing things in defense that are more appropriate to a previous age.

Each year, the DoD publishes a document called the Green Book, which provides a great perspective about what's actually getting spent where. Usefully, it reports the data in constant dollars, using a specific deflator for each category of military spending, not just a general inflation discount. Here's what we've been spending since World War II. You can see the four big peaks in spending for Korea, Vietnam, the Reagan era, and post 9-11, and the subsequent drops afterwards. Notice that the DoD is already imagining a spending reduction from the peak of about 200B, which is of the same magnitude as the post Cold War "peace dividend."

Bookends

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Sunday March 09, 2014 · 12:06 PM PDT

2014/03/09 · 12:06

Last week I wrote a diary entitled "I'm in the military and I am overpaid." Extensive comments to the diary scolded me for insensitivity to the situation of junior enlisted service members. There was a point to that critique, so this diary is about taking a look at the compensation of our most junior enlisted members.

One of the things I've always liked about the military, frankly, is the pay balance between high and low. While the admirals and generals live better than the seamen and privates, the ratio of pay between the highest and lowest paid, in terms of basic compensation, is just a little under 10 (15,125.10 for an O-10 compared to 1531.50 for a recruit). There are few large corporations where that's the case, and I wish more of our society were compensated in that way. Also, some allowances like Basic Allowance for Subsistence, or BAS, are awarded without respect to rank.

For the purposes of this diary, I'm going to take a look at the compensation of a junior enlisted person, specifically, an E-2. This is a military member just out of boot camp, ready to begin his or her first assignment. While this member's basic pay is the same as any other E-2's, the individual's housing allowance is dependent on location and marital status. Consequently, I'm going to select the location that offers the very lowest basic allowance for housing, or BAH, in the country, which turns out to be Klamath Falls, OR 97601. In addition, I'm going to assume that this person has a spouse and one child, under the reasoning that policy doesn't permit the recruiting of people with more than two dependents.

Bookends

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Sunday March 02, 2014 · 8:10 AM PST

2014/03/02 · 08:10

In view of the discussion of military compensation, kicked off by Secretary Hagel and Kos' front pager the other day, I thought it would be helpful to lay out what they pay me to get an idea of how much this really is. I suspect that the community may find this a little surprising. All military compensation is a matter of public record.

I'm an O-5 - A Lieutenant Colonel or Commander, depending on which service I'm in, and no, I'm not saying. I was commissioned in 1991, so my basic military compensation is 8,676 per month. This works out to 104,112 per year, which is in anyone's book a comfortable living - it's just about double the median family income in the United States.

Being an O-5 is, in today's military, middle management. Some of us have commands, but in general you serve more often in staff functions. That's work that needs doing too, and it can be very fulfilling, but let's be clear - most O-5s are not leading troops at the front. This is quite rare.

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Progressive defense requirements - what does the US really need?

Military Compensation for Junior Enlisted - not obviously underpaid

I'm in the military and I am overpaid