US military not ready for upcoming threats: Ex Pentagon official
The United States is channeling billions of dollars to projects that are mostly “obsolete” and do not benefit the US military in the face of upcoming threats, a former Pentagon official says.
Michael Maloof made the comments in an interview with Press TV on Thursday, over the approval of a massive military budget by the US House of Representatives.
The analyst said he was not surprised by the $610 billion budget but said he was indeed worried about the way it was going to be spent.
“It is not an unusual thing; it is a little high although it has come under serious challenge because there is concern that the money is being misdirected and not going into programs that meet today’s challenges,” Maloof said.
The former Pentagon official noted that some US military programs become obsolete before entering the operational phase and amount to a waste of funding and research, while replacing successful programs with failing ones.
“Right now we need more F-22s [but] that production only got stopped,” he said. “So they decided to shift over to F-35s, for example, and they are having tremendous production problems and cost overruns” which contributes to the surging budget.
J. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester, has said that the US Air Force is not satisfied with $400 billion warplane because of “inherited deficiencies” with its software and “new avionics stability problems.”
A fuel system deficiency, faulty diagnostic systems, cracks in wing spars, lack of high-fidelity simulators for combat missions, and a pilot escape system that could kill ejecting pilots were among the problems that Gilmore cited for F-35.
“All in all the defense budget is generally pretty below the—a lot of the programs are obsolete and they need to re-evaluate,” Maloof said, adding that the Pentagon’s “mysterious” procurement process also needs more clarification.
“A lot of reform really needs to be undertaken in the defense establishment,” he added.
Referring to America’s total debt of nearly $19 trillion, Maloof noted that the massive military spending meant that Washington was “borrowing against the debt.”
“The Obama administration basically is just checking out, but in that critical 6, 7 months from now a lot of things can happen and we are not just prepared to deal with catastrophic emergencies,” Maloof concluded.
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