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Feliks wrote: "Question for Michel; or Adam; anyone else in our group who is current or former MOS.
Anyone can answer; but Michel, I know you probably have the skinny on this.
When it comes to military spendi..."
As an ex-Canadian Forces soldier with 32 years of service (20 years active + 12 years reserve duty), I will be happy to give you my two cent (or 400 cents) on this, Feliks.
First off, I must warn you that the answer will hugely vary depending on which Army you are talking about. Is it a fully professional army, a part professional/conscript army or a mostly conscript army? There is also the factor of how rich/prosperous is that country and whether it takes its defense obligations seriously or is a nest of pacifists/day dreamers? There is also the question of corruption (any of it/a lot/totally corrupt) inside the government and ministry of defense in that country. So, here is what I believe, depending on the specific type of army and its political/social environment. In order to answer your questions, I will take the example of Canada, the United States, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Israel, China and India.
Canada: its military is a fully professional force and its personnel is very well paid by any World standards. It has about 2/3 active pers vs 1/3 reservists. Most of defense budget (about 1.2 % of GDP) is spent on personnel and operating costs, with equipment acquisition not being very high (in my opinion), with new equipment buying being both infrequent and in insufficient quantities. Canada's military suffers from a peculiar acquisition systems that emphasizes contributions to the national economy, often at the expense of the relevance/efficacy of the equipment being bought. Even if the military brass wants a specific type of equipment, Supply Canada (a civilian ministry) will decide how that equipment will be acquired and paid for and will typically insist that it be produced in Canada, under licence if need be, even when it would result in doubling or tripling the price paid for that equipment. This results in tremendous waste and delays. Canadian military personnel, being well paid, make a significant contribution to the local economy around their bases and will often live off base in rented apartments rather than on base. Military pensions are generous, so savings plans are not as critical to its personnel as in other countries. Any military budget spending is subject to intense political scrutiny and pro-peace lobbying, so opportunistic military spending will be very rare, unless an operational emergency forces the buying of a specific new kit.
U.S.A.: The rich kid on the block, with a fully professional force and a huge military budget representing about 4-5 % of its GDP (not sure of exact number). Its personnel is generally well paid (but is vulnerable to the high cost of living, so often lives within base facilities). American forces definitely buy more equipment on opportunistic basis than in Canada (sometimes due to lobbying and political pressure). Mil pers spending will definitely influence the local economy but the services paid by the base administration will be the most important part of the contribution to the local economy.
Germany: a once-powerful and influential part of Germany, German Armed Forces, while well equiped, have been mostly starved in terms of operating budgets, with low stocks of ammunition and spare parts and low operational readiness resulting from years of political neglect. Once a conscript army, the German forces have turned to a part professional, part conscript system, but military careers are mostly not considered glamorous or prestigious, with a high level of peace activism in the country. I don't know about present levels of military pay but, in the past decades, they were not that high. German government has vowed to contribute more to NATO but true enthusiasm is not there for more military spending.
Sweden: a mostly conscript army where national military service is taken seriously. Swedish forces are fairly small in comparison of the size of the country (like in Canada) but have generally high quality and modern equipment. Having been officially neutral until very recently, Sweden prided itself on being self-sufficient militarily and being ready to react quickly to any outside threat.
Russia: the giant with feet of clay. While its military arsenal is huge, its mixed force of professionals and conscripts is poorly paid, poorly treated and often poorly trained and led. The equpment portions of the defense budget are definitely much larger than the personnel portion, with a portion of GDP for defense having always being high but which is now even higher (6% plus) since the invasion of Ukraine. That war has shown the generally poor quality of training and motivation of Russian personnel, who are often abused and neglected by their officers. Rampant corruption has always existed in the Russian Armed Forces but the war in Ukraine has put a particularly harsh spotlight on that long-lived problem. The poor performance and motivation of Russian Army conscripts assigned to border defense has just been highlighted by the Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk Oblast.
Israel: a mostly conscript army with a solid professional core and good, modern equipment. The military is well regarded in Israel, thus enjoys a high priority in its national budgets. For the country's size and population, the Israeli military is an impressive force with battle-hardened personnel and lots of firepower. I however don't know much about Israeli military pay levels.
China (PRC): a huge military machine with huge numbers of personnel, most of them conscript doing mandatory national service. The general level of training seems to be adequate but let's remember that the Chinese military has not fought in an actual war for decades (last time against Vietnam in Cambodia in the 1970s), so is a mostly untested force. Like in Russia, military corruption is rampant and the lower level conscripts are poorly paid and poorly treated, while the officer corps follows a rigid military doctrine and chain of command that discourage initiative at low and mid levels. Like in Russia, the equipment and operation budgets will be much bigger than the personnel budgets. As for the quality of the equipment, it may look good and modern, but there are many examples of shoddy, low reliability equipment (see how their aircraft carriers perform).
Finally, India. The Indian forces are big and have quite a lot of actual combat experience (vs China and Pakistan), but has a mix of old and relatively modern equipment in its arsenal, on top of possessing nuclear weapons. Again, I can't say much about pay levels and service conditions in the Indian Armed Forces or about the economic impact of the Indian military on the local economy, but it certainly enjoys prestige in the eyes of the population.
Well, that's it for the moment. If you have other questions or would like more precisions on specific points, please do ask.
Anyone can answer; but Michel, I know you probably have the skinny on this.
When it comes to military spendi..."
As an ex-Canadian Forces soldier with 32 years of service (20 years active + 12 years reserve duty), I will be happy to give you my two cent (or 400 cents) on this, Feliks.
First off, I must warn you that the answer will hugely vary depending on which Army you are talking about. Is it a fully professional army, a part professional/conscript army or a mostly conscript army? There is also the factor of how rich/prosperous is that country and whether it takes its defense obligations seriously or is a nest of pacifists/day dreamers? There is also the question of corruption (any of it/a lot/totally corrupt) inside the government and ministry of defense in that country. So, here is what I believe, depending on the specific type of army and its political/social environment. In order to answer your questions, I will take the example of Canada, the United States, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Israel, China and India.
Canada: its military is a fully professional force and its personnel is very well paid by any World standards. It has about 2/3 active pers vs 1/3 reservists. Most of defense budget (about 1.2 % of GDP) is spent on personnel and operating costs, with equipment acquisition not being very high (in my opinion), with new equipment buying being both infrequent and in insufficient quantities. Canada's military suffers from a peculiar acquisition systems that emphasizes contributions to the national economy, often at the expense of the relevance/efficacy of the equipment being bought. Even if the military brass wants a specific type of equipment, Supply Canada (a civilian ministry) will decide how that equipment will be acquired and paid for and will typically insist that it be produced in Canada, under licence if need be, even when it would result in doubling or tripling the price paid for that equipment. This results in tremendous waste and delays. Canadian military personnel, being well paid, make a significant contribution to the local economy around their bases and will often live off base in rented apartments rather than on base. Military pensions are generous, so savings plans are not as critical to its personnel as in other countries. Any military budget spending is subject to intense political scrutiny and pro-peace lobbying, so opportunistic military spending will be very rare, unless an operational emergency forces the buying of a specific new kit.
U.S.A.: The rich kid on the block, with a fully professional force and a huge military budget representing about 4-5 % of its GDP (not sure of exact number). Its personnel is generally well paid (but is vulnerable to the high cost of living, so often lives within base facilities). American forces definitely buy more equipment on opportunistic basis than in Canada (sometimes due to lobbying and political pressure). Mil pers spending will definitely influence the local economy but the services paid by the base administration will be the most important part of the contribution to the local economy.
Germany: a once-powerful and influential part of Germany, German Armed Forces, while well equiped, have been mostly starved in terms of operating budgets, with low stocks of ammunition and spare parts and low operational readiness resulting from years of political neglect. Once a conscript army, the German forces have turned to a part professional, part conscript system, but military careers are mostly not considered glamorous or prestigious, with a high level of peace activism in the country. I don't know about present levels of military pay but, in the past decades, they were not that high. German government has vowed to contribute more to NATO but true enthusiasm is not there for more military spending.
Sweden: a mostly conscript army where national military service is taken seriously. Swedish forces are fairly small in comparison of the size of the country (like in Canada) but have generally high quality and modern equipment. Having been officially neutral until very recently, Sweden prided itself on being self-sufficient militarily and being ready to react quickly to any outside threat.
Russia: the giant with feet of clay. While its military arsenal is huge, its mixed force of professionals and conscripts is poorly paid, poorly treated and often poorly trained and led. The equpment portions of the defense budget are definitely much larger than the personnel portion, with a portion of GDP for defense having always being high but which is now even higher (6% plus) since the invasion of Ukraine. That war has shown the generally poor quality of training and motivation of Russian personnel, who are often abused and neglected by their officers. Rampant corruption has always existed in the Russian Armed Forces but the war in Ukraine has put a particularly harsh spotlight on that long-lived problem. The poor performance and motivation of Russian Army conscripts assigned to border defense has just been highlighted by the Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk Oblast.
Israel: a mostly conscript army with a solid professional core and good, modern equipment. The military is well regarded in Israel, thus enjoys a high priority in its national budgets. For the country's size and population, the Israeli military is an impressive force with battle-hardened personnel and lots of firepower. I however don't know much about Israeli military pay levels.
China (PRC): a huge military machine with huge numbers of personnel, most of them conscript doing mandatory national service. The general level of training seems to be adequate but let's remember that the Chinese military has not fought in an actual war for decades (last time against Vietnam in Cambodia in the 1970s), so is a mostly untested force. Like in Russia, military corruption is rampant and the lower level conscripts are poorly paid and poorly treated, while the officer corps follows a rigid military doctrine and chain of command that discourage initiative at low and mid levels. Like in Russia, the equipment and operation budgets will be much bigger than the personnel budgets. As for the quality of the equipment, it may look good and modern, but there are many examples of shoddy, low reliability equipment (see how their aircraft carriers perform).
Finally, India. The Indian forces are big and have quite a lot of actual combat experience (vs China and Pakistan), but has a mix of old and relatively modern equipment in its arsenal, on top of possessing nuclear weapons. Again, I can't say much about pay levels and service conditions in the Indian Armed Forces or about the economic impact of the Indian military on the local economy, but it certainly enjoys prestige in the eyes of the population.
Well, that's it for the moment. If you have other questions or would like more precisions on specific points, please do ask.
Mod
The question --in my mind --originated when looking at the US budget.
Health - approx 25%
Social Security approx 25%
Military - approx 16%.
Everything else: small potatoes
And I usually agree that the way the US spending and deficit is lopsided. Never enough for education, of course. And we also don't keep our transportation infrastructure up. Lots of boneheaded mismanagement.
But as for 'health' and 'social security' --these two enormous 'wedges' of the pie' --I don't quibble at all about that because really, what else should we spend taxes on besides preserving lives?
I'm not sure how American taxes were divided up prior to WWII. I do know that the original deficit which invoked Wilson's creation of tax, was caused by all the banana wars, paying for WWI, etc.
But the modern-day 16% for military --well, it strikes me that if most of the mil budget goes to personnel --then, mil pay returns to the nation in the form of buying power, just like anything else does. Mil pay supports lives and families. Homeowners, retirement plans, etc.
If that's so, then I can't complain. Those are 'people-based' costs.
But if most of the US mil budget goes to endless play-toys, damn R&D, and other fancy shyt that troops don't actually need or use --then I might side with critics who want the US mil budget lowered.
So that's what I wanted to know. Is the American mil budget used wisely, for the actual subsidence (cost of living) of our citizen-soldiers, or is it wasted on 'sunk-costs'? What good is always boasting the latest weaps if all they do is sit idle in hangars?
Thx thx thx!
I don't know if that 16% of budget going to the military includes them as well, but what about the military assistance money given to allies like Israel, Taiwan and the Philippines? Are these assistance programs lined under the DoD or under the State Department?
Mod
All foreign aid goes out from State, so far as I understand it
In any case, such monies would hardly be measurable against the amounts paid to either personnel or contractors, right? In a modern military budget, what are the most 'massive' line-items?
Not referring to 'branches' here but to over-line and under-line
Feliks wrote: ''Is the American mil budget used wisely, for the actual subsidence (cost of living) of our citizen-soldiers, or is it wasted on 'sunk-costs'? What good is always boasting the latest weaps if all they do is sit idle in hangars? "
Is the American mil budget used wisely? I don't think so. Too much political influence and corporate lobbying often resulting in new equipment programs being 'gold-plated' or mismanaged. Here are some examples of such gold-plating and mismanagement:
Lockheed F-35 stealth fighter: a very badly managed acquisition program with years of delays and massive cost overruns. The biggest problem in that program (in my opinion) is the decision by the Air Force to start acquiring F-35s BEFORE its testing and development were completed, something the Air Force called 'concurrency' (a fancy word for utterly stupid program management/mismanagement). As a result, the first batches of F-35s built and acquired still had flaws and performance shortcomings when they came out of Lockheed plants, which then necessitated costly rework/corrections/additions, and this for over a decade now! The software used by the F-35 is still evolving, using 'block' steps, which again need to be updated/modified at great cost and delays on the planes already produced. As a result, the F-35 suffered a number of groundings due to technical glitches that could have been avoided/prevented if the plane had been thoroughly tested BEFORE entering production.
The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS): one of the U.S. Navy's contribution to American equipment acquisition mismanagement. This program was supposed to provide numerous, cheap, fast and effective combat warships specializing in coastal combat and patrol and produced two distinct types of LCS ships: the FREEDOM Class and the INDEPENDENCE Class, both using supposedly quick-change armament modules in order to make them more versatile. 15 billion dollars was assigned to the program in 2003 when it was started. That program quickly suffered cost overruns and design/technical problems. Individual ship cost was said at first to be about 440-460 million dollars (for a ship the size of a corvette/small frigate) but, in 2011, the actual cost per ship was estimated to be 1.8 billion dollars. For that inflated price, the LCS ships were shown to be too lightly armed for coastal combat and had low survivability to combat damage. The ships also suffered multiple engineering breakdowns and structural failures (cracked hulls), resulting in low availability and reliability. Because of their poor performance and reliability, the first LCS ships built were retired from service after thirteen years (for FREEDOM Class) and eleven years (for INDEPENDENCE Class). One of the ships, LCS-11, was retired after less than five years of service, while only 31 ships out of the originally planned 52 were built.
The ZUMWALT-Class destroyer: designed and planned to replace the ARLEIGH BURKE-Class destroyers, the ZUMWALT is a huge, 15,907 ton-ship, 32 of which were supposed to be produced. It is a stealth ship with a main armamaent of vertical-launch missiles and two long-range 155mm guns. Due to quickly ballooning costs (8B, as in billion, dollars per ship) and performance failures, the class was ordered cut to only three ships in 2010. The much vaunted long-range 155mm guns are also useless now, as their special shells were deemed too expensive to be produced in quantity (800K-1M dollars PER shell). The whole program has since been declared to be a complete disaster emblematic of the failures of the American defense procurement system.
So, does the American public gets its money's worth out of the American defense equipment programs? Hardly! What it gets is systematic equipment gold-plating, equipment programs mismanagement and gross incompetence.
Is the American mil budget used wisely? I don't think so. Too much political influence and corporate lobbying often resulting in new equipment programs being 'gold-plated' or mismanaged. Here are some examples of such gold-plating and mismanagement:
Lockheed F-35 stealth fighter: a very badly managed acquisition program with years of delays and massive cost overruns. The biggest problem in that program (in my opinion) is the decision by the Air Force to start acquiring F-35s BEFORE its testing and development were completed, something the Air Force called 'concurrency' (a fancy word for utterly stupid program management/mismanagement). As a result, the first batches of F-35s built and acquired still had flaws and performance shortcomings when they came out of Lockheed plants, which then necessitated costly rework/corrections/additions, and this for over a decade now! The software used by the F-35 is still evolving, using 'block' steps, which again need to be updated/modified at great cost and delays on the planes already produced. As a result, the F-35 suffered a number of groundings due to technical glitches that could have been avoided/prevented if the plane had been thoroughly tested BEFORE entering production.
The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS): one of the U.S. Navy's contribution to American equipment acquisition mismanagement. This program was supposed to provide numerous, cheap, fast and effective combat warships specializing in coastal combat and patrol and produced two distinct types of LCS ships: the FREEDOM Class and the INDEPENDENCE Class, both using supposedly quick-change armament modules in order to make them more versatile. 15 billion dollars was assigned to the program in 2003 when it was started. That program quickly suffered cost overruns and design/technical problems. Individual ship cost was said at first to be about 440-460 million dollars (for a ship the size of a corvette/small frigate) but, in 2011, the actual cost per ship was estimated to be 1.8 billion dollars. For that inflated price, the LCS ships were shown to be too lightly armed for coastal combat and had low survivability to combat damage. The ships also suffered multiple engineering breakdowns and structural failures (cracked hulls), resulting in low availability and reliability. Because of their poor performance and reliability, the first LCS ships built were retired from service after thirteen years (for FREEDOM Class) and eleven years (for INDEPENDENCE Class). One of the ships, LCS-11, was retired after less than five years of service, while only 31 ships out of the originally planned 52 were built.
The ZUMWALT-Class destroyer: designed and planned to replace the ARLEIGH BURKE-Class destroyers, the ZUMWALT is a huge, 15,907 ton-ship, 32 of which were supposed to be produced. It is a stealth ship with a main armamaent of vertical-launch missiles and two long-range 155mm guns. Due to quickly ballooning costs (8B, as in billion, dollars per ship) and performance failures, the class was ordered cut to only three ships in 2010. The much vaunted long-range 155mm guns are also useless now, as their special shells were deemed too expensive to be produced in quantity (800K-1M dollars PER shell). The whole program has since been declared to be a complete disaster emblematic of the failures of the American defense procurement system.
So, does the American public gets its money's worth out of the American defense equipment programs? Hardly! What it gets is systematic equipment gold-plating, equipment programs mismanagement and gross incompetence.
Mod
Gotta agree with ya there. I work closely with one of the big contractors. There are lots of projects which go off the rails.
Oh well. Cool info.
If you happen to come across what percentage (even a ballpark figure) of US mil funds go to personnel vs hardware, please circle back. I think it'd be interesting to know.
Mod
How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain
related to the topic of supply chain, spending, and logistics
Mod
https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/20...
Anyone can answer; but Michel, I know you probably have the skinny on this.
When it comes to military spending --pick any modern western nation --typically, how much of a national defense budget is spent on personnel vs equipment?
How much is spent on 'sunk costs' vs 'prospective' or 'opportunity' costs?
Any idea? It just occurred to me today to wonder.
Going further --how much do most military personnel contribute back to the economy via spending?
E.g., do most mil live on base? Do they buy most of their goods from the PX?
Do they purchase goods at all or --relatively speaking --do they get all of life's necessities pre-supplied to them (food, housing, transportation)?
Are most MOS 'reserves' these days, rather than in full-time service careers?
Are savings plans and 401Ks provided to them or must they develop all that on their own?