{"id":220667,"date":"2016-02-01T16:33:39","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T16:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/feeding-the-military-industrial-complex\/"},"modified":"2016-02-01T16:33:39","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T16:33:39","slug":"feeding-the-military-industrial-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/feeding-the-military-industrial-complex\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeding the Military-Industrial Complex"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"157.03877772607\">\n<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong> Because he had commanded Allied forces in World War II, President Eisenhower understood the excesses of the war industry and warned Americans about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, a force that continues to siphon off tens of billions of tax dollars, as Jonathan Marshall explains.<\/p>\n<p>By Jonathan Marshall<\/p>\n<p>America\u2019s military procurement machine may be the single most successful system of wealth transfer ever devised \u2014 moving tens of billions of dollars every year from ordinary taxpayers into the pockets of big defense contractors and their allies in Congress. But as a provider of working equipment to defend the United States against realistic threats, it is becoming more and more dysfunctional with every passing year.<\/p>\n<p>Current administration plans call for spending a <em>trillion<\/em> dollars over the next 30 years to \u201cmodernize\u201d America\u2019s nuclear arsenal to fight a pointless war that would decimate major centers of civilization across the globe. [See Consortiumnews.com\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2016\/01\/23\/learning-to-love-and-use-the-bomb\/\">Learning to Love \u2014 and Use \u2014 the Bomb<\/a>\u201d]<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_17105\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" readability=\"33\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test.jpg?82332e\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-17105\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17105\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif?82332e\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test-300x236.jpg\" alt=\"The U.S. Navy variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in a test flight over the Chesapeake Bay. [Defense Department photoe]\" width=\"300\" height=\"236\" srcset=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test-300x236.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test-768x604.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test-560x440.jpg 560w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test-160x126.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17105\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test-300x236.jpg\" alt=\"The U.S. Navy variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in a test flight over the Chesapeake Bay. [Defense Department photoe]\" width=\"300\" height=\"236\" srcset=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test-300x236.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test-768x604.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test-560x440.jpg 560w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test-160x126.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/800px-CF-1_flight_test.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The U.S. Navy variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in a test flight over the Chesapeake Bay. [Defense Department photoe]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>At the same time, the Pentagon is also asking for even <em>greater<\/em> sums to modernize conventional weapons systems that are better suited to East-West conflict scenarios of the 1950s than to today\u2019s skirmishes with insurgents in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Spending on major military acquisition programs is <a href=\"https:\/\/csis.org\/files\/publication\/160126_Harrison_DefenseModernization_Web.pdf\">projected<\/a> to soar 23 percent, after adjusting for inflation, from fiscal year 2015 to 2022. Worse yet, Congress and the administration are spending much of that money on weapons that don\u2019t even work as advertised.<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest drivers of new procurement spending today is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet. The plane is too expensive and sophisticated for simple bombing runs in Syria or Afghanistan, but too crippled to use in dogfights against Russia\u2019s or China\u2019s most advanced fighters. It\u2019s ideal for one purpose only: With a total projected program cost of more than <em>$1 trillion<\/em>, this program will keep Lockheed Martin and its subcontractors in 46 states afloat for at least the next two&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2016\/02\/01\/feeding-the-military-industrial-complex\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive: Because he had commanded Allied forces in World War II, President Eisenhower understood the excesses of the war industry and warned Americans about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, a force that continues to siphon off tens of billions of tax dollars, as Jonathan Marshall explains. By Jonathan Marshall America\u2019s military procurement machine may [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-220667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}