"THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT By Mark Thompson
"Embarrassments like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with flubbed programs like the F-35 fighter, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, and the Army’s repeated failure to replace its Bradley Fighting Vehicles rate right up there with Boeing’s blunders."
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"Boeing, the Pentagon’s #4 contractor, was once an icon of American ingenuity and industrial prowess. But it has never recovered from the tailspin following its 1997 merger with bottom-line-obsessed McDonnell Douglas. Its new Air Force Ones and aerial tankers have hit heavy turbulence. Two of its 737 MAX airliners crashed. A fuselage panel blew off one of its jets. Safety concerns about its Starliner space capsule have left two astronauts stranded in space. Its biggest union remains on strike.
Last week, Boeing decided to pull its head out of its afterburner. The decision came as the company confirmed it had lost $2 billion on defense work over the prior three months. “I think that we're better off doing less, and doing it better, than doing more and not doing it well,” brand-new Boeing boss Kelly Ortberg said October 23. To right its flailing business, Boeing plans to shed pieces of the company, likely including some of its space programs.
The U.S. and its Department of Defense should take a lesson from Ortberg. After all, embarrassments like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with flubbed programs like the F-35 fighter, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, and the Army’s repeated failure to replace its Bradley Fighting Vehicles rate right up there with Boeing’s blunders.
The U.S. was the global colossus following World War II. While it accounted for 40% of the world’s economic output in 1960, that share has fallen to 26% today. Yet Washington still sees itself as the world cop, spending close to $1 trillion annually on its military, more than the next 10 countries combined. It has more than 170,000 troops based in 178 countries around the world and sold a record $238 billion in weapons to many of them last year.
The U.S. national-security state and U.S. national-security think tanks churn out reports every year warning that the Pentagon is underfunded and that defeat is just around the corner. They all flow from official documents from the White House (PDF) and Pentagon that insist the U.S. must be ready to defend pretty much anything everywhere at any time.
The United States is the only country in the world that designs its military to be able to depart one hemisphere, cross broad expanses of ocean and air space, and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations upon arrival in another hemisphere,” the Congressional Research Service said in an Oct. 2 assessment (PDF) exploring the size and cost of the U.S. military. “That U.S. policymakers for the past several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, 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.”
Boeing’s decision to trim its flaps is rooted in humility that can mature into wisdom. The U.S. should follow suit."
POGO A MODEST PROPOSAL The Pentagon should follow Boeing’s lead
