La note salée pour le (la) prochain(e) président(e)

Pendant ce temps où le patron de Boeing s'inquiète douloureusement et où William S. Lind annonce une révolution anti-RMA, les indices s’accumulent de la situation catastrophique du budget DoD face aux dépenses folles des armées US en campagne (en Irak principalement). Ces dépenses non programmées menacent évidemment les dépenses folles d'ores et déjà programmées dans le budget pour des systèmes d'arme horriblement coûteux et absolument inutiles.

La question devrait être débattue pendant la campagne présidentielle, — mais elle ne le sera sans doute pas, parce qu’elle sera perdue dans les habituelles procédures démagogiques. Le prochain président (la prochaine présidente) se trouvera donc devant un problème absolument pharaonique d’un budget complètement incontrôlable. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”, sauf que c’est vraiment de plus en plus grave.

Quelques indications dans un texte de Defense News du 5 juillet :

«The next U.S. president will face a defense-budget quagmire, former government officials say, with one estimating the Pentagon may need up to $100 billion for as-yet-unplanned efforts to repair and replace war-worn arms and gear after the Iraq war ends.

»Military leaders already have spent billions, but ground vehicles and other military equipment will require more maintenance work than initially planned. The Pentagon could face a bill of up to $100 billion for additional reset costs, dollars that are still “unprogrammed,” Jeffrey Bialos of Johns Hopkins University said at a June 29 event sponsored by the American Security Project think tank. “Maintenance costs will likely squeeze modernization accounts.”

»Bialos has held several high-level federal posts, including a stint as deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial affairs from September 1999 through January 2001.

»Any such squeezing, however, will make things difficult for the next inhabitant of the White House, not President George W. Bush, former officials say.

»Army equipment and vehicles used in Iraq are wearing out “five times to six times faster” than originally anticipated, said Brookings Institution military analyst Peter Singer. Two-thirds of the Army’s brigade combat teams, Singer said, “are not ready for combat” at any given time. And yet “it’s business-as-usual” on big-ticket weapons under development, he said.

»Gordon Adams, a Clinton-era official in the Office and Management and Budget, painted a bleak picture for the 2008 and successive defense budgets. Among the issues “buried in the budget” and yet to be accounted for are “a huge bill for reset coming” and “creeping O&M costs.”»

Mis en ligne le 6 juillet 2007 à 10H20