There is a defense budget crisis on the horizon, but the Pentagon is hiding its head in the sand. Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s reluctance to deal with it threatens to waste billions and saddle the next president with a political time bomb before she/he even sets foot in the White House. …

According to a Jan. 27 report by budget guru Todd Harrison at the centrist Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), many of the new weapon systems the Pentagon plans to build will reach their peak funding requirements at the same time, around 2022. This is known in defense jargon as a modernization “bow wave” and, given budget caps and limited resources, there will not be enough money to pay for it.

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As CSIS points out, 18 major Pentagon programs were terminated in the 2000s, but only after the nation wasted $59 billion on them. That $59 billion could have bought Army brigades, Navy carriers groups, Air Force fighter wings, or Marine infantry.  Or it could have bought better public schools, more alternative energy or more snowplows. Instead it went down a rat hole. …

For example, CSIS identifies the 10 largest Pentagon acquisition programs through 2030, including the F-35 joint strike fighter, the Arleigh Burke destroyer and the new Ford-class aircraft carrier. In addition to these conventional weapons, the list includes major investments in all three “legs” of a new US nuclear arsenal — new submarines, long-range bombers and land-based missiles. Over the next 15 years, these 10 programs alone will cost about $700 billion, or about 60 percent of all modernization funding.

Just to meet the peak of the bow wave in 2022, the Pentagon would need to find an additional $130 billion. Good luck with that. It is much more likely that some major programs will get delayed or canceled. The question is, how much money will the Pentagon pour down the drain before it gets serious about cuts? …

And yet the Obama administration has launched a 30-year, $1 trillion effort to rebuild the US nuclear arsenal from the ground up. …

Here is how we get serious. According to a Feb. 3 report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), Obama’s $1 trillion plan is unnecessary and unaffordable. CAP lays out a plan to save $120 billion while still retaining a formidable nuclear arsenal — reduce the number of nuclear-armed submarines, cancel the new cruise missile, cancel a new tactical nuclear weapon for Europe and forgo a new land-based missile.

Commentary: Obama’s Gift to Next President: A Defense Budget Train Wreck
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/commentary/2016/02/11/commentary-obamas-gift-next-president-defense-budget-train-wreck/80199380/