Military Waste. Joshua O. Reno
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military predominance in the world is, ultimately, the fact that it can, at will, drop bombs, with only a few hours’ notice, at absolutely any point on the surface of the planet. No other government has ever had anything remotely like this sort of capability. In fact, a case could well be made that it is this very power that holds the entire world monetary system, organized around the dollar, together. (2011, 365–66)20
This ability to mete out destructive violence, anytime, anywhere, instantly, is about more than defending ordinary Americans, in other words. It is also (or, maybe entirely) about keeping the world economy together in its current form, which revolves around the dollar as a default global standard of value. What this means is that, around the world, material goods and whole countries can be appraised in terms of dollars. And if the world economy runs in some sense on the American economy, it is just that much more appealing to invest in.
If Americans have long criticized wasteful military expenditures, what has changed is that contemporary debates tend to focus on whether particular machines are necessary, not whether a permanent war economy is. In a time of otherwise intense political polarization in US public culture, it is rarely acknowledged that cutting military waste is one issue that can create unity across political parties. But a critique of military expenditure is easily paired with a call for the preservation of the military from the influence of greedy politicians and businesses. In an executive order signed on March 14, President Trump proposed eliminating wasteful spending at the Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), asking that the Office of Management and Budget involve the public in finding ways to “improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of that agency.” Yet, just two days later Trump asked Congress to approve a $54 billion hike in military spending, a portion of which was meant to pay for the proposed border wall with Mexico. These requests can be reconciled as part of the twin pillars of contemporary American political discourse, which blames the nanny state for misusing public money and insists on an ever-deepening commitment to military Keynesianism.21
My point is not to challenge these critiques of wastefulness but, rather, to argue that they do not go far enough. From the point of view of the military manufacturing industry, they already think of themselves as doing a lot to trim waste and improve efficiency. They are motivated, moreover, not only by profit motive (although this is clearly central), but by a variety of commitments to making quality, durable products, to solving problems and fixing errors, to improving ties with the service members and government agents whom they deal with on a regular basis. One could reduce these motivations to economic or class self-interest—as in critiques of the military industrial complex—except that does not explain why these men continue to associate with one another doing volunteer and charity work after they have ostensibly retired. It does not explain why they devote their time to technical problem-solving at the local observatory or maker-spaces, except that they enjoy it. One could add that they enjoy not only the technical labor itself, but the social microworld that it entails and its familiar ethic of responsibility. One engineer, Eddy, claims that retirees like volunteering for these charities because the work resembles what their job used to entail. Eddy is even “managed” at a maker-space and living museum, TechWorks, by the same man who once managed him during his time at Lockheed!
However waste is understood, based on the experiences of military manufacturers, that waste arises from military production whether or not weapons are ever finished, whether or not they are ever purchased, whether or not they ever leave the factory floor. Most people typically do not see unfinished, unsold, or unusable warcraft. It is far more common to encounter warcraft when they are deployed in military operations, before they can be used or after they have fallen out of use. This arguably reflects a deliberate defense strategy: commissioned and active warcraft are icons of military strength, meant to frighten potential enemies, comfort allies, and attract buyers on the international arms market. They serve this purpose better by looking new and capable, not ineffective, incomplete, old, and worn. But waste is part of military industry whether every dollar is accounted for or not. The GAO will continue to point out where money was misspent and funds wasted. And Trump, like Obama, now promises to eliminate waste. But accuse military manufacturers of being wasteful, and they can easily document in painstaking detail exactly how much more they have thought about waste than one can imagine—perhaps even too much in some cases, where quality controls and risk analyses run rampant and slow work down, wasting money and time. Another strategy might connect the work of Lockheed Martin or other manufacturers to destruction around the world, but this can also be easily justified in terms of familiar public goods, such as national security, especially when civilians and military manufacturers are distanced from the “consumption” of military products in war.
A different approach is to argue that America’s massive military is not only poorly financed and organized, but has never been necessary at all, not now and not during the Cold War. For most of the twentieth century, the United States possessed far more nuclear weapons than the Soviet Union, but justified the necessity of amassing this excessive arsenal by claiming the very opposite (Masco 2014, 127). American military historian Paul A. C. Koistinen applies this same criticism to conventional weaponry: “In its ongoing quest for higher-performing aircraft, missiles, ships, tanks, and the like, America competed with itself, not with either its enemies or its allies” (2012, 168). While it is important to criticize policymakers and businesses for egregious expenditures, it is also important to note that even if this money were used with maximum efficiency, the US military would likely remain the biggest in the world and the nation’s greatest expense, no matter how efficiently the Pentagon spends “its” money.
One final problem with the idea of the military industrial complex is that it can conjure images of military, political, and economic elites working behind the scenes, in darkened halls of power, as if they were completely detached from ordinary people and communities.22 As if we have to compel them to act if we want to change how things are, with the implication that “we” have no real agency. For the remainder of this book, I focus more on how military waste can be made productive in the hands and imaginations of civilians.
CHAPTER 2
Flight or Fight
COAUTHORED WITH PRISCILLA BENNETT
The permanent war economy of the United States has produced the world’s most powerful and destructive airborne fleet. According to the CIA, the United States has over thirteen thousand military aircraft in operation today, while its nearest competitors, Russia and China, have about half as many combined. But planes do not remain combat-ready indefinitely. In this chapter, I follow military aircraft as they are transformed through reuse, preservation, and memorialization, each of which involves tensions over what can be done with them and what they mean.1 In some cases, people attempt to rethink planes beyond their application in war, or to demilitarize them. In each case, the possible affordances of planes, as material objects, complicate the view that they are nothing but tools of violence or propaganda to justify permanent war-readiness.
Whatever the tactical benefit of having a permanent supply of destructive aircraft, the enormity of the American fleet creates no shortage of logistical problems. The United States needs more space to keep and store planes, spare parts, tools, and repair staff. No object remains the same over time without constant attention. This effectively means that aircraft are perpetually re-created as they are fixed, improved, updated, and cared for. As discussed in the previous chapter, this is a key part of how materials are designed, tested, and retrofitted by military manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, even after they are sold.
When planes outlive their usefulness, they usually go to the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base outside Tucson in Arizona. Davis-Monthan is one of the largest areas in the US Air Combat Command. Due to its size, the dry desert climate (which helps avoid corrosion), and depopulated surroundings, it became the base of operations for the Military Aircraft Storage and Disposition Center (MASDC). This became the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARC), popularly known as “the Boneyard.” According to Michael Thompson ([1979] 2017), it is precisely when things are intentionally forgotten and ignored—when they become set aside as what he calls “rubbish”—that they are capable of the most radical shifts in meaning and worth. On a tour of the Boneyard, a visitor is