Tag: military industrial complex

What NATO Countries Spend On Military, Health, & Education

NATO countries officially agreed to raise their defense expenditures to 5% of their GDP by 2035.

But how do their military expenditures compare to what they spend on health and education?

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, shows a side-by-side comparison of government spending priorities as a percentage of GDP for all NATO members.

Compared: NATO’s Spending on Military Vs. Education and Health

Currently, every NATO country currently spends less on its military than on health or education.

However, the new 5% of GDP target for defense spending is currently higher than what every NATO country currently spends on their military.

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America Can’t Afford To Be The Arsenal Of The World Anymore

President Donald Trump was reportedly caught “flat-footed” when the Pentagon abruptly announced it was freezing shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine, including Patriot missile interceptors, precision-guided GMLRS, and artillery rounds.

The rationale for halting shipments of defensive weapons to Ukraine stems from a review that found that the U.S. only has about 25 percent of the Patriot interceptors needed for all Defense Department military plans.

Yet just days later, Trump reversed course. “They’re getting hit very hard now,” he said. “We’re going to send some more weapons — defensive weapons primarily.”

The rapid pivot back to arms transfers to Ukraine illustrates just how deeply embedded interventionist reflexes remain not just in Congress and the Pentagon, but even within Trump’s own orbit.

US Running Low

At the center of this internal tug-of-war is Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, a leading voice for a more restrained, realist approach to America’s military posture, which is a position that has reportedly frustrated some hawkish members within the Trump administration.

Colby has warned that U.S. weapons stockpiles are running low, defense manufacturing is lagging behind adversaries, and that it is time for Europe to take primary responsibility for Ukraine, while America focuses on shoring up its limited resources by preparing for a far more dangerous geopolitical challenge: China.

A recent analysis by Foreign Affairs aligns with Colby’s assessment, stating that the United States “has low stockpiles of munitions, its ships and planes are older than China’s, and its industrial base lacks the capacity to regenerate these assets. In war games that simulate a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, Washington runs out of key munitions within weeks.”

The U.S. Air Force’s fleet is showing its age, with planes averaging 32 years old, and some exceeding 50 years. Developing new major weapons platforms like these can take more than eight years, however if the F-22 Raptor is any indication, the process could take more than 15 years.

The U.S. Navy is in an equally perilous situation. Though the average U.S. naval vessel is 19 years old, some vessels like cruisers are pushing almost 30 years old. To meet future demand, the Navy may require extending the lives of some non-nuclear surface ships to over 50 years old.

In stark contrast, 70 percent of China’s naval ships have been launched since 2010. China’s annual shipbuilding capacity is an astounding 26 million tons, which is 370 times greater than the United States’ capacity of 70,000 tons. The U.S. industrial capacity is so limited that it cannot even produce a single 100,000-ton Ford-class aircraft carrier annually.

Still, Washington clings to a WWII-era fantasy, believing that it can arm the world while neglecting its own arsenal.

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Trump’s BBB busts the budget to benefit arms makers, AI warlords

Trump’s bill slashes spending on veterans to boost corporate welfare for the Big Five arms manufacturers and surging AI spying firms like Palantir.

Originally published at Antiwar.com.

The Senate is on the verge of passing the distinctly misnamed “big beautiful bill.” It is, in fact, one of the ugliest pieces of legislation to come out of Congress in living memory. The version that passed the House recently would cut $1.7 trillion, mostly in domestic spending, while providing the top 5% of taxpayers with roughly $1.5 trillion in tax breaks.

Over the next few years, the same bill will add another $150 billion to a Pentagon budget already soaring towards a record $1 trillion. In short, as of now, in the battle between welfare and warfare, the militarists are carrying the day.

Pentagon Pork and the People It Harms

The bill allocates tens of billions of dollars to pursue President Trump’s cherished but hopeless Golden Dome project, which Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists has described as “a fantasy.” She explained exactly why the Golden Dome, which would supposedly protect the United States against nuclear attack, is a pipe dream:

“Over the last 60 years, the United States has spent more than $350 billion on efforts to develop a defense against nuclear-armed ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles]. This effort has been plagued by false starts and failures, and none have yet been demonstrated to be effective against a real-world threat… Missile defenses are not a useful or long-term strategy for keeping the U.S. safe from nuclear weapons.”

The bill also includes billions more for shipbuilding, heavy new investments in artillery and ammunition, and funding for next-generation combat aircraft like the F-47.

Oh, and after all of those weapons programs get their staggering cut of that future Pentagon budget, somewhere way down at the bottom of that list is a line item for improving the quality of life for active-duty military personnel. But the share aimed at the well-being of soldiers, sailors, and airmen (and women) is less than 6% of the $150 billion that Congress is now poised to add to that department’s already humongous budget. And that’s true despite the way Pentagon budget hawks invariably claim that the enormous sums they routinely plan on shoveling into it — and the overflowing coffers of the contractors it funds — are “for the troops.”

Much of the funding in the bill will flow into the districts of key members of Congress (to their considerable political benefit). For example, the Golden Dome project will send billions of dollars to companies based in Huntsville, Alabama, which calls itself “Rocket City” because of the dense network of outfits there working on both offensive missiles and missile defense systems. And that, of course, is music to the ears of Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), the current chair of the House Armed Services Committee, who just happens to come from Alabama.

The shipbuilding funds will help prop up arms makers like HII Corporation (formerly Huntington Ingalls), which runs a shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, the home state of Senate Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss).  The funds will also find their way to shipyards in Maine, Connecticut, and Virginia.

Those funds will benefit the co-chairs of the House Shipbuilding Caucus, Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Representative Rob Wittman (R-VA). Connecticut hosts General Dynamics’ Electric Boat plant, which makes submarines that carry ballistic missiles, while Virginia is home to HII Corporation’s Newport News Shipbuilding facility, which makes both aircraft carriers and attack submarines.

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American cult: Why our special ops need a reset

America’s post-9/11 conflicts have left indelible imprints on our society and our military. In some cases, these changes were so gradual that few noticed the change, except as snapshots in time.

This is the case with the “Cult of Special Operations Forces (SOF)” that has emerged since 2001, first within the military, and then with society through mass media including popular autobiographies and movies ranging from “Black Hawk Down,” “Lone Survivor” “American Sniper,” “SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden” and many, many others. The Cult has metastasized to many broader cultural accoutrements (video games, fashion, veteran culture, etc.).

As with other situations where we see friends proceeding down an untenable path together, America’s relationship with its special operators requires an intervention.

First, to my SOF colleagues past and present, it’s not you…it’s us. Well, it’s mostly us — but a little bit you, too. This is not a screed against SOF; I am an old SOF tribal member, and I have many friends and family members within the community. Our SOF troops are an incredible resource for the country — they are almost invariably brave, patriotic, fit, and spectacularly competent. Regardless of our differing policy views, we should be proud of their professionalism and their many tactical accomplishments over recent decades.

What I am about to say will no doubt anger some of my SOF friends — but mainly because they’ll know that I’m right. In the coming years, we will require an institutional and psychological reset of relations between America and her special operators. The elitism and secrecy of the current “Cult of SOF” is bad for the military, bad for society, and — ultimately — bad for the operators themselves.

SOF and “Big Army”

Until relatively recently, the U.S. military had a problematic relationship with its special forces. The Vietnam experience soured many in the conventional military on the special operators, whom they saw as ill-disciplined and overrated. Others argued that concentrating superior troops and leaders in single units denied the rest of the force the leavening effect that those soldiers could have added to regular formations.

Despite the skepticism of senior leaders, however, SOF expanded on an ad hoc basis in the years following Vietnam, until its tenuous position with the Pentagon changed with the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, which established an overarching Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and strengthened the position of SOF within the defense structure.

The institutional strength of SOF relative to their conventional cousins was subsequently turbocharged by the 9/11 attacks and their leading role in the ensuing Forever Wars.

Today’s operators enjoy a privileged and inverted relationship with their parent services. SOF is now a caste apart, dominating the upper ranks of the military and monopolizing media and cultural attention. The “quiet professionals” many originally envisaged now have a media machine unrivaled across the military. Today’s SOF often treat the conventional military as the minor leagues from which they can selectively draw new talent. This distinction impacts the morale of conventional forces, even if few are prepared to publicly discuss it.

This stratification has impacts beyond hurt feelings, however. Separate chains of command and separate lines of effort can sometimes undermine what should be unified campaign plans. SOF theory begins with the proposition that specially selected and trained small units can have a vastly disproportionate battlefield impact, and this has often been the case. Sometimes, however, conventional units and scarce air assets have had to drastically intervene to pull SOF forces out of untenable situations of their own making, as happened in Mogadishu, and Operation ANACONDA, and elsewhere.

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Lockheed Martin offers to rescue Mars mission from budget death

NASA’s beleaguered Mars Sample Return mission may get a reprieve from an unexpected source. Lockheed Martin has proposed a streamlined, lower-cost alternative that could slash the mission’s price tag by more than half.

Facing significant funding cuts across multiple programs, NASA’s ambitious international effort to retrieve Martian samples and return them to Earth is under threat. Already jeopardized by Russia’s withdrawal from the program following its invasion of Ukraine, the mission now faces potential cancellation due to shifting priorities within the current US administration.

Under new agency guidelines, NASA has been ordered to focus more on deep-space crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, along with other endeavors involving cutting-edge technology, while axing projects that have been marked by massive spending without a proportionate scientific return.

One prime candidate for the chop is the Mars Sample Return mission, which is a staggeringly ambitious international program involving many nations that is tasked with using multiple spacecraft to collect samples from the surface of Mars and then return them to Earth for in-depth laboratory analysis.

The mission’s first phase is already underway, with NASA’s Perseverance rover exploring the surface of Mars. As it traverses the dunes and dead river beds that last saw water two billion years ago, it’s been collecting drilling samples that have been sealed in special container tubes left behind on the ground like a paper trail in a cosmic game of Hares & Hounds.

The idea is that a second lander will eventually set down in the vicinity of the first and deploy a second rover that will follow the path blazed by the nuclear-powered Perseverance and collect the tubes. These will be stored in a special sealed container, which will be placed in a small rocket that will be fired into orbit around Mars where it will rendezvous with yet another spacecraft for return to Earth.

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US To Spend $1.5 Billion Building New Air Bases and Facilities for the Israeli Military

The US is poised to spend over $1 billion on building new air bases and various other types of military facilities, Haaretz reported on Tuesday, citing documents and presentations from the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The construction projects include building a facility to accommodate Israel’s new KC-46 refueling aircraft, a facility for CH-53 helicopters, new headquarters for the Israeli army’s Shayetet 13 naval commando unit, ammunition storage, and other projects.

Ongoing US construction projects inside Israel are valued at about $250 million, and the total for all of the projects being planned is $1.5 billion. All of the construction will be funded by US military aid.

Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid each year, but has received significantly more since October 7, 2023. According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, from October 2023 to October 2024, the US approved at least $17.9 billion in new military aid for Israel to support the genocidal war in Gaza and other Israeli wars in the region.

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“Troops Could Vanish Like Squid”: New Bio-Inspired Camo Lets US Soldiers Evade Sight And High-Tech Sensors Instantly

The fusion of biology and technology continues to break new ground, as seen in a remarkable project funded by DARPA and the Air Force. By leveraging the natural abilities of cephalopods, particularly the squid, researchers are developing advanced camouflage technology for military applications.

This bio-inspired innovation promises to revolutionize how soldiers hide in plain sight, adapting to various environments by mimicking the squid’s adaptive skin. Such breakthroughs not only highlight the potential of bioinspired materials but also reinforce the crucial role of interdisciplinary research in defense and technology.

The Science Behind Squid-Inspired Camouflage

At the heart of this innovative research is the study of squid skin, particularly the light-reflecting cells known as iridophores. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, in collaboration with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, have delved into the unique cellular structures of the longfin inshore squid. These iridophores contain tightly coiled columns of a protein called reflectin. These proteins act like natural Bragg reflectors, enabling the squid to change colors rapidly and efficiently.

Through advanced imaging techniques such as holotomography, scientists have captured detailed three-dimensional views of these cells, revealing how the columns of reflectin twist and organize themselves to manipulate light. This ability allows the squid to transition from being transparent to displaying vibrant colors, a mechanism that could be pivotal in developing materials that mimic these changes for military use.

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Ukrainian Oligarchs Have Become Incredibly Rich From The War Writes Swiss Newspaper

Ukraine was widely recognized as the most corrupt country even before the Ukraine war, but since war broke out and tens of billions of euros have flowed into the country, corruption has flourished like never before.

Swiss newspaper Neue Züricher Zeitung details how a clique of oligarchs, many of them close to President Volodymyr Zelensky, have grown famously wealthy.

“These big businessmen are profiting enormously from the war, while also being patriotic, pro-Western and very discreet,” wrote the Swiss Neue Züricher Zeitung‘s (NZZ) Kyiv correspondent, Guillaume Ptak.

In other words, instead of showing off with sports cars, these new oligarchs know they have to keep their wealth hidden amid a devastating war. The paper details five individuals who have profited enormously.

“The war, which has entered its fourth year, is proving to be a profitable field for businessmen like Andri Stawnizer, Andri Kobolev, Oleksander Hereha, Andri Kolodyuk, and Vasil Khmelnitsky. The quintet has established itself in the war economy, investing in rebuilding what the Russian army destroys time and again. earns a fortune in strategic sectors such as logistics, energy, or construction materials. Typical war profiteers? Sure. But not entirely,” writes the Swiss paper.

They are making a fortune in strategic sectors. While this could be considered typical war profiteering it is also seen in a more positive light, since they ultimately support the army and the civilian population. According to the NZZ journalist, they are therefore“not like their classic predecessors, who recovered after the change of regime. They were mostly swept away by the war. The new generation does not buy TVs, newspapers or representatives, nor parties or private armies.”

NZZ writes that this new generation of oligarchs is not like the old one, and that “reins are held by President Volodymyr Zelensky.”

While Ukrainian authorities welcome most of the new oligarchs, this does not mean that they automatically have good relations with the presidential office. The paper notes that Kobolev, in particular, was known for his anti-corruption activities even before the war. He reportedly does not have the best relationship with Zelensky and has now been charged with corruption himself.

As for the other four, the paper does not make any allegations of corruption, but Ukraine is known as a country where corruption is entrenched from the top to the bottom of the system. Many leading officials have been charged with corruption, but skeptics claim that in many cases, these are only the officials who ran afoul of someone with more power, who wanted to remove a rival or settle a score.

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Trump says Ukraine will need Patriot missiles for its defense, chides Putin

U.S. President Donald Trump said Ukraine would need Patriot missiles for its defenses, after speaking with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday, and voiced frustration over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s failure to end the fighting.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he had a good call with Zelenskiy, repeating that he was “very unhappy” about his call with Putin a day earlier, given what he called the Russian leader’s refusal to work on a ceasefire.

Asked whether the United States would agree to supply more Patriot missiles to Ukraine, as requested by Zelenskiy, Trump said: “They’re going to need them for defense… They’re going to need something because they’re being hit pretty hard.”

Trump touted the efficacy of the Patriot missiles, calling the weapon “pretty amazing.”

Asked about the prospects for a ceasefire, Trump said, “It’s a very tough situation… I was very unhappy with my call with President Putin. He wants to go all the way, just keep killing people – it’s no good.”

Zelenskiy said he had agreed to work on increasing Kyiv’s capability to “defend the sky” as Russian attacks escalate, adding in a message on Telegram that he discussed joint defense production, as well as joint purchases and investments with the U.S. leader.

Ukraine has been asking Washington to sell it more Patriot missiles and systems that it sees as key to defending its cities from intensifying Russian air strikes.

A decision by Washington to halt some shipments of weapons to Ukraine prompted warnings by Kyiv that the move would weaken its ability to defend against Russia’s airstrikes and battlefield advances. Germany said it is in talks on buying Patriot air defense systems to bridge the gap.

A source briefed on the Trump-Zelenskiy call told Reuters they were optimistic that supplies of Patriot missiles could resume after what they called a “very good” conversation between the presidents.

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German MPs demand more money for Ukraine – Bild

A group of German lawmakers from the Green Party has called on Chancellor Friedrich Merz to urgently increase military aid to Ukraine, saying Berlin must contribute more in light of a slowdown in US arms deliveries, according to a letter obtained by Bild.

The letter, signed by Bundestag deputies Robin Wagener, Sara Nanni, Sebastian Schafer, and Anton Hofreiter, criticized the federal government’s recently announced increase in military assistance from €7.1 billion to €8.3 billion as insufficient.

The lawmakers pointed to the US decision to pause certain weapons shipments to Kiev as a critical factor, arguing that Berlin should raise the figure to at least €8.5 billion and commit to maintaining that level through 2029.

The Green MPs, who have been among Kiev’s most vocal supporters in the Bundestag, reportedly said the government still has room to maneuver within the approved budget framework, and argued that the constitutional limits on debt spending could be sidestepped through special exemptions.

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