How The US Military Spends $800B Per Year On War Machines | True Cost | Business Insider

in 2021 the U.S military budget crossed the 800 billion dollar mark that's more than the next nine largest militaries combined so it's no surprise that America with all that money to spend has the most expensive war machines on the planet take its latest aircraft carrier which comes in at a cool 13.3 billion dollars it's taken so long to build that five years after its commissioning the USS Ford is still not fully battle ready and what about the 1.7 trillion dollar F-35 fighter program the U.S Air Force recently grounded its entire fleet of Fighters for broken ejection seats some of America's war machines are currently in action in Ukraine like Javelin anti-tank missiles Howitzer artillery cannons and drones too like these California made switchblade loitering munitions the bill for America's latest war tech could run into the trillions of dollars but let's take a closer look at their true cost these 40 000 pound underwater bombs are just another test before the U.S Navy's largest and most expensive aircraft carrier is declared combat ready the USS Gerald R Ford is the first in a new class of carriers with more Firepower and a smaller crew the previous class began service in 1975. the Ford was designed to save billions over a 50-year lifespan still the Ford was double the cost of the last carrier built and it's been plagued with unexpected costs and delays just unclogging the toilets can cost four hundred thousand dollars we went aboard the USS Ford to find out why America's most advanced aircraft carrier still can't be deployed nearly two decades after plans to build it began [Music] these Sailors are moving Ordnance onto a new kind of weapons elevator that allows them to do what would be impossible on any other aircraft carrier we're bypassing the mess deck area we're completely independent you would never even see us move an ordinance throughout the day so it's more secure with higher survivability and we can store more on board it's the only way to move Munitions from deep inside the Ford to rearm planes on its Flight Deck less Advanced carriers move weapons in a more dangerous way through the hangers to the flight deck there are 11 elevators on board with the last only being certified in December 2021. the advanced weapons elevators are just one example of nearly two dozen major new technologies that make the USS Ford Cutting Edge and one big floating experiment tal Manville is a retired Navy Captain who served as the very first project manager on this new class of aircraft carrier the ship was supposed to start construction in o4 it got moved o5 they made an adjustment They delayed it a second time they delayed it a third time pushing that out the ship just by those delays went from 6.4 billion dollars to 10 billion dollars the Ford is the first of four new carriers already in different stages of design and build the Navy plans to replace the entire super carrier Fleet with Fords U.S Law requires its Navy to operate 11 carriers at all times but with all the delays the US is down to 10. the reason we have 11 is driven by the fact that the U.S Navy is kind of a two ocean Navy if you will of the 22 aircraft carriers in the world half are American while China Italy and the UK have just two each this Carrier class if if we build 10 or 11 or 12 could go easily into the 22nd century more than 5 000 shipbuilders worked an estimated 49 million hours to build the Ford that's seven times the hours logged building the Empire State Building Admiral Mike gilday the chief of Naval operations said it was a mistake to introduce more than maybe one or two technologies on any complex platform at a time Admiral gilday is right what you want to do is only do one or two new technologies on on a new ship and here's the reason why ships are the only weapon that the the Prototype the first of the class goes to war on the ship was christened in 2013. the Navy accepted delivery of the ship in 2017 without everything working as a way to stay under that Year's budget requirements four years later and the Navy was still carrying out final tests ahead of the Ford's first full deployment go to see Pilots can take off and land but the problems are still being ironed out before it's ready to go to war it's pretty clear that you know putting this many new technologies onto one ship was a mistake from a program management perspective because it did cause the program to be delayed the delays and tests and fixes are so costly that every new piece of technology is over budget two of the technologies that set the fort apart from every other carrier are the aircraft takeoff and Landing systems some of those are very large Inc you know not incremental uh changes but I would say revolutionary changes in terms of the electromagnetic aircraft launch system [Music] other carriers use steam driven catapults to propel their Jets off the deck but the Ford uses electromagnetic linear induction Motors similar to a high-speed maglev train or roller coaster just research and design on the electromagnetic aircraft launch system cost over 1 billion dollars installing it on the USS Ford cost more than twice what it was supposed to steam catapult system had thousands of moving Parts there are less than a hundred moving Parts on a electromagnetic catapult so that was a big Improvement fewer moving parts means fewer Sailors to operate and maintain the smaller crew and new technologies were projected to save four billion dollars over its 50-year run compared to the previous class of aircraft carriers the new system causes less stress on the planes so they last longer and more types of aircraft can use it including ones that are still being designed landing and takeoff are easier on Pilots too since a computer does the work the pilot turns over control to the computer it autopilots the airplane down to the carrier deck and then when it hits that advanced arresting gear it just smoothly brings it to a stop so it's a dramatically different experience for the pilot it's much safer and then it's also going to make the airplane last longer foreign the Ford's computerized systems allow both lighter and heavier planes to take off and land something that limited older carriers the Ford's combination of new technologies means that a wider variety of aircraft can land on it it's smoother Investments for aircraft that is our goal here on board for future of Naval Aviation flying drones and f-35s oddly enough the new launch system can't handle the newest fighter plane so the Ford will need a retrofit to handle the F-35 stealth fighter the next Ford class carrier is under construction in the shipyard but it's already being modified for the F-35 at an added cost of 315 million dollars many of the Ford's delays can be traced back to politics five American Presidents over two decades weighed in on the Planning and Building of the Ford the Department of Defense made the aircraft carrier program far more expensive than it needed to be and you can take that to the bank so far the true cost of building this war horse is 13.3 billion dollars a number that's increased nearly every year since construction began even the most basic of onboard functions can be eye-wateringly expensive the ship has 750 toilets connected through vacuum pressure like the system on Commercial Jets when one toilet gets clogged the whole system can be affected the fix requires an acid flush that costs four hundred thousand dollars and the Navy has said it doesn't know how often it will need to be done the Navy changed its shipbuilding programs when the Ford's problems came up he began designing and testing the takeoff systems on land in 2011 while the Ford was under construction the advanced weapons elevators are also now being tested before installation however that program will only benefit the next Ford class carrier built as a deterrent the true value of the Ford is likely to be in the wars it helps prevent rather than those it wages yeah the U.S military expects to spend 1.7 trillion dollars on this revolutionary stealth warplane the F-35 lightning II 2022 marks 16 years since the first flight of this controversial plane but high costs May sink the plan to build nearly 2 000 more f-35s it still has some problems that need to be solved and fundamentally the cost of operating the airplane and flying the airplane today is too high every hour the F-35 is in the air runs around thirty five thousand dollars compared to about 22 000 for an older F-16 so are the advancements of the plane worth the cost we went to Hill Air Force Base in Utah to find out how this plane ended up as the biggest weapons program in American history this is Captain Spencer Whitey callsign ghost he flies one of 78 f-35s stationed here the F-35 in general is just a game changer between the stealth and the fusion and just the sensors the whole Suite it just makes it so much easier to fly this airplane tactically than any other jet there are nearly 500 f-35s in service in the U.S military and in the last few years the F-35 has carried out airstrikes against Isis in Iraq and Syria probably the best compliment you can pay to this airplane is if I wanted to go to war this is the airplane I want to be in so by many measures the plane is a success you know the F-35 a lot of times has gotten a sort of a bad rap in the media there was bad press from the beginning but even in 2021 criticism followed the Revelation that operating this Fleet of planes could cost taxpayers 1.7 trillion dollars that's equivalent to the total amount of student debt in America just buying the planes costs 400 billion dollars but what are called sustainment costs really add up that includes developing testing flying and maintaining the American Fleet of nearly 2500 f-35s during a 66-year life cycle that ends in 2070. Lockheed Martin sent Insider a statement that says there is clearly work to be done to lower sustainment costs and we are working tirelessly with our customers to accomplish this truly understand the complex price tag we need to look at how it was born in 2001 the Department of Defense awarded Lockheed Martin the contract to design and build a new generation of fighter jet but part of the problem was the same thing that made it seem great in the first place the F-35 was supposed to fit the needs of the Air Force Navy and Marines all in one so the military actually had to build three different models the f-35a B and C they're really close cousins and they look a lot alike but the Air Force had its own requirements the Navy needed a tail hook the Marine Corps variant needed the jump jet so it was a mistake to sell the F-35 as one single aircraft it's really three aircraft rolled into one the Marine Corps wanted to replace Harrier Jets so it needed short takeoff abilities and vertical Landings for amphibious carriers that's what became the f-35b model at a cost of 101 million dollars per plane the Navy wanted a stealth jet that could take off and land on super carriers to replace the fa-18 enter the 94 million dollar f-35c model the Air Force was looking to replace the A-10 and the F-16 I have flown against f-16s in this airplane you can end up just showing up behind them and they never knew that you were on your way you were invisible you saw them from a long ways out they never saw you ghost flies the most conventional fighter bomber version the f-35a it's also the least expensive of the three at 78 million dollars the original plan was for all of the f-35s a b and c to be nearly identical but packing everything into just one kind of plane created all sorts of problems the first B model was meant to hover but it was significantly overweight because of all the functionality that designers packed into it so basically the Lockheed Martin had to redesign the f-35b and because all three airplanes were being developed together it also resulted in some redesign of the a model and the C model this was a major setback to the program and ended up costing the program a lot of time and an awful lot of money to redesign the Navy's C model needed tougher landing gear and bigger wings so it could land on a traditional aircraft carrier retired lieutenant general Chris Bogdan took over the F-35 Joint program office in 2012. the program had run into some significant cost and schedule overruns it was billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule the original design shared about 75 percent in common between versions that was meant to cut costs but General Bogdan says in the end the planes only share about a third of their design it was part of the mass Bogdan inherited because back in 2006 the dod decided to enter production before testing showed acceptable performance we were going to take all these new technologies that were not very mature and we were going to integrate them in one big bang on the airplane and basically hoped that it worked the problem there is if any one of those Technologies is not mature or doesn't work it holds up the entire program by October 2022 Lockheed Martin delivered more than 550 f-35s to the US military with plans for nearly 2 000 more Lockheed built more than 200 f-35s for other governments around the world and orders for 600 more are in the works the F-35 is being mass produced but the Pentagon has delayed a crucial Milestone called Full rate production that would officially Mark the end of testing the F-35 a decade and a half after its first flight the F-35 still has more than 600 known problems mainly related to computer software and Hardware so maintaining an F-35 turns out to be much more expensive than anyone expected the lifetime cost estimate for maintenance of the F-35 Fleet increased 15 percent between 2018 and 2021 to a total of more than 400 billion dollars just like you get a new iPhone every couple years we're going to get new computers in the jet with more capability and then new sensors and improved avionics in the aircraft the F-35 is a flying computer with 8 million lines of code for the airplane itself and another 16 million lines of diagnostic tools that help figure out what's going wrong at any given time absolutely the biggest Advantage for the F-35 is the fact that it's self-diagnosing right and if it doesn't tell us exactly what's wrong it gives us a general direction to go in which saves a lot of time on the back end when it comes to maintenance it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it and there are benefits inside the cockpit since Pilots get more information than in any other fighter jet the helmet a four hundred thousand dollar custom fit model combines the heads-up display of older planes with night vision as well as a feed from infrared cameras mounted on the body of the plane my awareness is projected to me in the visor of this helmet and it's so expensive because it's binocular IT projects into both of my eyes so those have to be perfectly aligned so I'm not seeing double the stealth design absorbs radar waves and hides the massive Heat Signature put out by its supersonic engine I see everything that's happening out there and they don't see me because I'm stealth which then just allows me this position to just sit back and quarterback in kind of a calm environment as opposed to kind of the chaos that you're having to go through if you're in other Jets where older Fighters are seen on radar the f-35s are barely a blip of course the same can't be said for the cost and without better affordability the military will likely cut back on purchases the original plan and believe it or not the current plan is for the Air Force to buy 1763 f-35as no one really believes that it's just sort of out there since the military buys planes and batches future production could stop at almost any time but most likely that's not the case most likely they'll get maybe 11 or 1200 in which case you have to keep a legacy Force fourth generation Fighters that work with you and depend upon you the F-35 as effectively the the the well the force that Kicks Down the door so two decades into the program with less than a third of the anticipated planes built that 1.7 trillion dollar number is just an educated guess in the war in Ukraine both sides have deployed armies of lethal drones against each other some sophisticated others like this one adapted by hand to drop grenades on enemy positions there's usually a human that decides where and when a drone strikes but some are capable of operating in fully autonomous mode meaning the Drone can be programmed to make the call between life and death on its own but what if the tech fails and what if it falls into the wrong hands the war we're seeing right now is only going to kind of accelerate this move toward autonomous lethal autonomous weapons on the battlefield but are we ready for Killer Robots and what would be the true cost of taking human hands off the trigger it's known as loitering Munitions they can fly around waiting for a Target to be identified before crashing to the ground to destroy it so it's really a combination of an artillery and a drone that has got the capabilities of both John aldana manages the loitering Munitions program at Aero environment on the west coast of the US the company has been producing missiles like this the switchblade 300 and this the largest 600 for over two decades they actually fold up like so and are inside a launch tube that's just a little bit larger than this it launches the switchblade out the Wings open up like that which is why we call it a switchblade the propellers here because of the air will start to spin and the battery which is inside kicks in and it's off the 300 can loiter for around 15 minutes and is designed to take out small targets like enemy soldiers and trucks while the largest 600 can wait around for up to 40 minutes and attack armored vehicles operators can control the switchblades from as far as 40 kilometers away you have the ability to wave off so you can cancel the mission all the way to the very end go back to loitering find another Target of interest and engage a different Target of entrance that you may not have even known about [Music] the United States sent 700 of these to Ukraine in early 2022 Ukrainian forces have already shared videos of what they claim to be switchblade attacks on the ground each switch played 300 reportedly costs about six thousand dollars and can only be used once that's more than an off-the-shelf drone rigged to carry a grenade but far less than the cost of an unmanned aircraft like the MQ-9 Reaper which can fly back to base once it has fired on a Target and the switchblades are being designed to think more and more for themselves autonomous and semi-autonomous drones are going to be used to conduct these kinds of conflicts that means tracking and recognizing a Target even one that's on the Move we'll continue to invest heavily on autonomy and Ai and Machine Vision algorithms and software that essentially makes these things more and more I don't want to call it 100 autonomous but more and more autonomous and self-thinking call it that way Waheed nawabi always sees a human being kept in the loop when making judgment calls but in his view sometimes it's the human that's the problem more and more of the analytics and the burden on the soldier is going to be taken or replaced by these algorithms that make it more reliable more accurate and safer for the operators human error during drone strikes has caused a high number of Civilian casualties in recent years as Kabul fell to the Taliban in 2021 a U.S MQ-9 Reaper drone fired a missile that killed 10 civilians including seven children the Drone team mistook an aid worker's white Toyota for that of a potential terrorist according to the Bureau of investigative journalism the U.S has killed at least 300 civilians in drone strikes and covert operations in Afghanistan between 2015 and 2020 but AI systems designed to make the tough choices easier are also getting it wrong as we'll see later Ukraine is one of the first major conflicts where drones have played such a high profile role but experiments with unmanned flying missiles began over a hundred years ago this is the Kettering bug an unmanned aerial torpedo designed by the US Army during World War One its wings were designed to fall off before the bomb dropped to its intended target but it wasn't until the U.S invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that we saw high-tech drones like the MQ-9 Reaper and even some loitering Munitions starting to make a difference on the battlefield in 2020 the world saw the first large-scale use of drones in the nagorno-karabakh war between Azerbaijan and Armenia Azerbaijan deployed israeli-made loitering drones similar to the switchblade but one of the things we're seeing in Ukraine is the Drone to bring use pretty effectively on both sides when Russia invaded Ukraine many experts predicted an easy victory for Putin's forces but Russia miscalculated the level of Ukrainian resistance drones have given Ukrainian forces the ability to fuel cheap and persistent air power that brings pretty significant threats to Russian ground forces and for a while their ill-prepared troops were caught in a 40-mile long Convoy to the north of Kiev they were sitting ducks for guns and turkish-made tb2 drones the Ukrainian government launched an appeal to fund an army of drones because the service of Ukraine all the simplest drones which you used to shoot nature and teams of Civilian Engineers have adapted large numbers of off-the-shelf drones for the battlefield some like this one can grip and release small grenades social media has since transformed the Drone into a symbol of heroic Ukrainian resistance aerial footage of strikes on Russian targets is often accompanied by rock music the impression is of a Nimble David slaying the Russian Goliath but the reality is more nuanced unmanned aircraft drones and loitering Munitions certainly helped but Russia quickly stepped up its defenses and used drones of its own they were aren't ready for it but they are now the Russians I think have really compensated and now developed their air defenses shot down these tb2s and really kind of rendered uh and and almost neutralize that technology to stay one step ahead big budget militaries like the US and alliances like NATO are continuing to innovate in the air but also underwater and on land this video from 2019 shows NATO testing submersible drones and this is a drone swarm flying through bamboo forests in China a number of militaries around the world are already using palm-sized Hornet drones for surveillance this ability to loiter over a Target and collect intelligence and surveillance and reconnaissance is really powerful and deploying a drone in combat is far cheaper and Carries fewer risks to Pilots than a manned jet but there are fears that drone operators working thousands of miles away from a potential Target are too disconnected from reality more computer game than real-life Warfare studies nevertheless show that they can suffer from PTSD and depression just like Frontline troops but the next phase in drone Warfare is promising to change the Rules of Engagement altogether what happens when military Powers allow the Drone itself to decide who is friend and who is Foe and then pull the trigger are we comfortable handing over life and death decisions to machines on the battlefield that's that's the question like the answer is like complicated it may seem like a paradox that on the battlefield we still have rules until now those rules usually meant humans making decisions to attack an identified military Target but there's no consensus among countries about what to do about it in 2020 according to a un report Libyan government forces deployed a turkish-made cargo 2 drone against an opposition group this drone can identify a Target and fire autonomously but it's unclear of the Drone itself called the shots the porosity of this line between fully autonomous and semi-autonomous and with life and death in the hands of AI what if that same technology fails the risk that AI enabled autonomous systems might Target the wrong forces and cause civilian casualties or even attack enemy forces but at the wrong time and place escalating a conflict or sparking a conflict is a serious concern and one that nation-states need to take seriously and ai's ability to recognize faces and objects is still very much a work in progress computer algorithms can be confused by changing weather patterns or similarly shaped objects this has turned out to be a problem with some self-driving cars between July 2021 and May 22 nearly 400 car crashes in the U.S were attributed to partially automated driver assist systems some fear the same could happen with armed drones without International consensus on how to control and regulate autonomous weapons many see AI Warfare as inevitable countries are discussing the issues but the technology is certainly moving forward at a faster Pace than diplomacy we're either sort of past the point of no return um or we're at this point where it's so important that we need to be careful especially careful now with ensuring that there are norms about uh prohibiting the autonomous targeting uh of these Munitions the UN Secretary General called for a total ban on lethal autonomous weapons as have international human rights organizations The public's fear in this area a it's legit it's something that the society should be questioning and asking these questions that's natural that's expected and there's that not I don't see anything wrong with that air environment CEO grew up in Afghanistan and knows all about Russian aggression I also saw War I saw people die he was a teenager when his family was forced to flee the Soviet invasion so I lived and experienced exactly the kind of things that the ukrainians are experiencing today the war in Ukraine continues to push the boundaries of the Rules of Engagement there seems to be little concern for civilian casualties but what's worse the cruelty of man or the fallibility of machines [Music]

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Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, true cost, machinery, military, militia, aircraft carriers, budget

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Length: 30min 24sec (1824 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2022