Jeff Huber - Those poor kids at the Pentagon. They receive more funding than the rest of the world's military establishments combined, but it's just not enough. Pentagon officials have prepared a new defense spending estimate—one they plan to spring on us just before young Mr. Bush slinks out of office—that projects a requirement for $450 billion more over the next five years than previously announced.

Whoa, you might be thinking. We already spend well over a half trillion a year on defense, and what do we get in return? The Pentagon did such a lousy job defending the homeland on 9/11 that we had to buy a whole separate agency to take that job over, and only neocons and other lunatics would say our military is protecting our national interests overseas.

You ignorant bedwetting liberal. Don't you see? The half trillion plus a year only buys you history's best equipped, best trained military and a few wars for them to fight in. If you want your armed forces to do what you pay them to do, that will cost extra.

Battle Budget Galactica
It's hard to tell exactly how much everybody spends on defense. America's fiscal year 2008 defense budget request was $623 billion. The Chinese, the nearest thing we have to a peer military competitor, say they spend about $25 billion a year on defense, roughly four percent of what we spend. The American warmongery, ever eager to create scary phantasms, claims that China spends a lot more on defense than it admits to. Critics of the Pentagon say they Chinese can't possibly lie more about their defense spending than we do. Our official defense budget doesn't include things like defense related spending by other departments, the Homeland Security budget, some veterans' care expenses, the ubiquitous "supplemental allotments" that never make it into the regular budget but always get through Congress, the ultra secret "black" budget, and other hush-and-slush funding.

Some say the Chinese spend up to three times on defense what they claim to spend. If so, they're still spending a half-trillion a year less than our official budget. Many claim that we spend twice as much on defense as the official budget total. If that's true, we're spending over a trillion dollars a year more than three times what the Chinese say they spend. Either way we're spending a bunch load more money on defense than the Chinese are. Half a trillion dollars a year will buy you very many $400 toilet seats. A trillion will buy you twice that amount.

Much of what China spends on defense goes to update its arsenal. Admiral Tim Keating, head of U.S. Pacific Command, says the Chinese admit to being "25 years behind us." I say that's another thing the Chinese are fudging facts about. The majority of their combat jets are J-7s and J-8s, fighters copied from the Soviet Mig-21 that first flew more than a half century ago.

However much the Chinese are lying about their defense spending, Russia spends somewhat less than they do, and however much we're lying, Iran's defense spending is less than one percent of ours and only about 70 percent of Mexico's, and those evildoing terrorists could hide their defense budget under a tic egg.

So at this point in the New American Century, whatever two-war strategy we're arming ourselves to fight must involve simultaneous conflicts with the Klingons and the Borg.

Force Plan 9 From Outer Space
As best we can tell, the 2009 defense budget only carries $520 million for space weapons research, which sounds like a trifling amount until you consider that we've signed on to a treaty that prohibit putting weapons in space. Don't feel too bad for space though; the Pentagon isn't neglecting it. In fact, the U.S. military is so heavily invested in space that it cannot navigate, communicate or hit a target without it. Without space, esoteric air breathing systems like the ultra stealthy, $2 billion a pop B-2 strategic bomber would be, well, worthless. Read all at Larisa`s At-Largely

Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) was operations officer of a naval air wing and an aircraft carrier, and he commanded an E-2C Hawkeye aircraft squadron. His satires and analyses of military and foreign policy affairs have appeared in Proceedings, The Navy, Jane's Fighting Ships, and other print periodicals. Some of his essays have been required student reading at the U.S. Naval War College, where he received a master's degree in national security studies in 1995.