keeplers.com. >> is there a nonfiction author or book you'd like to see featured on booktv? send us an e-mail at booktv@cspan.org or tweet us at twitter.com/booktv. >> up next on booktv a program that originally aired live on booktv.org. three former high-level pentagon insiders take a critical look at how the defense department operates. thomas christie, franklin spinney and pierre sprey are all contributors to the book "the pentagon labyrinth." this is about an hour. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening. thanks for being with us tonight. i'm drew, the executive vice president for the world security institute. the institute is the nonprofit organization that's home to our center for defense information and our strauss military reform

project whose latest work "the pentagon labyrinth: ten short's essays to help you through it," is the reason we've gathered here tonight. the goal of the project is to transform u.s. national security to meet the missions and threats of today. and it believes that it's essential that we consider both the fiscal and the strategic implications of defense programs. and it promotes informed oversight of pentagon activities. the pentagon labyrinth is edited by the project's directer wheeler, who is one of an extraordinary group of experts pentagon insiders and retired military officers who collaborated on this work. the handbook is intended for both newcomers and also for seasoned observers to learn how to grapple with the significant problems of our national defense. for those who'd like physical copies and who aren't with us

today, they are available on sale at amazon.com and also barnes & noble's bn.com. however, the complete essays of the work along with a really valuable set of related reports and source materials are available and can be downloaded online at www.cdi.org. and if you go to that site and find the image of the book and click it, it's a live link and it'll get you right to all of the essays and the related materials. we are extraordinarily grateful to those who supported the work especially to mr. phil strauss jr. and his family. and also to the stuart r.mott foundation that's our gracious host tonight. we're also delighted to be partnering once again with the project on government oversight and to have it executive

directer danielle brian with us here tonight to be our discussion moderator. so thanks again for coming and without further ado i hand over the proceedings to danielle. >> thank you, i drew. it is a pleasure and honor to be playing the role of moderator for this event. i've been mentored by the gentlemen to my right for i realize about 30 years now? [laughter] i don't know what that says about all of us. but immediately to my right is chuck spinney, the legendary truth teller historian, philosopher who i think it's funny was hiding behind the innocuous title of staff analyst all this time. repeatedly testified before the congress extraordinary, extraordinarily prolific gentleman who landed on the cover of "time" magazine in 1983 for his truth thes about the defense budget. he still is engaged as well as all of the panelist even though he's traveling the world with

his wife sailing and enjoying life. pierre sprey, immediately to chuck's right was -- came to the pentagon as one of mcnamara's whiz kids and was part of the legendary fighter mafia with colonel john boyd and was responsible for forcing the pentagon to accept and not screw up too much his vision of both the f-16 and a-10 which are those who are following weapons system know are two of the most successful weapons programs in american history. he was an active part of the military reform movement that created the military reform caucus that had such successes during the height of the reagan buildup, for example, is having a budget freeze. it was a bipartisan effort but led in large part by senator grassley as well as the creation of the operational test and evaluation office at the pentagon. speaking of that office to pierre's right is one of the

early heads of that office, tom christie, who came to that position after a 50-year career in and outside the pentagon. and i have to say that when i came to washington tom christie's name, he was almost like the wizard of oz because he was so powerful in his capacity to be behind the scenes in so many successful efforts. [laughter] in navigating the pentagon's bureaucracy. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> sorry oops. so what we have here are extraordinary minds and experience that are going to help us learn what they have experienced as well as some of their colleagues that are in this fabulous book, "the pentagon lab ript." we have much to learn there all of you. so chuck, i'm going to turn it over to you. >> does this thing work? >> it does for purposes of

television but not for the people in this room. >> so i need to talk about up. all right, well, this is about the book, so i guess we start with the first chapter which is mine, which is why the book was necessary. of the editor prevailed on me to write it much against my better judgment, i might add, because you know, he was putting this together, and i was off on my boat, and just didn't want to do it. but i did it, and i started -- i didn't initially know i was going to do it, and i started asking the question, why are we in such a mess today that we are? does anybody in the audience know how big the defense budget is? take a guess. close to a trillion. >> [inaudible] >> well, you're or both right. it's somewhere between the high sixs and 1.2 trillion depending on what you consider to uncollude. today we have a budget that's larger than any budget since the

end of world war ii. it's larger than a budget during any war that we fought with the exception of world war ii. yet we're supporting a force is rough hi, one-tenth the size of what it was in world war ii. it's about half the size it was in world war ii. the navy's about a third of the size it was, the army is probably 40% to 30% of what it was in vietnam. i'm, i was comparing it to vietnam. in vietnam we were flying on the order of a thousand flights a day at the height. in iraq and afghanistan the highest we've gotten is somewhere between 1 and 2 thowrk a month. yet we're fighting these wars in iraq and afghanistan. our forces are getting older, the op tempos are minuscule compared to vietnam and korea, and we've broken the bank.

the military's literally stretched thin. you've got a lot of people in washington talking about starting another war in libya right now. we don't have the resources to do that, and you can see the pentagon is dragging its feet on it one time. the real question is, why? how do we get into this mess? and the problem is, i think -- and i try to explain it in the article -- is that over the 40 years of the cold war we involved a political economy based on the politics of fear in which it was really a sub economy in our larger political/economic culture that became tightly interwoven, the relationship between the defense industry, congress, the pentagon and a whole bunch of think tanks and newspapers andlings like that that spread out from that. and, basically when the cold war ended without warning to most people with the exception

of one of the authors of our book -- it was facing, it was facing a total disaster. because if you reduced the budget to a normal and we were trying to be a normal country that wasn't permanently mobilized for wax, it would have collapsed. and so what has happened is there are strange mutations taking place because the web of political connections was so dong. we planted the seeds for an explosion in the budget in the late '90s. which came out on, as predicted and there were zell of us that predict -- several of us that predicted it. it wasn't too hard to see. and, basically, it was because the military industrial complex had the struggle for survival.

and what has happened is we've e evolved a political economy that is basically dependent on continuous small wars or the threat of small wars. and, of course, 9/11 turned out to be a godsend for this. we had kosovo, we were doing the bosnia, we were doing iraq, the no-fly zone in iraq. but, of course 9/11, you know from a marketer's standpoint would have been seen as from heaven. i'm not belittling it or anything when i say that it just created an emotional thing. so we've had this huge explosion since then which is largely been driven, nothing to do with the wars in iraq and afghanistan. and now we're at the point where the government's basically near a lockdown the military's strung out we've got horrendous personnel problems with troops author being rotated in and out

of afghanistan and iraq; a lot of posttraumatic stress syndrome. and the question is how do we sort our way out? what i try to do in chapter one is lay out what i haven't described very well here, and then i pass the ball to others to explain why that was the case. and i think that's about it. >> all right. pierre? >> yeah. picking up on exactly that theme, of course, at the heart of the shrinking forces and the huge ri-growing budgets -- hugely-growing punts that chuck -- budgets that chuck is talking about are the weapons ever more expensive weapons. and it turns out despite the huge amounts of money being spent, you know, we've basically

created a heap of pretty mediocre weapons and quite a number of use rest ones -- useless ones. of course, of the essence to tell the difference between the two. if you want to unravel this cycle that chuck is talking about because if you don't challenge that that prevailing notion that's so convenient to the military industrial complex that every new weapon has to cost at least three to ten times what its predecessor does, you're too manied to just keep on exactly in the cycle that chuck described. so that's why it's very important to talk about separating, you know good weapons from bad ones, sorting them out. of course it's to major con intention to the people who have to use them, but it should be something that lots of the rest of us get involved in. everybody who's interested in

defense should be directly involved in on getting to the bottom of the difference between good and bad weapons in order to break cycle that's both destroying the economy and destroying our ability to actually defend ourselves if we ever had to in some serious war. to set the stage for these little seven guidelines or rules that i've laid out in my essay, maybe rule zero is the idea that the more expensive a weapon is, the larger the mountain of bs that surrounds it. [laughter] you have to keep that in mind. and the more difficult to sort out the good from the bad. so i'll just very briefly run through these little seven guidelines just in the hopes of stirring up a hornet's nest here and getting a lot of questions

later. i'll just basically, throw them out, not justify them. if first one from the point of view of perspective is that weapons aren't the most important thing in winning wars or defending the country. by far more important are people, first and foremost, ideas; that is tactics strategy, new ways of doing things and a distant third is weapons. put it another way; badly trained and badly led far more of them will get killed because of that than if we send them to war with a tank that's a little worse than the enemy's or a fighter that's a little worse or a submarine that's a little worse. the second the second good luck

luck -- the second guideline is that not all weapons are equally important in war and their importance has absolutely nothing to do with cost. what rifle we pick, what $200 or $300 rifle we pick is of vastly more importance to how our soldiers will survive and fare and how well we will do in the next real war we fight and which anti-air my sill we pick. that's like so far down many the noise of what counts,st not -- it's not funny. same thing in fighters. and pretty much any be ore weapons -- pretty much any other weapons system you pick. vastly more importance to the outcome of the next war than a $2.2 billion b-2 or a $70 million f-35.

minor consequence to the people who have to fight that war. but the close air support airplane is a major consequence even though it's vastly cheaper than any of the others. the third rule and this is very important and this is where laymen need to get involved is you can't tell a good weapon from a bad weapon unless you can define the tasks the characteristics that it needs to do in combat. and you have to define those characteristics in terms of combat evidence not technical dreams not technical imaginations, not simulations not models. this is of the utmost importance. and if you misdefine what a weapon has to do. you will suffer the consequences of weapons that don't work and weapons that are too expensive. a very simple champ that i

think -- example that e think people will understand. if you follow the dream of a marksman in designing a rifle the dream of a marksman is to with able to hit a standing soldier at 500 meters. and you'll produce a rifle that's probably twice as expensive as et has to be and it will be totally useless to who's about to be ambushed by a bun of of people behind the wall, you know, brandishing ak-47th. it's simply the marksman treatment has nothing to do with combat. the same thing is true if you look at air combat. the dream of the technologist is to look at a blip in the cockpit on the radar screen, to push a button and 15 or 20 seconds later watch the blip disappear.

when you build an airplane to that dream, it will be vastly too expensive, and it will fail in combat. the fourth idea is that it suspect that hard to -- it isn't that hard to get these characteristics if you're serious about combat. in almost any area you looked at -- you look at, there's a wealth of combat histories written at the real gut level of combat that will clarify, you know, all the b, and that you're going to be inundated with about these weapons. and if you simply immerse yourself say in infantry combat, great stuff that's written from the point of view of the foxhole you'll know

vastly more than if you had red a truckload of documents detailing all kinds of tests that are irrelevant to rifles. same thing is true in airplanes. if you read accounts from the cockpit, you know, even from fairly remote wars like, for instance, if you read the great japanese samurai wrote a book called "zero." you're learn more about what air o to air combat is than from the last ten years of publications from lockheed martin or from the air force systems command. the fifth thing, fifth rule is when you make up your distillation of the characteristics that count in sorting good weapons from bad ones for a geffen area of

combat -- given area of combat, there's two that are absolutely essential you never leave out. the first one is the characteristics of the weapon you're talking about and their impact on the skill and the fearlessness of the guy who has to use them. and that includes what their impact in on how strain bl he is or that is how easily he can train with those weapons and exactly how well they protect him in combat and add to, you know fearlessness. you cannot discuss any weapon without very carefully examining that effect because people come first as i said right at the beginning. the other argumentistic you can't leaf out --

>> and that automatically brings in all these mundane things that all our high-tech people hate to talk about like the price. that has a huge effect on how much you can bring to bear or the question of how usable, how many sororities a day can you get out of an airplane, how many miles a day can you get out of a tank? what percent of them are going to be back in the depot broken down? all these mundane things suddenly become of overwhelming consequence once you bring in the question of the actual force you can bring to bear on the battlefield. so those two you can never reeve out in a sensible -- leave out in a sensible list of the characteristics of a weapon. you need the sixth rule is pretty simple, pretty straightforward is never trust r&d test results ever. [laughter] at the state we're at in weapons

development in the u.s., you can almost guarantee that my any test that's run by the developer is a asking the wrong questions, b answering them falsely, you know, and falsifying the data and, c promoting the agenda of the developer and the company that's behind the development. so test results are like an irrelevance other than the fact that people will raid them, and can you will need to understand how and why they're stowls. the category of tests on what we really should rely, ot and e, operational tests or what used to be called field tests. those are tests that are run by the user.xd were they run well, they would be of extraordinary importance.

they're really crucial. unfortunately, again, because of this huge overwhelming influence of money and politics in our procurement system there's hardly an operational it's you can trust today. operational test you can trust today. they're still done they're required as danielle mentioned pause there are actually laws that required an office to run them. but they've been so sub oned by the process and the pun that they're very many as unreliable as r and the test results, development the test results. in the end the only thing you can really trust, that has anything germane to say about whether when is good or bad is real combat results. >> that means, of course -- and that's hard work. not shaded by somebody who's

trying to promote a weapon and it's very hard. it's a lot easier for wars that were a long time ago. each then it's hard. but it's totally worth doing because it's the only, it's the only, it's the only source or we have now that has any promise of telling us whether a weapon was good or bad. and if you have access to, you know to military people who are involved or just coming back from combat, you can usually get to the bottom of what's working and not. you can talk to people coming back from afghanistan and understand that the army has further ruined the m-16 rifle, and it's working worse than before. you just need to talk to some guys who can in some infantry fights and then you'll learn more about it. and the last reel if you want

to know about a weapon's characteristics, its use fellness, if you want to get some reasonably broad picture to of that. obviously, you have to rehigh on people. and a very simple rule there -- >> it's not might be. it's not might be. [laughter] >> must be -- there's a very simple rule. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> a very simple rule about the people. first of all, never listen to a program manager military or civilian. [laughter] it's hopeless. you'll never get anything approximating the truth. never listen to an admiral or a general who's in the acquisition chain. forget it. obviously, never listen to a corporate plaque and be particularly care they bring out so-called combat losers.

some fighter pie who's just -- pilot whoo's just dropped a few weapons, and you talk to this guy, he's had the experience, he knows what's going on. if a guy's been presented to you like that, forget it. that guy has been trained like a marion et. what you really need to do is to talk to the people who are skeptics people who are committed to defense and are skeptical about what's going on. doesn't mean you have to believe them, but to get a complete picture, you must go and dig them up. they're everywhere, you know? any area you're interest t in there'll be somebody who's passionately admitted to it and not committed to the project in that area. i'll just give you one ample of a really -- example of a really

brave guy who had enormous impact. his name was ted postel. mit's a terrible place to be from if you're going to tell the truth about defense. but he had the guts when the army started lying about the patriot missile and telling you that the 158 patriot that were launched at scuds in the first imufl war were 900% effective -- 100% effective. that was the first press releases. the next one was 96%. we finally got down to where it looks like maybe two to four out of 158 hit, but there's a very good chance that fs zero. you cannot believe the abuse this guy took, the pressure he took, and he stood up, he stood up in the face of it.

people like that are in valuable and we need to honor them. just summary, very simply it's very understandable why people avoid the issue and most people who are not technical experts tend to avoid the issue of whether weapons are good or bad. t of the utmost -- it's of the utmost importance that lots of ordinary citizens who are not technical experts, people who care about defense staffers get directly involved in that tough issue even without technical expertise because it's perfectly doable. the the experts have made a total mess of this area, and anybody who's serious and fits to doing this study can come up with some veriful judgments. and unless ordinary people do this cycle of unending increase

of defense budgets or defense budgets that are totally immune to cuts and continuing decay of the armed forces and continuing evaporation of any defense capability at all, that will never be stopped until people can get involved in this question and tackle directly the question of what are good and bad weapons? >> all right, pierre. [laughter] now that i'm could be to five minutes -- down to five minutes -- [laughter] >> i gave you some extra. >> i know that, and he took it all! [laughter] i was asked to write another chapter to talk about the acquisition process, and i said my god we've been talking about that for 50 years. here we are with reform effort after reform effort, and we are still taking 20 and 30 years to

tibet these complex weapons systems in the field if we ever get them there. twice at three times the cost and, you know, 10, 20 years when we said at the outset we were going to do et in -- do it in two. ..

>> first, stop programs that significantly exceed their budget, or would spend -- [laughter] -- or would spend a limited taxpayer dollars to buy more capabilities that the nation needs. second, ensure requirements are reasonable and technology adequately mature to successfully execute the program. back to pierre saying the front end of the process is so important to get the so-called requirements right. and we have this god-awful bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo j. rocket all kinds of people involved and it's no wonder we

get it coming out of that process as something that is unexecuted will. and here we have another one coming down the pipeline, we're going to build a new bomber. we got the f-35 and we're trying to get over that hump which we probably will not. and so we'll have a couple of programs in each service, and you better believe every laboratory, every technology outfit, they are going to to hang your greatest thing on the system in front of you. third, my good friend bob gates realistic program cost estimates provide discipline and also discipline and constant oversight through the process. constantly guard against the so-called requirements validate the maturity of technology.

we have a process that we have directives we have instructions that call for all of this and none of this is done. the decision-makers sit at the top sit back and have it presented to them data says there's no way remember the f-35, there is no way this is going to happen on this schedule, much less the cost of whatever. and they go ahead and proceed. another factor now, i might seem a little defensive other process because i think a lot of the ingredients are there if we just paid attention. but there are some things that are there that we need to stop. one of which i think is really pervasive in causing a lot of our problems today, we can't stop programs is this political

engineering. and that, of course, is the process whereby if you have a weapons system, one of your measures of merit will be how many congressional districts how many states you have this program spread around. i remember, i've been around long enough, then through a lot, i remember being in the room when the b-1 program manager, caspar weinberger in the 1982 and he had a chart that showed all the states which he had spread the business so to speak. this was the b-1. and weinberger became very irate. i don't ever want to see that again. i don't want that and. that is not what we are up to. today that's a required a chart. it's probably in the directives that you will, in fact develop such a chart and used by the business around.

so it's not just the fact that you have congressman or senators that are going to be beholden to a program. it take a look at what this is costing you. i mean to have these pieces built here and there and brought together, it's a disaster. you know, i think that is a process that needs to be forbidden. and how you do it when the very congressman that are feeding at the trough the very services that are getting their programs through that they wouldn't otherwise, i don't know. it's past 7:00, i'm going to stop there if that's all right. >> there's a lot -- >> i mean pierre stole a lot of my thunder. [laughter] if we could implement this. many other things pierre calls for are also in the directives

alternatives, having alternatives. competition, competitive prototyping. i mean that's in the directives. how often is it done? when you do build prototypes they are really not prototypes. i mean, speedy's why did you describe more about what are they? because i think -- >> you know, people as opposed to the f-16, 70 which were were not in those days trying to advance the state-of-the-art per se, you know, so we didn't have some whizbang avionics system or control system innovation. so the meat of the prototype competition was the actual airframe, aircraft and engine, and the pilots. whereas when you come to the f-22, you for the f-22 against the of 23 allegedly. and what was the big part of the

program? avionics, fire control system and all these incentive. none of that was your not even the stealth characteristics was there. [inaudible] >> absolutely. >> as a prototype was a non-prototype is what they built was a different airplane speak of the same with the f-35. we flew boeing aircraft versus the lockheed aircraft. chose the lockheed aircraft. none of the avionics here. we haven't even tested the avionics and yet really in the actual platforms. you watch the space committee think we have had problems with the f-35, you ain't seen nothing yet. mark my words. >> the athlete to as a classic example of how this process breaks down. as tom and pierre said it's not about that. it was a supersonic demonstrator and didn't even give much of that. but what they did is they

declared it was a prototype. they declared the winner and then they went for the so-called milestone to approval. that's a crucial decision point in a weapons system. it's called full scale engineering and development, or engineering and manufacturing development. they change the acronym which is why chapter three i think it is that compares the pentagon to the new guinea tribe system. as a very important chapter. the language chapter. but what they wanted to do is they want to ram that thing through a full-scale engineering and development milestone decision. the reason is simple. first of all you've got to go back to the time. this is a 1991. cold war torches into. the bar is about ready to close. you've got to get the cows out before it shuts. so what they do as they ran this thing through the. even though the soviet threat for this was defined -- design, just evaporative the milestone to decision enables the

contractor to start spreading the goodies around the country. because he's not only building, he's done his production facility while he's designing the plaintiff nobody would spend on money doing this. this is crazy. because it maximizes -- if you have a problem than you have overinvested and you have to undo everything and to go bankrupt. of course, we spend other peoples money so it doesn't matter. and to basically what it does is it starts at the political engineering operation where you just spread the money around there and you are building a 60 -- a social safety net. when you try to cancel it you can't do. there's already pressure trying to resurrect the f-22. it's not dead yet. one thing i would add to tom's comment about caspar weinberger, it's true he said in a staff meeting, but a couple of months later he was over in ohio getting a briefing explaining how many jobs the b-1, and he had the map. he spoke out of both sides of his mouth.

[inaudible] >> that's what thomas talking about when he said the system the discipline. you have to read people first. the people who don't have the discipline, the people who ram the day that chuck was talking about the rampant milestone through political appointees connected to the major corporations who would benefit. >> some were academics. >> but folks are been getting a lot of grants were saying things, academics aren't so innocent anymore. but unless you pay attention unless you do something about the people, people come first. if you're going to appoint as assistant secretary of defense of acquisition or something, some guy who is beholden to lockheed, the grumman and a couple of maybe others, you deserve what you get. >> there's one other point i would like to add. the f-22 decision was made in 91. they made an equivalent decision

in 92. bypass the troop prototype phase and put into milestone too silly to build a social safety net. in so doing, the air force and the navy knew full well they were creating a crisis in their force structure monetization program in the late '90s, that they had no plan to modernize all the a-10s and f-16s and a lot of the f-18s in the navy force structure. so basically what they did is they frontloaded these programs, started the political engineering thing, got the whole thing, the whole system pregnant, and then in comes the clinton administration and deliberate and say we've got this pickle in the out years let's start a new program. f-35 jobs and. so whole thing was like an extortion strategy and was done in the case of f-22 and f. 18 we have a thoroughly documented the documents on the web. it was done with malice of forethought, period. >> on that note i want --

[laughter] -- i would open up to the people in the audit. i remember because this is being recorded if you could speak loudly so people can all here. i'm not sure if it works or not but go ahead. >> do you know how much more weapons systems cost because they politically engineered the way that i built? how much more does it inflate the cost of weapons? >> i think the building would be -- they don't want that to be known. i mean they have no idea but i don't think they're interested in finding out. >> no. it would be really hard. >> i mean, we can audit the books. >> we haven't even talked about that. >> but we do know the consequences, and consequences go way beyond cost. costs may be the least consequence, not that that is of no importance at all. the real consequence is you get

a shabby quality. >> yes. >> the more we outsource this political engineering way to remote, you know, states that don't really do defense work and intense some contractor somewhere to do something that he's never done before, the more trouble we have when we assembled the airplane. that started back with the c-5. the c-5 had a lot of little engineering, had and legal problems with subcontractor sending in stuff that wouldn't fit. in lockheed would cover for them because they didn't want the congress to find out. and yet you all the same things that are going on twice as bad on the f-22 and the even worse on the f-35. the lack of quality control certainly huge portion of a schedule problem on those airplanes is the political engineering. because all the subcontractors out in these remote areas are falling behind schedule. the main contractor wants to accommodate them because it does

want to sacrifice the program so they make excuses for why it's happening. >> there's another thing, too. when the parts are made all over the country then when you bring them together, sometimes they don't fit. something had to have to start making adjustments. i saw it happen with the c-130s which is very simple. they were building tail section in west virginia just sheet-metal and stringers and then they pulled him into the main fuselage body. in a lockheed factory down in atlanta, georgia that was mostly empty. they could've built the whole thing there and still have room to spare but it was being built in west virginia to satisfy bobby birther. and these practices are acted starting to affect our commercial sector as well because i'll industry might is something from the same problem. the c-17 for sure. it had that. [inaudible] >> because of long beach to get all sorts of problems. you're absolutely right. between minor they have, the cost overrun is double or something.

more than double. the parts don't fit and their bring it together and. >> a question over here. >> yes. i thought i could get a more concrete example of how that works using a small weapons a system which is therefore easier to evaluate, something like actually this particular affects the in 60 machine which has been released by the him at 240 which can be assured is even more expensive. but an f-16 machine gun to build one with irrefutable firm would probably cost two or $300. but the government pays some 12,000. and not only that, in this country, the small arms industry and the people are capable of making an m-16 machine gun their family businesses, small said no political clout, most of them have been in business for over 100 years, the biggest one is smith & wesson and it has less than a thousand employees.

so again, no political muscle at all. and not only that, and large part of their sales is commercial. so they do have to be -- behaved responsibly. what does the government do? sometimes they will let these guys go but a lot of times they'll take it out on someone who's never build a rival our machine gun or anything before. >> and, of course, the in 60 was famous for the fact that when the buildup had -- got hot and you had to change it, you also lost the front and the gas system, and the front sight which all came out with a weapon. >> this is what this process becomes really sinister. it's not just a waste of money. this is waste of lives. when you get shoddy stuff like that out in the field, people died. you know so this is not an argument about saving a few bucks or something, although saving a few bucks these days is

extremely important. it's an argument about saving lives and doing the right thing by our soldiers. >> someone had raised the topic of auditing, and i know the ball right now said the beauty have to do that by 2017. i'd like to get a sense of the witnesses on what they believe is a realistic timeline that dod could perform the audit by if they were truly and entirely committed to doing that. >> they have no intention of meeting that ever. >> they have promised how many are? >> we have no idea because they are not making the right ever. they don't want to do it pay. you've got to give them an incentive to do it. and probably the only incentive is start taking away the money. >> that's senator coburn. >> right. >> period, end of story.

>> that's a serious incentive and. >> let me ask follow on question to the. if you freeze the pentagon budget and to have an audit, will you get something meaningful out of it or we just get some paperwork that, you know speedy's having somebody that will recognize a good odd it from the outside even. >> whitey had to ask questions like that? >> sorry, that's how i am. [laughter] >> what really worries me about the way the whole defense operation is working now is it seems to have totally lost contact with the idea that you define a threat, you project the threat out and you design your weapon systems to meet those threats. there doesn't seem to be any connection between where the money is going and where the threats are projected, at least for those in the public that see where the threats are, which are

primarily religious fanatics and other fanatics around the world. how do you justify and f-35 and f-22, 81 in the face of those kinds of threats? and if you're not putting your money where those threats are how are we going to meet the real threats since nobody seems to be taking them seriously? >> that's the whole point. that's why we're here. >> there's another problem. >> china is the threat. >> well, we've got to have a fear of threat. we will for ever invent threat that justifies what we want to build. >> who is supposed to challenge that? it's got to be that the process work, you know, you put your idea where the threat is on the table and there's got to be another group that challenges that until you sort it out and you come up with a realistic threat definition.

[inaudible] >> that's exactly what is needed. several groups challenge it but first and foremost congress, congress needs to challenge instead of bowing down with the chairman of joint chiefs come out and puts out some strategy that's intended to support a budget and not meet a threat. you know like john boyd used to say, they just nod like dickie bird. if they conducted real oversight, we have an essay in this book on what real oversight is. and it's tough. it's been done. the congress has done some brilliant examples of real oversight. not many, but it can be done. that's one place but there are other places, other people need to get involved in the debate about what is the threat what are we defending against and what are we failing to defend against? absolute. i totally agree. >> are you going to have one for the 86 house republicans?

>> i'm sure if invited to attend. the house republicans. [inaudible] spirit we would be delighted to. >> is that an invitation to? >> my people have invited them. >> we talked to a few lastly a couple of us did as a matter fact. and i came away thinking there's a little hope there. my hopes may be dashed, but we talked to 31 -- not 31 to 11 republicans, representatives posted by ron paul but there were three freshmen, tea partiers their that i was very impressed with their thoughts on the military and -- primarily involvement in situations that we have no business being involved in. and i think it or up to them to vote, they would all vote to withdraw from both iraq and afghanistan tomorrow and certainly not get involved in

this libya situation. >> is that the only hope -- the people of been there for 20 years, part of what you call the military-industrial congressional complex. these guys are not. >> not yet. [laughter] >> i'm hoping he'll be watching booktv now, or c-span, and we will invite -- >> absolutely. >> this has nothing to do with party affiliation, this problem. and it cuts across all parties are equally guilty in this, in this affair of the decay of our defense. and so we have no no reason not to believe anyone has a serious interest in defense. >> no affiliation with party politics, i agree but it has -- there's a stream that runs

through this whole process that it's called term limits. once you get on capitol hill and once you are there, you become part of that problem. and it doesn't just exist in the department of defense. it goes over to other large departments. i'm very someone with the department of veterans affairs. and tsa. but you can take projects in those areas where scanners are stored to 50 of them just like the c-130 program that went on since -- you remember, chuck, since 1980. the air force never asked for another airplane. and for the last five years the air force quite as and as for another c-17. and it's about to mess up the 787 program. that's all caused by the basic term limits program -- problem with you get into power to spend more money and so the problem is over here more than it is over there. >> if i can just build on that statement. he was talking about the c-130

a. one that started getting stuff done the pentagon still come it started off, and this is a dollars, they're not current dollars. they are congress dollars much about 1999 does. i don't know it would behind epic they start off at about 149 a copy. by the time congress was finished adding these planes in their, their up to almost 55 million a copy for the same plane. nothing had changed. and it was just because lockheed was laying in the overhead. there was no oversight. >> didn't lockheed went to the stage for national guard. every state got one. >> that's right. that's exactly right. >> if the united states has to ask you a no fly zone over libby, there's going to be a lot of tension on u.s. hardware. weapons. can you give the public a sense of what are some of the good weapons and bad weapons out there right now that might be employed against libya? there will be a lot of attention to the whole buzzword.

what's good and what is bad out there now? >> f-22 will save us. >> it doesn't matter. >> first of all this whole colleges are made purely military point of view of the no fly zone there's no reason to bomb the pee out of libya to eliminate some unbelievable air defense threat because what they have got is a joke. i mean, if you want to fly f-16s of our over libya you know what they've got what fueled missiles that if i get out of the launcher, you conduct to easily it would be funny. [inaudible] >> scott o'grady was shot down in f-16 but that type of missiles libbey has, it's not such a joke. >> it is such a useless easy to outmaneuver missile. the israelis discovered that back in the 72 were. you know even than before

people even knew it the kill rate was under 1%. and here the assumption is this is the military the gcs assumption, if you're going to force us to create a no fly zone over libya, first we have to go in and just wipe out the whole air defense system. it's total nonsense. total nonsense. it simply defending a mindset that has grown out of huge budgets. the reason we need to wipe them out is because we've got jammers and we've got to use them. so, therefore, of course we have to exaggerate what the essay six missile can do. and so they have created the mountains problem of creating a no fly zone when in fact it's ludicrous. i'm totally opposed to doing it the easy way but it doesn't have to be the kind of cataclysmic event that the jcs has turned it

into. >> we'll have a few minutes less i want to get a couple more questions in. >> so we know that secretary gates is going to retire later this year speeded in u.s. able to identify themselves? >> sure. >> elaine with "national journal" groups. we know that secretary gates is going to retire later this year. and i'm wondering what thought you guys have about the kind of background you would seek in the next defense secretary as it contains to the issues you're discussing. who is out there question of have to feel obligated to name names. [laughter] >> but at least in terms of background. >> you ask, first and foremost if you had your druthers, which he won't because the president will come to office owing a lot to a lot of defense contractors, but assuming he didn't know anything and he which uses secretary of defense in the first thing he would need is a guy with a lot of guts.

more than anything else. i only work for one secretary of defense that had a lot of guts and he had a lot of of applause, and that was secretary mac american but he wasn't afraid of firing generals and admirals. that's scenic one on. everybody they could secretary defense you have to not be afraid of four stars. >> anything else the? >> i don't think you need someone who's necessarily deskilled in defense because all those people are contaminated. is it ms. grossman? [laughter] >> i think what you need is someone who is demonstrated their ability to run a large organization, and not a financial manager type, but a person who comes out of probably production of a major production company. but who has the characteristics like pierre is talking about. [inaudible] >> that's the problem we don't

have to many in the united states that are not defense contractors. which is not unrelated to this whole problem by the way. >> the last question, go ahead of. >> john doyle. i was wondering what you folks think about the rise of unmanned systems, not just aircraft, but we had unmanned submarines on the drawing board. and now they're talking about making the new deep strike bomber optionally unmanned. what kind of impact you think it will have on speed i have a follow was going on with that stuff under the ocean and all that big we have no idea what the burden is that we are taking on when we operate the systems. predator, you know when they got into this job we flunked predator. of course, i had darlene calling me, i mean i mean.