Word: budgeteering
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Such pricing problems are compounded by the variability in ruble-dollar exchange rates, leading economists to make estimates varying as much as 50%. Such difficulties give little confidence in Soviet defense budget estimates...
Every year the defense budget is presented to Congress as a "bare bones" program for American defense; Secretary of Defense Harold Brown argued this point last month before several Senate committees. Yet two major issues lead one to wonder if the proposed budget is just the bare minimum. First, with regard to the nuclear deterrent, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara determined that an adequate nuclear deterrent was 200-400 megaton equivalents, enough explosive to destroy about 30% of Soviet population and 70% of industry in a second strike. Today the U.S. deploys over 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads, many times...
Technologically, the Vietnam and Mideast wars have shown large and expensive equipment such as aircraft carriers, fighter aircraft, and tanks to be increasingly vulnerable to highly accurate, deadly, and cost-effective precision-guided munitions. Yet the defense budget still shows a greater commitment to these weapons: for example, although Assistant Defense Secretary William Perry portrays "smart" weapons as the most important revolution in military hardware since radar, the budget includes a request for a fourteenth, multi-billion-dollar aircraft carrier...
...these points were seriously addressed, today's defense budget could be reduced far beyond its projected 4-5 per cent real rise this year...
Much of this year's requested rise in defense spending is based on a perceived imbalance in NATO-Warsaw Pact forces, in favor of the latter. Thus we hear of the required "3% NATO increase" in the budget, although the increase is greater than 3% and seems intended more for strategic and naval forces than for NATO troops...