Back off our military pension, benefits

• Why is there a need to change the present retirement system?
• The Department of Defense should do a full audit of its assets. It has never been done.
• Second, reduce the Pentagon’s civilian workforce by 25 to 30 percent.
• Third, hold contractors accountable for system overruns.

With all the sacrifices military service members make, the Department of Defense wants to change the military retirement because Pentagon officials say pension and health-care costs threaten our national defense.

One reason for the high cost is the large number of veterans using the VA system. This is the result of the conflicts this country has been involved in since the end of the Second World War: The Korean War; the Vietnam War and the Cambodian incursion; the intervention in Lebanon; invasions of Grenada, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Somali; the First Gulf War and the post-Sept. 11 actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Conflicts have a cost not only militarily but also in health care. Many of today’s causalities have survivable wounds. Also there are the unseen wounds: traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder . Maybe those with PTSD have left the war but has the war has not left them.

It is not the profligacy of the military pension and health-care costs that are the problem, but endless conflicts and the unrestrained cost overruns of big-ticket military weaponry.

Why is there a need to change the present retirement system? The official reason is Pentagon military personnel costs now consume one-third of the budget ($139.9 billion down from $180 billion in 2011) and its effect on the national defense. I question the piety “in the interest of national defense.”

Instead of changing the present system, the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission should look closer to home. The Department of Defense should do a full audit of its assets. It has never been done. Congress passed a law requiring the department be audit ready by 2017. Few believe it will meet that deadline.

Second, reduce the Pentagon’s civilian workforce by 25 to 30 percent. Since 2009 the Pentagon’s civilian workforce has grown by 7 percent to 750,000 while the active duty military personnel has been reduced by 8 percent.

Third, hold contractors accountable for system overruns. Some 750 F-22 Raptors were proposed at an initial cost of $26.2 billion, or $3.49 million per jet. The Air Force only purchased 187 of the problem-plagued aircraft at a cost of $412 million each. This number includes cost for research and production.

In 2009, the plan was to produce 2,443 F-35s. It was also claimed to be stealthy; it is not. The cost overruns are due to software delays, fuel tank redesign defects in issues. A recent Rand report stated the F-35 “can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run.” Lightning protection, flight control problems, helmet display and numerous other cost overruns on the F-35 are huge: $1 trillion and climbing.

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The latest Pentagon proposal is the need for a new stealth bomber, the B-3. Northrop needs this bomber to compete with Lockheed’s F-35 fighter and Boeing’s KC-46A tanker.

But consider for a moment the B-3’s predecessor, the B-2. In 1986 the Air Force projected the need for 132 of the bombers at $441 million per plane. The number was reduced to 20 after the cost rose to $2.2 billion per plane, which must be sheltered because its effectiveness deteriorates in rain, heat and humidity.

The Air Force is not the only example. It is a systemic problem​.

The average major Pentagon acquisition is 40 percent over budget. Even when the Defense Department purchases prescription drugs for the armed forces, it pays 60 percent more than Medicaid.

The problem is not American service members’ pension and health care but the wanton waste of money and the unaccountability of the Defense spending.

The pension revision, if allowed to move forward, will result in fewer people entering the services. That would mean more reliance on military contractors. Ancient Rome tried it and we know how that worked out.

Stanley E. Zeitz of Surprise is a retired Air Force colonel.