Trump Should Cut Pentagon Waste and Craft a New Strategy

William D. Hartung

Security,

“Taking down the military-industrial complex, one tweet at a time.”

Over the past month, president-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly spoken out against Pentagon waste, in what one analyst has described as “taking down the military-industrial complex, one tweet at a time.”

The assault began on December 6 when Trump tweeted that “Boeing Is Building a Brand New 747 for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel the order!”  Trump’s tweet may seem premature – so far Boeing has “only” received $170 million for initial development of the plane.  But Trump’s assertion is roughly in line with preliminary estimates of what it could ultimately cost to build two of the aircraft, and his tweet put Boeing on notice that he plans to keep an eye on the costs of the system going forward.  The following week, Trump took to twitter to denounce the costs of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft, which at $1.4 trillion to build and operate over its lifetime is the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken by the Pentagon: “The F-35 program and cost is out of control.  Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) programs after January 20th.”