What is Donald Trump talking about when he proposed lifting the cap on defense spending? Why is a sequester on defense spending important? What does "political engineering" even mean?

Dan Grazier explains it all on the Steele & Ungar Show, on Sirius XM's POTUS channel. Grazier, a former Marine Corps captain, served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan during the War on Terror, joined POGO's Straus Military Reform Project as the Jack Shanahan Fellow.

Steele & Ungar is a weekly two-hour show with friends Michael Steele, former Chairman of the Republican National Committee and current MSNBC political contributor, and Rick Ungar, senior political contributor at Forbes. com and Newsmax TV and a long-time Democrat.

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Military Spending, Debunked (feat. POGO's Dan Grazier)

The Project On Government Oversight's Dan Grazier recently sat down with Tom Christie, a former Director of Operational Test & Evaluation at the DoD from 2001-2005, to talk about the critical need for realistic combat testing before the Pentagon buys new weapons on this latest POGO podcast.

Fly Before You Buy: Tom Christie on Realistic Combat Testing

Winslow Wheeler, a veteran Capitol Hill staffer, shares his insights about what proper Congressional oversight is and provides tips for today’s young staffers on how they can be most effective in their roles providing national security oversight.

Winslow Wheeler on Congressional Oversight

The A-10 has proven itself to be one of the most venerable and capable aircraft in the U.S. arsenal. It is also an aircraft most people in the Air Force never wanted, and they have spent years actively working to send it to the scrap yard. It is the first aircraft ever designed from the very beginning to be solely dedicated to supporting ground troops. Generations of American soldiers and Marines have come to love the jet for its unique abilities to free them from jams and help accomplish the mission. The A-10 achieved this status through a set of fortuitous events and through the efforts of a few brave and dedicated individuals who dedicated themselves to making sure the men and women fighting on the ground would receive the support they needed from the air. Pierre Sprey, one of Robert McNamara’s “whiz kids,” played a key role in the creation of the A-10, and recounts the second part of this incredible story.

Pierre on the A-10 part 2 (full, edited)

Pierre Sprey and the Birth of the A-10, Part II

Jeff Groom, a former Marine Corps helicopter pilot, recently published a highly satirical, and occasionally irreverent, account of his experiences in uniform, American Cobra Pilot: A Marine Remembers a Dog and Pony Show. He talks with POGO’s Jack Shanahan Military Fellow Dan Grazier about his transition from being a highly motivated and idealistic young officer to one who critically appraised the state of the current force. He also discusses life as a pilot who flies far fewer hours than he should to truly develop his skills and perform the combat function of his military occupational specialty. By his calculations, he figures the American people paid him $50,000 each time he actually performed his real job. The problem is, he did this only twice a year.

Jeff Groom, Disillusioned Helicopter Pilot

Instructors at The Basic School, the Marine Corps’ six-month-long course for all newly commissioned officers, are using training methods used in institutions like Harvard Business School and Columbia University to make better decision-makers. The Case Method Project at Quantico, Virginia, uses decision-forcing exercises, or scenarios used to place students in the role of a person facing a difficult problem.

Program Helps Marine Officers Develop Decision-Making Skills

The Navy’s version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, recently declared ready for combat, has netted unacceptably low “fully mission capable” rates—meaning it’s in fact almost never fully ready for combat—according to a document obtained by the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). 

The fact that the Navy is pushing ahead with the aircraft in spite of evidence that it is not ready for combat and could therefore put at risk missions, as well as the troops who depend on it to get to the fight, comes at the same time as the Pentagon’s latest annual operational testing report for fiscal year 2018 shows that the entire F-35 program, the most expensive weapon system in history, is not ready to face current or future threats. 

We look at these issues and more in the latest episode of the Pentagon Labyrinth.

Show Notes:
F-35 Far from Ready to Face Current or Future Threats, Testing Data Shows

FY 2018 DOT&E Annual F-35 Report

NAVAIR F-35 Readiness Charts

*Music: “Without Limits” Ross Bugden*

F-35 Far From Ready

Combat troops tend to get the majority of the attention in the coverage of our overseas wars. But there is an often-overlooked cadre of troops that perform a key role in our overseas campaigns and can affect both the duration and outcome of a conflict. 
The United States has a long history with military advisors. Soldiers in the Continental Army were on the receiving end when the Marquis de Lafayette and Baron von Steuben worked with them to increase their effectiveness on the battlefield. American forces have been advising foreign militaries since the early twentieth century in places such as the Philippines, the Caribbean, Korea, Vietnam, and more recently in Iraq and still in Afghanistan. In spite of the frequency of these missions, the services have only recently taken steps to create permanent advisor institutions.
Marine Corps Captain Maurice “Chipp” Naylon spent seven months in Afghanistan as an advisor with the Georgian Army and wrote a book, The New Ministry of Truth, about his deployment. His experiences, both good and bad, provide insight to the role military advisors play.
Show Notes:
The New Ministry of Truth
By living on Afghan base, Army advisors aim to better enable partners
MCSCG Deploys to the Republic of Georgia
Marines’ alliance with Georgians holds clues to future missions
*Music: “Without Limits” Ross Bugden*

Advising Foreign Forces with “Chipp” Naylon

The relationship between the military and the society it serves has a significant impact on policy decisions and even budgets. The veneration of service members in the United States today manifests benignly in the refrain, “Thank you for your service,” and the much appreciated discounts at the local home improvement center, but this reverence can also have less benign effects. The number of retired flag officers serving in high government positions, sitting on the boards of defense contractors, and appearing as talking heads on television shapes policy, which in turn drives Pentagon budgets.

Dr. Steele Brand, a professor of history at The King’s College in New York City, explored the differences between the citizen-soldier and the soldier-citizen in his recent book, “Killing for the Republic.”Republican Rome produced highly adaptive armies with farmers who would moonlight as effective soldiers during the campaigning season and then return to their families and plows—a practice that helped to remove the barriers between the military and the society it served, according to Brand. He says Rome’s part-time soldiers faced an uphill battle against enemy professionals, but that their ability to adapt meant they usually prevailed in the end. In this interview, Dr. Brand explains the differences between the Roman and American models of training soldiers and how those differences contribute to the civilian-military divide.

Citizen-Soldiers Versus Soldier-Citizens with Dr. Steele Brand

Retired Navy JAG and Syracuse Law professor Mark Nevitt talks about the laws governing the president’s authority to deploy the military within the United States.

What’s the Military’s Role in a Contested Election with Mark Nevitt

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is a nonpartisan watchdog that exposes government corruption and fights for reforms in order to achieve a more effective, open, and ethical federal government. Founded in 1981, it is completely independent and espouses no partisan ideology.
POGO is widely praised by Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle for its unbiased, fact-based work, and enjoys a reputation for independence and excellence among federal workers, whistleblowers, nonprofits, and the media.
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The Pentagon Labyrinth is a podcast by the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight to discuss key issues and current challenges for military and Pentagon reform.

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