Shhhh! (Pentagon's Black budget, revealed)

Here is a fact for the Republicans claiming for the decreased spenditure in Defence -in fact, a 4% increase: Pentagon’s black (or secret) budget will go up to mora than $50 billions. That’s an increase of a 3% compared to FY09 and the biggest sum in history dedicated to secret operations.

But numbers alone aren’t enough to get the big picture, so let’s find some comparatives. The UK, i.e., has the second largest military budget on the world; $60 billion. Chinese and French spend $58 and $54 billion each on their Armed Forces. Japan is the fifth position with only $44 billion.

According to those numbers, “black” budget is enough to make the 5th biggest army in the world -at least on the paper and in terms of money invested.

More data to compare: NASA budget for FY10 sums $17 billion. And that’s even the great challenges the Space Agency will have to face in the oncoming years. The biggest of them will be to replace the obsolete space shuttles and survive until then relying on the Russians. Not easy.

It should be accounted too that in those $50+ billion is not included the CIA budget, that usually participate on the Pentagon programs. The Agency, i.e., uses drones developed by the Army regularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan against the Talebans, and they have even used them in Yemen.

So, make the maths.

Well, if you are too lazy for that, have a look here to the documents unveiled by the Pentagon. There are three different important documents: R-1 (Research and development), P-1 (Procurement) y O-1 (Operations).

The list of prices for the research department, detailed, is here. Many of the projects have exact numbers of spending. Some look like taken out from the latest sci-fi movie. Like the $105.7 million dedicated to investigate “Directed Energy Technology”; this is, a real life rail gun.

There are too some other more down to Earth programs, like the development of the Global Hawk drones ($486.8 million) or renewable energies and alternative fuel research ($75 million). It’s remarkable too the $119.6 million collaboration with the Israelis for antimissile systems.

However, many more still continue being secret. To be precise, those full of zeros. Vast majority of them correspond to the ultra-secret National Security Agency (NSA). Who knows what could be the “Cyber Security Initiative” or the “Dragon U-2” program. And don’t even try to mention the “Special Program”. That line doesn’t even have a name for the project.



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