[R-G] Pentagon’s Black Budget Grows to More Than $50 Billion

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/pentagons-black-budget-grows-to-more-than-50-billion/

Pentagon’s Black Budget Grows to More Than $50 Billion (Updated)

     * By Noah Shachtman
     * May 7, 2009  |

top-secret-movie-posterThe Pentagon wants to spend just over $50  
billion on classified programs next year, newly-released Defense  
Department budget documents reveal. “That’s the largest-ever sum,”  
according to Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman, a longtime black-budget  
seer — a three percent increase over last year’s total.

It makes the Pentagon’s secret operations, including the intelligence  
budgets nested inside, “roughly equal in magnitude to the entire  
defense budgets of the UK, France or Japan,” Sweetman adds. All in  
all, about seven and a half percent of the Defense Department’s total  
spending is now classified.

Black-world weapons-buying “remains dominated by the single line  
item,” according to Sweetman. (You can find it under the Air Force’s  
“other procurement” section, on page F-21 here.) “This year’s number  
stands just above $16 billion. In inflation-adjusted terms, that’s 240  
per cent more than it was ten years ago.”

Many of the secret budgets still remain clandestine, however. In the  
research budget, the line item for a “Special Program”of the super- 
secret National Security Agency is a string of zeros. Same goes for an  
NSA “Cyber Security Initiative” kitty. And don’t even ask about NSA’s  
“Intelligence Support to Information Operations” account. That’s a  
blank slate, too.

Some other fun facts, buried in the Pentagon’s just-released budget  
docs:

     * Money for “Directed Energy Technology” — real-life ray gun  
research — jumps from $62.7 million last year to $105.7 million in 2010.
     * Cash for “Prompt Global Strike Capability Development” —  
weapons that can hit anywhere on the planet, in just a few hours —  
jumps from $74.1 million to $166.9 million.
     * The high-flying Global Hawk drones get an an extra $486.8  
million.
     * The Office of the Secretary of Defense is pushing $75 million  
in new alt-fuel and alt-power projects — from “Landfill Gas Energy  
Capture” to a “Tactical, Deployable Micro-Grid.”
     * The Maui Space Surveillance System gets a major downgrade, from  
$36.3 million to a mere $5.8 million. Aloha, space-watchers!

UPDATE:CQ’s Tim Starks reports that “the budget would also allocate an  
unspecified amount to the new ‘Imagery Satellite Way Ahead‘ program, a  
joint effort between the Office of the Director of National  
Intelligence and the Department of Defense designed to revamp the  
nation’s constellation of spy satellites.”

     The mostly classified plan would include new, redesigned “electro- 
optical” satellites, which collect data from across the  
electromagnetic spectrum, as well as the expanded use of commercial  
satellite imagery. Although the cost is secret, most estimates place  
it in the multibillion-dollar range.

[Image: OBB]