Sometimes more is less. So it is with the House and Senate’s compromise version of the Fiscal Year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that was made public this week and was passed by the House on Thursday.
The bill calls for near record levels of Pentagon spending, but it chooses to devote much of the funding to costly, dysfunctional weapons systems that are ill-suited to addressing current challenges, largely because many of the weapons boosted in the NDAA were chosen based on where they are built, not whether they are the best systems for defending the United States and its allies. Pork barrel politics ruled the day to an extent not seen in recent memory, and we may all pay for it for years to come — in burgeoning expenditures and reduced security.