Tomahawk Missiles, Raytheon, Campaign Money What You Need to Know

Tomahawk Missiles, Raytheon, Campaign Money
What You Need to Know
by Lee Siu Hin

   During the November U.S.-Iraq crisis in the Gulf, on the other side of the earth, a joint U.S.-U.K. team quietly conducted a series of missile tests. On November 18, 1998, a British attack submarine, HMS Splendid, fired a Tomahawk cruise missile with a 1,000-pound explosive warhead from 500 miles off the southern California coast. It traveled several hundred miles into a test target building on San Clemente Island, just 75 miles south of Los Angeles.1 Following two similar tests earlier that month, firing non-explosive-warhead Tomahawks from the Splendid to a U.S. Navy test range at China Lake, California, the exercise marked a joint effort to build a U.K. version of the Tomahawk missiles.
   Among the guests who witnessed the November 18 test was the Los Angeles-based British Consul-General Paul Dimond. He was impressed by the results: "The success of this test is a significant moment in the U.S.-U.K. global security partnership," he said. "This new capability will enable the U.K. to be an even more effective partner with the United States and NATO in support of international diplomacy."2
   Since the start of the current Iraqi crisis, in January 1998, hundreds of Tomahawk missiles had been traveling on U.S. war ships deployed either in the Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean. When the U.S. launched nearly a hundred Tomahawk missiles against Sudan and Afghanistan on August 20, and 300-plus Tomahawks against Iraq in December, many military experts were stunned by the numbers, since the Tomahawk's effectiveness had always been questioned. During the August attack on Afghanistan, at least two Tomahawks malfunctioned and dropped into southern Pakistan, killing several people. In the December attacks on Iraq, some Tomahawks hit civilian targets in Iraq and some flew off course into Iran, injuring and killing several people. Ironically, of course, the attacks did not achieve their alleged goals, to kill Osama bin Laden and President Saddam Hussein and cripple their forces.
   Besides killing innocent civilians with limited military success, how much did the U.S. military spend to punish Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq? According to initial estimates, bombing bin Laden's "hideouts" on August 20 cost America at least $100 million. Operation "Desert Fox" in Iraq has cost at least $1 billion since December 16; and since the 1991 Gulf War, an average of $50 billion per year has been spent maintaining the Gulf deployment and keeping the Iraqi president in line, according to Associated Press reporter Laura Myers.3
   The August 20 missile attacks in Sudan and Afghanistan, as well as the December missile attacks on Iraq, involved huge amounts of money, manpower, and resources. The assaults were part of a larger web involving campaign donations, international military sales, U.S. military contracts, and the U.S. military build-up in the Middle East. The attacks were also meant to pave the way for the little-known multi-billion dollar National Missile Defense System-a revised version of the Reagan administration "Star Wars" program.
   Many people are now familiar with Tomahawk and Patriot missiles, due to the Gulf War and the August and November attacks. Not many know, however, that the manufacturer of these weapons is the Raytheon Company, based in Lexington, Massachusetts, one of the biggest military contractors, with billions of dollars in annual sales.

The Raytheon Connection
   According to a recent leading aerospace publication, Aviation Week & Space Technology, the U.S. fired 79 cruise missiles at up to seven targets, primarily a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, and what they claimed were bin Laden's headquarters, training, and support areas south of Kabul, Afghanistan. The number of missiles reportedly used increased from 70 in classified briefs the day after the raids to 79 in later reports, with 66 fired into Afghanistan and 13 into Sudan.4
At about $750,000 each, the land-based Tomahawk cruise missile is more expensive than a conventional bomb delivered by manned aircraft. According to retired U.S. Navy Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, with regular maintenance costs and other expenses, the costs for the missile attacks on August 20 could be nearly $115 million of taxpayers' money. "It's a lot of money, far more than sending B-52s," he added.5 The rationale for using Tomahawk missiles for the attacks-to put no American aircrews at risk of death or capture-has raised serious questions in the military community; it is often hard to judge exactly how effective missiles are with no close-range eyewitnesses.
   After the August 20 missile attacks, some former Persian Gulf war commanders said they were astounded by the number of Tomahawks used in the attacks. It is "a helluva lot of missiles," a former Operation Desert Storm planner said, adding that during Desert Storm, they would never have dreamed of putting more than 8 or 12 Tomahawks on one target. In fact, commanders were ordered early in the Gulf War to stop shooting the missiles because of the expense.6 So why did the U.S. military this time rush to burn over $100 million in one night in August, when there were other alternatives, such as political negotiation or raising the matter in the U.N. Security Council?
   For the last several years, Raytheon's Tomahawk missile has become one of America's favorite weapons in foreign conflicts. In the last several U.S.-involved international crises, the Tomahawk has become a wild card for the military.
   During the Kosovo crisis this past September and October, the U.S. deployed (but did not fire) unspecified numbers of Tomahawks on warships in the Mediterranean. During the Iraqi arms inspection crisis in November 1998, the Pentagon deployed 250 to 300 Tomahawks aboard Navy ships and submarines plying the Persian Gulf. Although there are fewer ships in the region now than there were during the heat of the January-February Iraqi arms inspection crisis, the Pentagon has doubled the number of missiles-more than were used during the Gulf War. According to an unidentified official,7 these Tomahawk missiles, and 50 or so combat aircraft aboard the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, could enable the U.S. to launch an attack against Iraq without having to spend days or weeks trying to secure permission from the Gulf states. Saudi Arabia and several other Middle East states were reluctant to do so that time. In fact, this was exactly what happened later in December, when the U.S., with U.K. backing, launched hundreds of missiles against Iraq from the Indian Ocean, bypassing Arab states, the U.N., and even NATO.
   The publicity around these new weapons helped Raytheon's sales and it has certainly helped the company recover from its recent financial troubles. According to their recent report, Raytheon's 1998 3rd-quarter profits dropped 95 percent from the same time in 1997, and the company announced the elimination of 14,000 jobs over the next two years.8 However, since autumn, especially after the August air strikes, Raytheon has been getting many new contracts worth billions of dollars; in addition, its 1998 campaign contributions appear to have helped its sales as well.

The Campaign Money Connection
   Have big corporate campaign donations like those from Raytheon to both the Republican and Democratic Parties influenced U.S. decisions about military spending?
   During the period May to November 1998, financially troubled Raytheon received multi-billion dollar contracts from the U.S. military as well as from foreign countries. Raytheon also substantially increased its campaign donations during that time.
According to Aviation Week & Space Technology,9 not long before the air attack, Raytheon was chosen by the Navy to build the next generation Block 4 "Tactical Tomahawk," due to be operational in 2003. The current 2,700 Block 3 Tomahawks-probably used in the August 20 attacks-are to be retired soon, because Raytheon and the Navy believe that it will be cheaper to build 1,353 new Block 4 Tomahawks than to improve the old ones.
   On June 3, the Naval Air Systems Command's cruise missiles office awarded Raytheon $23.1 million for the Block 4 Tomahawk's engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) project. The entire development project will cost $275 million, ending in 2001. According to the plan, the missiles will then be built between 2002 and 2007. With an estimated cost of $574,000 per missile, plus other related expenses, the total development and production costs will be about $1.1 billion. That is in addition to the $95 million for improvements on Raytheon's Patriot Missile system, passed by the House of Representatives on March 31.
   According to the initial estimates of the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) and the independent watchdog of federal campaign money, FEC Info,10 Raytheon and its subsidiaries gave $625,579 in soft money and individual contributions during the 1995-1996 election cycle, and $330,192 in the first six months of the 1997-1998 cycle, with $3,380,000 for lobbyists. In addition, according to the Center for Public Integrity,11 Raytheon is one of the most generous defense donors to members of Congress: House majority leader Dick Armey, for instance, received $48,201. Furthermore, according to the Federal Election Commission, Raytheon donated $138,700 in soft money to both the Democratic and Republican national campaign committees during this period.
   Within six weeks after the August 20th attacks, Raytheon received several more big military contracts worth up to $4.1 billion,12 including:
   September 14: the Air Force awarded a $56.4 million contract to Raytheon Systems Co., a unit of Raytheon, for the upgrade of 1,950 Maverick missiles;
   September 16: the government approved the sale of nearly 7,000 Raytheon missiles, bombs and related accelerants plus thousands of training bombs costing $2 billion. (This sale was made to the United Arab Emirates, a small Gulf state of 2.3 million people.);
   Early October: Raytheon was selected by Greece to provide more than $1.1 billion for Patriot missile defense systems, $145 million for an upgrade to Hawk Air Defense Systems, and more than $200 million for T6-A trainer aircraft-a total of $1.5 billion.
   Between the November Iraq crisis and the U.S.-U.K. attacks in December, Raytheon received several lucrative contracts from the military, primarily from the Navy, including:
   Raytheon received $78.4 million from the Navy for fiscal 1999 transmitter groups and K-99 fire control systems for DDG-51 class destroyers under the AEGIS shipbuilding program.
   As a a member of the Avondale Alliance, Raytheon anticipates receiving approximately $50 million for ship integration work on the LPD-18, the second ship in the LPD-17 series.
   In early January 1999, Raytheon received approximately $422.5 million for three MK-2 ship self-defense systems. These implement an evolutionary development of improved ship self-defense capabilities against high-speed, low-flying anti-ship cruise missiles.
   As part of a joint venture with Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon will share on a 60/40 basis an approximate $376.6 million contract awarded recently for the purchase of the third year full-rate production of the JAVELIN weapon system.
   Raytheon chairman William H. Swanson announced in December that it is expected to have more than $18 billion in contracts, both military and civilian, for 1998. As a result, Raytheon's stock rebounded from its recent low to a near 52-week high by late December 1998.
   Raytheon is not alone. Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and Northrop-Grumman are all eyeing the annual $270 billion U.S. defense spending bills, plus billions of dollars in foreign military markets. They are all quietly competing with each other for a bigger share of the "weapons of the 21st century."
   This includes the largely unknown U.S. National Missile Defense System (NMD), a mini-version of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars," with a price tag in the hundreds of billions of dollars. All of these corporations are building the weapons for the U.S. to dominate the world militarily in the next century.

The Military Connection
   There is another aspect of the U.S. treatment of Iraq and the August 20 air strikes that has been overlooked: the legitimacy of its continuous military presence in the Middle East and the Gulf region. Not surprisingly, after the October Kosovo crisis in former Yugoslavia, in November the U.S. and Iraq suddenly went back to crisis mode again.
   In January, after the air strikes, the Pentagon has been considering sending a Patriot missile battery to Turkey, in response to the Turkish government's request for additional protection against possible Iraqi Scud missile attacks. This request came after a series of U.S. attacks on Iraq's missile defense system in the northern "no-fly zone." The allied planes are based in Incirlik Air Base in south-central Turkey. Pentagon spokesman Michael Doubleday would not say whether Washington intended to comply with the request. "We are interested in being as supportive as we can to any of our coalition partners who are involved in this operation," he said.13
   Since the 1980s, the U.S. military has found a series of scapegoats to justify its intervention in the region: first Iran, then Iraq, then Somalia, next Sudan and bin Laden, and now Saddam Hussein again.
   The end of the Cold War did not scale down U.S. military muscle building; on the contrary, it led to further military buildup and accelerated development of the most advanced weapons systems. With the Soviet Union gone and Russian power significantly diminished, the U.S. wants to achieve its long-term goal: domination of the world. In the short term, the U.S. still needs to create imaginary enemies such as Iraq, North Korea, China, Sudan, Serbia, to legitimize the U.S. military buildup, as well as the continued military presence in the region. This includes several next-generation war plane projects such as the Joint Strike Fighter, the B-2 Bomber, and the YF-22 for the Navy and Air Force- initial estimates put them at no less than $400 billion over the next 20 years, to be built up to 6,000 units; several new aircraft carriers; and possibly the $500 billion NMD system. With a series of U.S. military threats and air strikes around the globe, against "terrorists" and "military dictators," this will certainly be a good excuse for the policy makers to justify spending more and more money on weapons for the years to come.

Endnotes:
Lee Siu Hin is a free-lance foreign correspondent, who has worked with Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles.
1. Associated Press (AP), Nov. 18, 1998.
2. Ibid.
3. Laura Myers, "Annual U.S. Gulf Costs Said At 50B," AP, Nov. 17, 1998. See also, Laura Myers, "U.S. Gulf Force Still Strong," AP, Nov. 15, 1998; Susanne M. Schafer, "U.S. Gulf Force Still Substantial," AP, Nov. 7, 1998.
4. Aviation Week & Space Technology, Aug. 31, 1998, p. 30.
5. Author's interview with Admiral Carroll, September 1998. He said although the price tag of the missile is around $750,000, there is an average additional $400,000 per missile for personnel, transportation, and maintenance costs. With 79 missiles used, he estimated total cost for the air strikes as at least $91 million.
6. Aviation Week & Space Technology, Aug. 31, 1998, p. 32.
7. AP, Nov. 7, 1998.
8. Based on news wires and Raytheon PR materials.
9. Aviation Week & Space Technology, Aug. 31, 1998, p. 35.
10. Documents provided by FEC Info, Washington, DC.
11. Documents provided by Center for Public Integrity, Washington, DC.
12. AP, Nov. 7, 1998.
13. Robert Burns, "U.S. to Help Turkey With Weapons," AP, Jan. 15, 1999.

Sidebar:
Weapons of the 21st Century
The new U.S. military strategy is: focus on quality rather than quantity, and arm with new-generation 21st Century conventional and tactical weapons to prepare for what the Pentagon calls "fighting two wars at the same time."
Such weapons projects include:
1. Lockheed-Martin's next generation YF-22 advanced tactical fighters for the Air Force, called by one military expert "the ace of aces in 21st century warfare." With an estimated cost of $159 million per plane, the 442 planes will cost approximately $70.1 billion. In the fiscal 1999 defense bill, Congress passed $1.6 billion to pay Lockheed-Martin for the YF-22's continued development.
2. Boeing's F/A-18 E/F, the Navy's top fighter-bomber, for which Congress approved $204 million in 1998 and requested $3.28 billion (30 planes' worth) for fiscal 1999. The Navy plans to place 1,000 F/A-18 E/Fs in the next century, with an estimated cost of $81 billion. This doesn't even include the other model, F/A-18 C/D: 1,062 aircraft with a total estimated cost of $42.7 billion.
3. 3,000 Air Force/Navy Joint Strike Fighters, built by a coalition of aerospace companies, primarily Boeing and Lockheed-Martin-British Aerospace teams. With planned service entry in 2008, it will be the future standard fighter for the U.S., at a projected $72 million per unit, or $219 billion total.
4. A new CVN-77 Nuclear Aircraft Carrier built by Newport News Shipbuilding, with an estimated total cost of $6.5 billion, to be launched next century. In addition, a new $1.5 billion helicopter carrier which the Navy did not request but Congress "approved."
5. The National Missile Defense System (NMD), coordinated by the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMD). It's an anti-missile defense system including NMD, Navy Theater Wide system, Air Force Airborne Laser system and Army Theater High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD), with a combination of satellites, radar and missiles. Sounds familiar? It should-it's a copycat version of the 1980s' "Star Wars" program.
Nobody really knows how much it will cost to build the overall system, but initial estimates are around $500 billion. So far it has cost about $4 billion per year for the research alone, and the Pentagon is requesting $4 billion of BMD funding for the 1999 budget. Despite heavy criticism from anti-nuclear activists, and even the Pentagon's own "independent" panel, who called the project a "rush to failure" because of flight test misses in Lockheed-Martins THAAD and other components of this project, and despite almost $50 billion in waste, the Department of Defense still will not drop the project. Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin and Northrop-Grumman are all currently fighting tooth-and-nail for the contracts. So far, the Boeing facility in Anaheim, California, has won $1.5 billion from the Pentagon for related research and development. In addition, Congress quietly slipped an additional $1 billion of "emergency funds" into next year's already approved BMD budget of $3.5 billion, and restored $293.4 million for Lockheed-Martin to continue developing THAAD.

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