Today Secretary of Defense (“War”) Pete Hegseth visited SpaceX marking the third speech of his tenure and the continuation of his so-called “Arsenal of Freedom” tour. While visiting Starbase, Hegseth was scheduled to appear alongside Elon Musk, marking the first time since his break with Donald Trump that Musk has appeared on stage with a high ranking member of the administration.
In a press release announcing the speech, the War/State Department underscored Hegseth’s commitment to growing the defense industrial base.
“For too long, Pentagon bureaucracy has hindered the speed and might of our manufacturing base, obstructing innovation and warfare solutions from companies like SpaceX and Lockheed Martin”
The visit comes just two days after the U.S. Space Systems Command (SSC) awarded SpaceX a $739 million contract award for launching satellites with “missile warning and missile tracking capability.” That follows a $714m deal for launches in October for a company that since 2008 has received from than $22b in federal contracts.
All of this comes in the wake of the President’s recent call for a 50% increase in the defense budget to a mind-boggling $1.5 Trillion. A suggestion that makes little sense from a variety of perspectives, including the fact that in December the Pentagon failed its audit for the 8th year in a row! This makes it the only one of the governments twenty-four major agencies not to successfully pass an audit since they were mandated by Congress in 2018.
This hardly sounds like a Department worthy of receiving a 50% increase in its budget. Moreover, the President made this suggestion at a time when the U.S. is growing in debt - over $38T - which makes the national debt one of the greatest threats to our security.
The president has continued to suggest that all of this will be resolved by the revenue taken in as a result of the tariffs he has imposed. Today on social media, however, even he did not sound confident about this coming to fruition. “If the Supreme Court rules against the United State of America on this National Security bonanza,” he wrote in reference to the tariffs case, “WE’RE SCREWED!”
Long before Hegseth arrived, the Department made a mess of its weapons acquisition process which can only be described as a disaster at this point. The Department does need to clean up its fiscal house, as does the country. That is what Hegseth should be working on and detailing specifically in his speech in Texas. So far, however, that has not been the focus of his “Arsenal of Freedom” tour.
