In Latin America, the purchase of military equipment has experienced increasing complexity and difficulty, due to the dizzying technological advances that have been incorporated into the means of war. Because of the complexity and sophistication of equipment and materials, we are dealing with an integrated arms system that must necessarily interact with other systems. The greater amount of technology that has been incorporated makes it possible to increase the lethal capacity of arms systems and, therefore, increase the military capacity of a military force. In addition, this greater sophistication has increased, all the more, the technological gap between industrialized countries and developing countries, such as in Latin America, where the process of purchasing such equipment is more common. Faced with this situation, the most likely materiel to be purchased must be meticulously evaluated and analyzed, in order to prevent inefficiencies and fruitless expenditures, since funds are always scarce. This is the reason why it is so important to structure efficient methodologies, in order to evaluate the technical effectiveness of arms systems and the costs associated with them.
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This text analyzes the positive impact of force design methodology on Brazilian Navy planning process. It presents the lack of force design as the current major weakness of the Brazilian national defense. It centers its analysis in the Brazilian Navy, considering its loss of effectiveness and the probable decrease in budgetary resources in the near future. It also defines the so-called force design environment, which is marked by legality, legitimacy and transparency, and identifies force design as an essential tool for national defense budgetary planning, relating its non-existence to a low rate of efficacy and efficiency in public resources management. The text relates force design to the issue of interoperability and confirms that force design is of paramount importance to provide a link between political decisions and execution in the area of national defense. In conclusion, it confirms that implementing force design methodology deserves a high priority in the Brazilian national defense policy.
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This paper reviews the relationship between Defense and the federal public budget, with the objective of checking compliance with formally stated goals. In spite of its relevance, the Brazilian public budget gives more emphasis to financial information, to the detriment of operational or strategic information. Nevertheless, the public budget does allow the observation of certain occurrences. Defense and supply are disconnected, the latter characterized as an expense element. Defense-related programs were not regarded as strategic in the multi-annual plan, in force in 2001. Moreover, in the corresponding multi-annual plan there is an apparent overlap between the activities of each branch of service, and there is no special reference to defense-related diplomatic activities or intelligence. There is also some evidence of rescheduling of the 2001 budget elements, while maintaining values within additional limitations. The most serious discrepancy is in the lack of association between diplomatic relations and the national defense function, without any evidence of budget values in the attached detailed report, despite policy and legal direction. These issues point out subjects that should be given more attention by national planning and control in Brazil.
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This paper describes the organizational structure of the Peruvian National Defense System. After discussing the role of the different entities that make up the Defense System, the budget assigned to each sector is analized. Special emphasis is placed on transparency of the defense sector budget and, in particular, of the budget of the intelligence service. The initial analysis of the defense sector and its budget indicate that the available information is scarce and almost useless given that it does not allow for analysis of the social worth of individual projects associated with that sector. Likewise, a large part of the budget is destined for actions oriented toward social spending programs. This causes a distorsion in the analysis of the rest of the government's social spending policy. It is difficult to measure how defense spending destined for social programs complements or substitutes other government actions. A common theme throughout the sector is the cult of secrecy and the lack of transparency, as well as difficulty in accessing data. The situation has recently improved with the publication of the Defense White Paper. However, in our opinion, there is still much to done.
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This paper is intended to be a methodological essay that discusses how broadening budgetary analysis and quantitative information in the area of defense can serve as an instrument of transparency and public oversight. Although it is based on the case of Argentina (which the author knows intimately), the goal is to open the discussion on the broader publication of quantitative information in the region. The paper is the result of the author's double frustration with the data offered by international and official sources. The fundamental requirement for the production of useful quantitative information is that the analysis is simultaneously fed from various angles: from the budgeting systems specialist, and from the expert in the theory, policy, history and institutions of the defense sector. The author suggests possible end-users of the data, a precise definition of military expenses, and 19 series or indices with a brief explanation of their usefulness.
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The analysis of military expenditures in Latin America is made difficult by lack of homogeneous, coetaneous information for the different countries. This paper seeks to identify the publicly available information about the process of resource allocation to the Chilean Armed Forces, and based on this, to suggest a methodology for assembling of a set of indicators designed to elevate the quality of public information regarding this expenditure, while at the same time allowing the comparison of Chilean military expenditures with those of other countries of the continent, were the methodology adopted by them. This article is part of a larger effort sponsored by the Ford Foundation, to arrive at a common methodology of measurement of military expenditures in the Southern Cone, which has included Argentina, Chile and Peru in its first phase. This paper discusses, first, the institutional elements that condition the allocation of resources to the armed forces, the characteristics of that allocation process and, finally, the main methodological themes that affect the construction of a set of defense expenditures comparable internationally and over time. On the basis of the restrictions that this imposes, a group of indicators of the evolution and characteristics of a country?s defense expenditures is defined.
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