You thought that $500 toilet seat from 20-30 years ago was bad?
"We're No. 1 in the world in military capabilities," said David M. Walker, who runs the Government Accountability Office, the budget overseer for Congress. "But on the business side, the Defense Department gets a D - giving them the benefit of the doubt. If they were a business, they wouldn't be in business."
I'll say. When a C-130 cargo plane costs an inflation-adjusted 500 percent more than it did when it was first built...
All of this is part of generals fighting the last war (yes, that hoary old cliché is still valid). Bigger heavier weapons won't cut it in these counterinsurgency wars we seem to be fighting.
"Today, the United States is spending $500 million apiece for stealth bombers," the group wrote in a 1989 article that appeared in a professional military journal. "A terrorist stealth bomber is a car with a bomb in the trunk--a car that looks like every other car."
Sometimes the Pentagon refuses to learn a damned thing, even when its own people try to teach it. The group mentioned above is composed of several active and retired Army and Marine officers who've been trying for 16 years to explain that tanks, Hummers, and Bradleys are not the right tools for non-conventional warfare. The article is frightening. (It's the Chicago Tribune; I've had no trouble getting to the story, but if you do, try BugMeNot.)
Posted by Linkmeister at June 8, 2005 12:01 AMNews like this makes me only more sad at the loss of Hackworth.
BTW, bugmenot doesn't work anymore for the Trib. They use email addresses instead of names.
Thanks, John, that's a useful tip.
Posted by: Linkmeister at June 11, 2005 02:59 PM