[Infowarrior] - Are all military marvels needed?

[Richard Forno]

A great precis on how DOD procurement and Congress *really* works.  --rf


Article published Dec 15, 2007
Are all military marvels needed?

http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071215/TECHNOLOGY/11
2150048/home.html&template=printart


December 15, 2007

By Fred Reed - I see that Boeing has mounted a powerful laser in a C-130
cargo plane that, it says, will be able to cripple a truck from six miles
away. Those who watch military technology will recognize this as the little
brother of Boeing's Airborne Laser, or ABL, which is mounted in a 747 and is
intended to shoot down ballistic missiles. Both, in my opinion, illustrate
something profoundly wrong with the U.S. military.

The U.S. has no conventional military enemies now. Neither Russia nor China
nor anyone else is building vast arsenals of advanced weaponry. The enemies
the U.S. actually fights are guerrillas and insurgents. So why spend huge
sums on high-tech arms?

Why use a very costly laser to do what is already easily done by existent
gunships and missiles?

The main reason is money. Uncle Sugar has lots of it. Much of American
politics revolves around ways of draining the national purse. Thus,
road-construction firms want to build roads whether we need them or not,
etc. Aerospace companies behave accordingly.

Big-ticket, advanced weaponry is immensely expensive, which translates into
immensely profitable. The tab for a project can run easily into the
billions. Further, the weapon constitutes a semi-immortal trough. For
example, a new fighter plane ‹ the F-22, for example ‹ can take 25 years to
develop. It then costs a fortune ($361 million a copy for the F-22,
according to the Government Accountability Office), and creates a 30-year
market for spare parts, upgrades, service-life extensions and so on.

For engineers, for programmers and aerospace companies and towns where the
factories are, the economic attraction outweighs military utility. It can be
a 50-year cash cow. And with that much money, and that many jobs at stake,
people will persuade themselves that it is militarily a good idea.

The companies then look for additional applications of whatever it is,
whether they make sense or not, and peddle them to the Pentagon.

The resulting hardware may perform well. Engineers design these things, and
by their nature engineers want things to work. They love to push the
envelope, to do something that hasn't been done before. People who design
airplanes love airplanes. They work for huge companies with lots of money so
they can use the best computers and materials. The result is a weapon that
works, but not necessarily one that is needed.

The F-22 is a technical marvel that can cruise at supersonic speeds and
comes equipped with stealth technology and miraculous electronics. It is not
particularly useful against urban insurgents with rifles, though.

A great facilitator of massive tech projects is unlegislated secrecy,
otherwise known as inattention. No one really watches most of the federal
government.

Do you know what HUD's budget is, or what it does with it? Me neither. The
big tech projects aren't hidden, they aren't "black" programs. You can read
about them in Aviation Week, but few of us do. They just grow quietly in the
shadows. They become institutions with offices in the Pentagon, protected by
congressmen who represent the districts where they are made.

For the 30 years during which I covered the military, the pattern was to
defend the advanced weaponry while neglecting the inglorious low-tech
equipment needed in war. There is no constituency for the cheap and mundane.
The military prepares to fight an enemy, however imaginary, that justifies
the high-tech equipment it wants ‹ not the unglamorous ragtag militia that
is actually out there.

Thus, a huge, advanced, undeniably interesting laser in a cargo plane.