As the Department of Defense comes about.
Good luck with that. Think of the most difficult creature to kill in fiction, and I'm not referring to run-of-the-mill critters like vampires or zombies. Something that is implacable and utterly unstoppable. Now try to kill that several times over.
That is what killing a major defense procurement program is like. The armed services are, at times, both complicit and victims of this. When they can, the contractors site the final assembly plants in the districts of powerful congressmen. The armed services, when it suits them, are all too happy to show how many states and congressional districts benefit from any given program. If one of the seinor senators had a plant in their state that made muskets, the Army would still be buying them.
I don't think Gates will succeed, but I wish him luck.
(H/T to Abu Muqawama)
Something that is implacable and utterly unstoppable.
ReplyDeleteSomething like this, I suppose, with the power of invisibility.
Gates will be very lucky to make these changes stick, but I hope he does. Right now the last thing we need to be doing is plowing billions of dollars into weapons we don't need. I see no reason at all for a new class of super-destroyers, and while the F-22 is a formidable aircraft, it's doubtful it will be worth buying hundreds more of them.