On the bright side, lots of military contractors are making lots of money, and they're building their fancy new systems in lots and lots and lots of different congressional districts. So who's complaining?

<Slowly raises hand>

If we're going to use bloated spending as a way to create jobs, wouldn't it be better to forgo the corporate welfare and find better economy-boosting projects to sink our trillions into that doesn't involve making killing machines. Y'know, like fixing bridges, investing in nationwide electronic medical records, modernizing our electrical grid, etc. I know politicians are almost universally corporate whores, but at the very least, I wish they would be bought by corporations whose graft might have the side-effect of improving our quality of life a bit.

This is important info. And while the snark is fair, this is really depressing.

We are buying stuff and shorting our soldiers and their families. The same clowns advocating for new "systems" are undermining the financial situations, medical care, and yes, morale, of the folks who dare to take on the challenge of serving it the US military.

Soldiers are treated a lot more shabbily than missile defense systems. Soldiers are treated like crap because they do what is asked, but don't deliver jobs to a district. It is shameful.

And on top of that, we still live in a fiscal reality where "defense spending" apparently doesn't count on the books when it comes time to figure out how much we have, and how much we owe.

I am as enthralled with new and shiny gadgets as anyone else (I really am, and I can tell you all about them), but what allows our country to be run by nit-wits who cannot figure out the difference between spending on people (flesh and blood folks who live, die, and are wounded in the service of our country) and cool death-delivering weapons. Funding for vets is pussy land. Funding for shit that is over-budget and can't deliver...pure patriotism.

It is crap, and I hate it. And I live in WA where the returning wounded soldiers get crap at Ft. Lewis, and Boeing gets the boo-hoos because they lost a big-ass defense contract. It is sick.

Not only what the first two commenters said, but most of these weapons systems are oriented to Cold War needs. That's a big land and air battle in Central Europe, against massed Soviet equipment.

I think a key phrase here is "the programs that provided GAO data."

That means that not all the programs provided data to the GAO.

What portion did NOT provide data; and is it, um, possible that those programs were not those that are coming in at anything like on-time, on-budget?

And as a follow-up, my Senator Patty Murray has been a champ when it comes to veterans, but also is in the tank when it comes to defense contracts with Boeing. This is indeed a very pernicious and all-encompassing enterprise on the part of "national defense."

It hits all the right notes, it appeals to unions, to "national defense," to those who feel the need to "appear strong" and, unfortunately, to those who are smart enough and cynical enough to promise super duper weapons that do everything. But, as we all know, the super duper weapons generally cost a ton more than advertised, and don't deliver as promised.

And, to be blunt, in the current military situation, are little more than toys. They are awesome, but what we have is more than enough. It's just a fact. Our current arsenal is overwhelming, and while we should develop new stuff, the idea that we "need" better equipment, as opposed to investing in the personnel of our fighting force, is just plain stupid. F-16 with experienced and happy crew, or F-35 with demoralized and unfamiliar crew? You make the call, but who exactly are they going against, and why do we sell our servicepeople short all the time, but not our military toys? We need to grow up and start nixing things we don't need. Simple, but true.

I've thought for a while that one of the underappreciated stories of the Iraq war was that the richest, most sophisticated, most lavishly equipped army in the world went into battle in a minor backwater state and is being defeated by amateur irregulars.

"National Defense" is not, apparently, about dealing with realistic combat needs as they arise in the real world; it's actually about funneling money to politically-connected contractors and massaging the egos of career military upper-echelons. God help us if we ever needed to use this gold-plated monstrosity to defend ourselves.

This sort of deterioration into lavishly financed shadowboxing is probably inevitable if we are going to insist on pumping massive monies into armaments but if we don't have any real life-and-death conflicts to serve as a reality check.

Also, the DOD has for a decade now lacked the financial internal controls sufficient for the GAO or third party auditors to issue an unqualified opinion on the financial statements of the US Government as a whole, let alone the DOD itself.

We are taxpayers, the employers of government. We have the right to accountability.

When you have people in the Bush Administration like Stephen Hadley and Cambone, who used to be lobbyists for defense contractors, I don't know why this is surprising. The greatest unreported or at least under-reported scandal of this administration is the unjust enrichment of defense contractors. Kevin hit it dead on the head when he said that the Pentagon has used 9-11 as a pretext for pushing weapons systems like the F-22 Raptor, Osprey and the Predator UAV that are not only expensive and irrelevant, but DON'T WORK! They are dangerous and simply cannot be used in any normal battlefield settting. The Predator, for example, cannot fly in winds over 10 knots. Keep in mind that the Pentagon's budget is now over $500 billion and that figure does not even include the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are funded through emergency appropriations!

The Pentagon is bleeding this country dry and if the Democrats somehow manage to win the White House this fall, this organization needs to be gutted like a deer! Read the excellent book by Jeffrey St. Clair, Grand Theft Pentagon for more information.

So who's complaining?

Well it's certainly not conservative voters. Special interest isn't a Dem problem - it's a Repug one.

Republican problem?

"I don't know what jet fighter the Navy is going to buy, but the engines will be built in Lynn, Massachusetts." - Tip O'Neill

Trust me, it's a Democratic problem, too. It's a problem with the whole rotten system.

"Wars we're more likely to fight"

WTF is up with that? What wars? Why would we fight wars? What threat is out there? The US is in the safest space in its history, with nobody, nowhere, nowhow representing any kind of meaningful threat to the country. The largest economic powers are integrated into the world market system the US has been advocating and leading throughout the post-war period. The world trades in dollars. The evil communist countries are now part of that system, except for Cuba, and that's only because the US won't let them in (and Korea, but that's a Zimbabwe situation).

There is no threat. There is no need for wars. Canada isn't planning on any. Neither is Germany.

Why is it necessary to assume that there are wars in offing in the immediate future?

I see you finally got around to writing that Basra story... or not... yeah, right, like we really need more Pentagon oversight... but, yeah, I will bit and respond to your quibbling blog post...

(ok, for anyone who can't take a joke.... that was one)

I just feel like the public are a bunch of totally uninformed "consumers," so to speak, of these cutting-edge weapons (through absolutely no fault of our own, of course) and we may really be being taken for a ride by these weapons dealers.

Think of how firms that are used to selling products directly to consumers (products that consumers are even more in a position to understand) try to bilk us: every year, it seems we no longer just have Fruit Roll Ups or Pop-Tarts, we now get them in a new color, or wrapped in new plastic, or stuffed with new filling, or covered with sprinkles, etc. Or Neosporin no longer just heals cuts, but promises you can use it to get rid of headaches, too.

How are we to know that arms dealers aren't holding back cheap improvements from the generals just so they can sell them a new version that (they claim) obsoletes the last version of the high-tech missile-launcher they were sold last year? It's good to know that when the prosperity of the United States actually counts on, for instance, missile launchers and such, so little, we are fretting over that stuff instead of taking care of our workers, their retirements, and the economy, so much. *sarcasm*

So is there any way to quantify how much of that $8.6 billion is truly bloat? I recommend that we cut those dollars from the defense budget (along with the whatever else contributes to us spending as much as the next 15 countries COMBINED) and offer it as a tax cut.

If the GOP questions this we should nail them to the wall for opposing a tax cut. We can also point out the efficacy in "starving the beast." Hasn't their argument been for years that the best way to avoid spending money on wasteful government programs is to keep the money away from the wasteful spenders in Congress er, the DOD?

/snark

"The Pentagon has treated 9/11 as a gigantic treasure chest to justify acquisition of lots of shiny new systems designed to fight Russians and Chinese, and an awful lot of them are close to useless for the kind of war we're more likely to fight in the next few decades."

I go back and forth on this. I think it's prudent to develop and maintain capabilities that dissuade large potential adversaries from military action. On the other hand, is it likely that Russia or China will reach a point in the foreseeable future where military action is the path they'll choose? I like being prepared, but inventing potentialities and tying up resources to address them seems wasteful. That's especially true if it comes at the expense of developing capabilities that address our current challenge w/ terrorist groups. It's hard to know the answer to this last question.

The Pentagon has treated 9/11 as a gigantic treasure chest to justify acquisition of lots of shiny new systems designed to fight Russians and Chinese, and an awful lot of them are close to useless for the kind of war we're more likely to fight in the next few decades.

Why don't we need to be prepared to fight the Chinese? We're committed to defending Japan, and semi-committed to defending Chinese Taipei. We’re also committed to defending South Korea against North Korea (which will require a conventional military). As long as we’ve made these commitments, we have to be prepared to project conventional power abroad. That means having a military that can beat China’s.

The two biggest threats are Al-Qaida (now) and China (maybe, some day). Al-Qaida is a much bigger threat in terms of urgency, but that doesn’t mean we should dismantle our conventional military and put all of the money toward counterterrorism (which is what your statement implies we should move toward).

Boeing is cited as the contractor in several of the GAO report's troubled systems. But take a look at today's WAPO -- a full page ad signed by two dozen retired military officials (mostly generals) urging the Defense Secretary to ignore Boeing's plea to reverse the cargo plane award to Northrop/Airbus. Why is the thoroughly-considered cargo plane award even being questioned? That says a lot about how business is conducted in Washington under the Bush Administration -- monied lobbyists talk. Also, jingoism -- Boeing says that foreign Airbus company can't be trusted (even though Northrop will be doing the assembly). We want those NATO boys and girls fighting and dying with us in Afghanistan and Iraq but we don't want them working on American subcontracts.

Departing Republican Rep. Tom Davis said it concisely: right now, the Republican brand is worthless.

It's not just weapons procurement that's broken. Look at all the major, failed IT initiatives and the billions wasted there.

Over the last eight years this Administration has proven they can't manage foreign affairs, they can't lead relief efforts, they can't manage the economy, they can't enforce justice even-handedly, they can't protect our individual rights, they can't improve the environment, they can't educate our children (NCLB, ID, etc.). They can't capture Osama bin Laden. And, now, it is evident they haven't been managing the defense procurement process.

Bush came into office with the attitude that government is the problem (a la Reagan), so he didn't put enough resources into developing and training good managers. The private sector has pushed to fill this leadership vacuum. The results are what we see.

Ineptitude will be the Bush Administratio's lasting legacy. Pockets lined, hundreds of billions of dollars of our nation's wealth squandered. Thousands of lives lost in an unnecessary war (and no, it didn't need to be fought in Iraq so we could be free here).

President Bush is a poster boy for how not to manage.

For anyone who may have found that 7:41 comment by me a little opaque, sorry- maybe I should not write comments so soon after waking up.

I was just referring to this joke I wrote on another post's comments, where I teased Kevin for writing so much about Basra.

[I am not going to tolerate endless nonsensical banter from you today. If you start acting like a hyperactive brat on a sugar-buzz, and annoying the regular commenters and killing threads, you will be moderated.]

Unless you have worked on a DOD project, you have no idea of the magnitude of the waste involved. These large, multi-year projects are nothing but high-paying welfare programs for mostly white, middle class people and their corporate employers, like SAIC, Boeing, Lockheed. I worked for one of them for a very long time on 3 different Air Force bases. You can find entire buildings of people doing almost nothing for months, even years. Many of these people are double-dippers -- military retirees who have security clearances (it is very difficult to land one of these jobs without first having a clearance, which takes 9 months or more) and retired at 40. The ex-military people in this country are for the most part treated just fine, believe me.

As promised they are running government like a business. No concern abour the risk of a project's (investment's)failure; the government's (company's) liability, the ultimate cost; or who will pay (in both cases you and me).

For anyone who may have found that 7:41 comment by me a little opaque, sorry- maybe I should not write comments so soon after waking up.

Don't be so hard on yourself. I think the majority of Kevin's readers would feel cheated if you denied them a few pearls before breakfast.

*cough*

I've got an inside view of the acquisition disaster going on. It's killing the services, because they need to recapitalize their stuff after Iraq, and cost overruns are eating them alive.

I'd attribute the cost growth to changing requirements, underbidding by companies knowing they'll get it back in overruns or costs of requirements changes, and just pushing the technology too hard.

Now, to start an argument...

If we're going to use bloated spending as a way to create jobs, wouldn't it be better to forgo the corporate welfare and find better economy-boosting projects to sink our trillions into that doesn't involve making killing machines.
Posted by: greg

Defense has been the key driver in innovative technologies throughout history, and even more so in recent times. Aviation, Radar, Laser, materials, the internet, microprocessors, space programs, etc., etc., etc. The fallout to the civilian sector is immense.

As a nation, we are the military-industrial(-Congressional) complex.

Eisenhower would be disappointed, but probably not surprised.

Is this an April Fools joke?

sjrsm: The fallout to the civilian sector is immense.

No doubt. But are large investments in the m-i-C the most cost effective way of generating innovations in the civilian sector?

There's a lot of good research out there that demonstrates that it isn't.

There's a lot of good research out there that demonstrates that it isn't.
Posted by: JM

Goes the other way. This came up in a previous thread. From the description of a book on the topic (visit the site to get the whole thing).

Is War Necessary for Economic Growth?: Military Procurement and Technology Development

In this book, the author focuses on six general-purpose technologies: interchangeable parts and mass production; military and commercial aircraft; nuclear energy and electric power; computers and semiconductors; the INTERNET; and the space industries. In each of these industries, technology development would have occurred more slowly, and in some case much more slowly or not at all, in the absence of military and defense-related procurement.

We're committed to defending Japan, and semi-committed to defending Chinese Taipei. We�re also committed to defending South Korea against North Korea (which will require a conventional military).

And WTF is up with that? It's one thing when the people running China are part of an international imperialist movement bent on the destruction of capitalism and democracy. It's another thing entirely when they're an authoritarian society committed to full-blown participation in international markets.

And it's one thing when there is a looming military force in North Korea, buttressed by a government bent on destroying capitalism, where it was apparently necessary to fight a war to retain the same boundaries as when the war started.

It's another thing entirely when North Korea is a basket case, with people literally starving to death.

It was stupid to believe in the Red Scare. Moreover, it is retrospectively embarrassing, because at the heart of the Scare was an implicit belief that Socialism and Communism would be more effective means of governing than capitalism.

Capitalism won. It won big. It had clear won by the late 70s, and unequivocally won when the Wall came down.

We can demobilize now. The Cold War is over. We won. When wars are over, you beat the swords into plowshares. It's way past time to do so.

The Pentagon has treated 9/11 as a gigantic treasure chest to justify acquisition of lots of shiny new systems designed to fight Russians and Chinese...

The operative word here that explains the big increase in "change in acquisition cost from first estimate" is new. When any new system or large project starts up you've got the least cost visibility. The least disruptive way to get the costs down wouldn't be to cancel programs already started as much as putting the brakes on subsequent new projects. Start cutting back on and being more selective with what you load the conveyor up with at the front end and you will see those percentages start to fall.

Although we would all like the government spending to be directly targeted at those who need it the most, defense spending is the second or third best, albeit inefficient, way to indirectly achieve similar objectives as it is easily palatable to the electorate. It is definitely better than the scenario wherein there is government spending neither for defense nor for the general welfare programs.

Democrat Jane Mitakides isn't going to beat Republican Mike Turner in OH-3 in November by advocating that the federal government cut funding to systems at Wright-Patterson Base, which employs twenty thousand plus people--almost one of every twelve people working in the greater Dayton area. Then there are the area businesses that provide services and goods to the service people and their families. Mitakides can, of course, advocate that the Pentagon take money away from other military bases and give it to WPAFB, but she will be fought by the representatives who want that money for their own constituents. The voters in cities like Dayton employ Congressmen and Senators to keep military spending high and focused on their area. They are as dependent as any welfare addict might have been on this federal money.

Reducing Pentagon spending would have to be approached like reductions in welfare benefits. The reality is it could destroy many communities and increase poverty. There would need to be plans for dealing with the unintended consequences. So which politician is going to step up and make a speed about this comparable to Obama's speech about race?

I hear crickets and a distant train whistle.

sjrsm has a point. It's Noam Chomsky's actually. Or at least that's where I first heard it. The military does indeed act like a massive R&D investment pool. Anything that's actually successful makes its way into the private sector, from Jeeps and Hummers to GPS and the internet. The ROI on the internet alone is sufficiently high to justify any number of failed white elephant projects.

A point to pull from this, though, is that government is more effective at some critical kinds of R&D, and at bring the results of that R&D to market. The value of the internet is not so much in the protocol (although it is a brilliant piece of open source development that took place before anybody had thought up the phrase) as it is in the commitment to shared resources and open architecture. The value to the American economy of a universal WAN is at least a couple of orders of magnitude greater than the CompuServs and AOLs could have been. And it's cheaper than any privately developed protocol would have been.

Likewise, everything coming from satellites would have been like cable TV or cellular service had it been the result of private sector R&D.

Moreover (channeling a bad, but beloved, Heinlein juvenile _Time for the Stars_), spending money on crazy things rocketships that put orbiting objects into space can't ever be funded by the private sector. You can't get enough GPS customers to justify the expense. But the ROI is there IF you can make the huge initial investment and IF access is free.

Hell, Eisenhower's highway system was a defense project.

It's hard to know what they're working on that is worthwhile. It's certain to be a very small fraction of what they're doing. For every DARPANet there are dozens of projects strapping bombs onto dolphins or investigating pre-cognition. That's part of the point. It's hard to know what pays off.

sjrsm:
I've got an inside view of the acquisition disaster going on. It's killing the services, because they need to recapitalize their stuff after Iraq, and cost overruns are eating them alive.

I'd attribute the cost growth to changing requirements, underbidding by companies knowing they'll get it back in overruns or costs of requirements changes, and just pushing the technology too hard.

I agree with you on this. A company that just landed a huge contract in my area is absolutely notorious for underbidding, but it continues to win contracts. My company has lost many contracts recently due to bidding too realistically. My guess is that the everyone involved is pretending together that work can fit into the planned budget (which is starved by huge acquisition expenditures), knowing that it can't. Otherwise the work will will not be authorized.

There is also a pretense that the more convoluted and tool-intensive a requirements process is, the more precise the estimation of costs is. There are lots of people out there using unfamiliar new tools that introduce all kinds of variables into the estimation process that lend themselves to imaginative manipulation.

Ansel Adams - "There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept."

ok, for anyone who can't take a joke....

We tolerate you, don't we Swan?

jimBOB at 3:45 AM:I've thought for a while that one of the underappreciated stories of the Iraq war was that the richest... army in the world...is being defeated by amateur irregulars.

I'm having flashbacks! Christ on a Crutch, why can't we learn from history?

Defense has been the key driver in innovative technologies throughout history, and even more so in recent times. Aviation, Radar, Laser, materials, the internet, microprocessors, space programs, etc., etc., etc. The fallout to the civilian sector is immense.

I am going to jump in here and agree with Mike. If you ever find yourself on a gurney in a trauma bay being treated for injuries sustained in a car accident or a gunshot, you are far more likely to survive your injuries because trauma services stateside benefit from battlefield medicine. If the opportunity ever presents itself, or you know anyone who serves on a trauma team, ask how many of the folks in the ER are either prior service or current Guard and Reserves personnel.

Volatile Compund wrote:

We tolerate you, don't we Swan?

You're so funny, Volatile Compound, and your contributions are so worth-while.

Off-topic:

Wow, the DOD achieved us another milestone in futile endeavors by racking up a total of 38 coalition casualties in March. So in Feb. we had 29, Jan. 40, Dec. we were down to 23- but now we're back up to 38, like we were in Oct. Pretty soon we'll be back up to 65 again, like we were in September!! Thanks for your great surge and great leadership, DOD!!

Defense has been the key driver in innovative technologies throughout history, and even more so in recent times. Aviation, Radar, Laser, materials, the internet, microprocessors, space programs, etc., etc., etc. The fallout to the civilian sector is immense.

That doesn't mean we have to buy the stuff so frequently, it just means that the government and the arms manufacturers have to try to develop stuff. Seriously, if private companies were as inefficient and horrible at developing weapon systems as the DOD is, they'd go belly-up.

Kevin's post doesn't reflect that-- there are a lot of amazing horror stories that would each alone be a death-stroke to a private tech firm. One example is the new weapon system they have been developing for infantrymen that was covered either in Popular Science or Popular Mechanics maybe a half a year or a few months ago. The development of the system was floundering for years, included substantial revisions, and ultimately they settled on a design that incorporated technologies that have all been obsoleted by stuff on the private market. Plus, since the military leaders are generally suckers for buying too many doo-dads, it arguably will hamper military effectiveness. It requires every rifleman to have a radio, when probably only officers really need one, and radios in combat will often be too distracting, useless, of unnecessary when hand-signs can do the trick. Also the gear is cumbersome when soldiers already have limited mobility (and they'd like to have plenty), and I think it added a lot of weight to a soldier's gear. Probably the best innovation of the system was adding a digital camera to the soldier's rifle, which was hooked up to a flip-down eye piece on the soldier's helmet, so that a soldier can point and shoot his rifle around corners of walls and such in urban combat, without having to remove his head from behind cover to look at what he's shooting at. The military should have simply added this one innovation to the rifle/helmet, and then the development would have been short, the system would be light and small as a digital camera, the weapons companies wouldn't have been able to demand loads of money from the government for them, and every infantryman in Iraq could have had one by now. But the high-ranking military officers apparently have social and business ties with the weapons manufacturers, so they let us all get stuck up for this money by the weapons manufacturers. And it indeed costs our troops.

Another story of idiocy is someone, I think Rumsfeld, arranging so that all our tanks would run on gasoline instead of having diesel engines. I didn't read this story myself, just heard about it in blog comments, so I can't vouch for it. But apparently the standard for First World country's tanks now is to have diesel engines, but in order to make friends in certain private industries, theis douche-bag arranged for all our tanks to run on gasoline, which for some reasons I can't recall isn't as good-- either it requires a larger volume of fuel (this also limits the reach of our tanks- they can't fight as far from the supply line) or makes the tanks more prone to being destroyed or costs us more money, or two or all three of those reasons are the problem. Anyway, again, check out the story before you spread it around, and don't quote me on it, because like I said, I just saw it in a blog comment, but if it's true Rumsfeld is a real jerk.

You're right, Blue Girl. But how much DOD R&D money goes for advances in trauma medicine, and how much goes down the rathole for magic rifles that can shoot around the corner, not to mention smart rocks and brilliant pebbles and that whole panoply of useless shiny toys?

Oh, a pittance to be sure, thersites. I just throw it out there to protect my own turf...:)

Swan: Another story of idiocy...

check out the story before you spread it around

We'll file this one under "I" for Irony.

Blue Girl: I'm just jealous, 'cuz your specialty is something constructive.

All this talk about war spending being good for civilian society is just b-s.

Take, for example, the interstates. Nominally a 'defense' highway system but in reality a creation of trucking, real estate, and oil and car manufacturing lobbies, with a healthy dose of paving contractors and union labor in the mix. This $3 trillion investment has about as much relation to the national defense as the single shot .22 my dad gave me, but gets added to the mix when needed for argument.

How about the Jeep (which, incidentally, was developed entirely with private money)? The only innovative thing about any Jeep is the parts that get left off, and while the notorious failings of the modern Jeep may increase the GDP, so do failed heart surgeries and the funerals that follow.

As for the internet, here's a newsflash for you- it was mainly built by civilians under contract who would have built it anyway given that amount of money.

The simple fact is that the fog of war spending is just a way to dupe the simple minded Americans into "socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor". Spending $60 billion on Star Wars hasn't made the trains run on time, and developing GPS systems has just created a new class of bus drivers who literally don't know which way is north when their on-board computers go south.

In the old days the joke was to tie somebody else's shoelaces together. Now we do it to ourselves, proudly proclaiming we're too stupid to even find a pizza shop or public library without a talking satellite navigation system in our "Explorer". We've become the poor half-wit on the bus who has to carry written instructions for the trip he makes every day.

Look at Kitsap County in Washington state. Right now Kitsap has more nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers than the rest of the world's navies combined, and according to the local paper it has less economic growth than any other county in the state. East of Kitsap is Pierce County, also mired in poverty in spite of, or because of, Fort Lewis and McChord AFB.

The poor may not always be with us, but they certainly will be as long as we waste our money on the military.

Akin to Iraq, we no longer have a functioning government. The nation itself is dissolving at the Mexican border like a lump of sugar thrown into a bucket of water. Bush bicycles while the nation goes bankrupt.

Big governement = big business.

Red or Blue your bogeyman is the same beastie.

Yes, serial catowner, it would be way, way better if these R&D budgets were open and public. But there is no way that you're going to get a public WAN built out in 1968 by saying that someday kids will watch TV on their handheld computers.

There's no way to justify the series of programs that preceded the development of GPS by saying "it'll pay off someday," especially because for every one program that does pay off, there are a dozen miserable, embarrassing failures.

One cannot find solutions if one doesn't look at the way things actually work. For example, RGBS is, I am certain, correct. But I think we'd be better off, overall, if our ER staffs didn't have quite so much trauma experience. But what she says is nonetheless true.

Take the internet. If government's civilian sectors were better at this kind of thing, the world would be running on the open French minitel network, or some other public telco/post office system in Europe.

My point was the immediate ROI for these kinds of project is too low to be justified on their own, but the long term ROI is so huge that even a large amount of money wasted on DoD can be justified.

It would be far, far better if the US had launched Sputnik, and engaged in satellite development for the sake of science and innovation. But it is, in the current environment, impossible to do so without some national security justification.

That's the way it is. I'd settle for stopping the batshit crazy projects, like SDI, that do positive harm as well as wasting money, and for finding a way to stop failed programs like the Osprey that are about pork in the private sector and justifying the existence of stars on shoulders in the public sector.

With apologies to Blue Girl, she's wrong. Harborview Med Center in Seattle is a regional trauma center and anyone in healthcare will recognize the name. The techniques they use were not developed on the battlefield- in fact, the big advance in battlefield medicine is to quickly transport the injured back to a civilian level of care.

The techniques used at Harborview were developed by civilian doctors and the "teaching hospital system" which links all the big Seattle hospitals directly to the U of W and Seattle University. The funding is civilian funding spent on Harborview by the city, county, and state, and spent on the universities, and the fire department and police department responders.

These techniques are honed to perfection on a totally American cast of drunk motorcyclists, would-be suicides, late night partygoers, victims of angry spouses, and workers at unsafe construction sites.

Are there a lot of ex-military? Not really- being a regional trauma center (that extends to Montana and Alaska) takes a lot of doing, and flying in a helicoptor or riding in the aid car is a small part of a very big picture.

The "willing suspension of disbelief" is something you should use to enjoy episodes of Buffy, not to evaluate the effect of military spending on the civilian economy.

You should not consider a defense contractor the private sector. It is a hybrid. Any "private" company who does most of its business with the government is not private industry. The waste and inefficiency you speak of comes more from being a government contractor than from being a private sector entity.

Ha ha, "take the internet". But everyone who comes back from France or China is saying "Wow! Their high-speed connections are ten times as fast as ours! Their cell phone services really rock!"

And guess what, in spite of our attempts to stop them, the Europeans, who probably have no intention of going to war again, have put up satellites for communication and GPS.

The simple fact is that the successful DOD spending is bleeding edge, and anyone who bought computers in the early 90s will hear what I'm saying there. But most of the DOD spending is just money down the drain.

In fact, it's worse than simply burning $100 bills. First, it encourages the dangerous delusion that getting a penny of return ten years from now justifies spending a thousand dollars on weapons research today. That's just nuts.

Second, it takes and wastes the money that could be spend on schools, healthcare, transit, healthy food, renewable energy, etc.

All of that spending on a sustainable economy is replaced by spending on weapons that supposedly will make it possible for us to steal what we want.

This imperialist fever ruined the British, and they never had it anywhere near as bad as we do. The very least we can do as this catastrophe unfolds is apply a little critical reasoning to the fairy tales we live in.

I guess it all comes down to what piece of turf you are standing on, sc. :)

My (civilian) career was spent in hospitals that were closely affiliated with the military bases where my husband was billeted and usually there was a university nearby that was the hub that tied the two areas together. I worked with a lot of Reservists and Guardsmen because there is usually a contingent or two near bases.

And besides that, you know how chopper jockies are - we swoop down, scoop up, deposit in an ER and fly out again in an hour.

Alright, I just want to make sure I debunk Thersites here a sec and make sure everyone realizes she is a jerk who is out to make me look bad. Not only does this person regularly insult my comments (never for any good reason) now, but look, the Rumsfeld story is real:

"...The M-1 tank came to me to makes [sic] a decision. We always had diesel tanks and I made the decision to go to a turbine tank for the first time in the history of the world." ~Donald Rumsfeld to Jim Lehrer in a Feb. 14, 2001 interview This is about half-way down the transcript.

Then, from Google books, pp. 49-50 of Alexander Cockburn's book about Rumsfeld, it turns out Rumsfeld made the dumber move on the tank engines, which the military opposed, just as I reported.

Jeez, Thersites, so sorry to have mentioned something true and that shows that Rumsfeld is a moron.

Great, you checked your story. After you told everyone else to check it before spreading it around, which was my point.

One more thing:

I am not sure who Jack Sprat's comment was responding to, but in my comment, I certainly was not calling military weapons development part of the private sector. I was treating military weapons development (entirely appropriately) as something different than, say, if Microsoft or whoever went out on their own to develop a weapons system to enable hunters to use their rifles to peek over obstacles like the edge of a ravine, or the top of a boulder-- because the military weapons development produces extremely slower and much more crappy results, generally, than private companies that produce consumer products.

I don't know a lot about this and I don't know exactly how it is the military or the DOD doles out the contracts or whatever so that they f*** everything up all the time, but I am sure Kevin or some other commenter can fill in the details.

Swan: I don't know a lot about this

Oh, never mind. No more barrel-fishing.

[That will be enough. You are not the arbiter of who is a liberal and who is not. For the rest of the day, you might as well sign your posts as mhr, because they will be deleted. You were already warned. --Mod]

*

Swan: Some people might observe that it's not a virtue to talk endlessly about important things of which you know little.

To be clear, the gas turbine engines on our tanks don't burn gasoline like you buy at a gas station. They burn the same thing that airplanes and helicopters (things the military have a lot of) burn. Plus gas turbines rock on a LB/horsepower basis and on a volume/horsepower basis, the second being important for tanks. Horrendous gas hogs, though.

Ha ha, "take the internet". But everyone who comes back from France or China is saying "Wow! Their high-speed connections are ten times as fast as ours! Their cell phone services really rock!"

Exactly. Because the US private sector telecommunications apparatus sucks. Treating the internet as a public infrastructure, rather than a way for oligopolies to bleed consumers while providing lousy service is a better way to operate.

But what frickin' protocol do you think the French are using.

TCP/IP.

Developed my DARPA. An extremely successful R&D program that could never, ever have happened in the private sector, nor apparently in the public sector in Europe.

And guess what, in spite of our attempts to stop them, the Europeans, who probably have no intention of going to war again, have put up satellites for communication and GPS.

Sure. But there would be no applications for them to use those satellites for without US military R&D. They are putting them up there to exploit the US R&D conducted under military budgets. And they're gonna do stuff that uses public protocols and standards developed under the DoD.

Do you really not understand the point here?

But most of the DOD spending is just money down the drain.

In fact, it's worse than simply burning $100 bills. First, it encourages the dangerous delusion that getting a penny of return ten years from now justifies spending a thousand dollars on weapons research today. That's just nuts.

Second, it takes and wastes the money that could be spend on schools, healthcare, transit, healthy food, renewable energy, etc.

Yes, this is true. And these are capital expenditures that are simply wasted that could have long ago paid for a Northeast corridor bullet train or a program to buy solar cells in large quantities.

But that does not mean that the military has not been the primary source of US R&D in the post war period. It has been. It is hard to see how your are going to get projects like communication satellites and universal, extremely robust WAN technology done for their own sake. They'll be proxmired long before they get anywhere, because the ROI is to far out. The internet, again, is a great example. It took 30 years before the returns exploded. But they did indeed explode.

Swan, just because the M-1 has a turbine, does not mean it can't use diesel. The M-1 can be fueled with diesel fuel, kerosene, any grade of motor gasoline, JP-4 jet fuel, or JP-8 jet fuel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams

This fact however, doesn't mean that Rumsfeld isn't an idiot.

That unattributed comment above is mine.

I will try to keep this short and simple. Please don't take this personal. I'm only sharing facts and personal experiences.
Fact 1: When you have politicians is charge of anything it will 99% of the time be mismanaged. History reveals this and my experience with politicians.
Fact 2: People in general, the news media in particular, pick and chose what he/she/they want to believe and then add their feelings and bias and reports it as a fact and the whole truth. History reveals this and my experiences working with the new media.
Fact 3: Most of the news media and the general public as a whole has no idea how the government and certainly the military works.
How do I know all of this? Twenty years of active duty and having to deal/put up with the general public, and unfortunately, politicians, and the news media. Not even Fox News reports the whole truth. I have military friends that have or are servicing in Iraqi and the situlation is no where as bad as the media and politicians state.
What really is the truth about the military budget?

[Sockpuppetry by Swan deleted. And how clueless are you? I have the IP numbers, you know.]

*

Philiplewis: Not even Fox News reports the whole truth.

Unintended humor? Sarcasm?

The key issue that I mentioned in my post above is about cost-effectiveness of public sector investments.

jayackroyd has made some good comments concerning the clear fact that some military R&D, whether we care to admit it or not, has had positive spin-off effects in the civilian/private sectors.

No doubt true. At the same time, however, we know for example that much of the basic research that underpins drug development in the pharmaceutical industry takes place via government investment in, e.g., university research departments.

Why not a similar process for high tech wizardry?

Hey! A discussion about my speciality!

Yeah. Software ENGINEERING is really, really hard.

90% of the people out there that you would point your finger to and say - "that's a damn good computer programmer" is probably NOT competent in the field of Software Engineering.

I do this for a living; I'm taking classes in it right now - and the whole field of creating software-based large engineering projects is really really difficult. It's very hard to find people who know how to do it. (a lot of the people who were experienced in this field were shaken-out in the 1990's by a combination of the "peace-dividend" (ie. Aerospace Industry layoffs) and the dotcom boom (ie. guys got laid off from their defense industry jobs, went for private sector jobs, got rich, retired - replacements weren't trained).

And colleges have really fallen down on the job.

Managing large Software Engineering projects like the old large-scale defense projects of the past, is also a mistake. With software, you WANT requirements to change as you go through your development lifecycle. Your engineering team learns new things about the problem domain. If you don't change requirements, then you're not innovating. The problem is - these projects are scheduled and budgeted like hardware engineering projects, by old-school managers who don't have a clue about software projects.

It's no surprise that a lot of these projects have failed, and that we're learning a lot of lessons in the past 5-10 years. I doubt that a whole lot of this is of the Duke Cunningham-style corruption, and more of the result of an industry going through some really difficult changes, partially brought about by know-nothing morons like Rumsfeld and Cheney, who talk the "Transformation" talk, but don't walk the "Transformation" walk. And flat-out criminals, like Poindexter.

There ARE some smart procurement people, and some smart generals out there (and I'll just single out General Lords as one, in particular, who I have never worked with directly, but I have read about - and he has written some very smart things, and directed some very smart moves).

And to respond to greg's comment at the top:

Oh, I'd be just as happy if my employer were making plowshares.

During Republican administrations, we make our money building swords. We look forward to the upcoming Democratic administration.

For some reason, Republicans seem to tend to take the "urgency" of self-defense, and find ways to twist it into a money-making scam. To them it's just business. To those on the receiving side, being chewed into hamburger-meat for profit, well, it ain't pretty. To the taxpayer, getting it up the keister by folks like MZM; well, you get the government you vote for. PAY ATTENTION NEXT TIME! (ie - vote for Hillary, or McCain, you'll get more of the same).

Software ENGINEERING is really, really hard.
I'll back osama_been_forgotten up on that.
I'm a pretty good programmer, but anyone who put me in charge of a large, complex project would be cutting their own throat. And there are a lot more of me out here than there are of s/w engineers.

Posted by: Swan on April 1, 2008 at 1:01 PM

Philiplewis: Not even Fox News reports the whole truth.

Unintended humor? Sarcasm?

Some sarcasm. Mostly disappointment with all of the new media.

"I think there is something really wrong with Kevin's moderator."

Swan's been behaving like a 10-year-old with ADHD on quite a few threads recently. The childishness and blathering finally reached the point where the moderator felt a lesson was in order. Swan was warned, so there really isn't any excuse.

That's the way it is. I'd settle for stopping the batshit crazy projects, like SDI, that do positive harm as well as wasting money, and for finding a way to stop failed programs like the Osprey that are about pork in the private sector and justifying the existence of stars on shoulders in the public sector.
Posted by: jayackroyd on April 1, 2008 at 11:34 AM | PERMALINK

Believe whatever conspiracy theory you like, but regarding last months shootdown of a 1000 lb. frozen chunk of hazardous hydrazine propellant; money well spent, for this - and any future incident where we might have to "shred" any satellite that we have lost control of. It's a public safety issue. Whether cowboy-wannabe politicians get their penis-substitute, is unfortunate. But this is an important technological milestone. I don't think it does nearly as much harm as you suppose. And the "cover-story" for this particular shoot-down, is, in fact, truer than most people suppose.

On the Osprey: that's more debatable. Some really poor decisions were made in that bird's design, and I'm not as well-versed in aircraft, but civilian aerospace really could benefit from a VTOL-capable passenger aircraft. I just think that the Osprey has all the downsides to rotary-wing craft (high maintenance costs, instability, fuel inefficency) and few of the benefits of fixed-wing craft (range and speed are pretty limited).

On the M-1:
The gas-turbine engine was actually a very important decision - giving this tank the superior speed it has on the battlefield, which shows in how M-1-equipped units can advance so quickly.

However, the real benefit of the M-1 is the technology of the main gun, giving it accuracy and lethality that's orders of magnitude higher than anyone else we're likely to be up against. (which is why they had such an incredible kill-ratio in GW1).

Unfortunately, once you've killed all the enemy tanks, you've now got to occupy the enemy territory, and patrol with your very fast, very deadly, very expensive to run tanks, and you've got to keep those tanks supplied with fuel. That's where the turbine decision was absolutely brain-dead. The M-1 was designed to invade the Soviet Union, and punch through to the heart of the Motherland in a few short weeks. Who gives a crap what happened after that? A humanitarian would. Rumsfeld does not have a humanitarian bone in his body. The British general in the hospital scene at the end of Lawrence of Arabia said it best: "Outrageous!" - It's an awesome killing machine. But for the last 5 years, the US has needed an awesome occupying machine. And we don't have one.

I don't think it does nearly as much harm as you suppose. And the "cover-story" for this particular shoot-down, is, in fact, truer than most people suppose.

I wasn't talking about that event, nor was I talking about any "conspiracies."

ABMs are inherently destabilizing. This was clear when everybody was reading Schelling. It was clear in the 70s when Nixon and Brezhev ended the possibility.

On the Osprey, I only know that it never worked, and was never killed. As for there being benefits in commercial airspace for a VTOL, I wouldn't know.

"Wars we're more likely to fight"
-- somebody wrote

"WTF is up with that? What wars?

Why would we fight wars? What threat is out there? The US is in the safest space in its history, with nobody, nowhere, nowhow representing any kind of meaningful threat to the country. The largest economic powers are integrated into the world market system the US has been advocating and leading throughout the post-war period. The world trades in dollars. The evil communist countries are now part of that system, except for Cuba, and that's only because the US won't let them in ... .

There is no threat.

...
Posted by: jayackroyd on April 1, 2008
------------------------------------------

Ditto.

"I hear crickets and a distant train whistle."

Posted by: cowalker on April 1, 2008
-----------------------------------------

That's just the native call for political leadership.

Remember, all the calls for Leadership? We still need it.

John Edwards for President -- Leadership for America!

Ok, for the sake of argument, let's say that military R&D has like totally dominated our advances for 50 years.

And how great has that been? Well, we have the world's least sustainable economy, deeply in debt, healthcare that barely ranks number 20, if that, more of our people in prison than any other country, and...oh what the heck, you get the picture. Frankly, one of the best reasons to stop all military R&D immediately is just the results we see around us.

We may not be the most creative or innovative or industrious people, but it's just silly to say that if we hadn't built rockets and bombs we would have been sitting on the porch sipping lemonade. Nor do I believe for a minute that if we hadn't DARPAd the WAN the Europeans would have been, like, totally clueless and unable to solve a problem or build a system.

In fact, I've heard that there is a super big-ass linear collider being built in Europe that we've been a little bit shy about helping with the costs.

And if we'd had to wait another ten years for the spectacle of everyone talking everywhere on their phone, would that have been so bad? I think we probably would have made it.

jayackroyd,

But what frickin' protocol do you think the French are using.
TCP/IP.
Developed my DARPA. An extremely successful R&D program that could never, ever have happened in the private sector, nor apparently in the public sector in Europe.

Now just a minute there partner. If OBF gets to talk about software engineering (OBF - this old fart is having to learn AGILE, imagine that) then I get to talk about level 2 and 3 data link protocols. From where I sit TCP/IP is mostly a ripoff from SDLC which was created by the unfashionable IBM. Add in some features of X.25 and bingo, there is TCP/IP.

I'm not really digging on you. I'm mostly just crabby because I didn't recycle BSC and SDLC with asynch and call them X-Modem and Z-Modem and get rich when I had the chance.

Ideas get ripped off and improved all over the technical world, public and private.

Tripp--

Thanks.

Whatever happened to X.25? I was deeply into the first MS Exchange release, and there was a big fuss about X.25 usage.

As for making money from other people's innovations (or, actually, the accretions that become standards), I will save my sympathy for the (quite) late Phil Katz.

serial catowner: And how great has that been?

Hey, I can google "Britney's Panties" anytime I want, even from my phone. Who cares about the rest?

I hate getting poltical, but again I have to say that the general public and news media don't have a clue about how the government nor military really works. They also don't have a clue about American politics much less politics outside American. That includes some of the people in this blog.

None of the Democrates and most of Republicans know anything about leadership or can be trusted.
How can they be, they are all politicians. Yes, I include Senator McCain in this statement. As I stated earlier I had to put up with them while serving 20 of active duty. What we need to do is stop electing politicians and vote normal everyday people like most of us are. Yes , I know that most us are too smart to run for public office, but that is what is needed.

As for not needing a strong military, that was the thinking before both WWI and WWII. Those that forget the lessions of history are doomed to repeat them. In today's smaller world that could very easily lead to the destruction of the U.S. How safe would you then be writing the stuff you have been?

philiplweis:
I didn't actually see anyone here arguing against the need for a strong military. What's at issue is whether these overblown contracts are the best way to achieve that.

You want accountability ? First knock holes in what this fellow says.
http://pieceofmind.wordpress.com/
"Passing the Fifth : 17 years after the 1991 attack we still have not fixed those sewers and electrical grids. It's no accident. We mean to rain hell on them, we mean to impoversh them, we mean to make them suffer, scatter their factions, install our superbases that will permanently house 100,000 troops, control their government and watch and terrorize their factions as closely as Castro ever did his enemies.We mean to be inpower there."

Sorry about the politics. There are many reasons that affect these "over blown" contracts". I have exposed to many things and I'm sorry to say that most people have a very narrow view of life. Those people that look at things through an "emotional" window can, as I used to tell my now ex-wife, be slapped in the face with the truth and will denied it. I have a saying about people with a narrow view of things. "They not only can't see the forest for the trees. They can't see the tree for a spot on the bark. Now don't get me wrong, but unions are also part of the problems. Aways demanding higer pay and benefits. Where does that money come from? Yes, unions have done some great things us. Can anyone tell me, with todays technology, why it takes so long to build an F/A 18 or to R&D any new weapon platform?

As for not needing a strong military, that was the thinking before both WWI and WWII. Those that forget the lessions of history are doomed to repeat them. In today's smaller world that could very easily lead to the destruction of the U.S. How safe would you then be writing the stuff you have been?

Um, the US won WWII for the allies without having a standing army. Going on a war footing should happen for a reason, because a nation's existence is at stake.

It makes no sense for a nation to retain a standing army, a militarist posture, and an allocation of national resources to a war that does not exist.

I actually believe the US should have stayed out of WWI, by the way. Needless lives were lost in a stalemate that may have ended earlier without US involvement. And don't get me started about Vietnam or Korea. If the US had demobilized after WWII, neither of those disasters would have happened.

I didn't actually see anyone here arguing against the need for a strong military. What's at issue is whether these overblown contracts are the best way to achieve that.

I sure am. I don't see what reason the US has for maintaining a standing army of this size, for continuing to develop weapons that do not enhance national security, that, if anything, worsen it.

I do not see why the US needs a military posture substantially different from Canada's. They face the same threats the US does.

Canada ... face the same threats the US does.
One difference. They got a crazy neighbor to the south.

[R]oughly half the programs that provided GAO data experienced more than a 25 percent increase in the expected lines of software code since starting their respective system development programs.

Wait... people "predict" how many lines of code they "need" for these things and then a bunch of accountants get upset about the number being off? What kind of Calvinball unit of measurement is that? Its like predicting how many nuts you need for a meal of mixed nuts! You just know that if you order two hundred nuts you get coconuts and if you order two nuts you get peanuts.

Is the GAO gonna check if programmers are building their own data structures instead of using of-the-shell libraries?

The Pentagon has treated 9/11 as a gigantic treasure chest to justify acquisition of lots of shiny new systems designed to fight Russians and Chinese

It has been my impressions that the Pentagon has been using the Chinese as a treasure chest to justify acquisition of new systems to fight Russians.

I have a few quibbles with serialcatowner's post @ 11:17:
1. The Interstate Highway System was first designed in the 1930's as a result of Eisenhower's several month trek across the US with a military convoy in the 1920's. It was updated after WWII when the military noticed that it was easier to go around bombed cities in Europe by road than rail - the railroads led into the cities and were usually unusable.
2. Yes, the Jeep was developed by private money; solely to get a government contract. Its development nearly bankrupted the company. The company was left with so little capital that it had to share its design with other automakers as part of the government contract; it couldn't afford the expansion necessary to meet the Federal Government's production numbers.
3. "...civilians under contract who would have built it anyway, given that amount of money." Yes, but noone else was going to give them "that amount of money".
4. As for the poverty in Kitsap and Pierce counties - many military installations developed since 1940 were sited at their locations precisely because there was nothing else there. Troops during WWII weren't paid much, limiting off-base construction to bars, etc. During the period of the draft a car showroom and some fast-food places may have shown up. With the all-volunteer forces nowadays, there is probably actually less disposable income than previously (families can be expensive). And given the decrease in manufacturing jobs in this country, the poverty you mention isn't unlikely. Also if, as you say, Kitsap County hosts more carriers and nuclear submarines than "the rest of the world's navies combined", that could also explain part of the poverty. The US government isn't going to let just anyone build anywhere close to those vessels and their supporting installations. And since those vessels and their supporting installations are where the people are...
5. I can't say a word in defense of the "Star Wars" fiasco. Nor about many of the "gizmos" that end up over budget and too expensive to use. We definitely need to strengthen the walls between lobbyists and Congress (a five-year ban?) and some sort of projects review board, staffed by non-military (for their protection) needs to be put in place. Keeping the system honest is a never-ending battle.

If I remember my history correctly the U.S. had to build a very large military force very quickly and in less than a year. Remember Dec 7th.
We now have the ability now to go around the world in less than 80 days, remember Desert Shield? We moved a huge amount of personnel and equipment by an "Air Bridge" from the U.S. to the Middle East in less than 24 hours per flight. It was my job while on active duty to monitor those flights. How smart would it be to downsize our military system?
Don't forget that Members of Congress have a very large say in the awarding of these government contracts.

Yes indeedy. When there was an actual threat, the US built up its forces quickly. And now that the US has a standing army, it can indeed engage in wars of choice without such a national consensus and commitment.

I think it would be very smart to downsize an unnecessary military system.

There are no threats. If threats arise, then it would make sense to do something about them. But, in the meantime, there is no reason for a 24 hour response time force. There is nothing to respond to.

Canada doesn't have one. Germany doesn't have one. Japan doesn't have one. None of those countries need a thousand or so bases providing advanced force deployment.

Neither does the US>

The Cold War is over. We won. It's time to demobilize.

Actually, the government used to be on a par, or better, at software development than private industry (research by Capers Jones, used to be available at spr.com before they stuck it behind a firewall). The reason was that they documented better and were better protected against feature creep, which the major reasons for failed software projects.

ACR

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