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After Clinton and then Obama both failed to see the aging equipment, nothing was done to keep us prepared for anything.
Kinda like spending $60 on an oil change v. $5000 on a new engine, because you never did an oil change.
That's a good point, but the waste, and utter corruption still exists, at least it did when I saw it during the Obama admin. I am not saying that Obama was the cause as it's been going on for many decades under BOTH parties. LBJ was the worst, though.
The GDP argument is bunk. What the hell does that have to do with security? There’s no inherent correlation between GDP and what’s NEEDED for proper defense of this country.
So if you didn’t notice that the military industrial complex is out of control, go find the nearest ophthalmologist.
Exactly. Why people use the GDP as an excuse to lavish unneeded goodies on the Pentagon is beyond me.
What's more annoying from the perspective of the grunt on the ground is that so much money goes for new programs--which what brings home the bacon for politicians--rather than the "Operations and Maintenance" money that would keep the grunt on the ground well-trained and his equipment in good condition.
Millions for new toys, but pennies to keep those toys operating.
The difference between Democrat and Republican military spending is that Democrats tend to spend more on "human factors" such as military housing. Republicans tend to spend more on new weapons programs.
Post the IRS data on the average effective federal income tax rate by income group. And then explain to us how the higher-income earners' much higher effective tax rates, which would STILL be much higher than that of the middle class after everyone's tax cuts, somehow means that the middle class is footing the bill.
If this BS is true a lot less taxes will be collected vs a lot more spending now the GOP is in charge. That makes runaway military spending even worse. But I understand your true feelings about this kind of stuff, such as spending through the roof on a wall vs the cheaper option of going after the sanctuary employers of illegal aliens.
As long as Trump's cronies are rolling in dough you are happy.
Simply put, Americans are too militaristic for their own good. Diplomacy is seen as weak in this country. We think the military is the solution to ALL of our foreign policy issues. We think we can just shoot and airstrike our way out of every dilemma despite the fact that such thinking continues to fail us time and again.
I completely disagree. We need a strong military for the safety and security of this country and to help our allies.
We need to make sure nobody dares to do anything like 9/11 again.
With regards to $500 hammers, an "I wuz there" story.
A major disadvantage for military staff members is that we are rarely on a staff for more than three years or so, while a major acquisition program might take six or seven years from proposal of a system to its receipt. Yet, the same contractor will have been on the project the entire time.
That means the military staffer who wrote the requirements will never be the same person who takes delivery.
So, there I was: On the Strategic Reconnaissance staff of SAC about to take delivery of a new SR-71 maintenance package from Lockheed, the end of project that had begun several years before I got on staff. I'm going over the documentation, looking at the new "mechanic's toolkit."
There were some esoteric items in there, such as rare-metal plated screwdrivers used on the titanium skin of the SR-71. But there were some ordinary off-the-shelf-of-Ace-Hardware items as well...such as ball-peen hammers.
And the ball-peen hammers were, indeed, priced at $500 each.
So in the next meeting with the Lockheed contractor, I brought up that issue and a few other things.
He just gave me a blank look and said, "Your predecessor had no problem with it. To change it now, we would have to re-bid the subcontract for the toolkit. That would delay completing the contract by at least six months and cost at least another $50,000 over anything you saved.
But if you can get your general to sign off on that and the CINC doesn't mind reporting a delay on the SR-71 program Congress, fine."
There was another time that a contractor from Fairchild--one of the producers of the cameras used on the SR-71 and U-2--had a big white elephant on his hands. They had built a custom aerial reconnaissance camera for the Shah of Iran, but suddenly and unexpectedly the Shah didn't need it anymore.
So he had hawked it to us. His idea was that we could mount it in KC-130 tanker aircraft, move it from aircraft to aircraft (flightline maintenance could do it, he claimed) and thus have a new, handy reconnaissance aircraft to supplement the SR-71 and U-2. Only a few million dollars, and it was ready for delivery.
Everyone on the staff said, "YGBSM." The Operations guys (pilots) sure didn't want it. The tanker folks didn't want to get into the reconnaissance business, because tankers have zero survivability in sensitive areas.
We intel folk didn't want for the same reason, not to mention that we actually needed the money to overhaul the cameras we already had.
So we told the guy, "No, thanks."
Well. It happened that the president of Fairchild was a 20-year golfing buddy of the CINC.
The CINC said, "Buy it."
We prepared a briefing and a staff summary package of all the reasons we should not buy it...signed by the two-star generals in charge of Operations and Intelligence.
I saw the CINC's note on the package when it came back. It was a little notepad sheet with four stars at the top and the scrawl: "You didn't get my point. Buy it."
Well. We had our marching orders.
But we dragged our feet long enough for Taiwan to buy it instead.
I completely disagree. We need a strong military for the safety and security of this country and to help our allies.
We need to make sure nobody dares to do anything like 9/11 again.
Good point. Look what eventually happened to the mastermind behind 911. It didn't happen because of gobs of military spending. It happened because of excellent leadership. Bin Ladin was made example of and all of you know it.
We don't have a tax revenue problem, and total revenues have been steadily increasing, even with tax RATE cuts. We have a SPENDING problem. No politician is innocent, including the President.
I completely disagree. We need a strong military for the safety and security of this country and to help our allies.
We need to make sure nobody dares to do anything like 9/11 again.
America’s military is no longer for fighting or winning wars; it’s for generating profits. The materiel, machinery and manpower of our modern military is a source of unending revenue for support contractors large and small, who duly send lobbyists to Washington in order to perpetuate their racket by any means necessary.
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