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What's Wrong With the US Defense R&D Budget?
Harperdog writes "Here's an in-depth analysis of what constitutes defense R&D spending and how some of those projects are classified. From the article: 'But much of what transpires in the name of military research and development is not research in the sense that it produces scientific and technical knowledge widely applicable inside and outside the Defense Department. A large part of defense R&D activity revolves around building very expensive gadgets that are often based on unsound technology and frequently fail to perform as required.'"
It's all about scamming up those DoD contracts. Who cares if they ever deliver a viable weapon system, they can make payroll with feasibility studies all day long. The most hillarious of the 'urban legend' proposals I ever heard of was a couple physicists talking at a party during the Ronny Ray-Gun years, when 'Star Wars' funding was damned near bottomless. Their idea was, develop a tachyon beam weapon, deployed in space, that would shoot down enemy missiles 20 minutes before they were launched.
Rumor has it, they copped a cool 50 mil for a feasibility study before somebody at the Five-Sided Funny Farm figured it out.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Mr. Ghoshroy has a long record of disagreement with Defense contractors and programs. I am not saying that he is wrong on this one. However, other people do say that he is. To accept Mr. Ghoshroy's assertions without adequate rebuttal or background knowledge is, well, ignant. Note also that Mr. Ghoshroy has been very happy to allow some well known anti-defense agitators to exploit him in the name of making his case. This really has the smell of a personal vendetta. He may be right, but his approach does his credibility no good.
http://www.nriinternet.com/NRI_Sciectists/USA/A_Z/G/Subrata%20Ghoshroy/index.htm
http://openmediaboston.org/node/1084
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
develop something before you try to denounce poor spending in a field that to be competitive, at the cost of military failure and the detriment of an entire nation, must pursue even the most unlikely routes).
It depends on what you're trying to do. If you're responsible and want to conserve money, you let private inventors come up with new ideas, and let them risk their money building working prototypes. Only then do you think about investing in the ones that show some promise.
However, if you're a congressman, and your mission is to enrich the owners of the corporations in district #3A that donated to your campaign, then it's different. You rank the list of donor corporations in order of the amount they donated, and find out what they specialize in making. Say your top two donors make cotton string and brass eyelets. Then you write up a bunch of requirements for some invention that needs a net made of cotton string strung between brass eyelets, and make it sound really necessary. Invoking the safety of troops is always in vogue, so you might write up a request for a "biodegradable shell catcher to eliminate the possibility of reusing spent bullet casings as shrapnel in Improvised Explosive Devices." Never mind that the insurgents have never bothered using spent bullet casings for anything, but now you're selling cotton string and brass eyelets by the millions. The soldiers take one look at these things that show up one day and say "what the fuck are these useless things for?" Some kid figures out how to make beer holders attached to his bunk, and that's about all the action they see. So your contributors are richer, the taxpayers are poorer, and the troops have pallets of crap they don't care about shipped to bases where they don't want to be.
But by all means, let's pursue this unlikely route to ensure that brass casings are never used in IEDs again, and we can all breathe easier knowing our troops are safer. 9/11 !!! Never forget!!! O say can you see!
Or did I poorly judge these expenditures of time and money?
John
Just look at Lockheed Martin's F-22 and F-35 programs for sterling examples of why the U.S. is going broke buying weapons we really don't need, that don't work right, cost vastly more than Lockheed said they would when they won the contracts, and are years to decades late being delivered.
For those too young to remember. Those were *exactly* the same complaints made about the F-15 back in the day. You know the F-15, the fighter that has a 150 to zero win/loss aerial combat record.
In latin, "et" means "plus" or "and". You'll occasionally see "et" pop up in things like legal documents or academic papers.
The ampersand (&) is basically the current evolution of writing "et" in cursive. There are some interesting pictures on the subject.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Military R&D is often utilized to retain top talent and preserve experience and knowledge as it relates to the technology. People get worked up over "wasteful" projects that cost billions and supposedly never yield any direct benefit. You have to have jobs here in this country for researchers and technical specialists or you will lose the talent. One day when you need that talent it will not be available. Furthermore, if you do not constantly have a project going, for instance an aircraft carrier, you will lose the ability to build them since no one with the knowledge to do so will be available. It is like a legacy enterprise app in which no one has opened the code for ten years and then all the sudden you need to maintain it for some reason. Someone then has to RELEARN the whole thing to be able to work on it. The same goes for military hardware, you simply cannot let knowledge of these types of projects and systems go stale. The public doesn't understand these requirements so there are interesting stories about "wasteful " projects in the media that are publicly debated. The truth is, these projects are never going to cease and the "waste" will continue because the people in charge of our military readiness understand this aspect. It isn't waste, it is Research and Development; it is necessary though benefits are rarely ever immediately tangible and those in power who do not realize this are dangerous (cough...HP CEOs...cough).
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
As I've noted elsewhere, it's complicated, much more complicated than you're representing it here. Nobody else researches specific areas that the military has to. Elsewhere I used the under-body explosion example, but there are many others. Let's say, RPGs. They hit a vehicle in a very specific way. Who is going to research materials and construction methods to best defend occupants against RPG strikes? Who is going to have a person on staff with a doctorate who is a, if not the, world expert on uniforms and how they interact with the human body, equipment, vehicles, etc.? Only the Army (with benefit to the other services, of course).
I'm not saying earmarks don't happen. It's not my area (I do public affairs for the Army RD&E command, not budget), so I couldn't say without doing some research that I'm not going to do on a Thursday night while on vacation. However, we have several systems set up to respond to requests from the field, requests from doctrine writers (who write how the Army should work, hence what capabilities it will need), and others. We even take troop designs and get them manufactured. We now have a shop in Afghanistan where soldiers can pull up and get things made for a specific purpose. And we have guys researching things that might be needed 10 or 20 years from now.