How the Pentagon Wasted $10 Billion On Military Projects

schwit1 writes: In the past decade, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has wasted $10 billion on defense projects that were either impractical and impossible. It's hard to choose a single quote showing the absurd stupidity of these projects — the article is filled with too many to choose from. Read it all and weep. However, here's one quote that typifies the attitude:

"Henry A. Obering III, a retired director of the Missile Defense Agency, said any unfulfilled expectations for SBX and the other projects were the fault of the Obama administration and Congress — for not doubling down with more spending. 'If we can stop one missile from destroying one American city,' said Obering, a former Air Force lieutenant general, 'we have justified the entire program many times over from its initiation in terms of cost.'"

We get the government we deserve. Until we stop electing candidates (from either party) who promise pork, we will continue to get pork, and waste, and a society that is steadily going bankrupt.

Comments

Re:only government?

[gl4ss]

well the 10 billion spent has gone into private sector pockets. that's what spending in this case means. the military research spending is mostly a jobs program in USA, so the money stays mostly in USA.

better than wasting a trillion in Iraq anyway.

(I'm not a citizen of USA).

and now.. for the generals comment.. it's also money gone into his projects and paying his wage. but give the scenario of a war in the scale where this kind of stuff matters.

Here's an idea for how to spend the next 1 trillion in USA military better: just fucking educate your troops better, make the grunts have 3 year training. frigging conscript armies have longer training and they don't even expect to go to war. where as your grunts basically get just bootcamp and then it's to another culture to act effectively in the role of police, so it's rather ridiculous that the training hasn't been geared towards that. it's rather ridiculous that your mercenary grunts have such short and shoddy training(yeah it's a mercenary army, they're all getting paid and benefits and none of them were forced to be there at the moment).

or better yet use it to give your police a 5+ year training like any other proper 1st world country does(despite those countries paying their coppers less, while having higher minimum wages). does a lot more for your citizens safety. would do better for their safety as well, much more than just dumping military hardware on them with no training.

anyways, use it for training the coppers to be better with people, either the world coppers or the domestic. anyone can learn to shoot well in pretty much a weekend it's all the social interaction they end up in that's hard. who cares about the missile destroying an USA city scenario, which would change quite a lot in the world(and retaliation to which would again then need said educated coppers/soldiers).