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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.
"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.
The CMCM campaigns (specifically 2) were classified, so you will not be able to Google the results.
The radar on SBX is quite awesome actually. It shares a common linage with a radar known as TPS-X (which IIRC was renamed to FBX-T) which functions very well as part of the THAAD system. These radars are precision weapons guidance radars. While they do have a search function they do indeed stink at that: they are rifle sights, not binoculars. Try to locate a flying bird with your rifle scope.
The discrimination capabilities of these radars are really a function of software as well as the radar characteristics, see my comment about the CMCM-2. However during a launch a target would typically drop bolt mounts, explosive bolts for the stages, the stages themselves, and other such debris (in addition to counter measures). Individual radars (there were about a dozen tracking just the target vehicle) were assigned to and could track the individual pieces in flight as they spun around and bounced off of each other. This was easier than discrimination as the flight characteristics and origin of the debris were known ahead of time, but this is a small unclassified example of the capabilities.
Now, it is debatable if this was all a waste of money, but to say none of the stuff worked is disingenuous as the success stories will not be found in unclassified sources.
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$2.3 trillion unaccounted for.
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I agree with the sentiment, but the way that the funds are allocated does not lead to good results. You need to spend a lot of money on projects that will fail to find the ones that will work, but you don't want to spend a lot of money on individual projects that will fail, and most especially you don't want to keep funding projects after it becomes obvious that they will fail. You don't want to fund projects based on which congressional district will get the money and you want to make it clear that researchers who discover something won't work early can easily get funding to work on their next project.
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Colour me entirely unsurprised. This investigative article has details of many more billions of the Pentagon's wasted taxpayer money - and the real number could be dramatically higher. We'll never know, because the Pentagon has failed to perform the required audits of its accounting ever, despite tens of billions still being sunk into modernising its infosystems.
A few random details of what we do know:
- $5.8B of inventory "lost" between 2003-2011.
- $9B of ledger adjustments simply made up to get the books to balance in 2012, up from $7.4B the previous year.
- "Probably half" of its $7B general inventory is in excess of needs, but they're still spending $700+M buying more of the same.
- Hundreds of thousands of contracts that have not been audited for completion. Solution: raise the threshold to contracts worth $250+M.
There's much worse, but you wouldn't believe it coming from a random Slashdot post. Read the article.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
US defence spending is 4.4% of GDP. You can blame the deficit on many things but not that.
... Only it worked. They were able to build a bomb that could flatten a city that was small enough to be dropped by a single plane.
We take that for granted, but that was a pie in the sky concept at the time... at least from perspective of the non-physicists.
So today they're building lasers, magnetically accelerated cannons, autonomous hunter killer robots, etc...
Can you blame the pentagon for not being able to tell what will work from what won't?
I hate waste as much as the next guy, but how the hell are they to know half the time. F'ing radar invisible airplanes? Jet fighters that take off vertically?
A lot of it sounded crazy until it had already happened and was proven to work.
Just have a little sympathy for them. They can't really know sometimes. Neither can you. Any number of the dumb ideas there could have worked or could still work in the future.
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Ummmm.... through taxes the Federal budget IS a part of the GDP and private sector. You cannot separate them, it is all the same pot of money.
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Frankly just about every new system introduced was considered a total failure by the Press at one time or another.
The F-4 Phantom, F-14, F-15, F-18, M1A1, AH-64, M2 Bradley, B-1, F-111, The Nimitz class carrier, and going way back to pre WWII the B-17 crashed in testing and was thought to be too big and expensive.
This article is full of fluff and opinions from unnamed experts. The SBX may be a disaster but I don't see the limited angle as that big of a deal. It is designed so that if the US feels threatened by North Korea then we target them with the SBX. It is a system that is designed to respond to an escalation in threats not to stand guard for a sneak attack.
If you 24/7 protection from sneak attack that will cost you. You will need to build many X-Band and S-Band radars and re-establish the DEW Line. Then you will want to re-establish the Pine Line in Canada. Next you will want to convert the old Safeguard system in ND to house BMDs and then add installations in along the coasts. Maybe Land Aegis along the coasts. And we should probably build some X-Band Radars in American Samoa , Midway, Hawaii, and Christmas Island. In the Atlantic interceptors should be based in Greenland....
As you see it would be a massive project. Truth is that it is unlikely that North Korea or Iran would just go and pop a nuke at the US without any escalation. The simple truth is the interceptors are to save lives in North Korea and or Iran. If a single warhead hits a US city the response would be terrible. Those nations would cease. The death toll would be staggering.
If the leaders of those nations did get stupid and we manage to intercept the warhead the response would be much lower.
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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.
The job of an elected representative is to look out for the interests of his constituents. By definition that includes trying to bring projects and economic benefit to their district/state. The notion that voters will stop electing representatives that seek to bring those same voters economic benefits is absurdly naive.
Some amount of pork is fine and to be expected. What you have to worry about is when it gets big, expensive projects spread out among a lot of districts so that even a boondoggle cannot be killed. See the Space Shuttle for a good example. Basically you cannot realistically eliminate pork spending but you can work to keep it under control.
Frankly however $10 billion, while a lot of money is a rounding error in a $3 trillion + federal budget. I'm MUCH more concerned about the imbalance between our spending priorities (Medicare + Military specifically) and our unwillingness to fund those priorities with an adequate tax base. Either the spending needs to be cut or the taxes need to go up or both. But currently we just borrow and pretend that we can sustain this imbalance to this absurd spending level without adequate tax revenue indefinitely.
Actually, there was a real welfare queen that fits the details of the urban legend.
Her name was Linda Taylor. And welfare fraud was probably among the least of her crimes. It's a fascinating story.
Now obviously, she's the exception, rather than the rule. Most people on welfare aren't creating multiple fake identities in order to bilk the system. And most sure aren't involved in possible kidnappings and suspicious deaths.
Next time my nation is invaded by a foreign nation I'll make sure and thank the soldiers for keeping me safe.
In my entire life only times I can think of soldiers keeping anything safe was American interests in other countries overseas, think oil. Otherwise they don't keep us safe. Seems their job is more protecting US interests.
I would also like to note I am in no way attempting to diminish any soldiers service to their country it is greatly appreciated, but the truth is the military is not in the business of protecting Americans.
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