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Dissecting a $231 Million High-Tech Boondoggle

Posted by timothy on from the but-the-multiplier-effects! dept.

The L.A. Times takes to task the U.S. Congress, the Obama administration, and various military agencies for their combined role in supporting the expenditure of vast amount of money on a system called the Precision Tracking Space System. All told, according to the paper, the PTSS program -- which was to have provided early warning of missile launches, and precision tracking of the missiles themselves -- ended up blowing through more than $230 million before being cancelled. After talking to defense experts and reviewing hundreds of documents, the Times comes to what probably sounds like an easy conclusion for any big-budget military program that never reaches operation: it shouldn't have even left the drawing board.

2 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Re:$231 Million? by ThosLives · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hell, the general US public just spent that much money in four days to go watch a movie.

    While there may be some argument that perhaps that money could have been spent elsewhere, complaining over this one small amount of cash is a bit silly. Now, if we talk about a systemic problem - for instance, what percentage of projects like this get cancelled? - that is going to be much more productive.

    $230M is something like, what, the salary of 1500 well-paid engineers and managers? Split across 5 years, that's only 300 people, which is a mid-size engineering company. Even if you figure that 10% of that went to line someone's pockets, the rest to actual employees of companies, I'd tend to agree with this - $230M is chump change, and probably actually kept some people employed. And it's not even like it was a lot of people (you might be able to change the number by a factor of 2 or 3 if you are paying median or low-end salaries). So it's not like there is much direct money spent on "political influence" here.

    --
    "There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
  2. created by Dem Congress, fought by Republicans by raymorris · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually the program was created in 2008/2009, while the Democrats controlled everything- the House, Senate, and White House. Additional funding was added later by the Democrat-controlled Senate while Republicans argued against it.
    http://graphics.latimes.com/mi...