The Rising Cost Of Weapons & War

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Then you are screwed.

 

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You mean the same Lockheed Martin that has led the defense industry for years?

 

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The exact opposite is true. The USM is the utterly obsessed with the newest techniques and technology.

The Army's Delta Force & AWG as well as the Navy's DEVGRU and the Air Force's 24th STS, all come to mind. And these are just the "tactical" innovations.

As for taking chances on new technology, that's pretty much all the USAF does, though all three branches tend to have the newest piece of technology available.

Can you--for example--name any new or experimental technology which does not make its way into the hands of the US military a good deal before making its way to your hands?

~String

 

Well someone is making shitloads of money somewhere...

 

Without a doubt!

You can't spend (as yet, not totally disclosed) $700,000,000,000 (maybe more through other channels, but not much) without someone making a lot of money.

~String

 

I can stop you right there. Louis Freeh, who directed the Bureau in the 90's was passionately anti technology. He was not a lone. The upper echelongs of the Bureau had many like him. Audits, after 9/11 showed a drastically under serviced federal agency that had outdated technology. It has taken the better part of the last decade to play catch up from the weird, Luddite thinking that had grown within the Bureah:

The culture that dominated the FBI was weirdly anti-computer or apathetic on it. The culture that dominates the ranks of the military--for better or worse--is obsessed with anything cutting edge. There are numerous independent groups--kept isolated and given varied environments--who are tasked with thinking of the unthinkable and reporting on what the DoD needed to do to prepare for them. Thus you have DoD agencies, dividions and groups like: AWG, 24th STS, Delta Force, DEVGRU, The US Special Operations Command (who's job it is to unify all the creative fighting the AWG, DEVGRU, 24th STS and Delta Force do and write policy on it), The National Security Agency, The Defense Intelligence Agency, The National Reconnaissance Office (who gets to develop, build and manage all the spy satellites), The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, The Operational Test & Evaluation Directorate (who gets the FUN job of thinking, developing and buying the most advanced shit on earth), and The US Strategic Command who gets to manage the space based assets not directly tied to intelligence gathering.

A very different culture than the FBI.

~String

 

Our agencies aren't at fault. They are what we make them. Some are highly efficient. Some are backwards. The ones in the DoD are--by design--technology and innovation driven. Other agencies are a bit slower to change because resisting change is sort of in their makeup.

In the end, each of our government agencies does exactly what they are charged to do. If they don't, it's because we--the people--failed to change their direction.

I have a friend who worked as a uniformed officer in Secret Service for four years. He hated it and quit to become a--much higher paid, sadly--district LP manager for JCPenny. He said the agency was the worst run thing he'd ever seen. A million redundancies, wasted payroll all over the place. He worked at the mansion, on the property, sitting around doing nothing all day long. I asked him of the extra payroll and overlapping nonsense would be helpful in the event of a presidential attack and he said, "Yeah, probably, but all we do is sit around waiting for it." Me: "That's sort of the point, no?"

~String

 

I don't think you understand. These are uniformed officers who's primary job is to be seen, but not heard. Hundreds of them on duty at a given time, all within fifteen-hundred feet of the White House lawn. Their job is, specifically, to be seen by any would-be attackers. That is: stand around the Mansion, watch the entrances, check ID's, guard the gates, the lawn, the streets around it, on top of the buildings around it and in cars driving around within a couple blocks of it. That's it. That's all they do. It's all they're supposed to do. They are, literally, meat-blockades, body-shaped warning signs and uniforms to make the area look impenetrable.

In the off chance that something does happen, they usually secure all the visible areas, block traffic, hold down buildings and make the occasional arrest of harmless trespassers.

~String

 

I guess that is even more boring than being a traffic cop. Maybe even more boring than being a tollkeeper. You can't give those guys some other work if you value their alertness as watchers.

 

They're working on it kmguru. . . they're working on it. Believe me.

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One day soon!

~String