Comments on: Defense Dept. doubles spending on systems that don't deliver

Military doubles dollars it will spend on new weapons systems, but many are behind schedule or cannot deliver on crucial technological innovations.

[Mikeatle]

It pisses me off that we throw money at the military and require little or no oversight as to the effectiveness of the spending, yet we howl to heaven every time anyone proposes more money for education or public infrastructure. What have we become in this nation but slaves to the military industrial complex whose soul pupose it is to keep us perpetually in war so that their budgets will remain fat with tax dollars. Frankly, I would propose that the military budget be cut by at least 75% and most or all of that savings be returned to the people and/or spent on education and sorely needed infrastructure repair.

[sal-magnone]

The military has huge oversite, The DoD itself, outside auditors, the GAO, and more. Miltary projects almost always go overbudget because in many cases they are building what does not exist yet - often including the underlying technology. The system vendors works in forces them to offer the most optimistic possibility for delivery and cost.

The GAO is doing its job pointing out the problems. No problem with that. However, most of the nuts you see demanding their money back sound allot like the retro quacks that said the M-1, the Bradley, the F-16, the F-18 would never work in 1980. Of course, these are some of the world's best pieces of equipment (in their generation) now.

I would counter that we've been throwing huge money at eductation for decades with little or no improvement. And in fact, the largest portion of the US budget is entitlements (when you add state funding its off the rickter scale). I would argue that we have become slaves to social programs that designed to keep the poor in poverty under the guise of charity and social responsibility.

[mpeskin]

The issue is not the fact that developing cutting edge military hardware is expensive and difficult. The issue is the fact that all of the incentives in the current military procurement process lead the participants to substantially underestimate these costs. The problem with this is the total lack of realistic cost/time estimation makes it virtually impossible to spend our defense development money rationally, and thus the whole system gradually devolves into a welfare program for wealthy defense contractors.

Oh, and while US entitlement spending (education spending is not an entitlement, BTW) is also out of control, the vast majority of that spending is on programs directed at the elderly irrespective of income (Social Security and Medicare), not necessarily at the poor.

[sal-magnone]

IN any case, left-right aside, I will agree with this. Better management is required to better rationalize the spend. However, you can't do that without better structuring the political process that oversees the allocation and spend. Trying to fix the military build/buy process by cutting its budget is like trying to fix a patient by cutting his Oxygen. Living in an area close to Northrop, Lockheed and allot of other smaller contractors, I know these guys feel like they are working in the looney bin when ever the government comes up. They would like nothing better I think than to work in a sane system.

[sal-magnone]

"thus the whole system gradually devolves into a welfare program for wealthy defense contractors " - THAT'S a big leap to the left.

I never said education was an entitlement program - even though you are entitiled to it, funny how that works - the comment I replied to brought it up,

If you are old, but not poor, you don't need entitlements. Yes, you pay into the system but system is substandard gives you a substandard return.

So based on your comment, can we eliminate those "few" poverty programs like Medicaid from the federal budget (and state too)? Shouldn't be too much right?

[Jake Leone]

"and weapon systems dependent on increasingly complex, yet-to-be-developed software (we need more H-1B visas)."

This is the dumbest comment ever made.

Thankfully the people at the Pentagon are a little smarter than the average editor. If you look at most defense related jobs, they usually require citizenship.

So the answer, frankly, isn't to hire h-1b workers into those sensitive jobs. Like an h-1b from China, like that makes any sense at all. The answer is to keep developing citizen talent. Unfortunately the h-1b is often used to fill the lowest ranks of software and IT and so it actually damages this process.

[charliestl51]

When you post a diatribe against the American educational system, you might be well advised to use a dictionary, unless you are claiming that you yourself are a victim of an inadequate educational system.