“Wait, wait! It’s automatically firing the wrong direction!”
Quite an article. Quite an indictment of the whole military/industrial process of developing technology. I especially like the part about the satellite guided missile that may not be compatible with the gun ‘designed’ to fire it.
I think we may have a tad more time before the robots (ala Terminator) are ready to take over.
Army’s $200 Billion Reboot Fizzles; Murtha Wants $20 Billion More
The Army’s gargantuan digital modernization plan has turned so rotten, a new congressional report says it’s time to start thinking about killing off the effort, and looking for new alternatives. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania), the powerful head of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, has another plan: Pump another $20 billion into the sickly, $200 billion behemoth “Future Combat Systems” before it drops dead under its own weight.
[…]
The picture may be even more bleak than has been previously been understood, however. A soon-to-be-released Government Accountability Office report, first obtained by Inside the Army, notes that FCS’ core software programs are now slated to take up 95 million lines of code, nearly triple the original estimate. Only two of Future Combat Systems’ 44 key technologies are where they should have been — at the beginning of the program. Things are so bad that the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, is now recommending that the Pentagon start “identify[ing] viable alternatives to FCS.” That’s government-speak for chopping the program into bits, and starting over again. And the Department of Defense “concur[s] with [those] recommendations,” according to the study.
$20 Billion? Why, that’s a month’s worth of the war in Iraq! What are these people thinking? That money comes out of a printing press??
Maybe it does come out of a printing press.
In other news….
“…Sprint is unable to fund a Nationwide wireless Broadband with WiMax because it may cost $5B…”
Too bad, it probably would have employed thousands of people and provided a broadband highway system to help America’s competitive position.
But what do I know about the benefits of a $200B Tonka Truck? Surely those guys in government get paid the big bucks for making wise decisions with our tax dollars.
It’s fuzzy thinking gone nuts. In other news, the costly F-117 Stealth Fighter is going the way of the Dodo.
Defense spending is an investment in America! All these stories amount to nothing more than follow the money trail. People vote for Senators and Reps to bring home the pork, not to expand human horizons.
#3, B. Dog, it’s not just the F117. Also the B-52, the C-21, the U-2.
If Congress will let the USAF get away with it.
or, maybe they just leak this stuff out to make us think they don’t have much better toys, you know, they stuff they don’t want us to know.
Reminds me of my buddy working on the cruise missile program.
During the first launch they had a beautiful firing but forgot the missile expanded during firing. The problem was that the launch tube was too small. The missile just sat there and burned up.
Of course Jackoff Murtha (scourge of real Marines everywhere) would want more money for it. He is the champion of earmarks and pork barrel spending. No other congressman even comes close to this money wasting disgusting piece of shit.
#3 Yes, it’s going, and for good reason too.
#5. You should look at this http://tinyurl.com/2lslv and understand what you are talking about. I don’t expect you will, but…
Is that the system that had the radar controlled gun that was found to be aiming at the Generals brass buttons ? Be careful what you wish for !!!
The last thing most “soldiers” want to carry into battle is 20-30 pounds of computers with a whopping 12 hour battery life.
It’s an interesting concept, but just not practical for this generation of hardware.
If they can get it down to 5 pounds, with a week long battery supply, it might get used in combat.
The other problem with networking the entire military is what happens if the bad guys crack the network? What happens if they capture a vehicle that’s on the net? A soldier?
Didn’t anyone at DOD watch the new Battlestar Galactica show?
Don
#9, Patrick, from the Defense Industry Daily article:
“Congress has historically been extremely resistant to retire weapons systems, and has denied past Pentagon requests to reduce some of these same systems before.”
I didn’t say I agreed or disagreed with their decisions.