War is Making You Poor Act

[J Scott]

For those of you who are concerned about government spending being out of control, and subsequently the risk of increasing taxes, I thought you might be interested in this bill:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_Making_You_Poor_Act

Lastly, since I know there are some people not quite bright enough to understand that the title of a post may be representative of the subject matter within the post (as opposed to a personal opinion from the poster), let me point out that the title of this post is representative of the subject matter within this post, and not necessarily a personal opinion of the poster.

[J Scott]

Originally posted by Bryan Hancock:

I can assure you that people don't understand how complicated the current technology is and how many THOUSANDS of engineers it takes to make sure that we have the best fighters in the world.

I'm guessing we probably agree on all the main points here...

While I'm not claiming to be an expert, I did work on the MH-47 Chinook and the MH-60 Blackhawk for a short time, so I certainly understand how complicated military aircraft technology is.

That said, I've worked on just as complicated technology in the private sector that was built far more optimally (from an engineering standpoint) and at a far less overhead cost. If military contractors had the same incentives as private technology companies -- i.e., they actually had to design, build and ship products on-schedule and on-budget to make money -- we'd see just as far-reaching military technology advances at a fraction of the cost. But, unfortunately, military contractors have greater incentive to drag out schedules, blow out budgets, and charge for "research" that never has any shot of going towards military application (they sell the technology to the private sector for even more money).

Add that to the fact that perhaps we should be asking the question, "Is the proposed fleet of military aircraft really optimal in the 21st century?" We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build these ridiculously large and complicated aircraft (B1, B2, F117, F22, etc) when they are no better than the time-tested and much less expensive B-52, F-15, F-16, etc.

There's no indication that these high-cost machines are contributing to us winning any wars today or will contribute to us winning any wars in the future. But, there's no doubt that the high price the government is paying to have these machines designed and built is contributing greatly to our national debt. Unfortunately, it's the aircraft manufacturers who are making most of the decisions about next-generation technology, and not the military...seems a bit backwards to me...

I'm not saying we shouldn't spend as much as necessary on military defense. What I'm saying is that we need to overhaul the incentives of the military contractors building these machines (to make them more efficient and lower-cost) and re-examine whether we really need to spend $150M on a machine (like the F22) when a $15M machine (like the F16) is probably better suited to our current needs.

Then we can take the billions of dollars that we save and put them to use to benefit our citizens in other ways...