Close ties at the Pentagon

[UpInArms]

http://www.newsday.com/ny-uspent1013,0,7141522.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

The power, influence and bottomline of defense contractors has grown during the Bush presidency

WASHINGTON -- A giant program to modernize the Army with futuristic weapons -- one of the costliest programs in the history of the U.S. military -- is being managed by a private contractor.

The responsibility to ensure that the project to equip the next decade's Army with a new fleet of satellite-linked manned and unmanned ground and air vehicles moves from the drawing board to the assembly line has been contracted out to Chicago-based Boeing Co.

<snip>

Air Force Secretary James Roche last year criticized the growing dependence on defense contractors when he warned, "What you have to resist is the temptation, which will be very strong, especially over time, for government officials to rely too heavily on the judgment of the ." His concern, reflected in several speeches, is that putting industry in charge of contract management can drive up costs by dampening competition and further eroding the defense industrial base.

<snip>

To modernize as a rapidly deployable force, the Army has a Star Wars-like vision of eight new manned vehicles, each with revolutionary new technology and armor still undesigned; three unmanned ground vehicles, including a "robotic vehicle" that would sneak up on the enemy and collect targeting data; and four unmanned air vehicles to help with targeting.

The 18 new ground and air vehicles, sensors and munitions are to be linked by a computer system that also does not yet exist but that would give U.S. troops the ability to destroy the enemy from a distance or without being observed. Only this total battlefield awareness, combined with yet-to-be-developed active and passive armor, would make the lighter vehicles survivable, according to the GAO.

...lots more...

This sounds just like the PNAC plan for the 21st century

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. This sounds just like the PNAC plan for the 21st century<<

Nice to have madness in charge of your government and military idn't it?

I'm not much of a religious person... but if there is an ouce of truth to the notion that the armies of heaven will go to war with the armies of the earth... well... you know whose side we are gonna be on..... and that ain't a good thing.

[UpInArms]

2. "I'm not much of a religious person."

heaven help us all.

[Owlet]

3. Billions for this junk...

...vs 19 guys with boxcutters. I guess to have asymetrical warfare we just have to be big and musclebound. If we were small and wiry we'd be just like the opposition, and then it wouldn't be asymetrical, right? See, it's simple when you look at it logically.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. See, it's simple when you look at it logically.<<

What we use now.... is a money maker... small and wirey... not a money maker... war is business. It has always been thus.

French connection armed Saddam
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20040908-123000-1796r

Who Armed Saddam?
http://www.counterpunch.org/green02242003.html

http://www.sundayherald.com/31710
SEVENTEEN British companies who supplied Iraq with nuclear, biological, chemical, rocket and conventional weapons technology are to be investigated and could face prosecution following a Sunday Herald investigation.

http://www.freedomunderground.org/memoryhole/pentagon.php

[Mandate My Ass]

5. Boeing is the biggest welfare queen

to ever suck on the gov't teat.

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. Imagine if we spent some of this money on alternative energy

so that we could end our dependence on foreign oil. Wouldn't that do more to make us safer then all these weapons systems that don't work anyway?

We are taking all of these brilliant engineers and scientists and wasting their time working on this crap, when instead they could be working on projects that make life better for people. What a waste.