Bush attack ad should be exposed for its stupidity

[kcwayne]

In the latest attack ad on Kerry, Bush claims that Kerry has left us weak by refusing funding for a number of defense related programs.
One program pointed out in particular is the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

Clearly the Bush administration is counting on the fact that the public has an attention span of 3 minutes, and is completely ignorant of ancient history that goes back, oh, 20 years. Of course, they know they can lie and distort with impunity.

If John Kerry didn't vote against funding the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, he was doing a dis-service to this country. The program was a poster child for wild and uncontrolled spending that stretched into the billions for military hardware that didn't work, couldn't do the mission it was needed for, and did nothing but make defense companies wealthy.

Kerry should turn the record of the spending overruns back on Bush, and ask Americans if they think it makes sense to spend 3.1 million per vehicle on a truck with a gun, after spending billions to design the vehicle to begin with. Especially in an environment where soldiers are buying their own gear to protect themselves against sniper fire, which the Bradley can do nothing against other than transport them to a location to get sniped at.

The Bradley Fighting Vehicle Story


Like the Sergeant York Gun, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was a classic example of the Pentagon's "buy now, fix later" philosophy that was so prevalent during the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. In fact, when the decision was made in December 1979 to begin full-rate production of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, limited test results had shown that the vehicle's armor couldn't even protect its occupants from hostile fire. 14 Full vulnerability testing did not begin until 1980, a year after the go-ahead to buy the system was made.15
"This information was not reported to key decisionmakers," the General Accounting Office said in a 1986 report. "Even though the system had been deployed, the vehicle's vulnerability is still a major concern as demonstrated by test results."16
Once again, a lack of independent testing allowed an unsafe weapon to be placed in the hands of the nation's fighting men and women.
The Bradley, named after the famous World War II general Omar Bradley who led the D-Day assault on Normandy, is an armored carrier that transports cavalry units and infantry units to and from the battlefield and acts as a scout vehicle for reconnaissance and security missions. Ironically, the Bradley was intended to replace the M-113 whose armor wasn't thick enough to protect a squad of troops from anything larger than small arms fire. For that reason, many soldiers refused to ride inside the M-113, instead choosing to ride to battle atop the vehicle.17
But the Bradley, first deployed in 1983, wasn't put though any live-fire testing to determine if it would be better able to protect its occupants than the M-113. Live-fire testing wasn't done until 1985 when it was discovered that the Bradley was highly vulnerable to anti-armor weapons.
It also was having performance problems with its "swim capability" (some Bradleys were sinking while attempting to transport troops over bodies of water), transmission, electrical systems, and integrated sight unit.18 From 1980 to 1987, a total of 11 Bradleys sunk or swamped during swimming training operations. In 1987, after a Bradley sunk at Fort Benning, Georgia, the Army suspended Bradley training swims worldwide until problems could be corrected later that year.
"The Army has been testing certain modifications designed to increase the vehicle's survivability," General Accounting Office Associate Director Mark E. Gebicke told a House Subcommittee in 1987. "As a result of these tests, the Army has decided to modify the approximately 3,200 Bradleys still to be produced and to retrofit many of the vehicles already produced with certain survivability enhancements."19
Since it was live-fire tested in the late 1980s, the Bradley's reliability has improved - but only after it has undergone a number of fixes and upgrades totaling billions of additional dollars. Yet, as late as 1992, nearly a decade after the Bradley was first deployed, studies by the U.S. Army Ballistics Research Laboratory had still not drawn any firm conclusions on the vehicle's survivability.20


Defense oversight article

[OpSomBlood]

1. Bushco has the money....

...to say whatever the hell they want in their ads without any rebuttal. And yes, the average American has an attention span of about three seconds, not minutes.

[buddy22600]

2. nice post

[kentuck]

3. We need media reform!

It's not about "free speech" anymore....It's about whether you have enough money to say whatever you want, truth or lies, and never be held accountable...

[baldguy]

4. The Pentagon Wars

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/

Only a movie, but ...

[freetobegay]

5. I saw the movie on HBO.

I assumed at the time the movie was true, even though it was ridiculous to see how the Bradley vehicle came to be.

[trogdor]

6. I got to drive a BFV once.

It was in 1992, in Korea. Although I can't testify as to how much of a hit it can take, it was a marvelous vehicle to drive. Rather than having two drive sticks like a bulldozer, it had a steering wheel, so just about anybody, including a pencil-pusher type like myself, could take it for a spin.

I had a lot of fun driving the BFV on a closed track riddled with mud holes, sending showers of murky water flying everywhere. The beast had an impressive amount of pickup for a tank, and could get up to 45 miles per hour. That's what the BFV was designed for - to get you in and get you out quickly. Again, I don't know whether it can withstand a hit from, say, a Soviet-era RPG or an AT-4, nor could the cavalry scouts who treated me to the joy ride. Their job description doesn't include shooting AT-4's at their own vehicles.

I would be interested in knowing whether any of the Iraqi insurgents have ever been successful in bringing down a Bradley. It seems most of the people who've bought it while driving vehicles were driving humvees.

On edit: My concern about this sort of thing is, just how much is all of these toys supposed to cost? Can we do military R&D and procurement smarter? Sure, the Stealth Bomber (for example) is an awesome machine, but is the price tag really justified? THAT, my friends, is what we should be focusing on, not whether the damn thing works. I am sure the Bushies can dig up any number of 19D's who can tell you just how TOTALLY AWESOME the Bradley is, just as I have done.

[kcwayne]

7. My post is about cost

Bush is complaining about Kerry not funding the Bradley. With the R&D cost @ 14 BILLION dollars, Kerry should not have been voting for funding the project.

The decision about what to fund should be made on the need and the effectiveness of the project. The Bradley, the Sgt. York, and the B1 bomber were all horribly mis-managed programs that wasted billions of dollars. The cost over-runs were driven by willfully poor designs, fraud, and complete lack of congressional oversight.

The Bradley is an example of what you get when your procurement process is designed to the benefit of the contractors, not to the benefit of the military and the taxpayers. The thing was first introduced in 1982, and it took constant refunding to the tune of 14 billion to get it to the state where people like yourself would call it TOTALLY AWESOME. It sure as hell should be for 3.1 million each and 14 billion of R&D.

Maybe you remember at the start of Gulf War I the concern alot of people had about the state of our military equipment. Given the history of the Bradley's, Sgt. York's, B-1, M-1 Tank and Apache programs, there was alot of consternation that we had a bunch of crap on the field that wouldn't work in the desert. We were afraid that we had wasted a whole lot of money and were not in a position to stand up to a third world country that had less technology, but it was simple, and they had proven it would work against Iran. There was a story floating around that the US military had ordered 50,000 body bags from a supplier in preparation for the ground assault.

The military managed information outflow from GWI to insure that the press reported favorably on the hardware (witness the Patriot program, and all the successful gun-camera video). They wanted to justify the trillions that had been spent on defense systems over the preceding 15 years. They succeeded in convincing the American public that the expenditure was worth it, and now people have completely forgotten what a debacle it has been getting there.

Bush wants people to sign up for more of these "successes". My guess is that PNAC has determined that the major exports of the US over the next 20 years will be its military. I expect my great-grandchildren to be drafted to fight some war to protect China's interests in 50 years, as the US turns itself into a military for hire, while other nations develop products and infrastructure. The outsourcing of the future will be other nations outsourcing military protection to the US. They will have the assets, we will have a nation whose only industries are food distribution, police, and armed forces.

That is what Bush wants you to vote for, and what he is criticizing Kerry for voting against.

[Toucano]

8. Don't forget the Patriot Missile Defense System is

a total flop!

It's successful hits have been lied about from day ONE.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/feb2003/cbc-f07.shtml