Military-Industrial Miracles

December 23, 2007

Monolycus reminds us of the famous quote from Eisenhower’s farwell address:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

In a recent report Jason Sigger, at Wired’s Danger Room blog, had a good example on how far the democratic process has already been shunned in favor of the military industrial complex. A compromise over a $300 and a $350 bill version ending up with a price tag of $510.

There is this odd, nutty military project to put a huge chemical laser onto a Boeing 747 to shoot down missiles in their early launch phase. The laser contains several tons of quite nasty poisonous stuff and nobody would like that thing to fly above ones head in the first place. Its military purpose is questionable to say the least. How would a 747 flying over Russia to shoot down Russian strategic missiles survive?

The project has already consumed several billions and is far beyond all former cost and time estimates.

In the new defense authorization bill, the House had reduced the ~~Pentagon’s~~ Boeing/Lockheed’s request of $548.8 million for the program to $298.9 million. The Senate version of the bill reduced the request to $348.8 million. Like usual, the House/Senate conference, which operates out of the public sight, had to find a compromise between the two versions.

On would have expected the conference members (who are those?) to meat and agree on a sum somewhere in the middle, like maybe $323.85 million, to be wasted on this project. They didn’t.

From the conference report (big pdf, page 817+ of the bill):

The conferees agree to authorize $513.8 million in PE63883C, a reduction of $35.0 million.

The conferees note that the ABL program remains a high risk technology development and demonstration program …

It remains unclear whether the ABL system will be affordable. The Congressional Budget Office has made a preliminary estimate that the ABL program could cost as much as $36.0 billion to develop, procure, and operate a fleet of seven aircraft for 20 years.

The Arms Control Center documents more of such budget miracles. Consider the C-17 Globemaster Transport Aircraft:

Request: $72 million
House: $2.49 billion for 10 aircraft
Senate: $72 million
Conference: $2.3 billion for eight aircraft

Even the Pentagon doesn’t want these birds. But the House was willing to pay $249 million a piece for ten of these. The Senate didn’t want any. The conference agreed to pay $287.5 million a piece for eight of them.

How about the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter?

Request: $222.6 million for 29 aircraft
House: no funding
Senate: no funding
Conference: $184 million for 29 aircraft

Huh?

The Library of Congress explains what a House-Senate Conference Committee is supposed to do:

Where the Senate amendment revises a figure or an amount contained in the bill, the conferees are limited to the difference between the two numbers and may neither increase the greater nor decrease the smaller figure.

Can someone reconcile that with the above?

We probably could, if we could point out the members of the conference and the amounts they get directly or indirectly from defense corporations. I have yet to find ways to do this.

Maybe we are far beyond Eisenhower’s warning?

Posted by b on December 23, 2007 at 19:48 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Engineers are a national resource and we must maintain a steady flow of them into the workforce by inducing them with well-paid positions. The defense industry is simply assuring that all these college graduates do not have to settle for salary levels that reflect that national standard.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Dec 23 2007 20:01 utc | 1

You forgot my favorite b, the Boeing/Bell V-22 Osprey.
Boeing and Bell Helicopter designers came up with a nice design in around 1960 for a small aircraft with two rotors attached to a rotatable wing, to combine vertical takeoff with horizontal forward flight.
It could work OK as a small flying machine if the pilot/passenger(s) didn’t mind the spooky transition phase, where you stop in midair like a dragonfly, then descend straight to the ground. DoD and Congress liked the idea, especially for landing Marines with no runway, but they wanted it BIGGER.
Contractors didn’t mind that, as of course bigger means more MONEY. Current version (47 yr later) carries 24 troops or ten tons of cargo. I have not seen the R&D cost total but it had to have been, and is, ENORMOUS.
The kicker is that designers knew from the beginning that their concept could not be adapted to work with a lot of weight, simply because of immutable aerodynamic & structural equations. Science itself would not allow enlargement to meet pentagon demands. “Hey we did it with the C5A; so why not with the Osprey?”
The project (R&D) is probably the longest ever for a single aircraft, and could be the most expensive too. Now the craft is “operational,” at least on a limited basis, but it has now, as always, the problem that it kills troops and destroys expensive airframes regularly.

Posted by: rapt | Dec 23 2007 22:18 utc | 2

You have been tagged.

Posted by: Lurch | Dec 23 2007 23:20 utc | 3

rapt #2–
Thanks for your account. Important to remember that what they hope to do is far from what the will ever be ABLE to do. But it is often hard to tell since it sometimes comes down to very arcane technical issues.
Mono–
Always a good quote, but he did not neglect the subversion of Universities, which usually gets left out. (It is very embarrassing to both students and academics.) Already when he gave his warning, it was probably too late.

Posted by: Gaianne | Dec 23 2007 23:45 utc | 4

Responding to a current dot.mil Christmas card going around, about the Genie and the
Texan, then him drowning Iraq:Iran, started doodling up an alternate Christmas card.
Think this may finally give MoA folks a “hook” on just how egregious the DoD.CON is.
Texas is 261,767 square miles. If you built a six-foot dike entirely around Texas,
sealed it off, and filled it six-foot deep with the last of the Oglalla Reservoir
sparkling mineral water, right to one billion acre-feet, it would cost just $675B.
DoD/DHS spends that much of our blood and treasure EACH … AND … EVERY … YEAR.
Put another way, if DoD/DHS threw a kegger, every American would have to chug a
case of Schlitz Beer every day, EACH … AND … EVERY … DAY. Which brings up a
little appreciated factoid, US overseas military bases are the largest purveyors
of beer in the world. Milwaukee? Nope. Detroit? Nope. DoD/DHS outdrinks them all.
Put another way, for the average price of an American home at $250,000, every one
of the ~2,000,000 ARM resets about to become homeless, could be saved by DoD/DHS.
That, by the way, is only 10% of the total size of the mortgage credit.con bomb,
which is why EBC is floating $500B, while Wall Street, BushCo and Congress dither.
Europe isn’t $5,000B in a black hole of GWOT white-labcoat-welfare death-machine.
http://cryptogon.com/?p=1746 http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/scha-j11.shtml
Ja doch!

Posted by: Rebecca Tamerlain | Dec 24 2007 3:33 utc | 5

The urge to merge is the problem.
The urge to merge corporate power and institutional power with government has taken hold in America, and will now run its course no matter the brave souls who stand up before it.
The so called opposition, the Democratic Party, has been hollowed out very effectively by the centrists and money party enthusiasts, to the point where these politicians are complete caricatures of what they describe themselves to be.
Like the Weimar Republic that preceded the merger of military, industry, church, and government in 1930’s Germany, these Weimaraner Democrats in Washington have already — long since — given away the store. All that remains is theater, is comedy and drama, but the plot has thickened beyond repair.
There will be the usual going through the motions, perhaps even the most sincere and serious stop gap measures by lonesome patriots trapped in the death throes of the people’s Congress.
But the urge to merge all power in an unaccountable bureaucracy has been mentally accepted by the American populace. We know this because we do not see them resisting it.
Now is the time to get in the streets and stay in the streets.
That’s all it would take, but they will not do it.
Citizens would do that.
Consumers won’t. Consumers don’t.
They wait to be served. They wait for directions. They get in line, and they stay in line.

Posted by: UESLA | Dec 24 2007 5:55 utc | 6

Conservatives are big on reducing the amount of government interference in our lives. And one of the ways the government interferes most is when it insists on pesky, bureaucratic auditing and accounting procedures for military expenditures. Can we not trust the Free Market to assure that our money is well spent, er invested?

Posted by: ralphieboy | Dec 24 2007 8:37 utc | 7

heh, you crack me up, B. Maybe we are far beyond Eisenhower’s warning? ya think?
the sad fact is that all this money isn’t even enriching that many “americans.” the engineers make a nice living, but the bulk of the cash is staying in the hands of the already uberwealthy in the form of complicated compensation packages at the executive level.
i think the relevant point is that the credit gravy train can’t go on forever. the ‘faith and credit’ of the american people is a dubios bet these days, as the market meltdown is showing. when certain interests cease lending the US ~3B/day, that’s when things get interesting.

Posted by: chicago dyke | Dec 24 2007 11:10 utc | 8

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