Bad Military Contracts One thing this country is constantly doing, and I understand why, is developing new weapons. One of the problems is we have made this too political by giving contracts based not on prior performance, but what powerful politician has a defense or aerospace company in their district. It has also been based on which companies are the most powerful donators to the party. This has resulted in numerous cost overruns, weapons which are impractical at this time, and weapons with so much wrong with them they either have to be cancelled or manufactured with the problems and hope they can be fixed in the future. I often say would anyone buy a car that didn’t run with the promise it would be fixed in the future? I for one am tired of seeing billions of dollars wasted this way and it is not only on weapons programs. Look at the Artemis rocket and all its problems. The first problem was congress was said to have mandated in the contract that many of the old space shuttle parts should be used. This stifled innovation in some areas and the fuel it uses is the most difficult to handle. It has the smallest atoms; they are so small the rocket has the same problem fueling the space shuttle had. It causes leaks. Even with old style parts, the cost overruns were tremendous. It was also years late in the making and every launch is said to cost billions of dollars. I would like to look at some of the military projects which have run into trouble in the past. The navy decided to start a new destroyer program and developed the Zumwalt class destroyer. The idea was to create a multi-mission stealth craft. It was crazy expensive for a destroyer costing in 2016 about 4.24 billion dollars each. The Arleigh Burk destroyer which was in service first cost 1.83 billion dollars each. Originally 32 Zumwalt destroyers were planned. Then 29 were cancelled when it was found they were not any more effective than the Arleigh Burk destroyers. Today only 2 are in our fleet. Here is where I normally would talk about the F-35, but I have talked about how terrible it is so many times I will keep it short. When I last checked it still has over 700 problems which were not corrected. One of them had to do with supplying oxygen to the pilot. Ouch! Many problems might have been corrected by now, but one that hasn’t been is how slow the plane is compared to some of the planes that came before it and some of the enemy planes it would face. The price per plane, an Air Force model costs 148 million dollars, and the Marine Corps F-35B is said to cost 251 million dollars. I am not done yet, the F-35C is listed at 337 million dollars. This is totally outrageous. The aircraft carrier Gerald Ford cost a whopping 13.3 billion dollars and not everything worked when it went to sea. Well, the launch system partially worked and could launch a few planes at a time and then had to be shut down and rested for a while. Not good during an attack. Not only that, it is said the carrier was not built to carry the F-35 and will have to be updated to do that. There are numerous other problems. The carrier was billions over budget and years late and has been criticized by many navy men and even President Trump. Sometimes a choice has to be made. The British built a smaller carrier which holds 40 planes and is not nuclear. The price for two was a little more than 7.5 billion dollars. We could have almost built 4 carriers that size for what we paid for the Gerald Ford. Would numbers have been more important than having nuclear reactors? That would have given us about 160 planes instead of 75. Quantity was what won World War II. Some might argue our ships have more technology, but what is more important to a carrier, it is being able to get planes launched. In its effort to jump ahead in technology the military sometimes moves ahead on projects without using common sense. One project which was just too far ahead of our capabilities at the time was the decision to create a nuclear powered plane in 1946. It was named the Convair X-6. At the time the government did what it usually does and before the program was dropped 7 billion dollars had been wasted which today equals about 60 billion plus. When some of the navy ships started to corrode, which the navy was said to admit was aggressive it was said it was no big deal and was to be expected when steel and aluminum together are sloshing around in the ocean. Heck, if you know this is going to happen why put those materials together? Mother Jones reported in 2011 the US government had lost 31 to 60 billion dollars to contractor fraud and waste. Can you even imagine what that amount would be today? One estimate is just in Afghanistan alone we left 50 billion dollars’ worth of equipment. The government claims it was ONLY 7 billion. It should have been nothing. I remember when one of the aerospace companies was in a competition for a fighter plane with another company. They clearly had the best plane, but a very important senator was from the other state, so the second company got the contract. This is one of the reasons we don’t always get the best equipment. The M-16 rifle was a disaster in the beginning. It had aluminum parts and when the barrel got hot it wouldn’t fire. You can imagine what that must have been like when you were in a battle. It could have cost your life. That problem has been fixed a long time ago. Another project was a miniature submarine. It was to be used to take Navy SEALS into different combat areas. What is one of the first things you must have on a vehicle like this? It would be utter silence, which this didn’t have. Not only were the propellers very noisy, but the batteries were also a problem. They did not have the range they needed. The order was cancelled for additional subs and the one remaining sub was damaged in a fire and was too expensive to repair. What we need is some real oversight in these contracts and if a company increases the cost and delays the project there should be a financial penalty. Instead, the government sometimes gives these companies merit cash awards even when they are way over budget and years behind as with the SLS, Space Launch System.
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