MrRodgers
Posts: 10540
Joined: 7/30/2005
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Imagine if you could, work in military contracting, attain the rank of Colonel or General, Captain or Admiral get congress to buy military stuff, then go to work for the companies that supply the stuff. You'd certainly become a multimillionaire or you just didn't try.
The boondoggle that is the MIC is alive and well, making billion$ in clearly undeserved profits and the same vicious but very profitable circle thrives despite all of the so-called whistle blower protections and...is immoral prima facie.
We have had just since Reagan, the CH-53K helicopter, the Marines’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, the Osprey tilt-rotor program, the F-22, the F-35, etc. and we see this pattern repeated over and over and over again.
Now welcome the Zumwalt class 1000 destroyer. $1.34 Billion each, and that the whole 32-ship program would come in at $46 billion, then but by 2001, cost growth prompted the Navy to lower the projected class size to only 16 ships. And by 2005, with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimating costs of well over $3 billion per ship, the Navy decided to drop the number of ships to be built to just seven. (7 out of a world changing 32)
Flash-forward to today and the Navy has capped production at just three ships, with each costing over $4.2 billion in construction costs alone. Toss in over $10 billion for development costs, and you end up at more than $7 billion per ship. Amazingly, this is actually more than the $6.2 billion we paid for our last Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
Not only is nobody ever held accountable, the reason why they could get really rich...those responsible get promoted and to make matters worse, this cost is still rising, the Navy actually took delivery of, and commissioned, a ship that is far from complete and years away from being ready for combat. Plus, we get only 3 of the 11 promised new technologies.
In fact, every one of the Navy’s four original project managers were almost immediately promoted from captain to admiral upon completing their stint in charge. And the lead contractors for the Zumwalt program, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics, have received additional hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of defense contracts, even as costs soared, schedules slipped, and capabilities declined.
Unsurprisingly, the chief of naval operations, the Navy’s senior uniformed naval officer, who played a major role in getting initial support and funding for the new destroyer program, went on to become CEO and chairman of General Dynamics, which during his tenure secured billions of dollars directly related to the Zumwalt program. Of course, none of the congressional representatives who carried water for these same defense contractors have paid any price whatsoever for continuing to support funding the Zumwalt, despite overwhelming evidence the project was a loser.
HERE
Now do you really think Trump will stop this ? Not only has Obama steadily increased the pentagon budget since the world-ending collapse of western civilization, due to sequester but Trump pledges to increase our defense [sic] spending even more. Small, fiscally responsible limited govt....my ass.
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You can be a murderous tyrant and the world will remember you fondly but fuck one horse and you will be a horse fucker for all eternity. Catherine the Great
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
J K Galbraith
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Invest in the great Military Indust. Complex - 
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