Pentagon wastes more $$$ on cool high tech crap that doesn't work

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
- English Proverb

The original specs called for a 40 ton vehicle, but a certan squinty-eyed and generally annoyed unnamed cabinet member loves the idea of a lightweight moble army and arbitrarily cut it to 20 tons.

The General Accounting Office produced a document detailing the problems, and contemplating alternatives if it was canceled. It shows estimates of development without cost overruns to be in excess of $15 billion, with a total procurement cost in the range of $100 billion. Furthermore, it shows that based on past Pentagon efforts, even a slight delay would cause the price to skyrocket almost exponentially. Of course, if they can't make the damn thing work, one could expect a significant delay in production.

And it's not only this Pentagon program. Among other systems, the OICW turned out to be too heavy to carry, and so 1 revolutionary weapon is now two separate weapons that are quite a bit like existing counterparts. The Crusader, a super-powerful high tech artillery system was canceled at $2 billion because there was nobody to shoot it at, the Comanche Helicopter was super-stealthy and could do all kinds of stuff, but was canceled at $6+ billion because costs were skyrocketing and people discovered UAV's and many high priced stealth cruse and stealth missles have been canceled.

Finally, topping themselves, after spending $20 billion on development, the Pentagon is going to spend another $20 billion on procurement of the V-22 Osprey. Of course, the program was delayed for several years after 23 Marines died proving a basic tenant of multi-rotor helicopter design. The fix? The Pentagon
altered the design requirements to fit the actual performance characteristics of the vehicle and decided that the flight manual would be amended to prevent pilots from dodging enemy fire while landing, and required them to land the vehicle at a fraction of the original rated landing speed (again including while under fire). In otherwords, it's both a waste of money and a hazard to soldiers. In this it is like the Striker IAV in Iraq which turns out to be not quite as bullet-proof as advertised.

I appreciate that some ideas won't work out, but the military is batting about .200 in the last 10 years. That's pathetic. (The only systems I can think of are the UAV's, the F-22, and the Joint Strike Fighter). It is so much money that it is difficult to comprehend. The volume of $$$ spent on programs with little or no end result, would be enough to bribe every foreign fighter in Iraq with several million dollars, to rebuild the city of New Orleans 20 feet higher, or to send a manned mission to Mars.