People, especially weapons developers, keep forgetting that you have to develop weapons for use against a foreign enemy, not other Americans. The truth comes out on the battlefield and by then it’s too late for a lot of U.S. troops who get killed because of the willful ignorance.

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Lamentably - despite being bitten in the tail many times - Americans continue trying to conduct business with other nations based on American standards.   When conducting foreign policy (or business) not taking into account the customs and traditions of other nations leads to many problems.  For example - in many middle eastern countries if you say you are going to do something - you are honor bound to do it.  In the USA, you're not bound to do anything unless there are  signatures on a contract.

 

Hence - when the US goes into a country like Afghanistan and announces we're going to rebuild and secure the nation, to all the people there we're honor-bound to do it.  And then when we didn't - the US looked dishonorable and untrustworthy.  Hence - in a lot of places - we shouldn't promise anything (orally) in the middle east unless we *really* intend to deliver.  Otherwise, we only create trouble for ourselves. 

Beware of 'shiny objects' that appear to be great on paper an in artificial 'guaranteed to succeed' tests.

 

Our senior leaders are just as swayed by the latest and greatest (and the promise of fat civilian positions when they retire) as ever before.

 

Sometimes the KISS principal is best.  In fact it usually is.

 

I could pretty much guarantee, for example, that if the Air Force ever put out specs for a replacement for the A10 that they would load it down with so much technology would widen it's mission scope so much that they would end up with an inferior (from an overall readiness/effectiveness/cost) perspective.  I fear they have already done this with the F35 - trying to be everything to everybody. 

 

The Marine's new amphibious assault vehicle is another prime example of this:  Just design a highly-survivable IFV, optimized for the 99% of the time it's not in the water.  It will cost 50% less and be 100% better than something you can waterski behind.