| Talk about Murphy's Law in action - look at the recent major procurement efforts:
1. LCS
2. F35
3. Marine Expeditionary Vehicle
4. KC135 replacement
One of the common threads I see is that the military can't decide on what the mission priorities are, so they are making the fatal error of scope-creep in these systems.
Re: LCS - We need an ASW capability, minesweeping and interdiction capabilities. Seemed like we could accomplish all 3 with the same hull, but then we added stealth capabilities, a 45 knot speed requirement and then tried to keep two different contractors happy. Result = completely predictable.
F-35: Same thing. Needs to be a stealth strike fighter. That can be carrier based. Oh, and the Marines want VTOL. Each set of additional capabilities creates complexity, cost and problems. Like melting the decks of ships and premature fatigue on critical components.
WE HAVE THE LARGEST MILITARY IN THE WORLD! We have the FEWEST reasons to try to make every piece of kit multi-function! We can afford to have both minesweepers and ASW corvettes, so let's build the best minesweeper and the best ASW corvette rather than a swiss-army knife.
Ditto aircraft. The Marines in particular will NEVER run into a situation where they need STEALTH CAS aircraft! They need rugged and reliable far more than they need high-tech and sexy. A carrier-capable SU-25 Frogfoot-like aircraft with STOL capabilities that can also be transferred ashore to operate from semi-improved runways (i.e. Afghanistan) would be cheaper and far better for the jarheads on the ground.
The nature of 90% of our future conflicts should be abundantly clear: Afghanistan and Iraq (with IRan if we ever go into action there) are the blueprint. We need to plan for and procure for these types of needs instead of staying stuck in Cold-War thinking. |
