To All DoD Employees: You Don't Know the Half of It

by Joe Pulcinella

Justin Raimondo linked to this one the other day. It's a detailed account about just why our military does not have the required armament it needs to do our president's dirty work. Incredible. Everyone knows that politics is the culprit here but I don't think any one person knows just how bad it really is.

Tom Christie was worried. It was the fall of 2003, and the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester had noted problems with the Army’s pride and joy, the new Stryker Armored Vehicle. The $4 billion program was seen as the vanguard of the lighter, high-speed Army of the future. But even with new add-on armor, the Stryker “did not meet Army requirements” against rocket-propelled grenades in tests, Christie wrote in his 2003 annual report. Now the Pentagon was about to deploy the first 300 Strykers to Iraq while an insurgency raged.

So Christie did something unusual: he sent a classified letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office urging the military to be very cautious about where in Iraq it deployed the Stryker. The response? “I was slapped down,” says the straight-talking Christie. “It was: ‘What are we supposed to do with this [letter]? � Are you trying to embarrass somebody?’ “�

So eager were some Army brass to push the Stryker, critics say, that they paid three times as much for it as the competing bid and lowered its performance requirements whenever it failed testing. And even though the Stryker is largely untried, Gen. Larry Ellis of Army Forces Command sent a March 30 memo to the chief of staff asking for more money for the program as far ahead as fiscal year 2008-09.

I know I'm going to get lots of responses saying that this stuff is no secret in Defense circles but the article is a great read. Very detailed but I fear it only scratches the surface.

Stryker Armored Vehicle

Posted 12/14/2004 3:09:29 PM by Joe Pulcinella

It's just what I said about the US military being a tiny version of the Soviet economy. Since there are no price signals to determine the demand and distribution of any given product, they are supplied according to the whims of "intellectuals" and corrupt politicians. Why was the USSR always short on toilet paper? Was it because the Russians were too stupid to make toilet paper? No. But the reasons are the same as to why the US soldier on the ground can't seem to get enough of the proper materials to ensure that he doesn't get too killed.

Posted 12/15/2004 8:48:58 AM by Joe Pulcinella

Wasn't there a scandal about how vulnerable the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was when it was being tested? Didn't a movie get made about it? Here is a webpage outlining the vulnerabilities of the Stryker - it's dense and full of jargon, but it has some sobering pictures; http://www.geocities.com/paratroop2000/armoredhmmwvsstrykersfail.htm In the page author's opinion, and apparently that of others, the Army already has thousands of superior M113 Gavin tracked light armored vehicles that are much safer and more maneuverable. But they won't cost $3.3 million each to deploy, so I guess they won't use them.

Posted 12/14/2004 5:57:50 PM by Vince Daliessio