COLD WAR TOYS EAT UP PENTAGON BUCKS

For the last two years — and for the forsee­able future — the U.S. troops have become into terrorist-​​hunters, peace-​​keepers, fight­ers of messy, dirty lit­tle wars.
But the Pentagon is still spend­ing its money like it’s about to duke it out with the Russians in east­ern Europe, Army Times alleges.

While American infantry­men hunt guer­ril­las in the back alleys of Iraq and Special Forces foot sol­diers track ter­ror­ists in Afghanistan and Indonesia, the Pentagon is spend­ing bil­lions on super­sonic jets like the new F/​A-​​22 Raptor, which moves too fast to iden­tify ground tar­gets…
As Thomas White, for­mer sec­re­tary of the Army, observed, ‘None of the big pro­grams have been per­turbed, and we con­tinue to pour money into them…“
In the Pentagon bud­get, three of every four dol­lars are spent on pre­cisely the same things as in August 2001, accord­ing to a study by for­mer Pentagon bud­get ana­lyst Chuck Spinney…
Much of that money is for fixed man­power costs, but the weapons-​​buying accounts are heav­ily skewed toward high-​​tech and high-​​cost weapons sys­tems, Spinney and other ana­lysts said.
These include $3 bil­lion for F-​​18 Super Hornet attack fight­ers, $3.5 bil­lion for F/​A-​​22 air supe­ri­or­ity fight­ers and $4.4 bil­lion toward devel­op­ment of another high-​​performance air­plane, the Joint Strike Fighter.
Congress wrote a $100 mil­lion check for the Air Force to study a poten­tial new bomber, money for which the Pentagon didnt ask.
Also in the bud­get: $1.5 bil­lion for a Virginia-​​class attack sub­ma­rine designed to hunt 1980s-​​era Soviet mis­sile subs, $3.2 bil­lion for three new Navy destroy­ers and $1.2 bil­lion to begin buy­ing parts for a new air­craft carrier.

January 14th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.