 |
| Okay it looks cool. |
I know I know! “I
just did a blog on a Government sponsored weapon system debacle a day
ago.” “Why do we have to listen to yet another rant on how the
Pollytickans are wasting billions of dollars on something that
doesn't do the job it was supposed to do?” “Why does this guy's
breath smell so ba..” Wait that wasn't you. Well, me boyos (and
girlos too) the answer is extremely simple. I'm doing this because
1. I can and B. This sort of Shift really honks me off.
Lessee
so far I have talked about the M1 Abrams program that the US Army
doesn't need but Washington keeps alive. I have (Recently) go on and
on about the boat that the US Navy has that doesn't work right and
that they don't need. So I guess it is time I did a number on the US
Air Force. So read the above article, sit back and get ready for a
doozy!
So you
got this drone, the Block 30, which was supposed to be the latest and
bestest thingie when it comes to super duper spy craft. Able to stay
on target for over a day and do all kinds of stupendous things and
best yet, it is completely unmanned so we won't have any more Gary
Powers. (Nope not going to explain that one, read a book.) Sure, it
was going to be expensive but at least we were going to get a next
generation drone machine with more bang for our buck. Right?
Well,
like so many other stories, this one didn't turn out the way it was
supposed to. The Drone met the usual production delays and once in
service, it turns out the durned thing cannot perform as planned. As
a matter of fact the decades old spy plane it was designed to replace
does a much better job than the drone. So the military looked
towards this boondoggle when the big budget crunch hit with the idea
of stopping the purchase of more droned and mothballing the ones it
had already bought. This act would have saved the DOD billions of
dollars over five years. Sensible right?
Well,
send up the red flag and salute boys because in steps of Northrup
Grumman and our bashful boys in Washington with a multi-million
dollar program to keep the drones flying and more being made.
Congress over rode the DOD and not only ordered the purchase of more
drones but also ordered that the drones be kept flying at a cost of
millions of dollars a year. After all, NG pronounced that the drones
were “high-flying, combat-proven aircraft [that] are so robust and
reliable that they’re in high demand by warfighters who fly them.”
so they had to be good.
Now
folks, the number of flaws in this system (Um the drones not
Congress) are way to numerous to list here, but do include: “Block
30 provided less than half the required 55 percent “Effective Time
On Station” coverage — the amount of time loitering over a target
to gather intelligence — over a 30-day period, Gilmore said. Its
sensor to identify radar and communications signals “does not
consistently deliver actionable signal intelligence end-products to
operational users due to technical performance deficiencies”
There are many more but those are two good examples. So if this is
true, why keep the program going? Why spend billions on a platform
that simply doesn't work? Answers are simple: Money and Jobs (IE:
Bribes and Votes)
NG
supplied millions and millions of dollars in PAC funds to a whole
bunch of people in positions of power who rallied that cutting the
funding for the project would cost the taxpayers a lot of jobs. In
their tiny little Pollytick minds, it made more sense to keep the
system going even though the products were flawed than risk losing
votes by cutting funding and possibly costing jobs.
This
mindset runs rampant through the Government. It is how we have the
Joint Strike Fighter which is TRILLIONS of dollars over budget and
still doesn't work right. It is how we got the boat that I ranted
about yesterday that cost billions and doesn't work right. Thinking
like this is one of the main reasons we are so far in debt. We spend
trillions of dollars a year on stuff that isn't needed and most of
the time isn't even wanted by the people that get it. We do this
because we want to keep the workers of Town X happy and the owners of
Business Y happy. All the time we are being screwed which makes us
unhappy.
In the
end, I have a very simple solution to all of this. Instead of
spending billions of dollars a year to keep useless factories
churning out useless equipment, lets just take half that money and
evenly divide it among all the people who would be effected by the
closings and use the other half for more constructive purposes like
trying to find working brain cells in Pollytickans. The workers
would be happy and at least the other half of the money would go
towards something more constructive.
End of
Rant
No comments:
Post a Comment