08-24-2011, 02:15 PM
The mentality of the DOD procurement system has changed a lot from what it was at the height of the Cold War. I always refer back to the legacy of the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, which went from a concept to the sky in 14 months. That was the Golden Era of US technological capacity and achievement, when schools still taught science, hard math, real English, and multiple foreign languages.
Now, we have a combination of Pentagon Corporate Welfare dependents with eternal pet projects who have monopolized many of the former competitors into mega-companies like Lockheed-Martin, and Northrop-Grumman. We've allowed a Belgian-based small arms company to dominate most of that market for our military manufacturing several of our home-grown designs, combined with other 1950's designs repackaged as "State-of-the-art". The "new" submissions are even more obsolete operating systems disguised in space-age polymer packaging to woo the imbeciles holding the purse strings. It's rather entertaining to watch, really...
Now, we have a combination of Pentagon Corporate Welfare dependents with eternal pet projects who have monopolized many of the former competitors into mega-companies like Lockheed-Martin, and Northrop-Grumman. We've allowed a Belgian-based small arms company to dominate most of that market for our military manufacturing several of our home-grown designs, combined with other 1950's designs repackaged as "State-of-the-art". The "new" submissions are even more obsolete operating systems disguised in space-age polymer packaging to woo the imbeciles holding the purse strings. It's rather entertaining to watch, really...