The scrutiny started as a publication of the Naval Institute Press in Annapolis, Maryland, entitled The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard. Its story led to a Premium Cable movie, The Pentagon Wars. In the end, the Military Industrial Complex, a part of it, anyway, recognized it for its operational deficiencies.
I'm talking about he Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
Come with me out into the tall grass, and I will display a dramatization of what is very, very wrong with the military side of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC)
There is no better way I know of to illustrate what is wrong with the psychology and practice military procurement than this segment from the aforesaid film, The Pentagon Wars.
The perfectly ridiculous piece of military hardware that is the Bradley Fighting Vehicle evolved into existence beginning in the Nixon Administration and continuing through three more Presidents until it went into mass production and international distribution of almost seven thousand units.
It started as the Bradley armored personnel carrier, lightweight, speedy, all terrain carrier of an infantry platoon. From the beginning the "armored" part was pretty much a joke, since aluminum enclosures offer little protection from military grade firearms. The ridiculous evolution of the system from the originally proposed concept is lucidly summed up in these final lines from the film clip.
Woman: A troop transport that can't carry troops; a reconnaissance vechicle that's too conspicuous to do reconnaissance;
Man: And a quasi-tank that has less armor than a snow blower but has enough ammo to take out half of DC.
I am a U.S. Navy veteran. When I was in my twenties, I lived aboard a U.S. Navy warship and stood watches in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. That was a long time ago, but I still recall my pleasure at monitoring broadcasts while at sea in Europe and Africa while Saigon fell and the last Americans escaped Viet Nam.
American voters can take control of the military budget, but it will take an act of electoral will. The military budget is where most of the fat in the federal government persists. Almost all the worst and most wasteful programs and practices in Washington will be found in the juicy Pentagon hindquarters. My apologies to vegetarians offended by meaty metaphors.