The Best Vaporware Money Can Buy

Nine years ago, the Navy set out to build a new guided
missile for its 21st-century ships. Fiascoes followed. In a test firing,
the missile melted its on-board guidance system. "Incredibly," an
Army review said, "the Navy ruled the test a success."

Recently, the Navy rewrote the contract and put out another one, with little
to show for the money it already spent. The bill has come to almost $400
million, five times the original budget.

Such stories may seem old hat. But after years of failing to control cost
overruns, the most powerful officials at the Pentagon are becoming increasingly
alarmed that the machinery for building weapons is breaking down under
its own weight.

Yet another example of asymmetrical
warfare. We
have become so enamored of technology, so dependent on the methods and
models of modern manufacturing state, and so determined to create an
antiseptic virtual warfare where we can obliterate any enemy with negligent
risk to our own troops that our weapons systems design and procurement
are so divorced from reality as to be dysfunctional. To the ultimate
detriment of those very American
boys and girls the hi-tech gadgets are
supposed to protect in the first place, not mention you and we, who are
footing the bill.

Doesn’t the accompanying Navy artist rendering of
the melted missile look like something out of a comic book or sci-fi
movie? Unfortunately,
that’s about as close to functionality as it ever got. In the battle
of suicide bombers and Improvised Explosive Devices vs. Really Cool
Vaporware, we know where our money is. Unfortunately, we paid our taxes this year already…

from the
New York Times