Posts filed under 'The Cold War'
I was watching the BBC documentary Clear the Skies the other night and it got me thinking about the current state of US air defense. This straight ahead documentary offers a linear narrative of the morning of 9/11, focusing on air defense and Continuation of Government (COG) efforts. To a certain extent, I was surprised at how well things actually worked. The USAF and the FAA jointly coordinated efforts to track the hijacked aircraft. Fighter jets were scrambled for intercept in a (somewhat) timely fashion. Communication lines functioned and information was delivered to the appropriate people. Since I’ve been researching the old Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), the Cold War air defense system, I’ve been interested in knowing what US air defense looks like today. Obviously, we don’t have the massive network of regional SAGE air defense facilities we use to have, but the cooperation between the USAF and the FAA seems adequate for tracking aircraft and identify those with hostile intent. But based on what was presented in the documentary, we seem to be lacking alert interceptors, or in layman’s terms, armed jet fighters ready to fly at a moment’s noticed. On 9/11, armed aircraft were scrambled pretty quickly from Langley in Virgina, but they were some 200 miles away from DC and unable to intercept the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. However, if the other Capitol bound jetliner wouldn’t have went down in Pennsylvania, it would have likely been brought down by one the interceptors from Langley. I don’t remember where the NYC bound fighter jets originated from, but it might have been Cape Cod. Again, they were not able to make it to New York by the time the second plane hit the twin towers, but they would have been able to take down any additional hostile aircraft.
Of course there are many on the inter-webs criticizing the Pentagon’s response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. They suggest too many minutes passed between when the planes were identified as hijacked and when the order went out to scrambled interceptors. They also complain the USAF unnecessarily restricting interceptors to subsonic flight. For those who aren’t familiar with supersonic flight, when the sound barrier is broken, it creates a “sonic boom” that can shatter windows and generally make people angry — particularly the elderly, who hate having Mattlock interrupted by anything, including acts of war. Because of this, military aircraft are only allowed to “kick out the jams” over the ocean. So this is a fair criticism of the USAF I think, but the fault may really be with the FAA. There should be some kind of supersonic waiver granted for interceptors when faced with hostile aircraft over the continental US. We can deal with a few broken windows and the agitated old folks (P.S., old people need to be isolated and studied so it can be determined what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use…hey, it’s not just a Lyndon LaRouche campaign slogan anymore!)
Anyway, my take away from the BBC documentary was we need to increase the number of interceptor aircraft on alert in or near large urban areas. And we don’t need fancy F-22s or F-35s for the job. More F-15s and F-16s would do just fine, thank-you-very-much. I foresee two problems with this recommendation though. 1. Cost. The Pentagon would want to spend vast sums of money on additional F-22s/F-35s for air defense instead of cheaper F-15s/F-16s. That’s just the way they roll. Everybody knows USAF brass don’t secure lucrative post military “consulting” jobs by pushing inexpensive weapons systems. 2. NIMBY. Basing interceptors close to urban areas means you’re going to piss a lot of people off. Already, there are many in PDX complaining about the ANG’s F-15s. Frankly, I don’t mind them that much even though I live fairly close to the airport. They only fly after 9:00 AM, so the noise it’s a big deal compared to the ass-hats who run their leaf blowers nonstop. But people like to bitch about every little thing, so increasing deployment of fighters would surely create a lot of angry letters to politicians.
To me, it would make sense for the US to reevaluate air defense in, say, five to ten years. There is a lot of technology hitting maturity, like phased array radar, that’s coming down in cost and could be deployed to increase radar coverage. The phased array sites we currently have in Alaska, California, and Cape Cod look out. Why not look in as well?Increasing and modernizing radar sites would benefit both the FAA and USAF. Also, it’s a safe bet the F-16 will still be in production for another decade based on the strength of foreign orders, so I think it would be a good idea to purchase additional aircraft for air defense purposes or overhaul older F-16s slatted for retirement. Like a wise man once said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
June 17th, 2010
It’s taken weeks to arrange, but the stars finally aligned and I was able to get inside the former SAGE building at the long decommissioned Adair AFS outside of Corvallis. I’ve been wanting to poke around the place since it will be one of the Cold War sites profiled in my documentary. Edward Elkins of McMinnville, who served at the site in the ’60s, acted as the official tour guide while the building owner Justus Seely handled the logistics. For those of you unfamiliar with SAGE, it stands for Semi Automatic Ground Environment. Basically, SAGE was an integrated North American air defense system that operated from the late 1950s up to the early 1980s. At the heart of SAGE was the AN/FSQ-7 computer. Each SAGE center (like Adair) had two AN/FSQ-7s — one that was “active” and one on standby allowing for near 100% reliability. There were probably around 22 SAGE sites across the US and Canada at the height of the Cold War, but once ICBMs became the preferred method for delivering nukes, many of the SAGE sites were closed. Adair is unique because it operated up to the ’70s and managed the air defense responsibilities for a bit chunk of the West Coast toward the end of it’s service.
So what’s the building like today? Well first, I should confess to a major screw-up: I forgot my Frezzi Mini 100 watt movie light. For some reason, I packed the NRG battery belt and back-up bulbs, but not the actual movie light. This was a huge deal, since much of the building is sans electricity. Interesting story there: when Justus bought the building years ago from the local carpenter’s union, they took advantage of closing delays to strip as much wiring from the building as they could. They didn’t mess with the first floor, since that would be more noticeable to the new buyer, but the second and third floors were thoroughly ransacked, resulting in spotting power. So having the movie light would have actually facilitated decent filming. Instead, most of the video I shot was just dark shadows and flashlight beams playing across walls, which is kind of cool from an artistic angle, but it really sucks from a documentary standpoint.
But back to the actual condition of the building. There is still a significant “footprint” of the Cold War here. The basement of the site was basically a Civil Defense bunker. There are still moldy boxes of CD supplies and other artifacts strew about the place. And since there is no power down there, it feels like a vampire movie set. The first floor of the building, where the two massive computers would have been located, is mostly taken up by Justus’ flooring company. There are a couple of other tenants using this space for storage as well. Up on the second floor, where the operations room is located, there are more rooms that are leased out for storage. There is also someone living there apparently who serves as a caretaker/watchman. We heard his dog bark somewhere in the building, but couldn’t figure out where. That made things even more surreal. Oh, the other weird thing is the building use to be used for Airsoft battles, which is similar to paintball, just without the splatter. As a result, there are thousands, maybe millions, of these little white pellets everywhere. I thought some kind of massive bean bag disaster had taken place. The third floor is where most of the computer consoles would have existed. Of course these are long gone (maybe re-purposed for the set of Lost?), but you can still see where they were mounted to the floor. The lighting in these rooms was all blue and Justus did manage to turn some power on and some of the blue lights still work, which is super cool.
Overall, the SAGE building at Adair still tells a compelling Cold War story. It helps to have someone like Ed there to explain everything though. There have been some pretty significant alterations to the building, like the addition of a couple of windows and the partition of the first floor, but it’s still a fascinating (and often mysterious) site. Hopefully, I’ll be able to return someday with a lighting rig to get better interior footage. If that doesn’t work, I would at least like to go back this summer and get some better exterior shots since the rain yesterday cut short some of the outside filming.
If you want to see some of my limited footage of the site, please visit my Vimeo account here.
May 21st, 2010
Bomb Shelters Across the World
http://www.good.is
Brits Put Cold War Bunker on Preservation List
http://www.msnbc.msn.com
The Pulsing Heart of SAC
http://www.gwu.edu
Cold War Relics
http://coldwarrelics.com
February 4th, 2010
I spent another productive day at the Stanley Parr Archives and Record Center (SPARC) last week researching Portland’s civil defense efforts for my Cold War documentary. During my previous visit, I focused on the Kelly Butte bunker. For this last visit, I researched Portland’s network of super sirens and the mass evacuation of downtown dubbed Operation Green Light. So here is what I discovered about these historical footnotes.
Super Siren
The network of seven super sirens, often referred to as “Wailing Willies” by the general public, operated for about 11 years - from 1952 to 1963. The sirens existed at the following locations:
- Northeast corner of N. John and Princeton
- N. Emerson and Maryland
- NE 56th and Sandy
- SE corner of SE 54th and Boise
- SE Milkwaukie and McLoughlin
- SW 31st and Nevada
- Top of American Bank building (downtown)
These jumbo sized sirens were built by Chrysler and featured a V-8 “HEMI” gasoline engine (but were probably powered by propane). The sirens connected to the electrical grid for power to keep the batteries charged, but the sirens could operated independently in the event of a power failure. These sirens could be controlled remotely from the bunker at Kelly Butte or manually on site. The Wailing Willies were tested once a month and created a wail that topped out at 138 decibels. When Portland soured on civil defense in 1963, the system was abandoned.
Operation Green Light
On September 27th of 1955, the City of Portland conducted a simulated mass evacuation of our downtown core. This event was later reenacted for the CBS television production “A Day Called X”. Dubbed Operation Green Light, around 29,000 vehicles and over 100,000 people evacuated a 1,000 city block area of downtown. During the test, all traffic lights in the evacuation zone were converted to display a fixed pattern of green or red.
All photos courtesy of SPARC. Special thanks to Brian Johnson for all his help.
October 30th, 2009
I recently made a pilgrimage to the summit of Mt. Hebo in the Oregon coast range to see if there are any signs of the old Cold War Air Force radar station. It was a lot easier to get to the top of the mountain than I thought — you just follow Mt. Hebo road on up after turning off of 22 (near the 101 junction). The route is well maintained, yet extremely twisty; so much so, Emily got car sick during the drive. From 22, it’s about 30 minutes to the top. Unfortunately, my first trip was a disappointment due to poor weather. I was hoping to shoot some 16mm footage with Tony’s fancy Bolex using Kodak’s 50D, but typical coastal cloud cover had reduced visibility to around 50 - 100 yards. Eric and I did find signs of old infrastructure, like the foundation of one of the radar buildings and a buried electrical vault (see photos below), but that was about it. There are a couple of newer communications towers maintained by Verizon, the Oregon State Police, and one of the railroads, but nothing military related. The second trip up was far more productive from a filming standpoint. There was still some cloud cover, but I had enough sun breaks to manage a couple of panoramic shots using a really wide prime lens on the Bolex. I’m a little worried about the exposure since I had trouble reading my light meter, but I’m hoping the 50D has similar latitude to Kodak’s other motion picture negative film.
After coming down from the mountain, I also met with Bill Pollard, who served on Mt. Hebo during the Cold War. He now lives in Pacific City and had plenty to say about his time in the Air Force. There were a couple of interesting comments he made I though worth posting:
- When the Air Force station closed in 1980, it took two years for contractors to remove everything from the site
- The family housing existed about 2,000 feet below the summit. When the station closed, this site was dismantled as well. Some homes were sold to members of the community and can still be found — although heavily modified.
- When Mt. Hebo closed, some of the radar equipment was given to the FAA and used on a mountain top outside of Salem
- Some of the radar equipment was pretty jerry rig. For example, the hydraulic system on the height finder radar was crafted from modified landing gear scrounged from a T-33 fighter jet.
- The reason there were so many makes and models of radar systems across radar sites was not intended to drive technicians crazy. Rather, it was intended to make it harder for the Soviets to jam our radar sites.
- There were never any Soviet incursions or unidentified aircraft during the site’s operation according to Bill. Pretty much day-in-day-out routine for the most part.
- Encryption was not used for data transfers over Long Lines from Mt. Hebo to Adair, the SAGE site in Corvallis. I guess encryption was pretty much pointless those days, since only the US military had the primitive modems used for transmitting data over the phone lines.
- The Long Lines data transfer between Mt. Hebo and Adair was actually two-way. The SAGE system could also send back instructions to the radar.
September 29th, 2009
I recently spent some time at the Stanley Parr Archives and Record Center (SPARC), the City of Portland archives out in North Portland, researching my documentary short film about Oregon during the Cold War. I was only able to skim the surface of all the civil defense archival material, but the staff was gracious enough to scan a few photos of the construction of the Kelly Butte command center. B-Love also joined me at SPARC and did some Memorial Coliseum research and found some awesome photos of that sports arena’s construction. Still trying to come up with a title for the project, but I’m leaning toward “Watching the Sea and Sky: Oregon’s Lost Cold War Infrastructure”. It really puts a focus on the documentary, which I’ve decided is an examination of Oregon’s air defense and underwater surveillance efforts from roughly 1955 to 1992.
During my visit to the SPARC, I also learned about another facet of Portland civil defense efforts I was not aware of: air raid sirens called “Wailing Willies”. I guess there were seven of these towers in various neighborhoods throughout Portland, but I don’t know any of the detail like exact locations or how long they were in operation. I’ll follow-up on my next trip to SPARC and hopefully find out more.
August 31st, 2009
Sometimes you just need to be ambitious — even if said ambition is modest (or even pointless) by conventional standards. In the past, I’ve blogged about Oregon’s forgotten Cold War infrastructure, but now I’ve decided to do something with all this information. So where does the ambition part come into play? I’ve decided to make a documentary short film telling Oregon’s Cold War story by examining abandon or semi-abandon military, Civil Defense, and telecommunication sites across the state. Just to make it perfectly clear: this won’t be a comprehensive study of Cold War’s impact here in Oregon. Only about six sites will make the final cut based on the availability of interview subjects, period photos, and thematic relevance. The goal will be to try and loosely tie all these sites together to illustrate the social, political, and technological changes that took place in mid-century America and Oregon in particular.
I’ve already started collecting contact information for interview candidates and I’m trying to schedule location filming for August. One piece I’m trying to figure out is permissions for interviews and images. Andy was kind enough to provide personal release forms, but I’m still looking for release forms for photographs and motion picture film. As much as possible, I plan on using old archival footage to get around the thorny issue of copyright, but I will still need to get a hold of still photos. As far as filmmaking equipment goes, I’m not going to worry about that until I get closer to actually shooting on location. I figure I can beg, borrow, or steal most of what I’ll need. I suspect some of the exterior shots will be on Super 8. Interviews will have to be digital video, but I’m sure I can figure that out. More challenging will be deciding how to stylistically approach the project. I’ve already decided that I don’t want the conventional voice-over narration for the film. Rather, I would like to tell the story using just interviews. This presents a bit of a problem, since some technical things, like SAGE, will need someone with a level of expertise to provide a non-jargon laden explanation. Finding these kinds of interview candidates locally could be a challenge to say the least.
Here is a question for all you readers: what are your favorite documentary films and why? One of my all time favorites is A Thing of Wonder by the local collective Archipelago. It has an unconventional narrative style and a wonderful dreamlike quality. I’m also quite fond of Errol Morris’ various documentaries. He has an amazing talent for crafting compelling interviews. Another all time favorite documentary is American Movie — I love the way the filmmakers immerse themselves in the subject matter while managing to stay detached just enough to be relatively objective.
I suppose I should start using something like Twitter to document my progress on this project. Once that starts up, I’ll post the link here.
July 29th, 2009
Readers of this blog might remember a series of posts from ‘06 about Oregon’s lost Cold War infrastructure…you know, those missives about abandon bomb shelters and radar stations dotting the state. Well someone responded in the comments section about a lost Continuation of Government (COG) and/or Presidential Emergency Facility (PEF) near Bend and possibly called CPIC/West or CIA-ISTAC. I’ve been meaning to investigate this mystery further, but I just haven’t had the time to do more than a cursory query of the inter-webs. So here is what I know so far: The site is supposedly located at 23861 Dodds Road just east of Bend. I haven’t actually driven out there to confirm, but Google maps clearly shows some infrastructure in the area. Those who have looked into the site report that it’s owned by the Army and operated by the Oregon National Guard. Currently, the Guard is running something called the Oregon National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program (ONGYCP) at the location. There was an article in something called The Source in July of 1998 about the facility and it possibly mentioned the bunker portion had been dismantled and/or sealed. It’s also possible there is a companion site at the Redmond Municipal Airport, which is just to the north. Cursorily, I don’t see anything that looks like COGesque, like a microwave communication tower or satellite dish farm or helipad. Of course those could have been dismantled some time ago, so I don’t know if that’s worth mentioning or not. There is a rather extensive microwave site in Bend, but I don’t know how close it is to CPIC/West.
It’s unclear when the site was developed or how extensive the bunkers were, but it was originally called a “night vision device testing & evaluation facility” by the Army. This may have been a cover story to shield the real COG role of the site. Still, it’s unclear as to what the usefulness of the site would have been in the event of some kind of national emergency. Looking at the Redmond airport, it doesn’t look like it could handle the current 747 variant of Air Force One. But I have seen pictures of civilian 767s at the airport. And I do know that the Regan administration went on a massive COG spending spree in the mid ’80s, so this site might have been part of that infrastructure program that also included converting former SAGE sites into COG sites. But I’m confused why Bend would have been chosen as a COG or PEF site. I would have picked Klamath Falls since Kingsley Field has an airfield worthy of large aircraft. Of course K-Falls would have been a secondary nuclear target during the Cold War, so maybe Bend would have made a safe haven in the event of an all out nuclear holocaust.
COG as it stands today is kind of a mess from what I gather. On 9/11, the Vice President was quietly whisked away to “an undisclosed location” (which was really just a bunker below the Naval Observatory), but many top Federal officials were left scratching their heads regarding what they were suppose to do. Even the securing of the president seemed half-assed. I remember seeing news footage of him at all these SAC airbases, which seem like the last place you would want to go during a national emergency since they would be natural targets for evil-doers. My understanding was the COG system had moved way from harden facilities after the introduction of precise atomic warheads in the late ’70s to mobile command units run by FEMA. 9/11 suggested this system either no longer exists or was never effectively implemented. Of course there have always been rumors concerning some kind of secret COG subway system in DC, but the only “evidence” of this are ghost spurs off the current Metro system. Personally, I like the idea of mobile command posts utilizing our fine national park system. To me that seems like an effective and cheap solution to our COG problem. It probably won’t hurt to have plan that could be shared with government officials and employees in the event of a national emergency either.
Finally, there is another mystery closer to home. I’ve heard about an electronic listening station built off of NE Halsey around 148th avenue sometime in 1941. Apparently this was a WWII and Cold War listening post that was replaced in 1971 by the sprawling NSA complex in Yakima. The PDX site might have also captured a Japanese transmission regarding the attach of Pearl Harbor. Probably an interesting story there!
June 6th, 2009
The Avro Vulcan
Britain’s economy was hit particularly hard by the Second World War. Unlike the US, the UK struggled to bounce back and had to contend with what was left of its far flung empire. To make a bad situation worse, the Brits also had to deal with the emerging nuclear threat posed by the Soviet Union — a country possessing the capability to strike the British Isles with long range bombers. To address the prospect of nuclear death from above, the UK began to plan for an advanced air defense strategy. Along a parallel track, the UK also began to make plans for strategic bombers to deliver newly minted nuclear weapons. One of the most amazing systems they devised was the V Force, a threesome of long ranger bombers including the Valiant, the Victor, and the Vulcan. The most innovative, long lived, and beautiful of the three was the Vulcan.
The Vulcan bomber looked like it was built for Batman. The final production model represented an evolution in design after extensive prototype testing. Probably the most notable feature of the aircraft, the delta wing, had to be modified with a “kink” on the leading edge to reduce buffing at high speeds. Production began in 1955 and ended in 1965 with a total of 134 Vulcans produced. As a testament to its great design, the Vulcan remained in service with the RAF until 1984. And as the British are want to do with both their cars and aircraft, the Vulcan unfortunately didn’t offer much in the way of creature comforts. One the worst over sights was the omission of a lavatory, forcing the crew to wear diapers on long missions. A proper galley was also lacking, leaving few options for in flight food prep. Crews were left with a small soup heater, which rarely worked. Often times, it overheated cans causing them to explode, spraying soup all over the interior. Also, to make things even more uncomfortable, the anemic heaters didn’t work well. And of course, like all things British, the Vulcan suffered from numerous electrical issues (many of which were eventually addressed in the Mk2 version).
As part of the V Force, the Vulcan initially carried the Blue Danube nuclear gravity bomb. After the US fielded its first hydrogen bomb, the British developed one of there own, the Yellow Sun Mk2. Smaller nuclear bombs, like the Red Beard, were prepositioned in places like Cyprus and Singapore. In 1962, the RAF started arming Vulcans with the Blue Steel, a massive rocket with a 1 megaton Red Snow warhead. To replace the limited Blue Steel, the British worked with the US to develop the Skybolt ALBM. Unfortunately for the Brits, this program was canceled by the Kennedy administration. By 1970, the RAF decided to remove the Vulcan entirely from the nuclear deterrent role and transition it to the tactical bomber role. In this conventional configuration, the Vulcan could carry up to 21 1,000 pound parachute retarded iron bombs.
Thankfully, Vulcans were never used in a nuclear conflict, but they did participate in the Falkland War during the early eighties. Five Vulcans were update to include ECM pods and missile hard points on the wing. The logistics of the Vulcan bombing missions was amazing, requiring a daisy chain of refueling planes along the route over the Atlantic. And the bombing runs, while not producing much damage, were precisely executed by the crews. While the bombings didn’t disable Argentinian operations on the island, they spooked the Argentinians enough to cease deploying combat aircraft to forward bases.
Vulcan Video (don’t mind the strange music)
http://vimeo.com
English Electric Lightning
To defend against Soviet nuclear bombers, the British developed the supersonic Lightning interceptor in the ’50s. Like the American F-104 Starfighter, the Lightning was basically a “missile with a man in it” with not one, but two stacked jet engines shoehorned into a small airframe. Armed with two 30mm cannons and two air-to-air missiles, the Lightning packed a pretty good punch for the era, but sacrifices in fuel capacity were made for the sake of unparalleled performance. Later variants added an internal fuel tank lending a beer belly to the aircraft’s profile. And in a truly bizarre mod, over wing external tanks were added to extend the Lightning’s range even further.
With the adoption of the more advanced (yet slower) Tornado F3 interceptor, the Lightning began a slow phase out between 1974 and 1988. In their final days, the Lightnings were painted camouflage and used to defend the cold expanses of the North Sea. While the Lightning never shot a hostile aircraft down, in 1984 an RAF pilot intercepted an American U-2 at 88,000 feet using what’s called the zoom climb technique. In 1985, a Lightning bested F-15s, F-16s, and F-14s in intercepting a British Airlines Concorde as part of a multi-nation exercise.
Despite its impressive performance, the Lightning was quickly outclassed by more advanced fighters in the late ’60s. The radar, with its 30 mile range, was particularly weak even by British standards. Still, many RAF pilots claim the handling of the Lightning was better than any of the American Century Series fighters.
Lightnings in Action (+ hot air traffic controller)
http://www.dailymotion.com
April 14th, 2009
With all the talk of pork in the stimulus package and the new federal budget, I find it totally baffling our carefully chosen representatives in Congress haven’t put defense spending under closer scrutiny. There are billions being spent on military projects of dubious merit. And it’s not just Congress’ fault for all this wasteful spending. The way the Pentagon is run these days, the higher ups are constantly pimping Cold War style projects that lead to cushy consulting jobs rather than advocating for weapon systems that will actually keep us safer. Here are a couple of examples of juicy US certified Grade A pork.
Marine One
One of the most egregious pork barrel project is the new Lockheed Martin VH-71 presidential helicopter — which is actually made in Europe for all you patriots keeping score. The current presidential helicopter fleet includes the iconic VH-3D (made famous from the Nixon resignation photo) and newer VH-60N, similar to the Army’s ubiquitous Blackhawk. To be sure, there is a need for a new Marine One as older equipment becomes difficult to safely maintain, but a single copy of the VH-71 could cost as much as a single copy of Air Force One! Yes, you read that right, just one presidential helicopter could cost as much as a tricked out 747. To their credit, both Obama and McCain have questioned the VH-71 program, started by the Bush administration after 9/11 to curry favor w/ the Italians and the Brits. When asked about the new helicopter, Obama had this to say: “The helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me. Of course, I’ve never had a helicopter before — maybe I’ve been deprived and I didn’t know it. But I think it is a — it is a — an example of the procurement process gone amuck. And we’re going to have to fix it.” So if the president were to ask me, I’d recommend killing the VH-71 program outright and instead build more VH-60Ns. The VH-60N does not offer a comfortable cabin like the VH-71 or even the VH-3D, but it’s more than adequate for moving the president and other top VIPs around.
The USAF’s New Tanker
Jeez, the Air Force has really made a mess of this one. This all started when the Pentagon decided we should replace our aging fleet of flying tankers — some of which started service back in the ’50s. While this is a legitimate need, the USAF royally screwed things up by arranging a sweetheart leasing deal with Boeing for 767s that was totally under the table. Of course all the other major aerospace firms raised a big stink about this, so the Pentagon canceled the deal and opened the contract up to bidding. Well our good friends in Europe decided they wanted a piece of our defense spending pie and submitted a proposal for the work that could amount to something in the neighborhood of $100 billion. And guess what? The Pentagon choose the Europeans for the contract, unleashing a political firestorm. Boeing felt like a jilted lover, and immediately started lobbying their friends in Washington to repair the broken relationship. So what kind of solution have our lawmakers come up with? How about this: the Pentagon will split the contract between Boeing and EADS, with both companies providing tankers to Air Force. While this might be a good political compromise, it’s a totally insane solution from an operational and economic standpoint. The Air Force would have to service two different types of aircraft performing the same task. Not to mention the supply chain headaches this would cause. And who would pickup the tab for this disaster? You, the taxpayer would of course.
Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle
I don’t disagree that the Marine Corps needs to replace their aging Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAVs), but the new Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) is proving to be a bit of a white elephant. The EFV is a great concept, but it’s just to complicated from a technical standpoint to be effective under demanding combat environments. The EFV resembles one of those characters from the old Transformers cartoons. One moment the EFV is a speedboat, the next it’s a tank. But to actually accomplish this feat, a bunch of moving parts have to work perfectly. For anyone who owned one of those CD changers back in the ’90s, you know what these whiz bang mechanical designs lead to — stuff that works for like six months and then craps out. The USMC has already stated they are not going to start production due to reliability issues, but I’d say it’s time to kill the project outright and adopt a more simpler — and cheaper solution.
MV-22 Osprey
I feel sorry for the Marine Corps. They’re often treated like some slow kid at the back of the classroom when it comes time to hand out the respect. In recent years, the Marines have had all manners of advanced weapons systems thrown their way, whether they asked for them or not. The reality is, the Marines do desperately need to replace dangerously worn-out equipment. But when it came time to replace their rugged Sea Knight transport helicopters, the Marines got a flashy, complex, and sometimes dangerous, hybrid aircraft called the Osprey. Even mister evil himself, Dick Cheney, tried to kill the project back in the late ’80s, but Congress continued to push the Osprey on the Marines. The aircraft is now in service, but it’s not flown in combat situations. So lets cut our loss and stop production of this beautiful, yet totally useless, aircraft.
My modest proposal is to require Pentagon leaders to sign something similar to an employment agreement used in the for-profit world. This agreement would basically prohibit these doucebags from taking any defense related jobs for five year starting once they left the service. I don’t think that’s unreasonable and it would certainly go a long ways in preventing corruption on the kind of massive scale we have seen in the past.
March 4th, 2009
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