Defense Contractors

Warplanes’ Cost-Per-Pound Steadily Rising

Here’s another gem from that recent study on the defense industrial base — or rather the prospective lack of it — by the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Instead of tracing weapons’ cost growth over time, the folks at CSBA have simply divided each warbird’s fly-away cost (the cost of the plane, minus R&D …

Chart of the Century

This is sort of the Sgt. Pepper’s cover of military-industrial complex complex charts (click on it to enlarge). Its a classic graphic telling you how the U.S. military builds its weapons. “It really sums up everything that’s wrong with defense acquisitions,” says Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, …

Follow the Money




Back when I first started covering the military some dozen or so wars ago — in the late 1970s — General Dynamics was busy building the F-16 jet fighter and a plethora of other weapons. But it sold the F-16 line to Lockheed in 1993, and spun off its missile and space divisions, too. It seems to be moving into a different line of …

Afghanistan: It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas

Trouble on the blimp front: there apparently isn’t enough helium around to float the latest humongous lighter-than-air vehicles the U.S. military wants floating in the skies over Afghanistan to keep an eye out for bad guys.

The new Northrop Grumman unmanned Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle has “huge gaseous helium …

60 Seconds Over Taipei!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztn9YJdbdvI&feature=player_embedded]

Even though the Obama Administration hasn’t officially declared Taiwan won’t be getting the new F-16s it craves, that hasn’t slowed down Taiwanese animators from commenting on the apparently crashed deal. In English, even. (h/t The Cable)

Mercenary Army (cont.)

So plans are floating around the Pentagon — with the apparent blessing of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta — that call for a U.S. military force of only between 3,000 and 4,000 troops in Iraq starting next year. Under the existing deal with the Iraqi government — the one we helped install — all U.S. troops must be out by New Year’s …

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