It's big, slow, clumsy...but EXPENSIVE!!! Why, it's the perfect weapon!

Okay, so the first post was supposed to feature a lighter approach to our impending doom. However, this topic is so salient in today's news that I just had to exercise my serious side. Trust me...more lighthearted misanthropy will surely follow!


2/13/07

The Defense Department has determined that all four military helicopters that have crashed in Iraq since January 20 were brought down by enemy fire. This news is disturbing enough, but its broader implications are truly alarming.

Our military has invested much of our nation’s defense in helicopters. By virtue of its gargantuan fleet of helicopters, the Army has more aircraft than does the Air Force. It is not a stretch to say that the defense of our country depends on the effectiveness and survivability of the Army’s, and the Marines’, fleet of helicopters. That survivability is now coming into severe question.

There were those of us who objected years ago when the Army was betting so much of its future on the helicopter. It seemed to make no sense to entrust so much of this nation’s defense to a machine that was large, slow, relatively clumsy, and which hovered within range of even the cheapest rifle, let alone sophisticated artillery or the even modestly sophisticated automatic weapons which are the standard arms of much of the world’s militaries and many of its terrorists. Our objections were met with derision and scoffing. Who were we? Were we politicians? Were we defense contractors? Were we military “experts,” toiling away at ivory tower think tanks funded by the defense industry? These notables assured us that, despite the laws of physics, these wonder weapons were virtual flying tanks, heavily armored and packed with countermeasures, virtually impossible to shoot down. We asked questions like “How does one armor a rotor, the most important, and the most vulnerable, component of a helicopter?” But how could we, as mere taxpaying citizens, think that we were somehow worthy to argue with the deep thinkers of this nation’s defense establishment? Indeed, all we had going for us was common sense not overridden by ulterior, self-serving motives.

What were those ulterior motives? Helicopters are very expensive and thus extremely lucrative for the defense contractors who make them. Those defense contractors contribute heavily to politicians, and they do so in a true spirit of bi-partisanship. The defense industry funds the think tanks where the smirking, over-educated smart-alecks contemptuously dismiss the arguments of those of us who argued for a little common sense before spending billions, and wagering our nation’s defense, on Rube Goldberg contraptions whose main virtue, in the eyes of the people that really matter, is the gravy train they will provide for the contractors, the politicians, the staffers, and the military “experts.” Our soldiers die avoidable deaths and our military’s Achilles heel grows larger and more obvious by the day, but the military-industrial complex grows richer and more influential. It all makes sense to the people in power.

Where is Dwight Eisenhower when we really need him?