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Imagine how many people you could feed for $350B. Or how much we cancer and HIV research we could fund. Denmark bought a set of these monsters and I still have

Imagine how many people you could feed for $350B. Or how much we cancer and HIV research we could fund. Denmark bought a set of these monsters and I still have no idea why we need them. Competition (SAAB Gripen, F18) was 1/3 of the price, purchase as well as ongoing opex.

kej 8y ago
Your comment reminds me of one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms in not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Address by President Dwight D. Eisenhower "The Chance for Peace" delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16,1953. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9743.htm http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9743.htm
manigandham 8y ago
The world isn't peaceful. The last 50 years has seen unprecedented peace and people today forget just how fragile that is.
partiallypro 8y ago
That's not how budgets work. You don't automatically get to spend $350B because of a budget shift. You also have to consider the diminishing returns of things like disease fighting, crime fighting, and the incentive to fraudulently justify your research/actions. The F-35 is designed to be more expensive but cheaper to maintain. Fleet maintenance, especially in the US eats up a massive, massive chunk of the budget. So while the F/A 18 might be 1/3rd the price, once you count in maintenance, it might not be much cheaper...and it's last generation. There is a complex math behind it. There is absolutely waste, fraud and abuse in the military...but it's probably not as much as you think since the majority of military spending in the US is actually on pensions, healthcare, housing, salaries and maintenance of aging equipment. Things that in other countries are much cheaper or just not given to soldiers. Comparing the US to China and Russian (at least their public spending numbers) is so misleading. New research and projects is a drop in the bucket.

kej 8y ago

Your comment reminds me of one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms in not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Address by President Dwight D. Eisenhower "The Chance for Peace" delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16,1953. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9743.htm http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9743.htm

manigandham 8y ago

The world isn't peaceful. The last 50 years has seen unprecedented peace and people today forget just how fragile that is.

partiallypro 8y ago

That's not how budgets work. You don't automatically get to spend $350B because of a budget shift. You also have to consider the diminishing returns of things like disease fighting, crime fighting, and the incentive to fraudulently justify your research/actions. The F-35 is designed to be more expensive but cheaper to maintain. Fleet maintenance, especially in the US eats up a massive, massive chunk of the budget. So while the F/A 18 might be 1/3rd the price, once you count in maintenance, it might not be much cheaper...and it's last generation. There is a complex math behind it. There is absolutely waste, fraud and abuse in the military...but it's probably not as much as you think since the majority of military spending in the US is actually on pensions, healthcare, housing, salaries and maintenance of aging equipment. Things that in other countries are much cheaper or just not given to soldiers. Comparing the US to China and Russian (at least their public spending numbers) is so misleading. New research and projects is a drop in the bucket.