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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

More wasted money by the ED's!!

I just saw an article on Drudge showing a "Stealth" boat called the "Ghost Boat" that will, supposedly, revolutionize warfare.  The one thing that was missing from this "so called great" is a gun mount, or a weapon of any kind.  The purpose of warfare is to kill people and wreck things!!!  This Ghost Boat rides on a cushion of gasses to move over the water.  Great, it can sneak up on the enemy, yell BOO, and scare them to death! 

This love affair with technology is getting ridicules.  We spend billions on engineering ideas that don't work, won't fight, and can't survive.  I wish, n this time of budgetary restraints that we would put our money into know technologies that work, first time, every time.  We would be better off building World War II 2250 class Destroyers than the last 20 years efforts in ship building!  Hell, the 2250's lasted 40 years!!  Or, if we are in need of missile shooters, how about some Adams class DDG's?   According to Jane's Fighting Ships, they were the most potent ship, pound for pound, ever commissioned.  Other world Navies, including Australia and Germany are still using this hull.

But no, we have to design "Star Wars" ships that don't have a chance of succeeding.  It is time that Congress take the Navy to task for their irresponsible spending of the taxpayers money. 
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3 comments:

  1. Funding for "Ghost" was all private development money. ONE has been briefed, but your thesis of wasted taxpayer dollars on this one is completely baseless for this project.

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  2. sure - and that's where it starts... some company makes something like this they know the navy will like... so they send some EDs out there to look at it. Start the tab - flight time, hotels, meals, personnel costs... and you know you cant send one... so we start at a couple of thousand. They like it, so they have their friends come out for another look - more trips, more expenses. Now they start to need something to show for their trips. And you know somebody will like it - small and stealth - the Navy never really got the stealth reputation, so now they have something cool.

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  3. Hundy,

    Just like the original post, I fully support your right (protected by the 1st Amendment) to put in a good rant regardless of facts.

    Let me try a new tack...I would think that the small business investment by Juliette Marine to independently fund and develop a technology that they believe will contribute to military capability would be lauded by most Americans. The four major economic drivers in the United States are:

    1. Consumer Spending
    2. Business Investment
    3. Government Spending
    4. Exports

    These are listed in the order (by percentage) that they contribute to GDP.

    With that in mind, it looks like Juliette Marine (with which I have no affiliation) are participating or trying to participate in 2 or 3 of those categories. They certainly have made a business investment. They've briefed "Ghost" to ONR, so may be trying to generate interest by the government to purchase their technology. They may be using the cache of the ONR brief to be pitching this technology for export to Oman or Saudi Arabia or Nigeria or who knows.

    This is capitalism at work, and while I don't personally think the USN in particular should be purchasing this development, this is the way that innovation happens in the US.

    The original post suggested that the USN invest in putting "money in know(n) technologies that work, first time, every time." Apart from the fact that this is a completely impossible standard (for humans anyway), the apparent desire to eschew experimentation is far more dangerous to US competitiveness than allowing (and at times) encouraging experimentation. Sometimes experiments fail (if you're doing it right anyway), and sometimes the government funds those failures. Most of the time, the innovators learn something that improves their chances of success next time.

    How many "failed" experiments has the NIH funded in trying to develop cures or palliatives for those suffering from Parkinson’s? Was that wasted tax payer money? I would submit that we don't know that answer until there is a success, and if there is a success it will be traced back to a long line of innovation that, at the time, looked an awful lot like a long string of failures.

    USN Acquisition does not work in the way that your comment suggests that it works. Food for thought.

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