Monday, November 21, 2005

On The Other Hand...

If the US were going to try and keep China, India, and whoever else (Brazil? EU? Indonesia?) down forever, they'll have to do it on a budget. So it's kind of funny that the US is now looking at 30-year old weaponry to arm the soldiers of the future.

This points to an interesting problem with military hardware. Say you've got a fighter jet that's 5 times more capable than the previous one, but costs 10 times as much. Well, you or I might just think we're getting hosed - it's still cheaper to just buy 10 more jets, right? Well, no. The first reason is that a) qualitative assessments like my theoretical example are tricky at best, and b) the margin of victory might be somewhere in that equation, and you might lose it buy going cheap. Given that military needs aren't supposed to be dictated by economic efficiency, this partly explains some of the fabled examples of Pentagon misspending.

Interesting to see the US deciding that, in some cases, cheap is okay too.

1 comment:

Mike said...

My brother is in a armoured unit of the Canadian Forces. He tells me that nearly every year, our guys in the Lord Strathcona's Horse, using 28-year-old German Leopard tanks, routinely beat the US Marines and Army in tanking competitions - and the US with brand new M1 Ahbrams tanks.

So 30-year-old stuff can still be pretty effective.

Also, its a poor workman that blames his tools.