Tanks for the Memories

With the vast majority of state governments facing significant budgetary deficits and 29 states’ unemployment benefits funds at or near insolvency, as automakers look to find a slender thread to hang on to (but who’s planning to buy a new car next year anyway?), it sure makes actual federal mistakes stand out like the proverbial sore thumb. This list of pork and waste is endless, but every once and a while, it makes sense to provide a concrete (or at least iron and steel) example.

Let’s start with a little piece of information: the United States has not mounted a massive amphibious landing of troops since the Korean War over half a century ago. We know that the military is withdrawing (however slowly) from Iraq and will focus heavily on land-locked Afghanistan. With battles looming with “irregulars” (not the traditional “armies of the past”), the old heavy tank battles are giving way to rapid deployment and troop movement, usually over rugged and often mountainous terrain.

So how would you feel as a taxpayer in a crashing economy, where every dollar taken from the dwindling number of paychecks hurts, if the government decided to build a new amphibious tank/troop carrier to transport U.S. Marines from ship to shore – something we really have not done on a massive scale since the 1950s – a heavy, awkward troop carrier that didn’t work particularly well on land in recent tests? This “Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle” (EVF) was supposed to be able to plough through up to 25 nautical miles of ocean water at 30 miles per hour, land and carry 17 troops at up to 45 miles per hour inland, all behind a computer-controlled canon. The EFVs were intended to replace their predecessors, a Vietnam-era fleet of amphibious vehicles that frankly hasn’t found much reason to be used for a long, long time.

Back in 2006, after 12 years and an initial billion or so, the EFV leaked so badly and broke down so much that the entire $27 billion program – almost double the “bailout” that the entire auto industry was begging for – was pulled back for a retrofit. Another billion dollars and a couple of years later, and it’s “show time” for the repaired but seemingly already obsolete capability that seems stunningly out of touch with the economic and military realities around us. Sure it’s “cool,” and it’s even faster than the 2006 model (the new version tops out at over 51 mph), but do we really have to replace old capacities with “better versions” to fight past battles?

At $14 million apiece, it will be really hard to justify continuing this program if there is another misfire. This week, defense contractor, General Dynamics Corp., will have a chance to show off the “new improved” EFV in tests at the Pentagon’s test facilities in Aberdeen, Maryland. If it doesn’t meet expectations, will the government shut the program down? And if it does, will the government really ask whether this is the weapon system for today’s likely challenges… particularly when money really needs to be prioritized as the global economy threatens the very lifestyle that the military is supposed to protect?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I just thought I’d ask.