Army Sec's "Conned" Claim: Are Defense Primes Just ATMs With Tanks?
Okay, so the Army Secretary, this Dan Driscoll dude, is straight-up accusing the defense industry of conning the American public? Bold move, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off. Or if he's just gonna get disappeared by Raytheon.
The "Con" Heard 'Round the World
Driscoll's claim, that these "primes" convinced everyone we needed military-specific solutions when commercial stuff was just as good (or better!), that's not exactly breaking news to anyone who's been paying attention. But hearing it from the freakin' Army Secretary? That's a whole other level of savage. According to him, The defense industry ‘conned the American people and the Pentagon’: Army Secretary, these companies tricked the government into buying bespoke solutions.
He's saying they basically tricked us into thinking only they could build the super-duper, ultra-expensive, totally bespoke weapons we needed. Like, "Oh, you can't possibly use a regular truck for that, soldier! You NEED this $500,000 'tactical mobility platform' that's basically a jacked-up Ford with extra armor and a coffee maker."
Give me a break.
And now, the Army is supposedly trying to flip the script, going 90% commercial. Which, if true, is HUGE. Imagine the savings. Imagine the speed. Imagine not having to wait ten years and pay a billion dollars for a new rifle that jams after three shots. But...
The Inevitable "But..."
Here's where my cynicism kicks in, offcourse. Because, let's be real, the military-industrial complex doesn't just let go of that sweet, sweet taxpayer money without a fight. They've got lobbyists thicker than a tank's armor plating. They've got Congressmen in their pockets deeper than the Mariana Trench. Are we really supposed to believe they're just going to roll over and let the Army buy off-the-shelf engines and drones from Amazon?
I mean, Driscoll himself admits the Army's been a terrible customer. That they incentivized this whole mess. So, can they really change? Or are they just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic while the icebergs of bureaucracy and corruption loom large?
He says they're telling the primes, "the system has changed!" Yeah, sure. And I'm the King of England.
The A.I. Angle and the Drone Swarm
Then there's this whole drone thing. A million drones in the next few years? Okay, sounds cool. Sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. But who's building them? Where are they coming from? Are we just going to hand over the drone market to China because they can crank them out faster and cheaper?
And what about A.I.? Driscoll says they had an A.I. war game with "15 of the top CEOs in the nation," worth "probably $18 trillion in enterprise value." What the hell does that even mean? Were they playing Risk with Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk? And how much of that $18 trillion is going to end up in their pockets while the Army gets stuck with buggy software and biased algorithms?
Honestly, it makes you wonder if they really know what they're doing. All this talk about innovation and commercial solutions, it sounds great on paper. But the devil's always in the details. And the details in military procurement are usually classified, buried under mountains of paperwork, and guarded by lawyers who bill by the nanosecond.
Speaking of details, I gotta get my car inspected tomorrow. Why is it that the government can supposedly track every drone in the sky, but can't figure out how to make a simple car inspection process less of a soul-crushing experience? Just a thought...
So, What's the Real Endgame Here?
It's either a genuine attempt to shake up a broken system, or it's just another dog and pony show designed to make us think things are changing while the same old grifters keep lining their pockets. I can't help but feel this is the latter.
