Posts Tagged ‘procurement’
Presidential helicopter project is example of procurement “gone amok”
President Barack Obama has vowed to crack down on costly military programs, citing a project to build a new presidential helicopter fleet as an example of the procurement process “gone amok.”
Lockheed Martin Corp’s helicopter program is now more expensive than Air Force One, the high-tech Boeing 747 that ferries the president…
“This is going to be one of our highest priorities,” Obama assured Senator McCain when the senator told him at the summit that the government had to act to curb the “excesses of procurement.”
Obama has pledged to review major defense programs. As a result of the cost growth, the Defense Department must either end programs or certify them essential for national security and meet other tests established by law.
“I have already talked to (Defense Secretary Robert) Gates about a thorough review of the helicopter situation. The helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me,” Obama told about 130 lawmakers, academics and business leaders gathered at the White House.
“It is an example of the procurement process gone amok and we are going to have to fix it…”
We’ve had the opportunity since the end of the Cold War to redefine our military forces, redefine roles, confine the essential expenditures to defense – instead of the quasi-imperial expeditionary forces we have stationed all over the world.
Even the concept of a volunteer force is pretty much crap when taxpayers have to foot the bill for troops garrisoned in dozens of countries, entire infrastructures to support those foreign legions.
The new generation of engagement with terrorists has nothing to do with models and cadres still based on World War One functionality.
