The latest annual report to Congress (pdf) on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program details the soaring costs and deferred production schedule associated with the program. The report, which has not been publicly released, outlines total program costs from last year as well as per-aircraft costs and planned annual spending rates.
It's “a useful primer on the Pentagon's most expensive weapons program,” said one close observer of defense procurement.
Phi Beta Iota: Congress has abdicated its Article 1 responsibilities across the board, but particularly with respect to war and the cost of war. Coincident with the insanity of the US Intelligence Community claiming it can restrict the use of unclassified information in legal proceedings (See Drake Leak Case), what we have is a government that is “out of control” and incurring costs “in our name” that are unaffordable and often immoral as well as illegal. Transparency of true costs is a major foundation for sane democratic policies.
Sand is made up of pure silica, but deserts also include minerals that have been deposited by long-gone lakes, ground water, wind and pollution. Navy Capt. Mark Lyles' research team found 37 elements in samples of dust from Iraq and Kuwait, including 15 bioactive metals that are known to cause or have been linked to serious health effects with short- and long-term exposure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Lyle's team measured settled dust, which servicemembers breathe when it rises into the air during a dust storm. Though the government has standards for air pollution that can contain the following elements, there are no standards for exposures to toxic elements in settled dust. The metals Lyle's team found include:
It is amazing that nowhere in this article does it mention the media coup that the Taliban scored. I also am not sure that the information released by NATO is accurate. If so, it contradicts previously reported Taliban strength levels. Nor does NATO address the recent high profile security breaches…..
KABUL, Afghanistan — NATO said Monday that it has significantly weakened the Taliban insurgency, capturing or killing thousands of militants in Afghanistan during the past three months.
Boat trying to reach Lampedusa was left to drift in Mediterranean for 16 days, despite alarm being raised
Dozens of African migrants were left to die in the Mediterranean after a number of European and Nato military units apparently ignored their cries for help, the Guardian has learned.
Click on Image to Enlarge
A boat carrying 72 passengers, including several women, young children and political refugees, ran into trouble in late March after leaving Tripoli for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Despite alarms being raised with the Italian coastguard and the boat making contact with a military helicopter and a Nato warship, no rescue effort was attempted.
All but 11 of those on board died from thirst and hunger after their vessel was left to drift in open waters for 16 days. “Every morning we would wake up and find more bodies, which we would leave for 24 hours and then throw overboard,” said Abu Kurke, one of only nine survivors. “By the final days, we didn't know ourselves … everyone was either praying, or dying.”
Last Saturday's issue of Barron's ran a cover story on the deficit and their own take on how to address it. In contrast to the recent recommendations from President Obama and the House Republicans, defense was actually “on the table,” not “at” it. In the absence of any adult thinking on the deficit since the Deficit Commission in December, Barron's addresses a void that remains vast and empty in Congress and the Executive branch. The article puts on the table a defense recommendation — which I urged to them — that goes significantly deeper than even the Deficit Commission's — in truth fuzzy — recommendation on “security” spending.
Almost immediately, Forbes published at its website a related piece on defense spending and The Pentagon Labyrinth that contains some interesting private sector views on how the public might be beginning to perceive the current size of the defense budget and condition of our armed forces: note the references to “defense entitlement,” “defense bubble,” and “parade ground military.” It would seem that the paradigm is changing, at least outside Washington DC. (If you think that the recent killing of bin Laden proves the “parade ground” moniker wrong, I urge you to read the introduction essay in The Pentagon Labyrinth: “Why Is This Handbook Necessay?“.
Grow Up, Guys!
By GENE EPSTEIN
Barron's Cover SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2011
While the President and GOP sling mud at each other, the debt crisis is growing. Barron's offers some tough-but necessary-ways to alleviate it.
Phi Beta Iota: It is possible to eliminate the deficit by making Medicare prices honest and stopping the borrowing of money for corporate pork that feeds political pork. It is possible to eliminate personal income taxes by adopting the Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax, which actually produces a great deal more revenue which is desperately needed to bail out the equally irresponsible state governments and pension funds (both government and corporate). America is hosed. It is not possible to “reset” until Washington can combine intelligence and integrity, and that may require a public revolt on both taxes and the fraudulent corrupt Electoral System that keeps the two-party tyranny in a position to continue looting the Commonwealth.
The rise in national security secrecy in the first full year of the Obama Administration was matched by a sharp increase in the financial costs of the classification system, according to a new report to the President (pdf).
The estimated costs of the national security classification system grew by 15% last year to reach $10.17 billion, according to the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). It was the first time that annual secrecy costs in government were reported to exceed $10 billion.
An additional $1.25 billion was incurred within industry to protect classified information, for a grand total of $11.42 in classification-related costs, also a new record high.
Roy Presson, with his daughters Catherine, left, and Amanda, looking out at their flooded 2,400-acre farm on Tuesday in Wyatt, Mo
SIKESTON, MO. — With a rapid series of explosions late Monday that could be felt for miles through the Missouri soil, the Army Corps of Engineers successfully blew out some 11,000 feet of Mississippi River levee, taking dangerous pressure off the river above.
. . . . . .
For the people responsible for trying to manage the unmanageable river, each success is replaced by new worries.
“We’re just at the beginning of the beginning,” said Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh of the Army Corps of Engineers and president of the Mississippi River Commission.
Phi Beta Iota: Severe weather is an act of man, not God. Between paving over the wetlands and the many contributing factors to environmental degradation, the Earth's natural systems have been distorted to yield increasingly “unmanageable” conditions.
