Ha-ha, of course they don't. Because military spending = jobs = happy constituents. Also, military spending = profitable business = campaign contributions.
Remember, we keep getting told that the government never created a single job or successful business. Except, it seems, military suppliers.
Reshared post from +George Wiman
Congress: "Have some tanks! They're awesome!"
Pentagon: "Well yeah, but we have enough tanks thanks. We'd rather spend the $436m some other way."
Congress: "But… America! Ohio! Those poor factory workers!"
PilotOnline.com: national & world News for Hampton Roads, Va., from The Virginian-Pilot
WASHINGTON (AP) — Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army’s hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle. Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a bill…
This isn’t the first time this has happened- I think it was the 80s when the USAF wanted ??6?? Starlifters and Congress ordered 200.
There is a lot of Pork Barrels in US politics – not such a big problem here as individual MPs don’t have the clout unless majorities are very thin – but also the obsession with the military: I think a lot of Brits would get uncomfortable at that level. That’s to say we don’t appreciate our Forces, but we don’t go in for the level of almost masturbatory adulation you get the impression happens in the US. If you aren’t throwing money at the worlds biggest military budget you are unpatriotic.
Being a wargamer I have an interest in hardware, and have seen Fora threads where a claim is made “M1 BEST TANK IN THE WORLD” and the Europeans go “Yes, behind the Leopard 2 and Challenger 2.”
In Gulf 1 the Chally had better reliability than the Abrams. The US said it wasn’t like for like comparison, as the Challenger has an Auxillary Power Unit, which meant the strain can be taken off the main engine- in crude terms it keeps the tank running when you are stopped for a period of time, meaning the main engine can be kept just ticking over. The Brits went- “Yes, and?” i.e. That is why it is more reliable!
The 3 are all fairly similar- though of course direct comparision is going to be difficulty due to restricted classification, but the Leo is about half a million cheaper, and is sold to more countries. Its the sort of thing if NATO had got its shit together, 1 tank type would have made more sense, both from economies of scale and ease of logistics, but I don’t see that flying in Congress. (We only ended up with the Challenger because the Government suddenly found it had helped Vickers build a world beating tank for export to a country, only for the Shah to be overthrown, and it needed to do SOMETHING with them.)
@LH: Oh, this is by no means the first time this has happened (the Osprey is, I believe, another example, and expanding out planes / tanks / ships beyond the Pentagon’s request is a far-too-familiar story). You are also correct that, beyond the pork barrel, there is a lot of emotion and tribalism behind having a national obsession with the military; certainly no congresscritter ever lost their job by spending too much on weapons systems or rooting for the US to have the (by an order of magnitude) biggest military budget in the world.
I’m not 100% up on modern weapon systems in terms of MBTs — only that, largely, the class was designed for playing tag with Soviet tanks on the North German Plains, and the prospect for major tank-based wars has mostly faded away, though spot use can be effective.