The weapons industry must have an incredible lobby. I say this, because they are capable of selling weapons at enormous prices when the weapons don’t work. Wow what a gig. It must be great to make billions and not have to worry about how they will perform. Some say they are worried when things don’t work as advertised, but I say the proof they aren’t is all around us. We have planes that will kill their pilots by not supplying oxygen at times, aircraft carriers which can’t launch more than a couple of planes before their launch systems stop functioning and weapons with various other problems. It is ironic, when the Russians were sailing their aircraft carrier the news reporters fell all over themselves making fun of it and yet never mentioned the problems our newest carrier had which probably cost about 10 times more, which was approximately 13 billion dollars plus. Instead stories came out about how it was the most advanced ship in the world.

The newest aircraft carrier in the American fleet is the USS Gerald R. Ford. It is said to be the biggest aircraft carrier in the world and by far the most expensive. When it was built we decided to go with an electronic system to launch planes and do away with the steam catapults used in our other carriers. The British decided it was too expensive and used steam in their newest carrier and why not, steam catapults have been shown to be reliable. The Gerald R. Ford should be called the Gerald R. Dud. It seems to me to be nothing more than a huge floating target which probably can’t launch enough planes in a time of crisis to protect itself. The cost of the new system to capture planes as they land on the carrier was said to be a little over 300 million dollars, but as with everything the government buys it ballooned to over 900 million by the time it was installed. Guess what? It also doesn’t work properly. If you want to launch an F/A-18 jet from the carrier you can’t do it if it has a full load of fuel, because it is too heavy for the new launch system. We are not talking about a bomber, but the Hornet a twin engine combat jet, one of the staples of the navy. As more of these carriers are being built, we budgeted for three, the price keeps increasing and the ships don’t get any better.

There is talk that America may someday have to import some weapons to keep up with the latest in technology. The truth is we are just spending ourselves into bankruptcy. Some of our weapons were designed in the 1970s and since then other nations have come out with what many believe are superior weapons. I am talking about tanks, troop carriers, artillery and even rocket launch systems. If we examine main battle tanks, the American M1A2 SEP successor to the M1A2 Abrams is a fearsome weapon, but is inferior in some ways to other main battle tanks. The German Leopard 2 has the best accuracy and longer range, because of a longer gun and a more advanced fire control system. It has a dependable 1,500 hp engine The South Korean K2 Black Panther tank also has better accuracy and a more dependable diesel engine, while the American tank has a complex gas turbine engine and requires a tremendous amount of maintenance and uses a lot of fuel.

The F-35 fighter plane has many flaws. It was said after it was gone over and many flaws fixed there were still over 700 left. We are talking about the most expensive new fighter if we don’t count the F-22 which is also flawed. One quarter of the F-35s were grounded, because they were depriving their pilots of oxygen. The F-22 which is said to be the most advanced plane in the world also was having oxygen problems. Things are so bad the Air Force is saying it will have other options if its F-35s become unflyable. Can you believe this, we are talking about a program which costs about 1.5 trillion dollars so far and has delivered about 231 planes and some models cost as much as 122.8 million each. A plane which has problems and yet we still smilingly allow the company making it to continue charging us and supplying planes with problems. Imagine if you had to use something which was important to your life like a MRI machine and it could either kill you or not perform as it was supposed to. You would not go to the place that had it again, I can guarantee you that and yet the military gladly accepts inferior weapons, why? Is money flowing to the wrong places, are lobbyists spreading the wealth around? Here is a question for you, why would anyone buy more planes from a company which supplied a prior model which had problems? Yes the F-22 and F-35 were both made by the same company.

One of the saddest things we allowed to happen could be responsible for the destruction of cities in the US and even the country. When a missile was being developed to shoot down ICBMs, which are Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, it kept missing its target which was another missile. The people firing the interceptor missile knew where the target missile was going to be, but they still missed. The military must have been embarrassed, but not enough to drop the interceptor system so they switched to computer simulations and then the comments were, “we hit another one.” Miraculously they didn’t seem to miss anymore. Where is the oversight on these things?

I don’t know about others, but I am tired of seeing trillions of dollars being wasted by what looks like schemes to sell the military defective weapons calling them advanced protection. Even Donald Trump has attacked the F-35 program and said costs were out of control. How come no one else in power hasn’t noticed this? We have gotten to a point where we really are not buying what we want, but buying what the lobbyists are telling us to. Maybe it is time to get rid of the system of lobbyists all together. They don’t help the average citizen very much and are costing us a fortune while greasing palms so inferior products and programs can be foisted upon us.