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posted by n1 on Thursday June 11 2015, @02:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-advantage-of-the-best-minds dept.

Sen. John McCain pens an opinion piece on Wired:

America's military technological advantage is eroding—and fast.

For the past decade, our adversaries have invested heavily in rapidly improving their militaries to counter our unique advantages. At the same time, the speed of globalization and commercialization means that advanced disruptive technologies are now—and increasingly will be—available to less sophisticated militaries, terrorist groups, and other non-state actors.

Maintaining our military technological advantage is about much more than a larger defense budget or a better fighter or submarine. These things are important, but to give our military the capabilities it needs to defend the nation, the Department of Defense must be able to access innovation in areas such as cyber, robotics, data analytics, miniaturization, and autonomy, innovation that is much more likely to come from Silicon Valley, Austin, or Mesa than Washington.

[...] There are those who say that even with changes like these, our nation's innovators simply aren't interested in doing business with the Pentagon. And after spending much of my career in Washington scrutinizing Pentagon business practices, I am not exactly surprised to hear such sentiments. But in the final analysis, I believe the brightest minds will always be driven to solve the world's toughest problems. These are the problems our military confronts every day. And these are the problems we can solve if we create an acquisition system that enables the Department of Defense to take advantage of the best minds, firms, and technologies that America and the world have to offer.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Zal42 on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:09PM

    by Zal42 (5435) on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:09PM (#194983) Homepage

    According to McCain, the US is spending half of what the entire rest of the planet is spending -- and he see this as a problem?? To my ears, that sounds like more than enough.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:31PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:31PM (#194994)

    The other piece of the puzzle Senator McCain is steadfastly ignoring is that our current military efforts are not against nations with significant standing forces (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea), but against terrorists doing stuff on the cheap. We're launching $300,000 missiles and $3 million air strike missions at guys armed with $900 AK-47s.

    This sounds a lot like a standard run-of-the-mill "Horrors! The US taxpayers are not shoveling money to the 'defense' industry fast enough!" And Senator McCain definitely seems to be in the pockets of those businesses that would stand to profit if the taxpayers were shoveling more.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Kromagv0 on Thursday June 11 2015, @05:01PM

      by Kromagv0 (1825) on Thursday June 11 2015, @05:01PM (#195035) Homepage

      guys armed with $900 AK-47s

      My understanding is that it is even worse than that. An AK may cost $900 in the US on the black market but from what I have heard (a few friends who got to go fight in Iraq and Afghanistan) you can buy one in one of the 3rd world shit holes for something like $20-$50. So it would probably be better to say 18-45 guys armed with $900 worth of AK-47s

      --
      T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
      • (Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday June 11 2015, @06:09PM

        by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 11 2015, @06:09PM (#195076) Journal

        And the guys with the AK47s have no fear in battle because if they are killed by the enemy, god has a special deal for them in paradise.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2015, @07:03PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2015, @07:03PM (#195099)

        It's even better when nation-states like Russia and Iran give them to you for free.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:40PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:40PM (#195008)

    According to McCain, the US is spending half of what the entire rest of the planet is spending -- and he see this as a problem??

    He's not talking about absolute dollars, he's talking about return on investment. DoD development is ponderous, expensive and generally generations behind the state-of-the-art from the commercial world. They know it, they try to buy COTS (commercial off the shelf) when they can. But often their requirements are significantly more stringent than the commercial market. I'm sure that in some cases those reqs are overblown - do we really need ruggedized tablets that cost 20x a consumer tablet when you could probably just buy 10 consumer tablets and throw them away when they break? But lots of times the reliability requirements are not optional, for example the divide-by-zero error that stranded the USS Yorktown. [wired.com]