Here is the question: who is more dangerous to the well-being of our troops—the Iranians or, more disturbingly, our own defense industry through its weapons procurement and sales contracts?

I have written previously on the body armor fiasco , now let’s talk firepower, specifically the rifle; the primary rifle used by the US Army, the M-16, was first purchased by the Defense dept. in the 1960s. Since that time, according to the gun’s designers, the product really hasn’t advanced much at all. Meanwhile, the competition (favored by most foreign militaries for decades), the Soviet-designed automatic Kalashnikov AK-47, is in its third generation, now the AK-74. According to a recent PBS report the AK-74 out-hits the M-16 by two to one on full automatic. Over the years somewhere around 100 million AKs have been manufactured making it increasingly difficult for the United States to win ground wars. After all it's the rifleman and his rifle that decides ground wars. Because of the inferiority of the US favored product many thousands of our own troops have been at a distinct disadvantage against their enemies, from Vietnam to Iraq, and countless many have paid the ultimate price because of it.

The M-16 has been plagued with problems from the outset; in addition to firing at a much slower rate, it’s also famous for frequently jamming. So why hasn't the U.S. stayed on technology's cutting edge in rifles? PBS reports that "the rifle is a low-ticket item -- around $600 -- and big-ticket items get the lion's share of the defense money and attention. Big contractors seek big money, and congress loves big bells and whistles. Add to that the sheer size of our system for procuring weapons and the entrenchment of cozy old-boy relationships" well you get the idea-- we’re stuck with a glacial process where a new low-tech product has about as much chance to break through as the Marines had at Khe Sanh.

More from the PBS story: "In recent years, the principle designer of the M-16 has created a new rifle, something called the Ultimax, to rave reviews. Yet he didn't make it for the United States, nope, he made it for Singapore! Not only that, he's also invented a 100-round magazine that is compatible with the Ultimax and the M-16 and the M-4. The new magazine is being used by England, Germany, and even Switzerland. But for the U.S. Army—no sale. So our soldiers are still limited to 30-shot magazines, which must be like fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. It's appalling but that's what they're fighting with in Iraq today (against foes with AKs). Our guys fight with magazines that are emptied in full auto in three seconds. It then takes about five seconds before the next shot can be fired. According to experts that's just like a giant malfunction-- during that time, the soldier is helpless."

The procurement system is interested in sticking with and improving a product it knows and understands. For over forty years it's the M-16 that represents the status quo: stability. The main drive isn't to come up with something new; there are thousands of people working on these programs and fat-cat contractors making hundreds of million on them, and none of them want their jobs to be threatened. They want program longevity, to never have a conclusion, to always get follow-on contracts to keep these programs alive. So, at the end of the day, the military procurement system has become so big and bureaucratic its very nature is to resist innovation. The result: our troops fight with critical products like the M-16/M-4 rifle that haven't changed much in 40 years.

Ironically, in 2004 and 2005, the United States bought 185,000 AK-47s from an Eastern European country to arm the Iraqi Security forces— after Iraqis rejected U.S.-made M-16s! But a recent Government Accountability Office report found that 110,000 of them were unaccounted for. They are presumably in the hands of insurgents or other groups that will likely use them to harm American troops.

To make matters worse, the Washington Post reports today that Iraq has become one of the largest buyers of U.S.-made weapons. Gen. David Petraeus told a Senate committee last month that Baghdad has signed deals to buy $1.6 billion in U.S. arms, with $1.8 billion more in possible weapons purchases. Now that's a deal, Bush gives them billions of taxpayer dollars and the Iraqis then turn around and give the money to our defense contractors. But it doesn't stop there, Iraq has also ordered $100 million worth of light military equipment from China for its police force because they say the United States was unable to provide the materiel and is too slow to deliver arms shipments. Huh?

Am I crazy, don’t these deals put our own fighting kids’ lives at even greater risk? What the hell-- Iraq's security forces already are unable to account for more than 190,000 U.S.-supplied weapons (including the aforementioned AKs), many believed to be in the hands of Shiite and Sunni militias, insurgents and other forces seeking to destabilize Iraq and target U.S. troops.

So the next time you hear the Republicans (and assorted others -Lieberman and Clinton for instance) call for an attack on Iran because their actions are putting the troops at risk, call them on it—tell them that if that is their reasoning, if they truly want to protect our young fighting heroes, then they should turn the guns back on themselves-- now that would be some righteous friendly fire!

Unfortunately there’s more…

Marine Tilt-rotor Aircraft Set for Deployment Despite Problems

The V-22 Osprey, a new tilt-rotor aircraft, is expected to be deployed to Iraq in several months, but critics say it has operational and design problems.

But it's not just cost that has disturbed some people. Even the Pentagon's own former chief weapons tester, Philip Coyle, now a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information, says the Osprey won't stand up to insurgent ground fire.

PHILIP COYLE, Former Pentagon Chief Weapons Tester: It's not armored. It's not a tank. It's an aircraft. And so you have a very complex piece of equipment where bullets or other types of projectiles can strike that cannot practically be protected.

Osprey's safety record

Osprey's critics also point to the aircraft's troubled safety record. In 1991, a test pilot survived this crash of a prototype, but over the years there have been three other crashes that killed 26 Marines and four civilians.

After a crash in the year 2000, the Corps went back to the drawing board, redesigned much of the aircraft, and conducted extensive flight tests. But Coyle says not all the bugs have been worked out and the Marines know it.

PHILIP COYLE: It's turned out to be a relatively unreliable aircraft. The Osprey has had any number of different kinds of mechanical failures over its history, electrical failures, electronic failures, hydraulic failures. And so even in the most recent testing, its reliability and availability has not been up to the standards that the Marines require.

But a Marine Corps internal document obtained by the NewsHour dated June 7th shows the Osprey is still having serious maintenance problems, just a few months away from deployment to Iraq. Identified were: fuel system leaks, and nose landing gear failures. Either one of those could cause an accident.

Also cited were: failures with the flight control computer and the de-icing system. Its "problems are difficult to troubleshoot" or "identify." And air conditioning breakdowns were said to "negatively impact" the Osprey's "ability to fly in hot climates." Because of these and other problems, for the past nine months, the newest aircraft had been fully mission-capable only 62 percent of the time.

'Vortex ring state'

PHILIP COYLE: Hardly a week goes by -- maybe it's two or three weeks -- before I read in one of the defense trade journals or in a newspaper article or some place that there's been another Osprey failure.

Osprey critics also say the aircraft still has design flaws. when the Osprey flies in helicopter mode, it is susceptible to something called "vortex ring state." That's when air that a helicopter's rotors push down re-circulates up, causing the aircraft to lose lift and crash.

JIM FURMAN, Former Army Helicopter Pilot: With the Osprey, because you have two engines that are side by side, it reacts to vortex ring state in a very unusual way. It results in a very rapid roll that's unrecoverable if you're at a low altitude. And that was never resolved. It's an aerodynamic issue with that aircraft that really cannot be designed out.

When you're getting shot at, you're going to do anything that you can do to try to save yourself and the people on board. And if you have some flight restrictions, that's going to be very restricting on your survival.

Furman says confidence is not enough to overcome another potentially dangerous problem: The Osprey cannot auto-rotate. When a helicopter's engines fail, pilots use the lift created by the spinning rotors to auto-rotate and land safely.

JIM FURMAN: One of the requirements for any helicopter is that it be able to auto-rotate. Auto-rotation to a helicopter pilot is like an ejection seat. And so it would be like manufacturing fighter jets and not putting ejection seats in them, to buy the Osprey without auto-rotational capability.

The first Ospreys will go to Iraq in September.

Cites:

Iraq turns to Chinese for weapons purchase.By Robin Wright and Ann Scott Tyson
The Washington Post October 4, 2007

The NewHour. PBS.

tags: all  politics  iraq  history  middleeast  armedforces  commentary  

links: digg this    technorati