I don’t believe the MIC is nefarious as a whole. Corrupt, yes. Nefarious, I wouldn’t commit to that.
Yes, the MIC has a lot of ex-military. It operates on the revolving door principle just like .gov. I see that as corrupt, no more or less than K street.
Missing millions from the DOD budgets and multiple GAO audits finding the same/similar along with gross fraud, waste and abuse. I see that as corrupt. Was ENRON corruption, dunno you decide.
When I say contractors it’s more the black water/acedemi types. There are “tech reps” as well, often ex-military, that support equipment and platforms from a technical assistance/training/follow on support stand point. Then there’s the KBB types. A civilian “contractor” with a job as a mail clerk in theater pulling $80K+ annually. Why is KBB in theater when the military can allocate resources to do that in house, along with the hundreds of of other KBB like positions? Erik Prince & friends corrupt? Maybe that just falls under fraud, waste and abuse.
Lets take the case of UAV operations in theater for example. Lot’s of “customers” had a very hard time getting UAV support in a timely manner or at all, period, across the board. So lets walk through a typical UAVs’ day. It takes off from the local airfield, gets up to altitude and should loiter in designated airspace until local control is handed off to Creech AFB via satellite. The hand off can take anywhere from 5 mins to hours. After Creech is satisfied they lock out local control of the UAV and set up comm links with the local/regional eye in the sky and that usually happens fairly quickly. The ACC (AWACS) folks, 5 or 6 in the seat usually, already have a huge workload and a long list of calls UAV support along with in theater airspace considerations, friendly and foreign aircraft management, constant refueling ops, ground support, constant updating for various commands, comms considerations on multiple freqs, etc. Maybe they’ll get a call and authorization from whatever recent, fashionable chain of command to include POTUS (yes I meant POTUS) for air to ground action, that process could take minutes to hours or even be cancelled days later. Even if there are any armed UAV’s in the area they will rarely use those munitions. The ACC coordinates with a aircraft hanging out at 30K feet to punch GPS guided munitions on target. Then there’s the after action reports and debriefs. All the while local UAV control is zero. Even if there’s a comm link failure with the UAV for hours, Creech still has to give permission to the UAV to give back local control.
All this UAV activity could be controlled locally. But it isn’t. It’s gotta go through all kinds of “bureaucratic” fog, touched by every command/agency under the sun and then some for good measure. Corruption? The whole “we got Bin Laden” thing? What the hell WAS [emphasis added] that? Wag the dog?
(a vast majority the so called “drone” strikes that came across your TV screen were not UAV carried munitions, they were munitions dropped by manned aircraft. UAV’s were involved but not their munitions)
If any of you were in the sandbox anywhere, how much cash or cash equivalents did you witness going to the locals for whatever non infrastructure reason? I don’t think we, the U.S., got a bulk discount on all those brand new vehicles, from every manufacturer in the world that we gave to the locals as bribes or whatever new PC name we give it.
I’m in weeds on this forum and I know it, damn it.
Point being presently, if the U.S. economy goes, the worlds economy goes or vice versa. I don’t believe that the common folk will put up with the shenanigans out of DC with an economy in shambles to 1929 degree or worse, for many reasons as mentioned throughout this forum. At the same time to think that .gov is just going to throw up their hands and walk away peacefully…not happening. History is replete with governments violently turning on their populace in dire economic times. The military will fit in to that scenario in some form or fashion, just as it always has. Now is this going to happen? I think it’s prudent to be prepared for that.