iscover
Issue 105: April 1995
Aren’t You Glad You’re Not Paying For It!
Excess taxpayer dollars these days are pretty rare animals. Unfortunately many politicians and service chiefs apparently don’t seem to appreciate this when dealing with their nation’s crucial defence budget. A nation’s defence budget is very much a finite thing and in today’s ‘peace in our time’ era, that budget in most countries can only be counted on to get smaller with each passing year. Therefore it is surprising to see so much money wasted on projects which just do not make sense in value for money terms. Whilst some of these programmes were committed to in more buoyant (threatening) times, some still persist as national symbols of supposed greatness that far exceed their sponsor’s ability to justify in either practical or fiscal terms. It’s all a case of being thankful that we, as Australians, don’t have to fit the bill for some of this incredible waste. Most of the goofers originate from the US though that’s largely a function of their size, while the constant war between the Navy and Air Force and the ‘Hill’ certainly spawns some weird bedfellows that have pork barrelled many doubtful projects well beyond their use-by date. Let’s have a closer look at some of these incredible money wasters.
Mcdonnell Douglas C-17
This transport aircraft was conceived back in the seventies to augment the C-5 Galaxy and ultimately replace the C-141 Starlifter. Years of protracted development took place without it seems either MDC or the US Dept of Defense learning one single lesson from the incredibly fouled up C-5A programme of the sixties. The original requirement was for 210 C-17s but as the cost soared this kept coming down to today where barely 40 will be acquired at a unit cost of around $350m each, or about twice that of a 747-400! Despite all the lessons learnt from the aborted YC-14/15 programme (a stupid attempt to reinvent the Hercules with jet engines at great taxpayer expense) the C-17 stumbled on towards oblivion with the first squadron only becoming operational in recent months after two decades of development of what essentially is just a ‘trash hauler’. So pointless were the original specifications that USAF last year had to rewrite the specs to get the C-17 through. One dubious requirement was its ability to carry a 72 tonne payload 2400nm (4450km) when USAF officials finally figured out that they would never do that anyway! The design, like the C-5A before it, was also orientated around the insanity of operating the aircraft into a high threat in-theatre area. One man with a single shoulder fired missile could end that aircraft’s life in seconds and thus in the real world an aircraft of this complexity, size and cost would never be risked in such a high threat environment. Yet like the original Galaxy before it, the C-17 has been gold plated from the beginning to perform a task that it will in reality never undertake. If this money (over $11bn to date) had gone into more C-5Bs then the US would have all the long haul airlift it now desperately needs along with sufficient funding to get serious on buying J model Hercs. Oh well!
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