US military non-adoption of foreign technology

[swansont]

In an engineering thread,

 

Soon' date=' U.S. tanks, APCs, etc, will be equipped with defense capabilities such as this one:

http://spikedhumor.com/articles/53036/Anti_RPG_System.html[/quote']

 

 

To which I responded

 

apparently not

 

There is a US system under development, but it's a long way off, and that is seemingly keeping the US from adopting a system that is much closer to being deployment-ready.

 

I post this here in case there's any further political discussion, so as to avoid derailing an engineering thread.

[ecoli]

Perhaps this could be put under the label of psychology as well. Could there be some sort of mentality in the US against using foreign products? A lingering feelin that US products are better, perhaps?

[Sisyphus]

Nah, this is pure military-industrial complex at work. Disgusting and inevitable.

[Pangloss]

It's not psychological. It's... institutional. And it's not without a practical basis, either. Depending on even staunch, historical allies for defensive weaponry and ordnance is a national security risk. Just ask the Iranians about their F-14 Tomcats leftover from the days of the Shah.

 

And of course there is the power of the military-industrial complex, which, because of the size of the Defense budget and Iraq+DHS spending, probably has more influence in Washington than every other lobbying group (including oil, transportation and tobacco) combined.

[swansont]

It's not psychological. It's... institutional. And it's not without a practical basis' date=' either. Depending on even staunch, historical allies for defensive weaponry and ordnance is a national security risk. Just ask the Iranians about their F-14 Tomcats leftover from the days of the Shah.

 

And of course there is the power of the military-industrial complex, which, because of the size of the Defense budget and Iraq+DHS spending, probably has more influence in Washington than every other lobbying group (including oil, transportation and tobacco) [i']combined[/i].

 

The government also takes the attitude of not wanting to rely on a single source internally, which makes sense, so I don't see why you can't adopt foreign technology and develop your own concurrently, especially when you are five years away from the estimated rollout (and when do these projects ever deploy on schedule) and the foreign product is being deployed now. The downside is what happens if your domestic product falls short of the outside competitor's performance.

 

Raytheon may be developing the anti-RPG technology domestically, but where will it ultimately be built? With all the outsourcing, a significant amount of our defense hardware is manufactured outside our borders. A large-scale conflict that threatened supply lines and manufacturing facilities would also be a national security issue.

[mr d]

Hello

 

It has both to do with the politics of developement, and the practical security side.

 

Politcal; the Goverment mandates using American firms whenever possible. Keep that money in the U.S., encourage growth and advancement of American technology. Some of this also deals with porkbellying by congress.

 

Practical; in particular in the field of technology you not not wish to be dependant on a foriegn goverment's regulations or politics. As stated above an Allie one day may not be the next. That can be as simple as a change in politcal party control in a foriegn nation.

 

You could be say having cluster bomb technology being developed abroad, yet a new political party is elected (democratically). That party wishes renegotiation of farm imports, so in the mean time places a moritorium on the exporting of technology and hence halting delievery of purchased ordinance.

Also using technology developed elsewhere opens the risks that technology may also be aquired by hostile elements. They could then develope new counter measures, rendering useless the technology you purchased abroad.

 

Mr D

[Pangloss]

Raytheon may be developing the anti-RPG technology domestically, but where will it ultimately be built? With all the outsourcing, a significant amount of our defense hardware is manufactured outside our borders. A large-scale conflict that threatened supply lines and manufacturing facilities would also be a national security issue.

 

 

It's a good point. Globalization has become the very fabric of the modern American corporation, so it's probably impossible to build an entirely home-grown weapons or military transportation system anymore.

 

An interesting example of this can be seen in the recent fight over which company would produce the next-generation "Marine One" -- the helicopter that flies the president around (amongst other things, of course). The battle came down to Sikorsky, an historic US builder and creator of the famous Black Hawk, and AugustaWestland, a UK-Italian group.

 

Nobody gave AugustaWestland a chance. Sikorsky is a major player in the military-industrial complex, as a member of United Technologies (home of Pratt & Whitney, Carrier, Otis, etc). They developed their competitor in West Palm Beach, where government officials could conveniently fly down in their taxpayer-paid Gulfstream Vs (oh excuse me, "C-37 transport", so sorry!), spend the afternoon flying up and down the beach in the prototype snapping pictures of sunbathers, take in a "fundraiser" dinner at The Breakers and still be home by midnight. What could possibly go wrong?

 

Suprisingly, AugustaWestland won the contract. According to one friend of mine, who has written several currently-popular military aircraft books and has flown both of these helicopters, their design was simply "superior in every way". I imagine that AugustaWestland's pledge to build the choppers here in the US, creating thousands of new jobs, might have had something to do with the victory as well.

 

But I digress. The point I was getting at is that Sikorsky's design uses plenty of foreign parts. Of course you won't find that information very easily, because Sikorsky conveniently "lost" their documentation regarding contracts with China and other nations to supply parts for the design. Allegedly as much as half the aircraft by weight is manufactured overseas, which is not too surprising given that United Technologies has outsourced about half its workforce to China and Brazil over the last few years.

[Skye]

An issue with alot of these things is maintaining the intellectual property rights of the system. An example is that the UK is developing a suite of weapons for the Eurofighter Typhoon. France already has some weapons that could be used, but the UK wants to be able to sell the Typhoon without France being able to block the sale of the weapons, which would hobble the plane.

 

A big export market for armoured vehicles are the Arab states. Egypt even assembles Abrams tanks from kits. How would Israel (or the Arabs) feel about Israeli weapons on their vehicles? Might be an issue too.

[CPL.Luke]

you have to wonder what would happen if a country like China ever underwent anouther cultural revolution or something similar and just took possesion of the the american owned factories that were making all of America's high tech weaponry.

 

How could we in the US respond to something like that? especially if the Chinese then declared war on us

 

 

^note the above could probably never happen because those factories get money to make the equipment from american companies, and they also get parts to make the equpment from other foreign companies that are routed through american firms. And even if the parts were made in China they probably wouldn't have enough money to keep the industry going for more than a few years.