Military Boondoggles?

This is an a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/29/the_list_the_worlds_biggest_military_boondoggles?page=0,0"interesting list/a, but the concept doesn't strike me as quite right. From a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boondoggle_%28project%29"Wikipedia: /ablockquoteIt also refers to government or corporate project involving large numbers of people and usually heavy expenditure; at some point, the key operators have realized that the project is never going to work, but are reluctant to bring this to the attention of their superiors. Generally there is an aspect of "going through the motions" – for example, continuing research and development – as long as funds are available to keep paying the researchers' and executives' salaries. The situation can be allowed to continue for what seem like unreasonably long periods, as senior management are often reluctant to admit that they allowed a failed project to go on for so long. In many cases, the actual device itself may eventually work, but not well enough to ever recoup its development costs.br /br /A distinguishing aspect of a boondoggle, as opposed to a project that simply fails, is the eventual realization by its operators that it is never going to work, long before it is finally shut down./blockquoteThe five projects are the Type 45 destroyer, the Bulava SLBM, the Chinese CV, the French CV, and the A400M cargo aircraft. I don't think it would be correct to say "one of these is not like the others"; rather, I'm not sure that they have much in common at all. Of course, if you believe that, in general, modern major nation-states spend way more on defense than they should, then you could identify any major project as a boondoggle; that's fair enough, but probably not useful in terms of thinking about the five biggest boondoggles. br /br /Anyway, I'm not convinced that the Type 45 destroyer falls into this category. The Type 45 project is certainly troubled, and the fact that the ships won't be able to fire missiles until 2011 is problematic, but I wouldn't say that its been given up on; I don't doubt that the Type 45 destroyers will eventually deploy and do their jobs capably. They may be the only ships in the Royal Navy to do so, but nevertheless. I'm also uncertain about the inclusion of the two CV projects. If it's true that every CV should be considered a boondoggle, given technological advances in the field of carrier-killing, then the British CVF and the US Gerald Ford class should have honor of placement ahead of a pair of projects that haven't yet resulted in a single ship being laid down. If CVs aren't of necessity a boondoggle, then I don't know that it makes sense to call out the French and the Chinese for what might otherwise be considered justifiable caution regarding technical and strategic issues. br /br /The criticism of the Bulava and the A400 is fair, I think. The Bulava is simply a disaster, and I'm not sure why the Russians want to waste additional money on it given that they already have perfectly serviceable SLBMs. It is kind of surprising that the missile development has gone so poorly; the Topol-M (the ICBM model for the Bulava) seems to work just fine, and the Russians have a history of good outcomes with missile technology. The A400 is kind of a disaster, in particular because I've never quite understood the necessity to build radically capable and modern span style="font-style: italic;"cargo/span aircraft; they have one job to do, and they don't fight each other. br /br /Here's my list, in no particular order:br /br /olliBulava Missile/liliAdmiral Gorshkov CV conversion/liliUS land-based missile defense/liliA400/liliNorth Korean ballistic missile/nuclear weapon program/li/oldiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7163938-1169442553834593357?l=lefarkins.blogspot.com'//div

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