The U.S. Army is looking to become more “agile.” Seriously.

Dwight Eisenhower gave an epic speech during his presidency where he addressed for the first time what he called the “Military-Industrial Complex,” saying that if we were not careful to keep the military actions of the United States separate from the business-industrial concerns and objectives of the folks who build the weapons we would end up with essentially one entity- something Orwell-esque where the government starts wars in order to keep the economy going.

There are strong arguments that WWII is what really got the U.S. out of the Great Depression, not so much the New Deal- that it was business mobilizing, fueled by government money to support the military efforts in Europe, that got the monetary wheels rolling on the tank that then became the amazing economic growth and dominance of the later 20th century.

Both of these concepts are in play with the latest plan from the Army to switch from- count it- a $160 BILLION Future Combat System (FCS) program to a more flexible approach. The Pentagon has decided to halt the program

"One of the things we learned from FCS was, we tried to go too fast and the technology wasn't there," Army Chief of Staff General George Casey said this week.

"We're going to strike the right balance between leveraging technology that's available so that we're not doing wishful thinking, but at the same time are pressing the system as fast as we can," Casey continued.

Is it possible that the U.S. is actually trying to be frugal with its military spending? That we are considering a different set of values as far as how much money the military gets and what it should be spent on?

Perhaps.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates in April put a halt to the $87 billion ground vehicle portion of FCS that was run by Boeing and the Science Applications International Corporation.  Gates said that the Army’s modernization effort would focus on speeding up the development of computer networks and putting weapons in the hands of soldiers.

Wait, what are we updating if we don’t have good computer networks and soldiers don’t have weapons? That sounds like a pretty basic thing for warfare in the present day- have computers to use all that fancy stuff we use with the bombs and whatnot, and make sure that the people who are supposed to be fighting against other people have guns.  

The army said that they would be buying fewer weapons but more often, ostensibly so that the government can have more oversight over what they purchase. That sounds like another version of the same destructive tendency to me. I mean, when I’m low on money I buy smaller versions of things- like the travel size shampoo or less cheese (ok, it’s hard to buy less cheese, but I maybe pretend like it’s less cheese).

I don’t think this means they will be spending any less money, but I could see them having more flexibility in keeping up with technology if they are buying it every two years- I can also see companies developing specific divisions that create new technologies just for the 2 year deadlines though- so it could just speed up the military-industrial complex- we’ll see how this one works out with launch…