The U.S. and Soviet Union were constantly developing new weapons and new technologies during the cold war. We all know what happened, the Soviet Union ran out of cash and disintegrated and now, instead of one extremely powerful country, there are several smaller countries, the prime one being Russia, followed closely by the Ukraine and then the other former Soviet Republics. When this came to pass, almost all research and new weapons development came to a halt in those countries. Many of them didn't even want nukes on their soil. Where did this leave the state of weapons development in this world?

The U.S. seems to have continued their weapons development race. This time they really have no adversary, so you will hear things like we need this billion dollar plane or this ten million dollar missile because China will be a threat. The real problem is that once you get all that cash into the military industrial complex, you can't seem to stop spending. The lobbyists keep pushing their way around Washington and they have plenty of bucks to do this. What politician is going to jeopardize himself by refusing one of these guys. They know that if they don't go along with the game, millions in cash can be used to back their opponents in the next election. So here is where we stand, we are building hugely expensive weapons to fight a type of war that doesn't seem very likely to come about. It is just possible that we could bankrupt ourselves this way just like our former enemy.

DDG 1000
Graphic Source: U.S. Navy

Popular Mechanics, in the April, 2006 issue, discusses some of the advanced weapons systems we are developing. One is a ship called the DD (X) destroyer. It is projected to cost 4.7 Billion dollars for seven ships , this will probably double before they are built like almost everything else that is on a defense contract. This is definitely not a ship that was designed to fight terrorists. The ship is overkill for our current needs but is a big fat present for the company building it. It is designed to come in many different types.

Littoral Combat Ship
Graphic Source: U.S. Navy

There is another ship that is even more capable and is only 1/10 of the price and is still too much money as far as I am concerned, but it does have some really good points, it is the Littoral Combat Ship. It is fast, much faster than the destroyer, it can be fitted with a modular package that fits its mission and can carry frogmen for insertion. The different modules are for different types of missions. There is one for anti submarine warfare that has torpedoes, sonar equipment and many other things in the package. The other packages are fitted perfectly to their missions. Think of it, if we could afford 7 DD(X) destroyers we could afford 70 Littoral Combat Ships.

F-22 Raptor
Photo Source: U.S. Air Force

At this point in history this country enjoys tremendous air superiority. The advantage is probably much larger than we know because we may have such planes as the Aurora, which is rumored to be a space plane. We know that the SR-71s Blackbirds were retired years ago and these planes were able to fly faster than 3X the speed of sound. The exact speed has always been a secret and they could fly at a ceiling of at least 100,000 feet. Does anyone seriously think that we would have ever retired a plane like this unless we had something much better? This plane wasn't a fighter plane, but we do have some serious and expensive hardware out there. The F-22 Raptor is the fighter plane that we are pinning our future on. Its first test flight was in 1997. This plane is supposed to be super maneuverable and fast without afterburners. In 2005 the development and production cost of the F-22 program had reached at least (and maybe a lot more) $70 Billion. The plane is stealthy, but it is so expensive that the Air Force has decided to replace several F-15s with one Raptor as the F-15s are retired. When asked why, they don't reply that it is because of the excessive cost, but instead, that the Raptor is so good that it can replace several other planes. In an interview with a Raptor pilot the Washington Post asked the pilot about the price of a Raptor and he replied that it was about $110 million or so per plane. OUCH!

Joint Strike Fighter
Photo Source: U.S. Air Force

There is another advanced plane that the military is developing and it is called the Joint Strike Fighter. In 2005 it was estimated that development would cost almost $45 Billion. An estimated cost for building 2,400 planes was $244.8 Billion. This means each plane would cost almost as much as the F-22. There has been some contributions to the development cost such as a $2 Billion payment from Great Britain and smaller amounts from others, but this hardly off sets the huge cost to us for a plane that we are going to let others also have, putting our technology in jeopardy from spies. This really begs the question, is it the electronics or the avionics or both that must be updated. Would we be better off with 10 times the planes if we refitted some of the older models? Can sheer numbers of good planes out perform much lesser numbers of great planes?

One area that we are currently working on is improving the Hummer. It seems that the Hummer, even when armored, is still not offering full protection to the troops. I have heard it said that we are working on a vehicle that has a lot more angled surfaces on it to deflect weapons like RPGs. I wonder if we are going to adopt that new kind of shield that the British are working on. They claim that it can be utilized on an armored car and stop all RPG shells from penetrating the vehicle. The way it works is that each armored car carries a generator which is switched on when they are in a danger zone. The armor is constructed of several layers. The second layer creates an electrical circuit when the first layer is pierced, this melts the munitions, protecting those inside the vehicle. Again, this will make each vehicle a lot more expensive, but in this case I believe it is money well spent.

Are we developing directed energy weapons? Yes, not only are we developing them, there is a rumor that one may be installed in a Joint Strike Fighter. Shades of Flash Gordon. If this is true, we have certainly come a long way since those days of machine guns. Its funny, when we decided to go back to Gatling type machine guns, it was thought to be a great break through. The reason was that these things can put out about 3,600 rounds per minute, yet if the gun has six rotating barrels, that means that each barrel only fires 600 rounds a minute, well in tolerance to keep the barrel from getting too hot. It is said that the U.S., after years of research, is on the verge of creating all sorts of futuristic energy weapons and we shouldn't be surprised if they just appear one day. These weapons are said to have the capability to not only be lethal but also non lethal as well.

Just imagine what the U.S. would be like if we could just take the military budget for one year and use the funds to cure some of the ills of the population in this country.