Nostalgia and Weapons

The other day I was reading an article about the Pentagon’s tank program. It was illustrated by photographs of the two competing versions of the new XM-1—one, you will not be surprised to learn, by GM, the other by Chrysler—that is to become the main battle tank for the next couple of decades; 3,325 are to be built; $514 million has been spent already on research and development. Each XM-1 is scheduled to cost more than a million dollars; the full batch, $4.9 billion. It goes without saying that the actual costs will be, by a universal law of these big weapons programs, far higher, even without the multi-billion dollars for support requirements, expensive extras, elimination of bugs, etc.

The article’s prose was not terribly exciting, and as I plodded along, the objects in the photographs were metamorphosed, under my glazing eyes, into the dinosaurs that they rather closely resembled to begin with. I found myself musing: Isn’t it really ludicrous that we are spending this kind of money—and the time, energy, talents, and resources that the money represents—on a herd of these lumbering monsters?

JB

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James Burnham

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The other day I was reading an article about the Pentagon’s tank program. It was illustrated by photographs of the two competing versions of the new XM-1—one, you will not be surprised to learn, by GM, the other by Chrysler—that is to become the main battle tank for the next couple of decades; 3,325 are to be built; $514 million has been spent already on research and development. Each XM-1 is scheduled to cost more than a million dollars; the full batch, $4.9 billion. It goes without saying that the actual costs will be, by a universal law of these big weapons programs, far higher, even without the multi-billion dollars for support requirements, expensive extras, elimination of bugs, etc.

The article’s prose was not terribly exciting, and as I plodded along, the objects in the photographs were metamorphosed, under my glazing eyes, into the dinosaurs that they rather closely resembled to begin with. I found myself musing: Isn’t it really ludicrous that we are spending this kind of money—and the time, energy, talents, and resources that the money represents—on a herd of these lumbering monsters?