"Sending the vehicles by ship takes longer, but is less expensive and can deliver many more at one time".

Tell that to the mothers of OUR best and bravest who have or will die because..."is less expensive".

Heck of a war.....

I just did some research on these vehicles and the cost per vehicle is difficult to calculate, since there is no breakdown per vehicle. The contract was for a total of 125 vehicles with a total cost of more than $1 billion dollars. There are two different vehicles involved and the costs are not broken down on a per vehicle basis.

seaman93555....$1 billion total cost for 125 vehicles....which might include the developement cost. Heck of a expensive war....paid for by????

Anyways, I thought that the South African government had originally developed and pehaps produced a "troop transport vehicle" of similar design. If so I wonder what it cost them per vehicle and if it was less expensive and obtainable why we didnt purchase them for SA.

Very good questions re: lesser cost for same thing. But the big question remains, if we knew South Africa had these for some time, and we were ready to commit billions of dollars to "save" Iraq from itself, why didn't our soldiers get these a long long ago. My son was there to start this thing, is back now and hope to God he can help finish it before it finishes him.

This is one issue that I reserve criticism for the Pentagon, largely.

The White House has limited ability to affect the military procurement system, once the budgets are in place. At that point, they are as much at the mercy of that military bureaucracy as anybody else.

But the Pentagon commanders that run the place are another story. THEY can force changes and make things happen faster.

I have wondered about a number of things for some time. The men now in command of our military were platoon and company commanders in Viet Nam. They saw, first hand, how our system was ill prepared to fight an insurgency, and believe me, they certainly had enough ideas on how to fix that system then. I knew enough of them at the time to hear plenty.

Now? Nothing has really changed that much. While procurement of military equipment wil always be expensive, due to a lack of broad market demand, as the article notes, the distribution of that equipment, once delivered, is in the hands of the folks that bought it. THEY should certainly be able to move it to where they need it quickly, especially when lives are at stake.

And as for using SA equipment, have you ever heard of "not designed here" syndrome? Our military has that one bad. If WE didn't design it, we certainly won't let our troops use it! After all, if someone else can design something we could use that works, but is cheaper, that just might show up our system as being as bad as it really is.

Oh, and yes, of course, that 1 billion bucks certainly includes R & D costs, government procurements always do, that's one reason they are so expensive. You don't expect the contractor to just give that time and expense away, do you?

We have been in Iraq since 2003. These vehicles have been available for a long long time. Yet the Bush administration, and the Defense Department, was unwilling to purchase any until people started complaining. Hell, the Bush misadministration was unwilling to provide armored HumVees until forced to by public opinion. Just another example of the mismanagement of the war and the lack of commitment to the troops by the right wing beyong the "shock and awe" part of war. Bush is still trying to pay for the war with the Iraqi oil that doesn't exist. He refuses to raise taxes to pay for his own insanity. So he keeps shortchanging the soldiers until he gets caught.



Jean - we could license the design of what ever the SAs have produced and manufacture them in the US like we did the harriers. But you don't want your defense industry outsourced in case your current allies become your future enemies......wait.....din't Bush just outsource our intelligence gathering..............

I find this disgraceful. You can't ask our soldiers to go and fight without giving them everything they need.

What if they threw a War and no men came because it was to expensive to get to the recruting office.

Leaving aside the entire question of how we came to be in this mess, the way that Bush has used/abused the military is a great shame. National Geographic had a show on "The Road to War" which went into some detail about how the Generals were repeatedly forced to come up with lower troop plans to do bigger jobs. The incompetence in the management of this war is criminal and it all comes from the top, not the brave souls over there for the best of motives. What we are doing to the average fighting family (or failing to do for them) is a great shame. Even managing to discover what is actually going on is a great challenge.

The filmmaker who is releasing "No End in Sight" (a movie about Iraq from the ground) says he started out neutral, but what he learned shocked him and eventually Rumsfield himself ordered that the military withhold all assistance from him and his crew. Fortunately, he was wealthy enough to pay for armoured cars and crews and get the story anyway in spite of the admin's efforts. But most people in his situation would be out of luck when big business and the government agreed that they would prefer the story not to get out. I haven't managed to see it yet, but I've been impressed with the wide range of people who talked to him and what they had to say. Maybe in the fullness of time, Colin Powell will be willing to share his truths. We are beginning to see glimmers of truth from time to time. I still find it amazing that people are shouting about liberal bias in the media when it is so tightly controlled by the wealthy at the top. (For example, listen to Bill Moyer's Journal on the drum beat to war, where many journalists who were trying to get out less popular or approved truths found their stories altered or buried in the back pages while the front pages screamed the party line.)

Again, I am reminded of the German people during Hilter's rise. People on this board have usually read my remarks as calling Bush a Natzi. That is certainly not the intent. I agree with the Sinclair Lewis quote which predicts that when fascism arrives in America it will be wearing a flag and waving a cross. And I strongly fear that it is arriving as we type. But I am hopeful that we will manage to beat them back in 2008. The majority of Americans are not delighted with a fascist agenda, and if they come to understand the role they are playing in supporting it, things will change in a hurry.