Army's Cut of 'Future Soldier' May Impact Med-Tech 184
docinthemachine writes "The U.S. Army has decided to axe its $500 Million 'Land Warrior Soldier of the Future' program. If this goes through, the loss of future medical technology will be enormous. Many do not realize the enormous amount of medical technology that trickles down from the military. The program was working on develops new HUDs, 3D vision systems, and bioarmor. Surgeons today are using this technology (via DARPA) to develop new robotic surgery, bioimplants, intelligent prosthetics and more." That's the downside. The reason for the program's cutting is fairly obvious: "Unfortunately, land Warrior is part of the Army's Future Combat System (FCS) Initiative. This is the roadmap for an unprecedented hi-tech modernization of the Army. What new? How about an air force of completely unmanned remote controlled fighters- it's in the budget! Unfortunately, the entire project is so far over budget it becomes a target for cuts. Originally at $60 billion, then $127B, recent estimates have balooned to $300 billion total cost (yes that's billion with a B) and some are calling it the biggest military boondoggle ever."
not quite.. (Score:5, Insightful)
At I believe it's still at least 100 billion short of the iraq invasion, which currently holds the record as the biggest military boondoggle. ever.
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From what I read, there were two related issues on D-Day: (1) Hitler equivocated on what to do with his armor in preparation for a possible attack; his generals proposed a
Re:not quite.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The key mistake in this argument is the assumption that the people we're fighting in Iraq are people who would, if not so occupied, be flying planes into US buildings. Now, some of them probably are, but the best evidence -- given how al-Sadr, bin Laden et al are using the war as a recruiting tool -- is that most of them are people who, before the war, may not have liked the US very much, but didn't actively hate it enough to go out and try to kill Americans; even if those Americans were right next door, not halfway around the world!
Before 9/11, there were plenty of Americans who didn't have any warm'n'fuzzy feelings about the Middle East, but they weren't in any rush to go and enlist to sit out on some chunk of sand in Saudi Arabia either. After 9/11, recruiting stations had lines around the block. If you can't see the parallel here, you're blind.
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The military has done and is doing a fantastic job. The political ramifications of the invasion and subsequent nation building haven't been managed well. No this isn't Bush bashing exclusively, it a general condemnation of all of our elected federal officials and the way they naviga
Silly to think Iraqi War increased threat to West (Score:2)
Re:Silly to think Iraqi War increased threat to We (Score:2)
Re:not quite.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's based around the (debatable) idea that 9/11 was a one-shot with no follow-through. I think that part of what made 9/11 so horrible was that everybody was expecting it to be part of a campaign, one which was easy enough since the country is full of soft targets. I don't know if it didn't materialize because of the toppling of the Taliban, or increased enforcement (including Guantanamo and wiretapping), or just because they didn't plan well.
At this point proving causation is just impossible. They have a lot of bones to pick with us, but the rhetoric is often obtuse and bragging. The real question is not what got us here, but where we go from here. Most people are agreed that simply dropping the Iraq war is not an option, including (I suspect) the grandparent poster. But "winning" in the usual sense may also not be an option, in which case you're kinda stuck between a rock and a very difficult policy decision.
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I think that they'd find bombing malls and bridges to be very effective, assuming I have any idea what they mean by "effective". For all the economic harm, the 9/11 attacks seem to
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[colbert] Ha Ha Ha! Those silly europeans with no historical viewpoint! Clearly they know nothing that we Americans haven't taught them. 61 years later, they still have to kowtow for our rescuing their asses from the Nazis. If only the European colonial powers had listen
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At that point the situation was so badly deteriorated that it was largely a question of how long it took the soviets to physically move their tanks there.
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Q: Give the dates of the last two attacks on American soil from radical Islamic terrorists.
A: 1993 and 2001
So we need another three years out of the current policy before you can even make this "fight them there so we don't fight them here" crap. Others addressed the "recruiting more than we are killing point." I'll just say "Ask people in Madrid and London how they think the 'fight them there so we don't fight them here' policy is working for them."
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These guys don't respect weakness. They live by the sword and will not quit until they die by it.
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Brilliant. Instead of making it difficult and expensive for them to kill us, we spend billions of dollars making it easy for the terrorists, by sending our citizens into hostile environment where the terrorists blend in, speak the language, and have local support. Meanwhile, we kill a few of them, but the war provides the perfect recruiting tool to create even more radical Islamist terrorists, wh
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Not a boondoggle, that's far too kind a word (Score:3, Insightful)
The attacks have happened in Spain and Britain instead. Both had troops in Iraq. Fighting in Iraq does not prevent terrorist attacks.
It was one of our allies who acknowledged that the current President is "the best recruiting sergeant ever for al-Qaida".
bin Laden's second in command, Zawahiri, publicly thanked God for the situation in Iraq.
AQ strategist Yusuf al-Ayeri published a book arguing that the b
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FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
If the U.S. didn't get into wars all the time, then wouldn't that both save lives and cost less money?
Re:FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:FUD (Score:4, Funny)
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Read it again, paying more attention to the "quotes".
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FUD by the Opponents (Score:5, Informative)
The US Army has been very much at the fore front of modern medicine. Obviously the future list of benefits isn't in yet but here is a short list of a few benefits I can think of right off the top.
Coumadin - Primary anticoagulation and colt prevention drug used in medicine -- Developed as Sodium Warfarin to kill RATS.
Most Skin Grafting and venous grafting technology arose from combat surgery and recovery. This includes the modern advances heading towards organ replacement that began as tissue replacement efforts under US Army funding.
Most Rehabilitation technology (No comment needed here)
Most Nutrition Research -- Yeah folks they were from the 1860's on the primary research effort into human nutrition
Vaccinations of nearly all types. -- Yes I know there is some history before and outside the Army but most of the efforts to contain disease are US Armed Forces based this is world wide.
Water Purification -- Most of the efforts at good potable water development are US Armed Forces developments.
Mapping - Not just GPS folks the US Armed forces have been involved in this to the limit and it benefits all mankind including those around the world who use the Satellite technology for such. This is cheaply available because of the US Armed Forces.
Weather -- The US Armed Forces provide a very large part of the weather research around the world and millions owe their lives to it. This is on going research
Electrical and Magnetic Technology advances. -- Funny how those typing on computers can complain so about the US Armed Forces. Computers wouldn't be hear and that famous OS Microsoft sells wouldn't be here either.
Education -- You know all those kids from the far East who are knocking us Americans out of a job because their schools work? Well they learned in schools largely patterned after US Armed Forces Schooling technology. The contribution of the US Armed Forces to Human Learning is very deep.
I know it may not be popular to say so but the US Armed Forces have done a lot of good.
To be fair, in this "Free Trade" world, the new technology is more likely to displace an American from his job than it is to make him one. But that is a matter of US Tax and Trade policy it is not one of the US Armed Forces. The US Armed Forces are in their R&D beyond belief. Here is a short list of what is coming: [1] Cars that drive themselves saving millions of lives and billions of barrels of oil and stopping much damage to the environment. [2] Faster and better computers. [3] New Energy Technologies. [4] More disease control. Are there bad things? I am sure some things will always go wrong. But on the whole, the loss of US Armed Forces Research is nailing the lid on the casket of the USA in future generations.
Its the research STUPID (Score:2)
Its the MONEY that funds the science and engineering that invents the stuff, it is NOT the military. The military just defines the problems to be solved.
Necessity is the mother of invention, so I'd be willing to go for civil war, WW1 and WW2 pushing many things forward but NOT the others.
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National Defense is a legitimate constitutional responsibility of national government. Medical research is not.
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Now, which of the listed things passes the muster of your strict constructionist views?
When we pare our forces and expenditures back to the point where we can only
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Better for them to spend their time learning useful things.
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"If the U.S. didn't get into wars all the time, then wouldn't that both save lives and cost less money?". That is patently false. I could come up with examples of this all day long, but we will stick with a few basic ones. First we have the transportation industry, planes, trains, and automobiles all have gone through great leaps and bounds in technolo
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This is much ado about nothing. One system sucked, so the Army is dumping it in favor of a better one.
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If the US didn't go into UNJUSTIFIED wars... (Score:2, Interesting)
We wouldn't have had an enourmous display of incompetance and uneffectiveness in Vietnam.
We wouldn't have attacked Saddam in 93...our ally a few years previous...because he invaded Kuwait who were friends of our NEW ally Saudi Arabia which oppresses women and backed the 9/11 terrorists.
We wouldn't have lost 3k people, wounded 40k and blown $400Billion chains WMDs,,,no wait, stopping Saddam from getting Yellow Cake for nukes, no wait to st
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Because we should wait until something h
Re:If the US didn't go into UNJUSTIFIED wars... (Score:4, Insightful)
Since 9/11 the US has helped Bin Laden achieve his major war aim (US troops out of Saudi), destroyed Iran's enemies and given control of Iraq to Iranian allies.
Maybe you'd better learn to look before you leap.
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I agree that Iran shouldn't be allowed to have nuclear weapons, but Bush's misadventures in Iraq has actually made it more difficult to stop that from happening. Our military is too busy with Iraq, our populace will have zero enthusiasm for military action against
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It make no sense, sènior (Score:5, Insightful)
1. why aren't companies like Pfizer investing in it? (probably they are?)
2. why doesn't the US Government have the sense to invest directly in such things?
Do we really have so little influence over the State, and the State is so stupid, that our best hope is to encourage the State to invest indirectly in such research by funding military development and hoping we get the sort of spin-off we're looking for?
And even more significantly, have we ACCEPTED this state of affairs?
This is OUR money that's being spent.
Re:It make no sense, sènior (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It make no sense, sènior (Score:2)
The fact of the matter is the americans are in favor of having a large and powerful military. It makes us feel like men.
Re:It make no sense, sènior (Score:4, Insightful)
You can mod me down now.
Re:It make no sense, sènior (Score:4, Insightful)
1. why aren't companies like Pfizer investing in it?
The trouble with investing in government programs is that the entire project can be ditched overnight for the benefit of someone's political agenda
Re:It make no sense, sènior (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, libertarian or not, you're going to have to accept that just because a technology is really cool, doesn't mean the private sector wants to invest in it, even if they got guaranteed patent rights to it. The risk/return/time horizon profile may not be justified compared to other investments.
2. why doesn't the US Government have the sense to invest directly in such things?
I suppose you could ask the same thing about the space program.
Re:It make no sense, sènior (Score:2)
Pfizer is a pharmaceutical company - their objective is selling drugs, not saving lives. Pfizer's revenue is $12.3 billion, the US government's revenue is $2.8 trillion. Pfizer isn't very well run, and neither is the Federal government (compared to best US business practices - compared to other countries, they're both great). Pfizer's incentives are in trying to limit effects of obesity, the Government wants fewer soldiers to die be
Why (Score:2)
It would probably be cheaper to invest in peace and avoid war all together.
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in the military and defense is an investment in peace.
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But you have to realize that this really was psychological.
And it works both ways.
If you have nothing but money to go against will power then you will eventually go broke.
Think of a suicide bomber as a very cheap and very smart self guided missile.
Compare this to the millions of dollars a single cruise missile costs.
If you want to win modern asymetric wars, then you will have to do what is necessary.
Not what you fancy.
htt [exile.ru]
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The US government wants to load up the soldiers with more and more expensive hardware, while the 'bad guys' can kill them with a few bucks worth of explosives and a cheap cell-phone. Like managers everywhere, they have an expensive solution to the wrong problem.
"So, you're suggesting the ability to acquire targets more reliably and quickly"
Will allow them to kill more innocent civili
Steve Austin: astronaut. A man barely alive. (Score:2, Funny)
Damnit. (Score:2)
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That's why it's being axed.
It's a load of horseshit.
Have you seen the sorts of prototypes they've been showing off? They don't look like battlefield systems. They look like toys. Few looked actually deployable, a
How about this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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500M is a small amount of funding for medical research.
It was far too small for this particular military project, for that matter. Just read the rest of the summary (never mind RTFA):
recent estimates have ballooned to $300 billion total cost (yes that's billion with a B)
Bad estimates are bad estimates, no matter what sector you're in. It's still hard to imagine how the R&D effort required would be smaller if:
* the research could be targeted directly to generally applicable medical breakthroughs, as opposed to warfare-relevant-only research that may "trickle down".
* there's more of an interaction for some projects with the commercial sector
no it's not... (Score:5, Funny)
No, that's billion with a 'b'. You mean 'Billion'; that's billion with a 'B'.
Waste of money (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember that Monty Python quote: "But what have the Romans given us?" "Roads" "Ok, besides that, what have the Romans given us?" "Sewerage systems." And so on.
How would an extremist go about recruiting people to his cause when the country was the source of their food, water and etc. (not meaning to sound condescending).
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I don't know but they could check and see what worked in the United States.
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This is a fantastic idea. We'll just let any old gang of thugs do whatever they want with our money, and we won't even pretend that we could do something about the organized murder and repression, even if we did care. Better yet, we could
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Guess what? It doesn't work. The top 2% of the elite get all the money, the people get nothing, and then start hating America for propping up yet another corrupt regime.
Despite the fact that a handout of that size would simply never happen, I struggle to believe it could ever be successful. We are talking here about people who have simply not learned how to live in a society like ours. The hu
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Yes, many governments in Africa are corrupt. That's why aid needs to come with oversight. Not oversight of the "We'll say how you spend it" variety, because that just leads to 'solutions' that don't have much effect on the ground. Instead, we ask them to come up with a plan that will do something like fighting po
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Rome "gave" the world roads by conquering it, and those roads were fundamentally military technology--their purpose was primarily to facilitate the rapid movement of troops about the Empire. And to give aid to Africans rather than Africa would in fact require conquest or something like it. Somalia. Rawanda. Darfur.
If one were to use Rome as a mo
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Well, Martin van Creveld, one of the most famous recent military historians, called the invasion of Iraq "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them". More recently he's taken to calling the US military in Iraq "stupid" and "totally incompetent"... if that's any help.
But then he's an Israeli, so he'll have to deal with the
Robots? (Score:2)
How about running these robots on Linux? That should cut the cost down to a mere price to download the robot parts....
fix funding (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end, the best way of funding medical research is by giving funding to medical research, and the best way of making advances in computers, semiconductors, material science, nutrition, etc. is to fund those areas. We just need to figure out how to make that work politically without wasting money on gimmicks like the military or manned space exploration.
This is "Insightful"? (Score:2)
"it has also given us a bloated military and lots of wars, because that bloated military wants to do something."
OK, I'll bite. Since you're obviously an expert, please be so kind as to tell us exactly how big the US military should be to defend the US, deter would-be agressors, fulfill international treaty obligations, etc. And do you honestly believe that servicemen and women want to go into combat, and risk life and limb? For what, the excitement of battle? Or do you believe that the military dictates
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Probably roughly in line with the military expenditures of other Western nations, relative to their GDP and population (whichever is proportionally less).
I do agree with your comments about effective funding for research, but by calling the military a "gimmick" you're merely parading your ignorance
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The US has an all-volunteer force. If you sign up, you know that that's exactly what you're signing up for, and you approve, through your action, of the entire organization and its recent history and actions.
How happy would you be in that arrangement?
I'm not in that arrangement because I haven't signed up.
Wouldn't you want 300 billion dollars spent on ways for you to not die?
Objectively, no. The US military
nerds (Score:3, Funny)
Verizon (Score:3, Funny)
Look at net benefits, not just benefits (Score:2)
Should have x-prize style competitions... (Score:2)
wise decisions, humans are obsolete anyways. (Score:2)
Look this is supposed to come online in what... fifteen to twenty years? By that time, ''soldiers'' will be sitting in Pods in Idaho, controlling swarms of robots walking around Iraq (Yes, they US will probably still be there
We've got robots driving themselves ( http://www.grandchallenge.org/ [grandchallenge.org] ) and many, many robots that are starting to walk effectively, and simultaneous transla
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Thats a bunch of baloney, robots can be hacked. The signals that control the robot remotely can be jammed or interfered with. I doubt the need for human forces will go away as quickly as you think it will, most likely it will be a hybrid battlefield.
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-- You do not need to be on the battlefield to h
duh! (Score:2)
FCS will be a failure (Score:2)
It's too bad for the spandex... (Score:2)
Thye poor foot soldier (Score:2)
Government Jobs/R&D Programs (Score:3, Insightful)
We want more jobs, basic science and healthcare R&D. We clearly want to fund and operate it through the government, socialism, because we want everyone in the country to benefit equally from access and results, regardless of money and position. So instead we should spend that money directly on job creation and R&D. Simply offering more scholarships to med students, especially researchers, with most of that money would make most of the difference. Scholarships for recertifying mostly qualified foreign doctors would bring more foreign expertise, techniques, even whole theraputic systems into the country. Rather than throwing them away like we do now in order to maintain our artificially low supply vs increasing demand, just to keep privileged doctors rich and worshipped like gods. And much more could be spent increasing the National Guard for coping with increasing natural disasters like hurricanes / floods / wildfires and manmade toxic spills. Or invested in highschool level training and entrepreneur grants for locals to start re/construction companies, possibly trained with rotations through the Army Engineer Corps, or a more civilian one.
But just spending $BILLIONS, $TRILLIONS on a military jobs/R&D program is a huge waste. We want to buy those things for our country's security. Better to do it without bloating our unaccountable military further, and actually get more productive, healthier citizens. Instead of more dead/wounded people and a higher bill.
Call me heartless, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think our medical technology in the fields of blunt trauma and prosthetics are "good enough" at this point. The Army can develop ways to better help you cope with getting shot or getting into a car collision, but they haven't touched the field of disease since they figured out how to avoid malaria and promote hygene. I don't see the Army curing cancer or AIDS or anything of the sort.
Besides, a lot of the treatments developed by the Army nowadays are so expensive you'll need the budget of the Department of Defense to pay for it.
Why should it be military ? (Score:2)
Military Boondoggles (Score:2)
Read: "
-kgj
And now, this word ... (Score:4, Funny)
And now, this word from the Military Industrial Complex ...
Did you know that war is good for you? That's right: think of all the amazing medical benefits which trickle down like a warm, red rivulet of blood from today's mechanized battlefield! Artificial limbs, artificial skin, artificial eyes ... just thank a disfigured soldier!
But that's not all! Thanks to military development, you can buy a combat-sized humvee just like the ones you see smoldering on TV (armor not included -- see dealer for details). Your police department's armaments have never been deadlier. And coming soon: pain-causing crowd control devices guaranteed to put the "obey" back in "civil disobedience."
You U.S. citizens are fortunate to live in a nation which has been continuously at war somewhere in the world for over sixty years. Nothing benefits the homefront more than the front line. So call your legislator now, before the new Democratic congress, and tell him or her you demand the rich benefits of bloated defense appropriations. Because there's no bigger buzzkill than stopping the killing.
War ... what's it good for? It's good for you!
desperation (Score:2)
Until more science-minded people actually go into the deciding (rath
People Just Don't Get It (Score:2)
It's meant to be PAID FOR.
And it's only used when somebody wants to GET PAID AGAIN FOR REPLACING IT - or use it up arranging for somebody else to get paid (in oil or whatever resource is the reason for the war.)
"Boondoggles" happen for a reason - and it's not simple stupidity or incompetence.
Years ago, I read in an electronic engineering journal an article by an engineer who consulted for a company manufacturing a certain component for the US
What utter bullshite. (Score:2)
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How direct do you want to get? People killed per day by American troops? Or people killed per day by American weapons - regardless of who is wielding it? Or people killed per day by weapons that may be derived from American military research?
Let's say we count weapons that American dollars R&D'ed directly. I'm willing to bet that medical technology that are a result of American military R&D saves more lives per day than American guns and weapons can take away; by a wide margin.
Take the math further (Score:2)
And how many more lives would have been lost if the US hadn't used the bomb, and tried a land assault against a Japan unwilling to surrender? It could be (and has been) argued that it would be in the neighborhood of a million. So, you could say that n
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On the other hand, the embargo alone was killing peo
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Pen mighter, tell that to beheaded journalists ... (Score:2)
A particular person may be mightier holding a "pen" rather than a "sword", however that is only true because someone else with a "sword" is protecting the writer. Without the protection offered by another, the writer is at the mercy of others. The holder of the pen becomes the prop for a jihadist video.
Re:problem (Score:4, Informative)
1. Body armor. First, make sure there's enough of the current generation to go around; then put R&D money into developing lighter, better armor that will offer the same level of protection without adding so many pounds to the already killing load the modern-day soldier has to haul around the battlefield.
2. Medevac choppers. Nothing new, nothing fancy, just the same Blackhawks that have been quite successfully pulling wounded troops off the field for the last couple of decades. And, of course, the medics and equipment to turn those choppers into first-class air ambulances. One of the major reasons we lost so few people in Desert Storm (trust me on this one; I was one of the people doing this job) is that we had so much surplus medical capacity in the air that any soldier, injured anywhere in the theatre, combat or non-combat, was guaranteed to be on a chopper within minutes and at a hospital within half an hour. That was the first war in history (and so far, the last) where this was true, and it shows in the casualty reports.
3. A goddamn rifle that works. The M16 and its variants have been failing American soldiers on the battlefield for forty years, for fuck's sake! Either it doesn't shoot at all ("Okay, this thing doesn't work so well in the jungle. So let's make it work really well in the jungle
All of the above are a lot cheaper than trying to turn our troops into something out of an anime, you know? And last but certainly not least:
4. The State Department, so maybe we can stop putting our troops into wars we never should have had to fight in the first goddamn place.
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