IN THE NEWS
Wretchard at The Belmont Club is stretching the "military transformationist" logic a bit far in this posting. It's tough to argue with the prospect of giving US ground forces greater mobiity, and their weapons greater precision. It's a lot like saying, Gosh, it'd be nice if my car got better mileage.
There's a world of difference between (1) designing cars to be more fuel efficient, and (2) starting a road trip with the fuel tank only a quarter full, and no gas money. That's also the difference between the military transformationist proposals and their half-cocked application in Iraq.
[Thanks to Lawyers, Guns, and Money for noticing Wretchard's post.]
It's the same argument I always had when people would try to establish ridiculously high standards for my military career field. When they expressed the choice as being between 100 competent personnel and 100 superior personnel, the choice seemed simple. But when faced with the real-world choice of 100 competent personnel or 10 superior ones, they suddenly discovered that they still had 100 jobs that needed to be done.
(Then the F-22 ate all the money and the whole thing became moot.)
Posted by: Mojo | 10/10/2006 at 18:35