Watchdog: Pentagon Buys Weapons Backwards

 abercrombie outlet Courtesy Lockheed MartinThe federal agency charged with catching U.S. government waste said in a new report that the Pentagon has squandered millions in taxpayer dollars on expensive and complex weapons systems by spending first and asking questions later.The new report, prepared by the Government Accountability Office and published Friday, focused on the shortcomings of the Missile Defense Agency's Ballistic Missile Defense System but hit on a controversial strategy used in other major defense purchases: concurrency.Concurrency is broadly defined as the practice of not waiting for a proposed weapons system to be fully tested before putting it on the final production line.When all goes well few, if any, faults are found during testing and minimal changes must be made to those weapons that have already rolled off the factory floor. That way, the military gets its hands on the most advanced operational systems much faster than it would otherwise.When problems are found, however, taxpayers are usually on the hook for not only the upgrades that need to be made to the systems still in development but for retrofits for those that were already thought to be finished products - at price tags that can run into the billions.

 cheap abercrombie uk "While some concurrency is understandable, committing to product development before requirements are understood and technologies mature or committing to production and fielding before development is complete is a high-risk strategy that often results in performance shortfalls, unexpected cost increases, schedule delays and test problems," the GAO said.Instead of concurrency, the GAO suggested the Pentagon take a "knowledge-based" approach in which there is little or no overlap from technology development to product development to final production.By the GAO's estimate, a single problem found in a new variant of the missile system that was in the middle of production caused the cost of testing its capability to quadruple, from $236 million to around $1 billion.Concurrency is also a major factor in the most expensive weapon system purchase in history, the Pentagon's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. That program, which will provide three branches of the military nearly 2,500 of the world's most advanced fifth-generation stealth fighters, is expected to cost over $1 trillion over the next half-century and the costs keep rising. The F-35 officially went into production in 2003, but the first ever test flight didn't take off until three years later.Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's top weapons purchaser, said in February that the plan to buy the F-35 was so flawed it amounted to "acquisition malpractice."

 abercrombie and fitch uk "I can spend quite a few minutes on the F-35, but I don't want to," Kendall said at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Putting the F-35 into production years before the first test flight was acquisition malpractice, OK? It should not have been done, OK? But we did it."In a report last month, the GAO found that the Pentagon had taken steps to reduce concurrency with the F-35 by delaying the purchase of some planes, but that had predictably increased the overall cost of the program...WASHINGTON (AP) — The retired top CIA officer who ordered the destruction of videos showing waterboarding says in a new book that he was tired of waiting for Washington's bureaucracy to make a decision that protected American lives.Jose Rodriguez, who oversaw the CIA's once-secret interrogation and detention program, also lashes out at President Barack Obama's administration for calling waterboarding torture and criticizing its use."I cannot tell you how disgusted my former colleagues and I felt to hear ourselves labeled 'torturers' by the president of the United States," Rodriguez writes in his book, "Hard Measures."The book is due out April 30. The Associated Press purchased a copy Tuesday.

 abercrombie uk The chapter about the interrogation videos adds few new details to a narrative that has been explored for years by journalists, investigators and civil rights groups. But the book represents Rodriguez's first public comment on the matter since the tape destruction was revealed in 2007.That revelation touched off a political debate and ignited a Justice Department investigation that ultimately produced no charges. Critics accused Rodriguez of covering up torture and preventing the public from ever seeing the brutality of the CIA's interrogations. Supporters hailed him as a hero who acted in the best interest of the country in the face of years of bureaucratic hand-wringing.The tapes, filmed in a secret CIA prison in Thailand, showed the waterboarding of terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri.Especially after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, Rodriguez writes, if the CIA's videos were to leak out, officers worldwide would be in danger."I wasn't going to sit around another three years waiting for people to get up the courage," to do what CIA lawyers said he had the authority to do himself, Rodriguez writes. He describes sending the order in November 2005 as "just getting rid of some ugly visuals."Rodriguez writes critically of Obama's counterterrorism policies today. With no way to capture and interrogate terrorists, Rodriguez says, the CIA relies far too much on drones. Unmanned aerial attacks alienate America's foreign partners and make it impossible to question people in the know, he says.

 abercrombie and fitch outlet These points could foreshadow Republican attack lines in the presidential race because other former senior CIA officers are advising presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney.The killing of Osama bin Laden is Obama's signature national security accomplishment, but Rodriguez writes that valuable intelligence from the CIA's "black sites" helped lead the U.S. to bin Laden.The book is published by Threshold, a conservative imprint of Simon and Schuster that also published former Vice President Dick Cheney's memoir. ..PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — A senior North Korean army official says his country is armed with "powerful mobile weapons" capable of striking America.Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho emphasized the importance of defending the North against the U.S. and South Korea as Pyongyang marked the 80th anniversary of the nation's army Wednesday.He told officials at the April 25 House of Culture that the weapons could defeat the U.S. "at a single blow."North Korea made another unusual claim Monday, promising "special actions" that would reduce Seoul's government to ashes.North Korea is believed to have nuclear weapons but not the technology to put them on long-range missiles. A rocket launch that the U.S. claimed was a North Korean attempt to test missile technology failed this month.