Future weapon

The "need" for a continuous stream of future weapons of unproven design is the justification of the military-industrial complex - the use of the term "future weapon" implies that technological escalation is inevitable.

In mid-2004, the U.S. Congress made "only modest changes in the Pentagon's plans to spend well over $1 trillion in the next decade on an arsenal of futuristic planes, ships and weapons with little direct connection to the Iraq war or the global war on terrorism."

"House and Senate versions of the 2005 defense authorization measure contain a record $68 billion for research and development - 20 percent above the peak levels of President Ronald Reagan's historic defense buildup. Tens of billions more out of a proposed $76 billion hardware account will go for big-ticket weapons systems to combat some as-yet-unknown adversary comparable to the former Soviet Union." Some defense analysts, notably Thomas P.M. Barnett, consider the People's Republic of China to be the focus of Pentagon obsession.

"On the Pentagon's wish list are such revolutionary weapons as a fighter plane that can land on an aircraft carrier or descend vertically to the ground; a radar-evading destroyer that can wallow low in the waves like a submarine while aiming precise rounds at enemy targets 200 miles inland; and a compact 'isomer' weapon that could tap the metallic chemical element hafnium to release 10,000 times as much energy per gram as TNT."

Debate on the defense bill has "largely skirted the budgetary or strategic implications of this buildup" due to Congressional cowardice and inability to withstand the pro-technology propaganda claiming that these weapons, like the Strategic Defense Initiative, can eventually be made to work somehow.

"In the public mind there is clearly a present danger, so we can't trim back the defense budget in any manner even though counterterrorism spending only accounts for a small part of it," said Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * arms control / nuclear weapons
 * environmental warfare
 * revolution in military affairs
 * technological escalation