So, what happened with the ATF and subsequent F-22 Raptor programs in the 1980′s, 1990′s, and 2000′s? In a word, racketeering. In another word, corporatism. Here’s one more: corruption, as in corruption of military industrial complex (MIC) and the U.S. military procurement system. Somewhere along the line, someone (or a number of people) somewhere in the U.S. military industrial complex and military procurement system, respectively, discovered that they could accomplish a number of objectives by dragging system (including aircraft) development time out over many more years, instead of developing and fielding a finished product as quickly as possible. The private sector/contractors figured out that they could make a lot more money, squeezing hundreds of millions to billions of dollars from the Department of Defense (DoD) before ever going into production. After all the development money, the actual production contract was just a bonus, the icing on the cake, if you will. And, the public sector/military folks realized that they could safeguard or prolong careers and create a more advantageous public-sector-exit/private-sector-entry strategy for themselves. Synergy. Of course, you can apply this to pretty much all areas of current U.S. military procurement.
Source: DefenseReview.com (http://s.tt/13fzD)
