[tra3]

> There’s really no good reason to stick your neck out at a dysfunctional place

I'm reading "The Pentagon Wars" [0], about how US Military used to develop weapon systems in the 70s and 80s; here's an anecdote from the book:

> General Gavin recounted how he had to bury fifty young men near the village of Gela, Sicily, in 1943.1 The men had pieces of their own bazookas ground into their bodies by the German tanks they had been trying to stop. Their new bazookas had failed to stop the tanks. General Gavin condemned the Ordnance Corps for not testing the bazookas against German tanks that had been captured in North Africa. There had been considerable controversy back in the States over the development of the bazookas. At least one prominent scientist on the project had resigned because of his conviction that the warhead was too small to stop a tank. Sadly, he was proved correct. General Gavin was angry that the Ordnance Corps bureaucracy had given his troops an untested weapon.

The book is great for a number of reasons one of which is describing how defense contractors were compensated on delivery not the quality. The bulk of the book deals with Bradley fighting vehicle development that was a death trap. James Burton, the author, ends up being pushed out of the military for raising a lot stink about the Bradley but not before making a huge difference in the design of the vehicle, that ends up saving a lot of lives.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars

[jcadam]

I greatly enjoyed the movie. They actually played it for us when I was in the military attending a course on space operations and we got to the subject of acquisitions.

[protomyth]

Study the development of American torpedoes for WWII as further reading. The Bureau of Ordnance has a lot of American blood on its hands.

[ncmncm]

On the other hand, they saved many Japanese lives. For a while, anyway.

[ncmncm]

Almost until 1944, the torpedoes that US submarines were obliged to use on Japanese warships would not blow up when they hit.

Toward the end of that period, some submariners determined that if they shot the torpedo so it struck at a shallow angle, the shock would not so damage the fuse as to make it completely fail.