Simple, rugged, cheap, low-maintenance… what the hell is a cropduster doing in today’s U.S. dotmil?
Just about everything, it seems.
Sheesh, pretty soon the Pentagon will announce that the Jeep Wrangler will replace the Hummvee and the Colt Government 1911 is going to be re-adopted as the official military sidearm.
Okay, maybe not.
A while ago I opined that what the U.S. Armed Forces needed was not MOAR COMPLICATED weapons systems, but simpler, even old-fashioned kit that would do more or less the same tasks for much less money, with a much greater redundancy (i.e. losing one multi-million weapons system out of the dozen on hand to enemy action would not cripple either our wallet nor our force, when instead we had a hundred and fifty simpler weapons systems capable of doing more or less the same job).
Seems like some smart people think the same way about the Navy:
The Navy’s problem remains its obsession with blue-water ships and big-budget contracts instead of stepping back and rationally thinking about what is actually needed to fulfill requirements at a cost-effective level in terms of construction, use, and the risk of combat losses. The enemy of “good enough” is the desire for perfection and there is no reason to spend time and money reinventing the wheel when a proven gunboat design already exists that is good enough for the Navy’s littoral combat needs. A modern version of the Fairmile D motor torpedo boat—the famous Dog Boats of the Royal Navy’s coastal forces in World War II—is what the U.S. Navy needs today.
And the author goes on to explain how it would all work, and it’s a compelling argument. A couple hundred of these bad boys, suitably updated, would definitely put a wrinkle into someone’s turban or Mao jacket, if you get my drift.
Read it all, and let’s hope someone in the Navy Department reads it as well, without throwing the thing straight into File 13.