Our Military-Industrial Complex in a Nut Shell

So, the USAF decides to buy a few dozen Global Hawk Block 30 drones to replace its existing inventory of U-2 spy planes, and finds out that they are more expensive and less capable than the 5y year old platform, so they are mothballing the drones:

It has been quite an expensive week for the US Air Force. Not only did Congress halt funding on a surveillance blimp project that they already invested $140 million in, but now the Pentagon says $3 billion worth of drones could be canned as well.

The United States military has already ordered a dozen unmanned surveillance drones at a combined cost of $3 billion, but realizing that the stealth, high-tech spy crafts aren’t as capable as the antiquated, old-school planes already in their arsenal, the Pentagon is pulling the plug in terms of acquiring any more.

In addition to ending the acquisition of Global Hawk Block 30 drones that the military had planned for, the Air Force will take the 18 they’ve already received, leaving them to hang around the hangar for now.

Air Force Gen. Norton Schwartz and Air Force Secretary Michael Donley told a Senate committee this week that between acquiring any more drones and maintaining upgrades and repairs on those and the ones already purchased, the military would practically go bankrupt. Gen. Schwartz says that the new plan will save the Pentagon $2.5 billion, but will also lead the Defense Department to let the $3 billion worth of surveillance drones already under their command to just collect dust from now on.

"This was a choice [where] we had an asset that can do the mission as it's currently specified and could do it overall at much less cost," Schwartz said before the Senate this week. "Sustaining the U-2 was a better bet."

So, they spend billions on a system that is more expensive and less capable than its predecessor, and somehow or other, the contractor will sill get paid for the unusable crap that they delivered.