Re: Obamanomics
Defense insanity: U.S. military is dependent on Russian pilots and planes
The Russian-made and piloted transport AN-124 cost taxpayers $47,000 an hour to operate in 2007, for a total of $840 million in FY 2007-08.
We pay the Russians to deliver supplies and equipment to our troops in sensitive locations around the world and make ourselves more and more dependent on foreign nations in the process, while funding their military and robbing our own. This is crazy stuff!
By the end of fiscal year 2010, we had spent more than $2 billion leasing foreign aircraft to do the job that our own C-17s could do if we had enough of them. And $2 billion would purchase about eight C-17s that would fly for more than four decades!
The Obama administration’s current policy puts us on a path to one day having the military might of a third-world nation simply because we will not be able to quickly and efficiently supply our troops with U.S. airlift assets.
Hiring foreign powers to make deliveries to our military is a bad idea on so many different levels. First, it potentially places our fighting men and women at greater risk because foreign powers will know the location of our troops and what supplies they are receiving, and even have access to sensitive military technology and equipment. Second, we may not be able to hire foreign powers to fill our airlift needs. Third, hiring foreign powers to provide us with airlift capacity will cost taxpayers more than building our own aircraft. Fourth, America will lose more high-tech aerospace jobs to other nations.
