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Originally Posted by Oberon

So it's an awkward balancing act between having a munition that is smart enough to kill the people you want it to kill and them only, but cheap enough that you're not going to go bankrupt when you fire it.

BUT...BUT...It's all about the boom economy! Not saving money; just ask the congressman from the defense industry ba$ed district that makes Abram tanks the army doesn't need: "The combat vehicle industrial base is a unique asset that consists of hundreds of public and private facilities across the United States," the letter said. The outlook for selling Abrams tanks to other nations appears "stronger than prior years," the letter said. But those sales would be "inadequate to sustain the industrial base and in some cases uncertain. In light of this, modest and continued Abrams production for the Army is necessary to protect the industrial base."
Lima, Ohio, is a long way from this dusty tank parking lot. The tiny town in the northwestern part of the Buckeye State is where defense manufacturing heavyweight General Dynamics makes these 60-plus-ton behemoths.
The tanks create 16,000 jobs and involve 882 suppliers, says Kendell Pease, the company's vice-president of government relations and communications. That job figure includes ancillary positions like gas station workers who fill up employees' cars coming and going to the plant." http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/09/army-to-congress-thanks-but-no-tanks/comment-page-4/ Yet another case involves converting our Afghan allies soldiers to M-14 rifles when every kid over ten years old Akbar Allah's with the weapon of choice' the AK-47 his grandpa trained him on....ITS THE ECONOMY BBY not economics In short, there is no awkward balancing of the American Indusrial-Military complex....as long as you ignore Ike's famous parting warning: "Beware..... Greed is alive and GOOD!