Opinion

The military-industrial complex and their political allies endanger American servicemen

Jeffrey Carson Candidate for Congress, Virginia 8th District
Font Size:

Just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC lies the heart of America’s military-industrial complex. In the last decade Northern Virginia has become home to the nation’s powerful defense contractors, from Boeing to Booz Allen Hamilton.These titans of the defense industry produce weapons and equipment, and provide services, that our politicians then purchase for our troops. Though they certainly make a profit, these contractors promise their chief motivation is patriotism — ensuring that our men and women in uniform have the tools they need to be safe and effective on the battlefield.

My name is Jeffrey Carson, and I’m the Libertarian Party’s candidate for Congress in Virginia’s 8th District. I’m a former U.S. Army Captain with four years of service, coming from a long military tradition that includes my brother, both my parents and most of my extended family. I know what our troops need to complete their mission while staying safe. Unfortunately, I also know how Washington politicians on both sides of the aisle betray our soldiers through sweetheart deals with defense contractors, putting our warfighters at needless risk of death or serious injury.

The United States spends more money on defense than the next ten military powers combined. But the weapons and equipment put in the hands of American soldiers are often substandard, unnecessary, or just plain dangerous. Lawmakers from both the left and the right push these shoddy and overpriced defense contracts through Congress, and contractors return the favor through campaign donations in the next election cycle.

These perilous procurements cut across every branch of the armed services, affecting everything from mundane materials to high-tech boondoggles. Consider the debacle of the “universal camouflage pattern,” the Pentagon’s program that saw seven different camouflage uniforms introduced across the services in less than a decade. The $5 billion price tag should have purchase increased survivability for American troops by keeping them concealed in different types of terrain.

But many of the patterns just didn’t work — especially in some of the most dangerous combat environments. “It definitely makes a difference in Afghanistan,” one Army soldier explained. “Afghanistan is primarily brown, and there’s no brown in the universal pattern.” From 2005 until at least 2009, soldiers stuck out like sore thumbs while wearing the uniform in combat zones.

The Pentagon blamed the fiasco on poor coordination between the services, but angry soldiers held their own opinions. “People in the military associate certain projects with nepotism, a Good Old Boy network,” Army Sergeant Matt Pelak told the Daily Beast in 2012. “Maybe someone’s brother owns the company that designs the uniforms, or he’s on the Defense Appropriations Committee.”

The military is now returning to similar patterns they retired in 2002, at a projected cost of another $4 billion. The $9 billion spent since that time made our soldiers less safe and their missions more difficult, but enriched contractors and politicians alike.

Major “next-generation” defense programs can be many times more wasteful — and more dangerous for our troops when they go wrong. The Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship is billed as a 21st-century stealth vessel, designed for coastal combat and expected to replace nearly a third of the current U.S. surface fleet. But leaving aside the program’s exorbitant cost ($40 billion, more than double the initial estimates and rising), numerous studies question the ship’s ability to even survive in combat operations.

The Pentagon’s independent Director of Operational Test & Evaluation recently concluded that the Littoral Combat Ship “is not expected to be survivable in a hostile combat environment.” Yet “combat” is in the very name of the program, and the ship is expected to be a crucial coastal minesweeper that would move ahead of larger ships during potential conflicts in the South China Sea and Persian Gulf.

It’s a completely unacceptable amount of risk for the program’s price tag, so much so that even Arizona Republican Senator John McCain warned that “in terms of actual cost and cost to our national security, we simply cannot afford to continue committing our limited resources to an unproven program that may eventually account for more than a third of the surface-combatant fleet.”

But despite its dubious effectiveness and high price tag, development and production of the Littoral Combat Ship continues. Much of that can be attributed to the influence of Lockheed Martin, the ship’s manufacturer, which spent nearly $20 million in contributions and lobbying in the 2012 election cycle alone.

There are more examples of wasteful and dangerous defense programs than can fill a book, much less an op-ed. But you won’t hear these kinds of stories from my opponents in the Democratic or Republican parties. More than in any other region, my adversaries in Virginia’s 8th District are beholden to campaign contributions from the defense contractors at their doorsteps.

I’m an independent voice, and if elected to Congress I’ll work from within to ensure that taxpayer money is wisely spent and that our troops’ safety comes before contractor profits and politicians’ reelection campaigns.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel