Two-Stage-to-Orbit Spaceplane Program Shelved 135
MadMorf writes "According to this article in Aviation Week, for nearly twenty years the USAF and "a team of aerospace contractors" has designed, built and tested a two-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, which could be used for "reconnaissance, satellite-insertion and, possibly, weapons delivery". Now this highly classified project may have been shelved for budgetary reasons."
no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:3, Funny)
Re:no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:2, Funny)
We'll just have to check out Area 51 for strange occurrences to find that out...
Re:no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:2)
Word on the street is that Area 51 was decommissioned for top secret projects about 20 years ago. Everyone knows about it, so it's not a very good place for secrets. However, if they keep it well guarded and use it for classified research projects, they can create the illusion of it still being active without potentially giving away too much information. They can also use it for disinformation by working on things that are not the primary focus of current projects.
Or maybe they just want
Re:no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:1)
Re:no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:1, Offtopic)
So what you're saying is that Area 51 exists just to draw attention away from Area 52? We'll just have to check there instead, once we've found it.
Or perhaps that's what they want us to think, so continue to do all reseach at Area 51; where better to hide than in plane sight, right?
</conspiracy>
Re:no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:2)
Re:no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:1)
Re:no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:2)
Boeing bought Rockwell which would give them the XB-70 database and if I remember correctly Boeing was a major contractor on the X-20 Dynasoar. Martin had a lot of lifting body data and Lockheed is known as the builder of of choice for black projects but this one smells like a Boeing project. Odds are good that every major contractor had some part in it.
Re:no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:2)
Re: no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:2)
More likely the money was reallocated to a "need" that would give Halliburton the biggest cut.
Re: no longer funded....has been shelved...lol (Score:1)
So... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:1)
Considerable evidence supports the existence of such a highly classified system, and top Pentagon officials have hinted that it's "out there," but iron-clad confirmation that meets AW&ST standards has remained elusive. Now facing the possibility that this innovative "Blackstar" system may have been shelved, we elected to share what we've learned about it with our readers, rather than let an intriguing technological breakthrough vanish into "black world" history, known to only a few insiders.
so,
Re:So... (Score:2)
It is just me or does it sound like a bigger, more complex version of SpaceShip One? Your tax dollars at work.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, a bigger more complex version of SpaceShipOne that reaches orbit. Just like SpaceShipOne, a suborbital craft!
Re:So... (Score:2)
Actually, after reading the article it appears that this suposed craft is also suborbital. That said, if the reports are true, then it existed quite a while before SpaceShipOne.
Re:So... (Score:2)
Actually, after reading the article it appears that this suposed craft is also suborbital
The article repeatedly refers to the ship as "orbital". And it indicates that it can be suborbital or LEO depending on the needs of the mission.
From the Article:
If mission requirements dictate, the spaceplane can either reach low Earth orbit or remain suborbital
The US government had a SpaceShipOne-like suborbital spaceplane/rocket, air launched, in the X-15 - decades before Rutan. That doesn't detract from Scaled's ac
Re:So... (Score:2)
"I saw a man who wasn't there,
A little man upon a stair,
He wasn't there again today,
Gee, I wish he'd go away."
The XB-70 Valkyrie is one of the most beautiful [unrealaircraft.com] aircraft ever built.
Count me among those who hopes the AvLeak story is true; I can think of no better memorial to her designers and pilots than to have seen their work continued.
Re:So... (Score:1)
No problemo (Score:2)
I love The Slashdot Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
When did slashdot turn into the Weekly World News? First it was political conspiracy theories, not this. It's getting ridiculous.
Re:I love The Slashdot Headline (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I love The Slashdot Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually Aviation Week is a very good source. It is often called Aviation Leak by people in the military. Some of this makes a lot of sense. I was reading that Redstone arsenal got rid of some of the last of it's Pentaborane not too long ago and that they had disposed of a large supply of it at Edwards as well.
Pentaborane is some very nasty stuff and the Air Force was supposed to have stopped development of it way back in the 60s.
Lots of people have been reporting an XB-70 like aircraft flying around the south west around Groom Lake. There is also the law suits about toxic chemicals that some black project workers have been exposed to. A borane compound really fits that bill. I would have to give this a probable. It would just be a development of work done on the X-30 and XB-70 projects from the 60s.
It makes a lot more sense than UFOs at Groom Lake.
Re:I love The Slashdot Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't uncommon. There have also been reports of a flying wing stealth reconnaisance plane referred to as the TR-3. More concretely, there was a lot of speculation during the 80's that the air force was developing a stealth fighter called the F-19 Ghostrider. The Air Force made a bit of fuss when drawings of it were leaked, the Wall Street Journal discussed it, Revell created a plastic model kit of it, and even Tom Clancy featured the plane in Red Storm Rising. It turned out the leak was a misleading cover up to help keep the true design of the F-117 secret, which flew for several years before being made public.
Re:I love The Slashdot Headline (Score:3, Interesting)
I was lucky enough to be there the day they let folks sit in the cockpit of the SR-71.
Very nice.
Re:I love The Slashdot Headline (Score:2)
Re:I love The Slashdot Headline (Score:2)
I don't know if the craft would even necessarily have to be unmanned. The Pegasus is not a very large rocket, and it's launched at about 1/4 the speed (1/16 the KE, assuming the same mass) this supposed space
Re:I love The Slashdot Headline (Score:1)
Wrong department (Score:1, Funny)
Did it? (Score:2, Interesting)
[conspiracy theory]
Supposedly we have an uber top secret project has been ongoing for 16 years. We have a group that has been probing into it for the full time. Maybe the group got close and the gov't decided to release info that it has been "shelved". The group redeems itself by posting the information and stops following the secret program. The gov't smiles and continues without watchful eyes.
[/conspiracy theory]
Maybe?
Re:Did it? (Score:2)
I really doubt it was uber top secret. (Score:2)
That, considering that for the 1987 Bourget Airshow, NASA contracted with Va Tech to have built an 80' model of the NASP (National Air/Space Plane). People walked under it as they entered the US Pavillion, and a bunch of students stood under it, explaining in extremely broken French (or English, as possible) what the display was all about.
I know, I was there. The labor in building the thing, plus
Replaced by smaller, unmanned or disposable drones (Score:5, Interesting)
My money is on the drones, however. Some of the newer models can orbit at close to 100k feet for long periods of time, and are so small hard to spot that they might as well be satellites. Also, if they've been successful enough with hiding the sats that are launched, as in last month's Wired article (discussed here on slashdot) [slashdot.org] then maybe they don't need as much quick launch capability.
100k "drones"? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:100k "drones"? (Score:3, Informative)
First up, A solar powered UAV [wikipedia.org] that was tested 3 years ago to reach near 100k. Now, I'll grant that it wasn't a production model, but who's to say with a bit of black technology and a much larger budget this hasn't been duplicated?
There's also multiple models of blimp based technology, such as this [videsignline.com] or this [msn.com]. Now, granted, the blimps would be a bit harder to hide from, but then again, if it's there 2
Re:100k "drones"? (Score:1)
space plane (Score:2, Informative)
Re:space plane (Score:2)
Re:space plane (Score:1)
Just because something is done by the private sector, even with private funding, doesn't mean that the technology will be available to our enemies. The government can still classify it if they really want to keep it hidden, and even without that there's ITAR to deal with. ITAR is so scary that most companies take an
Wishful thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:5, Interesting)
What makes you say that? We've had the technology for this sort of thing for quite a long time. The reason why the Space Shuttle sucks so much is:
That being said, the Space Shuttle is a marvel of engineering. The engineers were merely given a task that didn't make sense (combine cargo and human lifting), and the space vehicle industry has suffered from a lack of follow-up.
A craft the size of this hypothetical spaceplane would need a huge amount of fuel for that
All rockets do. The entire point of the Rocket Equation is to figure out the percentage of mass that will need to be expended using a given propulsion method. That's why the shuttle weighs 2 kilotonnes on the pad just to get 135ish tonnes into orbit. Or in percentages, about 6.75% of the Shuttle's mass makes it to orbit. The rest is either burned or discarded.
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:1)
All rockets that launch from sea level at least. Most of the lower altitude ascent is fighting the atmosphere, and the air density at 100000 ft is about 70x less dense than ASL. The "mothership" carries the orbiter beyond that with its air breathing scramjet. This vastly reduces the orbiter's fuel requirements and demonstrates the efficiency of hybrid propulsion systems (combined cycle chemical/airbreathing). Getting through those first 100000 feet is more than half the battle, and that's
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:1)
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:2)
Read the article. "Decent Equipment" in this case means "camera equipment" -OR- a microsat. In other words, it has poor cargo carrying capacity. Probably on the order of a tonne or less. The Space Shuttle has a maximum cargo capcity of ~27 tonnes plus a crew of five and various other equipment. (Depending on orbit and revision of vehicle.) The vehicle itself weighs about 109 tonnes
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:2)
Or some other propulsion system. Back circa late 1980s or early 1990s, AvLeak ran several articles on a possible hypersonic aircraft (or aerospacecraft?) that (they hypothesized) used a type of external burning pulse jet, with the aft part of the vehicle forming essentially an aerospike engine. Reports said that the vehicle left a characteristic "donuts on a string" vapor trail.
It's possible that said vehicle was either the XOV
Re:Russian's have much bigger lifters. (Score:2)
So did the Saturn V. Neither one flies at the moment.
The Energia was a brief blip in history whereby a single contempoary rocket carried more mass than the Shuttle. However, that history is now almost two decades behind us.
The Ruskies launched the really big parts of the Space Station.
This is true, but I expect that it has more to do with either the shuttle-bay confines or politics rather than the lift capacity of the shuttle. The maximum payload for the shuttle is several
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:2)
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:5, Informative)
Taking the final velocity minus the starting velocity, we get a required Delta V of 7.38 km/s.
Converting from Isp to exhaust velocity, we get (9.81 m/s * 400) = 3.924 km/s.
Thus our equation looks like:
m1 = m0 * 2.718^(-7.38 / 3.924)
"m0" is the starting mass of your rocket, m1 is how much mass you'll have left after you achieve the required Delta V. So, if we take a 20 tonne starting craft (for example) and plug it into the equation, we get:
m1 = 20,000 kg * 2.718^(-7.38 / 3.924)
m1 = 3,050 kg [google.com]
To get the ratio of fuel to craft, we compute 1-(3,050/20,000) to come up with a craft that is about 85% fuel, leaving about 15% as craft mass. Considering that the Space Shuttle only gets about 6.75% of its mass to orbit, 15% is pretty darn good.
To compute the other way (how much fuel mass is needed for a given final mass), you can compute the following:
m0 = m1 * 2.718^(7.38 / 3.924)
If we assume a larger number than before (say, 20,000 kg of ship+cargo to orbit), we come up with the following figures:
m0 = 20,000 kg * 2.718^(7.38 / 3.924)
m0 = 131,140 kg
Again, we see the same ratio (1 - (20,000 / 131,140) = ~85%), but the sizes have increased. The question is, could the Valkyrie (XB-70) carry 131,140 kg of spacecraft?
Well, according to the specs I have [wikipedia.org], it had an empty weight of 93,000 kg, and a maximum takeoff weight of 250,000 kg. Maximum loaded capacity was 242,500 kg, so you can assume that the 8,000 kg difference is probably fuel expended to get off the ground. Doing some simple math (242,500 kg - 93,000 kg) we come to a final cargo capacity of 149,500 kg. Taking away the weight of our craft (149,500 kg - 131,140 kg) we find that the Valkyrie would have 18,360 kgs left over for fuel and other weight. That shaves it pretty close, but it's doable.
If you assume that the Air Force has increased her Thrust to Weight ratio with some of the more powerful jet engines that have been designed since the 1960's, the margins actually look pretty darn good.
Does that answer your question?
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:2)
From the Article:
WORK ON THE ORBITER moved at a relatively slow pace until a "fuel breakthrough" was made, workers were told. Then, from 1990 through 1991, "we lived out there. It was a madhouse," a technician said. The new fuel was believed to be a boron-based gel having the consistency of toothpaste and high-energy characteristics, but occupying less volume than other fuels
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:2)
Re:Wishful thinking (Score:2)
The way I see things, if I find out that the military has spent all of the NASP / X-33 / A-12 / etc. money and any other misc. cost overruns and HASN'T used them to find anything particularly interesting, I'm going to be quite ticked off.
I mean, it's pretty well known at this point that the reason why the DSRV went so far over budget was because the money went to feed a number of other underwater engineering tasks, like tapping Russian undersea cables.
Aerospace black projects are nay but a fun game. Cr
History repeats! (Score:4, Informative)
Re: History repeats! (Score:2)
Lots of stuff is new, when the basis for comparison is 1963!
gone huh? (Score:2)
good. (Score:1, Insightful)
Can we not, as a species, keep at least one place free of war and hostility? I know, that is probably a really tall order, but come on, human-kind! Grow up already!
BTW, I am by no means a luddite. I'm all about the space program and getting the human race a means to get off this planet. However, can we not leave these
Re:good. (Score:2)
Re:good. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:good. (Score:2)
That's my one fear regarding easy access to space -- it makes me feel real vulnerable being down here at the bottom of the gravity well.
Weaponization of space (Score:2)
Anything that is meant for inserting weapons into orbit should be shelved, IMNSHO. Maybe I'm spewing a bunch of "tree-hugging-hippy-crap", but I think it is best to keep weapons out of space.
If a verifiable international treaty were in place to prevent some types of weapons from being deployed I might agree with you. But unilaterally backing away from the weaponisation of space would be suicide for the US. Also, how do you define a space weapon? GPS can be used to guide a bomb through a terrorist's bedr
Re:Weaponization of space (Score:3, Interesting)
Practical observation (Score:5, Insightful)
How arrogant, to think that 'democracy' and 'capitalism' (american style of course) once adopted by those savage backward countries
'American style' is your embellishment, not my words. The need for democracy and capitalism is not so much derived form hubris as practical observation. What else to you suggest? Islamic faciscm? Stalinism? Maoist dictatorship?
Re:Weaponization of space (Score:1)
And to back him up, I will also say that its a hell of a lot better than the other opt
Re:Weaponization of space (Score:2)
So it is hardly the height of hubris to think that it might be the American one. It might also not be. I don't know of anyone who claims that they are better than all others that have ever been or ever will be.
But I doubt it is the Taliban one.
Re:Weaponization of space (Score:1)
I am not saying we should put nukes in orbit, but we need to be prepare to respond should another country do just that. This is why programs such as this one are so vital. And I would put money on a bettet option
Some Might Say You're a Dreamer... (Score:1)
It's funny how the "Blame America!" crowd decries our nation's attempts at influencing the attitudes and actions of other countries, yet somehow believes that the world will follow our lead if we declare space off limits to military weapons. Or worse, believes that we should deliberately weaken ourselves while we watch our enemies grow stronger.
Do you really think the Chinese don't want space-based weapons? Do you think that North Korea wouldn't dep
In the end it's to AVOID killing others (Score:5, Insightful)
>for most technological advance in the world is to come up
>with a better means of killing others.
I'm sure I'll burn some karma on this, but I would beg to differ.
There is an interesting premise to Larry Niven's sci fi writing about the Kzin war - the Kzin telepaths reported to their masters that the humans had no military weaponry, and were sure to be an easy conquest. Yet when they first attacked, humanity threw them back in short order, because the civilian technology we DID have was so powerful it cut thru their military systems like butter.
http://www.larryniven.org/kzin/empire.htm [larryniven.org]
Hmmm.
I see things a little differently, however. I work for the US military as a civilian, directly involved in the procurement of weapons of war. Anyone in our organization will immediately tell you that the goal is not to wage war, but to avoid it. Ronald Reagan knew this when he emphasized his "peace thru superior firepower" mantra. If we allow ourselves to become weaker than our foes, we will find war waged upon us, simply because it's possible. Granted, the only way to stay ahead is to work hard at it, and stay atop the technological king-of-the-hill game. To many (and apparently to this person) it looks as if we want the weapons so we can use them - but I assure you that the vast majority of soldiers, airmen and marines in this country want nothing to do with going to war. I have great respect for the armed services in America, because they are willing to put themselves in death's way to free others. But nobody that I've ever talked with had any interest in conquering another county for the sake of expanding our territory, or taking something that was not already ours.
In the end, I find it fortunate that our military research ends up providing such dramatic benefits for the civilian world.
Re:In the end it's to AVOID killing others (Score:1)
While this certainly looks like a noble clause I think if you look through history you will find many instances of wars starting by this very same reasoning. One nation (or one ruler if you really go back) assumes that 'something' rightfully belongs to them and then proceed to attempt to claim it back. I'm sure you could name at least a couple conflicts going on right now which could fall under that category. In some cases you could say that was just an excuse fo
Re:In the end it's to AVOID killing others (Score:2)
Re:good. (Score:2)
No, the realist in you doubts that weaponless space is possible.
The cynic in you KNOWS that it is not possible.
F-in Mondays...
Re:good. (Score:1)
Back in the day.. (Score:1, Interesting)
It was featured in aviation week, and funding was displayed in the budget too.
There was no need to hide it according the the airforce, as nobody knew if such an aircraft could be made.
But after the skunkworks built and flew the Have blue prototype, the entire project turned black overnight.
All information about it disappeared, from the requests to the budgets. That convinced everyone that the project was real, an
Why is this bad? (Score:2)
As far as the other aspects of this for USAF purposes, ie, recon, they have been superceded by other technologies that have emerged and evolved since i
Re:Why is this bad? (Score:2)
A rocket launch is immediately identifiable by foreign satellite intelligence. That is how the Soviets and Americans verified arms control treaties during the Cold War, and it is the basis of Cold War nuclear-launch "early warning" systems. A rocket launch has no surprise value.
An air-launched space plane (or even an air-launched space rocket), however, is a diff
Gotta love Aviation Week (Score:1)
"highly classified project" is the anchor. (Score:1)
Wouldn't doubt it if this ball gets picked up by some private company.
Seems like the best method of achieving orbit, imo.
Budget cuts (Score:2)
Useless projects will make the magics for the rest!
Shuttle? (Score:1)
Re:Shuttle? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:GIve it to NASA? (Score:1)
While it may not be th
Single stage to orbit (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Single stage to orbit (Score:2)
It's British. It'll never leave the drawing board :-( *sigh*
What happened to the HOTOL project? (Score:1, Interesting)
Perhaps they sold it to Lockheed?
AvWeek is a reliable source, take this to the bank (Score:4, Informative)
They often publish photographs of planes, too, and leave the interpretation up to the reader. For example, they published the first photos of Rutan's White Knight, the carrier for SpaceshipOne. The White Knight/SpaceshipOne system flies a profile very similar to the one described by this current article, although with much lower performance.
Anyway, AvWeek published the White Knight photos with no description of the plane's mission, but any informed reader would immediately recognize it as a spaceplane first stage. Once Rutan announced the program, they covered it completely, but until they knew for sure they didn't say anything. For them to describe this Blackstar system in this explicit detail, I am certain that all their ducks are in a row -- and barcoded.
Thad Beier
Re:AvWeek is a reliable source, take this to the b (Score:2)
Re:AvWeek is a reliable source, take this to the b (Score:2)
"Aviation Leak & Spy Technology" (Score:1)
RLV News on Blackstar spaceplane (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite the many details provided by AvWeek about the purported Blackstar program, the existence of an "operational" TSTO reusable system seems wildly inconsistent with what has been happening with all the rest of the government space programs since the early 1990s and with what they have planned for the next couple of decades.
- As a reader already commented, NASA's whole approach to space transport is based on the claim that fully reusable space vehicles are not feasible with current technologies.
- DARPA has had programs like Falcon and RASCAL (canceled due to cost overruns) that are intended to provide "responsive space" capability. For the next 5-10 years, this simply means launching microsats on short notice. Why not just use Blackstar or build on its capabilities?
- Why would a system like the Blackstar be "shelved" when it is so far beyond what anyone else is flying and beyond what the rest of the government claims is even feasible?
- The magazine article speculates that the program was run directly or indirectly by an intelligence agency and they managed to kept it secret from even "top military space commanders". So how did they manage to fly this thing to orbit and not have it show up on the military's space tracking system?
- In a government where secrets seem to stay secret only until more than one person knows about them, I find it extremely hard to believe a huge program like this could be kept under wraps for over 10 years. And not just from the public but from most of the military and NASA.
If it was the beginning of April, I would take this whole thing to be a big leg-puller.
If we were still in the 1980s, I would assume AvWeek had been led astray by a disinformation campaign aimed at the Soviets. But the Soviets are gone so I'm not sure why anyone in the Pentagon or the Intelligence agencies would bother to run an elaborate spaceplane ruse other than perhaps to get back at AvWeek for breaking so many stories about secret programs over the past several decades...
A design study program and some prototype tests, maybe, but a secret operational orbital system borders on sci-fi. I like sci-fi and I hope this story is true but I'll wait for independent confirmation before I'll buy it.
I built one of these myself in the 1970s! (Score:2)
http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/rockets/nostalgia/
http://www.dars.org/jimz/estes/k-42i.tif [dars.org]
SpaceX's manned space capsule (Score:4, Interesting)
A quote from the Space.com article:
Musk said he thinks Dragon can be ready to enter service in 2009 - a full year before the shuttle is expected to conduct its last flight.
"I feel very confident about being able to offer NASA an ISS-servicing capability by 2009 and am prepared to back that up with my own funding," Musk said.
Dragon's initial test flights would be conducted from SpaceX's island launch facility in the Kwajalein Atoll, Musk said, with operational flights to be conducted from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Musk said SpaceX proposed several different configurations of Dragon in order to meet NASA's needs to deliver both pressurized and unpressurized cargo loads to the station and bring some materials back. He also proposed a crewed version capable of carrying up to seven astronauts to and from the station.
From the SpaceRef article:
Visitors to SpaceX's El Segundo facility over the past several years have noticed an area which is roped off - one they cannot get close to - with some large hardware covered up. Underneath those covers are a variety of Dragon protoypes and developmental items produced over the past several years.
Initial designs for Dragon were somewhat similar to a blunt nose version of the DC-X - complete with landing legs. Driven by additional thinking - and the emerging demands of a cargo and human transport business for the ISS - the design of Dragon has been modified and the crew capsule portion of the spacecraft now sports a more conventional blunt conical, capsule-like design with a 15-degree slope angle.
Ah... (Score:1)
Amazing.
Think of the technology here that could have been
applied to other things such as retiring the space
shuttle, etc.
Scaled up, this could have been quite interesting.
There were reports of this thing flying all over.
See Dan Zinngrabe's old Black Dawn black aircraft
site for information.
This is the first I've heard that the aircraft dropped
from the belly of the aircraft - most of the reports
had it that the orbiter took off from the back of the
larger bird.
One more thing (Score:1)
http://members.macconnect.com/users/q/quellish/daw n.spml [macconnect.com]
It's old information but still interesting many
have seen this thing.
The two VTOL Stealth aircraft I spotted in
outstate Minnesota back in 1989 haven't come
into the white world yet - some of these
things languish in classified museums.
Blackstar? Secret? Don't make me laugh... (Score:2, Interesting)
You guys are complaining? (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably true... (Score:2)
There's talk of cutting many classified programs due to money. All that jet fuel for the war effort and that ordnance are expensive. I have heard confirmation that government contractors will be cut from several bases; civilians and military are getting RIF'ed too.
Schools and hospitals and potable water and... (Score:2)
All that jet fuel for the war effort and that ordnance are expensive. I have heard confirmation that government contractors will be cut from several bases; civilians and military are getting RIF'ed too.
My guess would be that at this point, three years into the game, most of the $300B? $400B? however much we have spent [and are spending] on Iraq is going to schools, hospitals, the power grid, water treatment plants, sewage treatment facilities, etc etc etc.
Most of what the DOD is paying on traditional s
Re:Schools and hospitals and potable water and... (Score:2)
Any links??? (Score:2)
Actually, fuel is one of the big costs. The next is food and water. After that it's salaries and small arms ammunition. The nation-building stuff comes from a separate budget item that is approved by Congress. There will be some retirements out of the Air Force inventory in the near future due to budget reasons.
Do you have any links to - ah - how could I say it, more or less non-partisan studies of how the money is being spent?
I'm not talking the raving lunatic KOS/Moveon nonsense, but a serious, bean-
Re:Any links??? (Score:2)
But, since the invasion ended, the US has put about 60-80 billion towards rebuilding efforts (this from skimming GAO reports). The military operations side of things is more expensive. You have a carrier group in the Persian gulf. You have bases operated and maintained all ove
keep me updated (Score:2)
No. I can't provide a link to the numbers for two reasons: first, my source is one that I can't release, and the second is that the DoD hasn't had a good track record with their accounting of the "nation building" stuff in Iraq... I know for a fact that many classified things are getting cut due precisely to the war effort. And I know for a fact that the Air Force has been scrambling to figure out how to come out okay with a several-billion dollar shortfall. (I think it's 6 billion, but I'm not exactly sur