[TML] Ship shapes

[Leon Wu]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tml-bounces at travellercentral.com 
> [mailto:tml-bounces at travellercentral.com] On Behalf Of Antony Farrell
> Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 4:01 PM
> To: 'The Traveller Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [TML] Ship shapes
> 
> > A small disagreement. A good war system is based on costs also. How 
> > many others can I kill for a given buck. Sure the 
> manufacturers want 
> > to sell expensive one time use stuff but the winners of 
> real wars need 
> > to get the max kill for the amount spent. A perfect example 
> of this is 
> > Trillion credit squadron.
> > 
> > --
> Of course the military has budgets and cost is very 
> important. How else could we work out the cost overruns on projects. 

However don't forget the effect of politics. An example is the Canadian
government's boneheaded handling of our aging helicopter fleet.
Originally the conservative government in the late 80's ordered a bunch
of helicopters to replace our aging fleet of Sea Kings. Unfortunately
the opposition Liberal party campaigned against them as extravagent
totally ignoring the fact that they were desperately needed. Once the
Liberals were in power they immediatly cancelled the deal and re-started
the search process. Which after a year came back with the same
helicopters the previous Conservative government ordered. Due to this
embarrassing result, the government sat on the report for some time.
Eventually a new Liberal leader was able to get the order in and after
more than a decade since it was originally ordered Canada put in the
order. Which is now facing further setbacks pushing deliver to 2010. 

This is just one example of politics triumphing over commonsense. A lot
of nations will re-invent the wheel just so they can have their own
wheel. If the Germans built the ultimate tank tomorrow does anyone
believe the US government would purchase those? Or would it begin the
expensive process of building their version of it?