Just for the record, it looks like we have another clearcut case of ignoring what the troops on the ground need. Wired magazine, (yeah, not your usual news source about the needs of the troops), just published an article which highlights again how the care and feeding of the military-industrial complex interferes with the good judgment necessary to get the Marines, in this case, what they absolutely require to be safe. (H/T to Devilstower at dailykos for the article link.)

Maj. John Rumbaugh’s job was hard enough without all the mortar attacks. An Army surgeon attached to a Marine force in Iraq’s lawless Al Anbar province, the Maryland resident saw a constant stream of casualties from roadside bombings, gunfights and checkpoint shootings. Meanwhile insurgents, exploiting gaps in patrols in the region, would periodically rush the base, fire a handful of mortars at the Marine hospital, then disappear.

Almost every day for a year the insurgents repeated the deadly trick with seeming impunity. With just 20,000 Marines and a few hundred soldiers to cover thousands of square miles, there simply weren’t enough troops to secure the base. Rumbaugh understood that. What he didn’t understand was why the Marines’ weapons-buying bureaucracy had refused repeated, urgent requests for aerial drones that could watch over the base instead.

For years the U.S. Army had used hundreds of such drones to monitor expanses of Iraq where the ground troops were thinnest. The Marines had their own drone - the $100,000 Scan Eagle co-produced by Boeing and Insitu - but in much smaller numbers. Since 2006, Marine commanders in Iraq had filed three formal requests asking for between 60 and 240 additional Scan Eagles. But the complex of Quantico, Virginia, offices responsible for filling such requests - the Combat Development Command, the Marine Corp Systems Command and the Warfighting Laboratory - had ignored or rejected all the pleas.

As a result, none of the 10-foot-wingspan Scan Eagles were available to patrol around Rumbaugh’s hospital. When 12 of Rumbaugh’s medical staff were seriously injured in a spate of attacks in 2006, the major had had enough. In January 2007, through a family member, he appealed to his representatives back home, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland).

Van Hollen passed the request (.pdf) on to the Army; Mikulski went a step further, contacting Secretary of Defense Robert Gates directly. “I ask that you look into this situation,” the senator wrote (.pdf), “and take whatever steps you deem appropriate to ensure the safety of these forces.”

The Scan Eagle episode is just the latest in a long history of conflict between the Marine Corps’ fighting troops and the bureaucrats in Quantico, where critics say an entrenched resistance to more efficient technology purchasing is endangering fighters’ lives. While an adaptive enemy takes advantage of commercial equipment to build lethal roadside bombs and survivable communications networks, Quantico eschews cheap off-the-shelf products in favor of Cold War-era processes for designing expensive new weapons over the course of years.

There’s more in the article. Look in particular for the account of the green laser “dazzlers” as well as the story of the trucks. Nick Schwellenbach, an analyst with the watchdog group, Project on Government Oversight, was quoted:

There is definitely a tendency in many quarters of the defense establishment to prefer to establish new programs or protect existing ones, rather than use off-the-shelf technology available on the commercial market…

It’s about turf, ego and resources. If your bread and butter is the research and development of new systems, then why would you want to undermine your own project that you may have spent years on?

It reminds me of something that President of the United States (and former General of the Army) Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction…

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

This is particularly true when it gets in the way of providing what our marines and soldiers actually need on the ground in a war zone.

JK noted this himself during his introduction last year of the Honest Leadership and Accountability in Contracting Act of 2006 which he co-sponsored with Senators Dorgan and Leahy.

We owe every man and woman serving in our military nothing less than complete transparency when we spend money in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the war in Iraq and the actions of companies like Halliburton and Custer Battles have become symbols for questions about government waste and a near total lack of accountability. It’s a disgrace that we have to answer to parents who ask how we can allow corporate cheaters to reap massive profits on the battlefield of Iraq when their sons and daughters are serving without proper equipment.

Sounds like we still need that bill.