Advertisement
Huey
Army Museum, Hanoi, Vietnam. About 7,000 UH-1s saw use during the Vietnam War There are many interesting exhibits in the
War Remnants Museum (formerly named
War Crimes Museum), Ho Chi Minh City (a.k.a. Saigon). One that caught my eye was an M-16 rifle imprinted with “General Motors, Hydramatic Division”. That got me thinking, if defense is an industry then war is a business?
I did some research on the internet and confirmed that
General Motors did manufacture M-16s for the Vietnam War, about 1.4 million rifles, from 1968 to 1971 (source:
AR Files). Today's list of the
Top 100 United States Defense Contractors reveals many familiar corporations: Boeing, United Technologies, KBR, General Electric, Shell, Bechtel, FedEx, Exxon Mobil, BP and Dell. GM is still there, at number 40. United States defense spending was about half of worldwide defense spending in 2008 (source: Boeing Corporation 2008 Form 10-K Annual Report).
Lockheed Martin Corporation is on top of the 2008 list with $28.7 billion in sales to the U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy. In Lockheed Martin's 2008 10K Annual Report, the first item under Risk Factors notes “we rely heavily upon sales to the U.S. Government including both DoD and non-DoD agencies, obtaining 84%!o(MISSING)f our sales from U.S. Government customers in 2008”.
The Boeing Company is number two on the 2008 list. Boeing essentially
Canned Heat
War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. operates in three business segments. 2008 revenues for these segments were: Commercial Airplanes $28.2 billion; Integrated Defense Systems $32.0 billion (with $24.1 billion to the DoD); Boeing Capital Corporation $0.7 billion (source: Boeing Corporation 2008 Form 10-K Annual Report).
Third on the 2008 list is
Northrop Grumman Corporation. This company was founded in 1939, around the beginning of World War II. In 2008, sales and services to the U.S. Government accounted for 91 percent of Northrop Grumman's total revenue (source: Northrop-Grumman 2008 Form 10-K Annual Report). Northrop-Grumman management's outlook cautioned that “certain programs in which the company participates may be subject to potential reductions due to a slower rate of growth in the U.S. Defense Budget forecasts and funds being utilized to support the on-going Global War on Terrorism”.
General Dynamics Corporation is fourth on the 2007 list with $13.6 billion in sales to the U.S. DoD. In Risk Factors, General Dynamics states that “U.S. Defense spending historically has been cyclical ... defense budgets rise when perceived threats to national security increase the level of concern over the country's safety” (source: General Dynamics Corporation 2008 Form 10-K Annual Report).
Raytheon Corporation was the fifth largest defense United States contractor in 2008.
War Bird
A-1 Skyraider. War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Raytheon's sales to the U.S. DoD were $11.6 billion. Management's discussion of results states that “the DoD base budget, which excludes emergency funding operations for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq has grown from $300 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2001 to $512 billion in FY 2008, or 7%!c(MISSING)ompounded annually” (source: Raytheon Corporation 2007 Form 10-K Annual Report).
Don't get me wrong, these are great technology companies, they have a lot of smart people working for them and they are good at what they do. And I can't blame capitalists for being greedy, defense contracting is a lucrative business. I am disappointed that the people of the United States allow their government to spend many billions of dollars on “defense”.
11 years, 7 million tons of bombs, 543,400 peak U.S. Troop strength (April, 1969), 47,413 U.S. hostile deaths (source:
LANDSCAPER.NET) and what did the Vietnam War achieve? The
Viet Minh was a national liberation movement founded in 1941 to seek independence for Vietnam from France. The French were finally defeated by the Viet Minh in the First Indochina War, 1945-1954, and the United States continued to slowly draw itself into direct conflict with North Vietnam, the
Vietnam War.
Today,
American steel
I was walking back into town from the Khe Sanh War Museum and found a scrap metal yard by the road. Vietnam has tons of war junk buried in the countryside and organisations are still working to clean up unexploded ordinance. there are new “perceived threats”. Is militant Islam going to take over the world? I doubt it. Is Uncle Sam going to continue in his “Global War on Terror”? You bet your ass. Are we going to continue to be afraid, continue to believe the propaganda? Probably.
There are no honourable wars today, only prolonged conflicts where there is no ultimate victory. Peace and freedom would be unhealthy for the United States defense industry, for American business and American workers. War has become an industry and our local newspaper advertises “careers” in the armed forces, but a nation can't win wars when its troops simply want to get paid and go home safely. Greater defense spending and more technology does not always deliver increased security.
I finished my tour of Vietnam in Hanoi. It was a pleasant city and while there I visited the Hoa Lo Prison Museum (nick-named the “Hanoi Hilton” during the Vietnam War era). An American tourist was talking too much and too loudly. She said to her guide, “we learnt too”, I could have shot her!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.088s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0466s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb