AMERICAN MILITARY R&D SECRECY DESTRUCTIVE AND WASTEFUL

[Morpheal]

AMERICAN MILITARY R&D SECRECY DESTRUCTIVE AND WASTEFUL

There was a story today, in the BBC news, about a protest at an airport in the UK and it brought t mind a serious problem of “trickle down” technologies that fail to trickle down when needed, from the military to the civilian sector. This has profound implications for both the human condition and the betterment of the environmental concerns that plague today’s world. In essence the entire R&D system needs to be re-examined, and subsequently rebuilt, and the tax payers, the civilian public, need to gain the benefit of inventions they have already paid for but that are being withheld from them under a system of unfair and wrongful military constraints that strangle the trickle down of new invention and innovation from furthering adequate progress in the civilian sector.

BBC News (December 8, 2008): “The runway at Stansted Airport has reopened following a protest by more than 50 environmentalists. Is active demonstration always the best option? Climate action group Plane Stupid said that the action was intended to draw attention to CO2 emissions from the aviation industry and the protesters intended to occupy the area for as long as possible. “

We know that direct protest is often naive. It is technically naive and politically naive. Unfortunately that good intentioned means, and what is often a lack of adequate effect, as well as difficulties that are sometimes faced by protestors who are ill prepared to withstand some of the pressures that today’s behemoth industries and powers can exert, tend to work against that type of process. Besides that it isn’t dialogue and it is not a creative solution. We need ideas, communication, not placards, marching and shouting, which tend to belittle the problem, rather than declaring its severity and offering creative solutions.

We know that radically new engines have been developed in the USA that have potential for extreme fuel savings and reduction in emissions beyond previous expectations. They are much smaller, much quieter, and much more efficient. They can carry heavier loads, use less materials in manufacture and certainly less fuel. Materials savings are very significant when we consider the size and complexity of the average jumbo jet engine.

Of course we run up against the difficulties involved in gaining release of new technology. That is true even when there is a desperate need for that technological advance in the civilian sector, and less and less need for it in the military sector. Declining military need does not necessarily open the way to release of new inventions. Increasing civilian need, and the needs of the environment in particular, do not help the matter either. Similarly the tendency is to allow civilian, private sector, R&D to work unguided, sometimes obstructed and misinformed or even misdirected, to reinvent the wheel as it were. In a time of economic hardship this is a particularly failing strategy. Private sector lacks the fiscal ability and morale to pursue extremely complex, expensive, research and development efforts. Competition between labs and manufacturers in the private, civilian industry, sector further precludes progress. They do not communicate with each other, and do mislead each other, in their quest for a unique breakthrough to desperately sought for profits. The desperation tends to become worse then the economy falters and share holders are circling like vultures seeking to pick at the bones.

Of course we find the same scenario in other areas other than aerospace. We find it in power generation and conversion. There are more efficient, more advanced, designs available to the military sector, but not to the civilian sector. It is not limited to that. It pervades almost every field of human endeavor, ranging from medicine to every form of motive power, communications, aerospace, shipping, power generation, and so forth. There is something for everyone in that military Santa Claus’s black bag of inventions. The same power that could in minutes destroy the world, can benefit humanity and potentially save it.

We do need further R&D efforts led by government in a time when private sector and pork barrel R&D are suffering cuts. That is mandatory. Naive protest and reliance on privatized, free enterprise, progress must be considered to be at an end, with its near fatal reliance on brute competition. The establishing of more nationalized laboratories for practical civilian oriented research and development of new inventions is a must. We cannot rely on military trickle down for progress in the civilian sector. We see the results in the world and the results are far from good. Similarly the waste of good minds, creative talents, skills, and resources, in a system where everyone might only be reinventing the wheel is abominable tragedy and extremely grievous loss. That system must change. Cooperative research and development has far more future. Unfortunately it is primarily in the military R&D sector that cooperation was possible, therefore more rapid and effective technical advancement. (The lie that that is untrue, and the lie that free enterprise, privatized, non cooperative competitive R&D are the method of choice, have long been promoted as part of a government ideology and its misinformation, disinformation campaigns.)

Now that “pork barrel” military spending in the USA is being severely cut, the whole infrastructure of R&D will need to be re-examined and restructured. It cannot continue in a business as usual mode. It will have to be changed. Similarly there needs to be consideration of what has been developed using tax payers dollars, and hidden away on the military shelf, inclusive of advanced and more efficient aerospace technologies, but far from limited to that, which has potential for solving real problems in the civilian sphere. Environmental issues, and reduction of greenhouse gases in aviation, is one such area. No one knows as much about getting more range for less fuel, lightening the weight of technology involved, safety in flight, and new aerospace designs than the military R&D establishment. It is a time when some of those inventions needs to be made more readily available, for adoption into the immediate needs of the civilian sector. In this time of systemic failure, and worsening environmental, human and economic disaster it remains the responsibility of governments such as the government of the United States of America to rebuild its research and development capabilities, and to utilize its existing new technologies and technological designs, for the betterment of the human condition, not only solely and exclusively for its destruction. That includes the withholding of extremely valuable inventions that already exist and are much needed by the civilian sector.

Robert Morpheal

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