Andrew Olmsted dot com: Politics and War

Andrew Olmsted dot com: Politics and War: "Would it be better to make sure that every soldier we send into battle is equipped with the latest and greatest equipment available? Absolutely. But we're not willing to pay that price, and with good reason. One uparmored HMMWV runs $155,000, and the military needs close to 10,000 for operations in Iraq. That would mean we would have needed a stockpile of $1,550,000,000 worth of HMMWVs alone standing by for the operation (and probably more, but call it $1.5 billion for argument's sake). Add to that the costs of maintaining a fleet of uparmored HMMWVs (since they require additional maintenance and training to operate), and you're talking a nontrivial addition to the defense budget. In retrospect it seems cheap, a few billion dollars, but in peacetime any expenditure on the military frequently is seen as expendable when balanced against more constituent-pleasing expenditures like, well, take your pick."