Defending Freedom In A Second-Hand Car

Mackenzie Eaglen / January 28, 2010

Yesterday, an Army General penned an op-ed about why the Army needs a new combat vehicle. Most Americans would be shocked to learn that many soldiers serving in the U.S. Army today are riding around in vehicles built in the 1980s based on technology from the 1970s.

While the rest of us are used to a fast-paced, information-accessible real-time culture of i-Phones, Blue Ray, portable video games, tablets to read books, and GPS in our cars, Army soldiers are stuck in the era of Atari.

“The State of the U.S. Military,” a chart book released yesterday by the Heritage Foundation, draws attention to an issue that should be of immediate concern to Washington even though the military warranted only a paragraph of time and attention in the President’s state of the union address last night.

The old age and debilitated condition of many of the Army’s ground combat vehicles and helicopters is simply unacceptable when the nation is asking its soldiers and their families to wage two wars overseas…the longest war in the history of America’s all-volunteer force. (more…)