The Defense Department recently rewarded the Raydon Corporation over $36 million dollars to develop eleven “Virtual” Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP). While these vehicles are critical to protecting troops from IED’s and other explosives in both Iraq and Afghanistan, $3.3 million per virtual MRAP is nearly three times the amount it takes to build an actual MRAP.

From defense.gov:

Raydon Corp., Daytona Beach, Fla., was awarded on July 9 a $36,355,550 firm-fixed-price contract.  This contract is for 11 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle virtual trainers for the Army National Guard.  Work is to be performed in Daytona Beach, Fla., with an estimated completion date of Nov. 30, 2011.  Over 50 bids were solicited with one bid received.

It should go without saying that I want our troops to have everything and anything they need at their disposal. If this MRAP simulators are something we need, great, but would it kill the Dept of Defense to get more than one bid?

Or better yet, why not just use the money to buy 36 actual MRAP’s send 25 over to Afghanistan and Iraq and keep 11 for actual training?

(h/t to Danger Room)

Well the Obama administration has solved it:  overpaid soldiers are not only ruining combat readiness (the 9 years of war has nothing to do with that) but bankrupting the government.

Pace a Newsmax.com story. Apparently the military is bloated and “eating us alive.” The system of government health care forced on service members should be continually ignored because a decrease in service member pay will cover it all.  Never mind that two wars going on 9 years now requires the type of leadership and experience that only those previous 9 years can bring and that retention should be a top priority.  And lest we forget that the federal government has been spending like a drunken sailor on car companies and mortgages.

Forget that, it’s the men and women who go to places like Afghanistan and Iraq to fight people who will literally cut your head off for being a Westerner that should take the hit.  To be completely honest I have a very good feeling that most soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen alike would voluntarily sacrifice all but a basic inflation/cost of living raise if they could trust that the money wouldn’t be used to further socialize the nation.

Stephen Colbert last night ripped Julian Assange, the supposed founder of Wikileaks, about editorializing the death of suspected terrorists in Iraq. Of course as Colbert pointed out earlier in the episode, no one really knows who runs, maintains, or works for Wikileaks because they want their privacy, go figure. Anyway you can check out the video, Here, and watch Colbert lay into this guy a bit.

The best part of this is Colbert calling him out on what we all know to be true,

“You have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called ‘collateral murder.’ That’s not leaking, that’s a pure editorial.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks for finally asking some hard questions about this Mr. Colbert.

PS- sorry I couldn’t embed it, it was being weird and I ran out of patience.