Recently watched the movie 'The Pentagon Wars' which describes the problematic development of the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle which the movie describes as "a troop carrier that can't carry troops, a reconnaissance vehicle that's too conspicuous to perform reconnaissance, and a quasi-tank with less armor than a snow blower but has enough firepower to take out half of downtown Washington." In Senate hearings described in the movie, the US Army spent $14 billion over 17 years developing the Bradley.
The movie is in a semi-documentary style and is insanely hilarious (in a very black comedy way) and is similar to movies such as Dr.Strangelove and Catch-22. The more hilarious the movie gets, the more strongly it makes its point about the ludicrousness of the weapons development process. We see the US Army performing tests that are guaranteed to succeed (missile defense, anyone ?) and career-minded, egotistic, deranged bureaucrats at the Pentagon who put their careers before peoples lives. Some scenes such as the 'Office of Ruminant Procurement' and the use of sheep for "vaporific" testing are just hilarious. The movie is brilliant political satire very skillfully executed.
The movie is based on the book "The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard" by James Burton (chronicling his real life case). I suspect that if we dig just a little deeper into the dense, seemingly impenetrable web of defense programs and weapons procurement, it's down the rabbit hole.
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