WASTEFUL AND DANGEROUS MILITARY EXPENDITURES

A SHORT HISTORY OF MILITARY SPENDING (cont.)

Even more wasteful than colossal expenditures for projects concerning arms and space vehicles that came to some fruition are the costs connected with things that never got "off the ground" at all.  For example, a program in the 1960s for the development of a B-70 bomber--at a cost of $1.34 Billion (almost $10 Billion in 2011 Dollars)--was terminated after production of only two airplanes.  The reason given for the abandonment of this giant investment of time, labor, knowledge, and money, was that its technology had already become obsolete.  And in the mid-1970s, an American anti-ballistic missile system known as "Safeguard," in the course of development by the U.S. Defense Department, was foresaken prior to completion, but not before a waste of $5.7 Billion (almost $24 Billion in 2011 Dollars).

Sometimes the costs involved in the abandonment of a program are greater than those encountered in its creation.  An instance of this is noted in an estimate that the cost of destroying chemical weapons would be up to ten times the costs associated with producing them.

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