Most wasteful weapons project after 1900

If it were created during WW2 it would be chambered in .30-06, not .308, effectively making it into a somewhat lighter and more reliable BAR. Don't think that would happen.

How is a semi-auto rifle in any way like the BAR? What I was talking about was a more effective Garand with a bigger magazine capacity.
 

Tovarich

Banned
Has anyone put in a bid for the UK nuclear programme, in its entirety, right from the beginning?
Even the tea & biscuits at the meeting of Atlee's cabinet which OKd it was an extravagance!

(Short post, I know, but I misread the thread title as "Most Tasteful Weapons Project", and having spent 15 minutes trying to find a WMD section in the Harrods catalogue I have no time left to elaborate) :eek:
 
Was German military research in WW2 really that hindered by their operating practice? I always thought that the Germans did pour their scientists together to work on projects, the problem being the number of projects splitting up the scientists.
 

loughery111

Banned
Has anyone put in a bid for the UK nuclear programme, in its entirety, right from the beginning?
Even the tea & biscuits at the meeting of Atlee's cabinet which OKd it was an extravagance!

(Short post, I know, but I misread the thread title as "Most Tasteful Weapons Project", and having spent 15 minutes trying to find a WMD section in the Harrods catalogue I have no time left to elaborate) :eek:

This is pretty much one of those cases where people who think nuclear weapons are bad will think the programs are wasteful in their entirety, and those of us who don't will think that most of them were necessary or useful or at least not a waste. No one is going to be swayed by the other side...:p
 
This is pretty much one of those cases where people who think nuclear weapons are bad will think the programs are wasteful in their entirety, and those of us who don't will think that most of them were necessary or useful or at least not a waste. No one is going to be swayed by the other side...:p

Not really. My argument against the US weapons project was not based on rejection of nuclear deterrence for moral reasons. I argued the 'overkill' programme was of no military value and therefore a waste of money.

The British nuclear weapons programme was openly not driven by military considerations right from the start.

In October 1946, Attlee called a small cabinet sub-committee meeting to discuss building a gaseous diffusion plant to enrich uranium. The meeting was about to decide against it on grounds of cost, when [Ernest] Bevin arrived late and said "We've got to have this thing. I don't mind it for myself, but I don't want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked at or to by the Secretary of State of the US as I have just been... We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs ... We've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.

In the British case the decision to have nuclear weapons was not even remotely to do with their military usefulness. Whether you think they were (and continue to be) a waste of money depends on how much you think British presige is worth and whether British nuclear weapons have truly added to that prestige in a way that money spent elsewhere would not have.
 

loughery111

Banned
Not really. My argument against the US weapons project was not based on rejection of nuclear deterrence for moral reasons. I argued the 'overkill' programme was of no military value and therefore a waste of money.

The British nuclear weapons programme was openly not driven by military considerations right from the start.



In the British case the decision to have nuclear weapons was not even remotely to do with their military usefulness. Whether you think they were (and continue to be) a waste of money depends on how much you think British presige is worth and whether British nuclear weapons have truly added to that prestige in a way that money spent elsewhere would not have.

I wasn't stating the above in response you anything you said; hell, I already admitted to agreeing with you in part, way back when...

As for the second half of the post; I'm not sure to what degree "prestige" was the goal of the British nuclear program, and to what degree they were trying to secure some freedom of action and an independent deterrent, as the French did later on. The quote above could be interpreted either way, or both.

There was, after all, no guarantee that the US wouldn't withdraw back into its former isolationist shell under the strain of long-term military and economic commitments overseas. Were I in Attlee's position, I'd damned well want to make sure that France and the UK would be able to mount a credible resistance to the USSR with only West Germany, Italy, and the Low Countries as allies, if need be.
 
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