Noah Shachtman at Defensetech tells Boing Boing, "Here's another sign of the Pentagon's nutty priorities. Despite promises of a 'Manhattan Project' to stop improvised explosives, the Defense Department is devoting about the same money to bomb-halting research as it is for giant blimp development. What's worse, only a tiny fraction of frontline troops are getting the radio frequency jammers that are one of the few proven methods for keeping bombs from going off."
Snip from blog post:
Consider this story, from Defense Technology International.
The 1940s Manhattan Project is estimated to have cost $20 billion. In Fiscal 2006, the Navy plans to spend just $15 million within ONR [Office of Naval Research] on its new drive, with another $15 million to be spread among the Navy's five affiliated research centers: Pennsylvania State University, Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University, and the universities of Texas, Washington and Hawaii. [The Navy recently became the quarterback for counter-bomb research — ed.] Another $15 million may be allocated to other universities outside the affiliate network.
Keep in mind, the Pentagon's fringe-science arm is planning to spend $38 million next year on giant blimp research, and $200 million on "cognitive" computers. So $45 million isn't all that much, in Pentagon terms.
