13 April 2008

Imagine, if you will, a person tells you he genuinely wants to be your friend - and claims actually to be your friend - at the same time he says he does not trust you and believes you to be a sociopath. Of course, if you believe him, you are a complete fool. (Aside from the obvious, you would be partaking in a script you did not write and one that serves you no purpose.) At the worst, you may be in a position of great risk if you decided to believe him.

Now snap to reality because this one is a doozy:

It seems Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the US Air Force are in a rather briny pickle. Because Boeing subcontracted Alcoa to forge titanium parts on the US Air Force's F-22 Raptor fighter jets and because Alcoa did a sub-par job, using "shoddy manufacturing" techniques, the jets are flying with a "manufacturing defect in crucial titanium supports" with the very likely outcome of causing "a catastrophic failure in flight" that "could result in the loss of the aircraft" (Dominic Gates, "Boeing sues Alcoa over parts for F-22 Raptor fighters," The Seattle Times, 11 April 2008). Apparently, Alcoa "failed to add a crucial extra 20 minutes in the furnace that was needed for proper forging."

Those twenty minutes just cost Alcoa more than $12 million and might just cost the US Air Force the airmen's lives they put at risk in using those jets.

There are a multitude of warning signs blaring a mile a minute here, but the most deafening is the Air Force's decision to use the jets at the same time they claim they "would never do anything that would compromise the safety of our airmen" according to the Air Force's public-affairs officer, Lt. Col. Jennifer Cassidy. How can they claim not to compromise their airmen at the same time they acknowledge that if they use the jets, "a catastrophic failure in flight" will (surely) occur?  (This rather sounds like our person telling us he is our friend but does not trust you and labels you a sociopath in the process.)

This is a shot in the dark, but is it not their (moral) responsibility to avoid a catastrophe, especially one they have been fully warned about? Is there not a pride in maintaining our airmen's lives, rather than knowingly put them at risk that is 100% avoidable? Is it not the point to maintain (rather than jeapardize) an Air Force to protect our skies and fight for whatever it is we believe in?

Is it not a source of pride in the US that we claim to be the best, utilize the best equipment, and leverage the best technologies?

It seems the Air Force is choosing to be the fool, believing rather wrecklessly that it can be the best while utilizing defective equipment just waiting to cause a disaster. Continuing on this path, there is no purpose served except inevitable loss of cataclysmic proportions and even greater costs in the end.

There has to be a point when we call a spade a spade in pursuit of common sensibility and the (moral) responsibility to avoid disaster blaring so stridently in our face...

Of deception and self-deception, how about withdrawing altogether from this sordid game?