On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 10:24 AM, J. Andrew Rogers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > One of the basic strategies of the US military that has served it well over > the last several decades is to convert the operational expense of massive, > region-covering hardware into research-fueled CapEx that creates a buffer at > least as hard but with a much smaller logistical footprint -- militaries > live and die on logistical footprints. It turns out that for modern > military systems, the reduced OpEx of more modern designs can fully amortize > the research and CapEx within a decade or so. It is a virtuous cycle of > sorts; the more research that is done, the cheaper a given level of military > power actually is, in inflation-adjusted currency. It is not intuitive and > so many people resist the notion. It might be better to invest the money > for supporting a huge land buffer into research and technology that obviates > the land buffer in the military calculus. It is not only less costly on many > different levels, but investments in technology research tend to pay off for > the broader economy in ways that are hard to predict.
....something which India lacks (hard technology wall). It reminds me of a discussion where the person opined that the USA had no industry and everything was outsourced, either China or India. IMO, he missed seeing that the outsourced work was all repetitive and mundane in nature. The meatier part : thinking, designing and research was still handled by them. A look at the well-endowed research departments of each university is proof of the exciting stuff they are working on whether its agriculture, bio-science, CS, ..... all of which hardly have immediate practical applications, maybe in a few years. That is the crucial difference between India and USA, we buy the technology they create, sometimes paying for out-dated stuff.
