Heidi Grant, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for international affairs, said that Air Force arms sales doubled from $4.7 billion in 2005 to $10.5 billion in 2011, before vaulting to $38.3 billion in 2012 because of a huge F-15 sale to Saudi Arabia. Grant said she expected Air Force arms sales to remain around $10 billion in the foreseeable future.
The Air Force currently oversees 2,800 foreign military sales cases valued at $138 billion in 100 countries, she said. "I see the caseload and the dollars continuing to increase."
William Swanson, chief executive of Raytheon Co , told Reuters in an interview that he and his top executives had planned 162 meetings over the coming days. "We are overbooked."
Before and during the Second World War, American industries had successfully converted to defense production as the crisis demanded, but out of the war, what Eisenhower called a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions emerged. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience Eisenhower warned, [while] we recognize the imperative need for this development.we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence...The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Eisenhower cautioned that the federal government's collaboration with an alliance of military and industrial leaders, though necessary, was vulnerable to abuse of power. Ike then counseled American citizens to be vigilant in monitoring the military-industrial complex.
Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
You do realize that the manufactures are the ones making a bulk of the money not the tax payers right? Last time I checked the US military does not build anything.
