Bureaucratic Wrestling Over the Trophy

This NBC Nightly News report by Lisa Myers on the fight between the US Army and the Pentagon over the fielding of the Israeli designed anti-RPG weapon known as the "Trophy" is just another example of the bureaucratic fight that sprouts up between the different branches of our armed forces and their bosses in the Pentagon. I'm all for our military going to US based contractors like Raytheon to develop such weapons but we need to be willing to go around the bureaucracy rules and use a system that is already on the shelf and is being fielded by the Israelis. I guess the US Army is still a little miffed at the Pentagon after Secretary Rumsfeld and the rest of the Pentagon brass canceled their much loved Crusader(a self propelled long-range howitzer) and other weapon platforms. Here's hoping that the Pentagon wins this one and can rush some of these "Trophy's" to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It'll at least give our soldiers one less thing to worry about, If only the Israelis had some new technology on the shelf to ward off IEDs.

Update

Here's the second part of Lisa Myers report on the turf fight between the Army and Pentagon over the "Trophy."