Loren Thompson Quotes (41 Quotes)


    They're largely meeting their quotas in the midst of an increasingly unpopular war, They're barely pulling in a handful of people in a country of 300 million. What these numbers show is the average recruiter is bringing in one recruit a month. That's not a great performance.

    Bringing in somebody from management to install that rotor blade doesn't seem likely.

    This is really about a war plan that went wrong based on a series of bad decisions that reflected really abysmal intelligence.

    He has always taken the role of a controversial visionary whose job is to articulate a new path forward to people who don't want hear it.

    This is very good news for Boeing at a time when its space operations seemed to be faltering.


    They're expecting that the government will publicly disclose its approval of the transaction, with conditions, this month.

    The entire Marine force was designed around the concept of amphibious warfare, which is a good deal different from the kind of conflict they're fighting in Iraq today, hundreds of miles from the sea. The Marines are a light force they kick in the door but they are not supposed to occupy all the rooms.

    You have to wonder where the Army thinks it's going after Iraq.

    The British are going to spend billions on this, and they're concerned they won't really understand the technology of what they're buying. They don't want to be treated like a Third World arms dealer. They're saying, ' If you can't trust us, how can we trust you

    What happened here is that the technology enthusiasts got far beyond what the laws of physics would allow.

    Part of the story on space radar can't be told because it concerns the most sensitive missions of government satellites.

    The big question going forward is how intensive the military commitment to Iraq remains. If it stays at current levels, then the Army is facing a recruiting challenge every month for years to come.

    The Army is doing most of the fighting in a very unpopular war. That means no amount of money is going to make recruiting an easy job.

    Having already gone through a bad aircraft choice once, the Army wants to make absolutely certain that this time it picks the right aircraft.

    Although they may not have won the original competition in an entirely proper manner, they've got a pretty strong track record in developing these kinds of weapons.

    A prolonged shut down of spare parts production potentially endangers Army readiness. There's no way Sikorsky can maintain a high rate of production without the Teamsters on the line.

    Since it's actually a handful of nuts with no real resources at their command, it's a little hard to see why such imagery is appropriate.


    It is so uncommon for senior military officers in the United States to criticize civilian leaders that it has to make an impression on the White House and Congress.

    This is an interesting twist on an argument that the Air Force has been pursuing for some time on the need to cut its purchases of Joint Strike Fighters. The Air Force has settled on a number of about 1,100.

    During the Cold War, the Guard was an afterthought. There were sound reasons then why the Guard was less equipped than the active force. But in a post 9-11 world, that model no longer works.

    It's hard to overstate how important this technology is to future U.S. military plans.

    It's not hard to see where this story ends -- he won't be effective in office. He's losing his ability to execute his agenda.

    Rumsfeld was a buffer between the president and public criticism and staying behind him was a sign of Bush's strength. Now Rumsfeld is becoming the cause of the criticism and standing behind him could be interpreted as a sign of weakness.

    There is a huge demand for spare parts that only Sikorsky can meet. Without the Teamsters, the company can't maintain a coherent production schedule.

    It's time for the administration to do a fundamental reassessment of what it is that we are willing to do in order to stabilize Iraq. The United States needs to draw a line in terms of how deep it is willing to be drawn into Iraqi domestic politics.

    So far the Democrats look like better news for the defense industry than the Republicans, ... I don't see how anyone could disagree. The Democrats are on the record wanting to spend more money than Bush does. The Gore plan envisions spending 10 to 11 billion more a year on defense, whereas the Bush plan sees half as much (of an increase).

    If you're Frank Lanza, you're getting on in years, you don't have a clear succession plan in place, and your share price may be as high as it's going to get. Why wouldn't you be thinking about selling

    If it doesn't get the money, at some point down the road, Northrop is going to have to raise the cost of building warships to cover the cost of doing business.

    Gordon England has believed since he was in industry that the acquisition system is broken. If given the opportunity, he'll push to change almost every aspect of the way the Pentagon does business because he believes billions of dollars are being wasted.

    As the war in Iraq drags on, the Army is accumulating a collection of problems that cumulatively could call into question the viability of an all-volunteer force.

    What you see in these examples is that the Nunn-McCurdy cost breaches cover a lot of diversity in terms of causes and consequences. To punish programs equally for such different difficulties is not constructive.

    There has been a lot of talk about the appropriate head count for the National Guard. But the actual number of National Guard soldiers is far less important than how well-equipped each of those soldiers is.

    If we're going to bomb Iran, it's a long time off in the future, and we're certainly not going to use nuclear weapons to do it.

    Obviously, the Teamsters are counting on all that work to create a problem that management can only solve by caving in to their demands.

    Cutting-edge military technology today is very similar to cutting-edge commercial technology. It's not clear we can control any of these dual-use technologies to stop them from reaching enemy hands.

    The government should never have tried to develop one system to meet the very different needs of the Army and Navy.

    It's just to guarantee that we're not left blind against an enemy missile launch.

    An invisible line has been crossed, and the decline in Rumsfelds tenure has now begun. He has gradually alienated each of his core constituencies, including the Congress, the media, the think tanks, the defense industry and now much of the officer corps.

    If the rules are too demanding, they're going to be hard pressed to find a place to operate other than a desert. When you build a military base, somebody is going to lose their land, somebody is going to object because of noise. But if everybody gets a veto then you're not going to have any new military bases anywhere.

    Cutting that much money from the program clearly foreshadows either program termination or a long delay and major restructuring.


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