War games
2nd January 2010
Consumer products and video-gaming technology are boosting the performance and reducing the price of military equipment.
There is a long tradition of technology developed for military use filtering through to consumer markets: satellite-navigation systems designed to guide missiles can also help hikers find their way, and head-up displays have moved from jet fighters to family cars. But technology is increasingly moving in the other direction, too, as consumer products are appropriated for military use.
That’s because consumer products have to make money, so are under constant pressure to be the best that they can be for as little cost as possibie; common mythology to the contrary notwithstanding, neither of these concepts apply to equipment used by government agencies. (I won’t make the obvious reference to the Air Traffic Control system, merely ask when was the last time you read an article about the government spending lots of time and money upgrading/buying a computer system only to have it crash and burn horribly?) The reason for ‘$900 toilet-seat syndrome’ is because a private business that wants to make a profit will look to see whether something they need is already on the market, and then create their design around as many commercially-available parts as possible, while a government program will create a design that is everything they ever wanted it to be and then go out and have custom parts created for it — a process that, as you might expect, costs an arm and a leg (but it’s not their arms or their leg; it’s the taxpayers’ arms and legs).