Cette fois, ce n’est pas nous, avec notre obsession du JSF & compagnie, qui racontons cette histoire, mais l’excellent Werther<\/a>, sur Antiwar.com<\/em> aujourd’hui<\/a>. C’est la fabuleuse histoire du VH-71, un v\u00e9ritable conte de f\u00e9e de No\u00ebl sur la coop\u00e9ration entre l’Europe et l’Am\u00e9rique en mati\u00e8re d’armement et la formidable rentabilit\u00e9 industrielle et technologique de America the Beautiful<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tL’enti\u00e8ret\u00e9 du billet de Werther est \u00e0 lire pour tout conna\u00eetre de l’extravagante histoire du VH-71, un formidable succ\u00e8s de la coop\u00e9ration transatlantique (comme le fait remarquer Werther, un march\u00e9 pass\u00e9 in illo tempore<\/em> et comme par hasard, entre l’Am\u00e9rique de Bush d’une part, l’Italie de Berlusconi [Agusta] et le Royaume-Uni de Blair [Westland] d’autre part). La pharaonesque flotte de 23 Agusta EH-101 transform\u00e9 en Agusta-USA US-101, puis en Made in USA<\/em> VH-71, revient pour l’instant au contribuable US \u00e0 11 $milliards, ce qui laisse calculer le prix de l’h\u00e9lico solo. Encore n’est-ce pas fini. On planche pour voir comment on pourrait faire mieux.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tQuelques lignes t\u00e9moignent de la verve de Werther:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abNaturally, Congress got involved, because anything involving aerospace contracts means a rich harvest of PAC checks. Forthwith, the cry rang out from Capitol Hill that domestic content was needed. Riding to the rescue was Lockheed Martin, an aerospace megacorporation with no known experience in helicopters since the abortive Cheyenne in the 1960s. They selflessly volunteered to be prime contractor. Bell, an outfit that ought to know something about rotorcraft, came in as a junior partner to Lock-Mart. Together with Augusta and Westland, the consortium marched bravely into the future of politically-guaranteed profits.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbOf course, an off-the-shelf EH-101, reputedly a reasonably usable rotorcraft, was unsuitable either for the imperial pretentions of the presidency, or the needs of domestic porkbarrelling. Thus arose the metamorphosis of the EH-101 into the star-spangled US-101, the public-relations prototype that would ultimately become the military type designation VH-71.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThis helicopter fit for a walking divinity (and\/or his retinue) required nearly 2,000 requirements changes. Given the usual incompetence of the government procurement system, the cost increased apace with the change orders. The Pentagon’s Selected Acquisition Report (its most recent edition) from September 2007 lists the total program cost of VH-71 at $6.5 billion [pdf]. But the latest cost increases and schedule slips suggest that the total program cost may rise to $11 billion: nearly $500 million per aircraft. The cost overruns have become so egregious that the program has been frozen pending examination of alternatives.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbOne may safely assume that, consonant with virtually every U.S. aerospace program ever heard of, the VH-71 will not be cancelled, but \u00a0\u00bbrestructured,\u00a0\u00bb or perhaps stretched out. Anything but cancelled. No other \u00a0\u00bbplatform,\u00a0\u00bb as the military argot would have it, will quite fill the bill. No doubt there are many necessarily expensive add-ons to the original EH-101 required to keep our elected Ozymandias out of harm as he soars above the rabble. But an unawed American might ask: aren’t there better, cheaper alternatives?<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLe VH-71 est le r\u00e9sum\u00e9 caricatural de l’absurdit\u00e9 sur laquelle repose toute pr\u00e9tention europ\u00e9enne \u00e0 coop\u00e9rer avec les USA ou \u00e0 vendre des armements et autres \u00e9quipements a\u00e9ronautiques aux USA. Il y a une incapacit\u00e9 ontologique du Pentagone, avec le soutien de Washington, \u00e0 envisager quelque chose qui ne soit pas enti\u00e8rement American-made<\/em>, par conception-production aux USA, ou par compl\u00e8te transformation-restructuration pour les choses venues d’ailleurs. Certes, les industriels europ\u00e9ens, finauds, vous diront: nous avons vendu aux USA, ce qu’ils en font ne nous int\u00e9resse pas. Sauf que chaque aventure type-VH-71 fait un peu plus reculer cette cause de la coop\u00e9ration US avec l’Europe, heureusement, d’ailleurs, que l’absurdit\u00e9 n’en demeure pas moins, et aussi et surtout le frein \u00e0 la coop\u00e9ration europ\u00e9enne que constitue la chim\u00e8re de la coop\u00e9ration transatlantique.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tLorsque la facture compl\u00e8te du VH-71 sera connue, elle figurera \u00e0 Washington comme un argument imp\u00e9ratif de plus (chaque super-rare cas de coop\u00e9ration \u00e9voluant de la m\u00eame fa\u00e7on) pour s’abstenir la prochaine fois de coop\u00e9rer avec les Europ\u00e9ens. A ce prix-l\u00e0, \u00e9videmment. La soci\u00e9t\u00e9 virtualiste US s’y entend pour censurer, au travers de ses propres extravagances, toute tentative s\u00e9rieuse de coop\u00e9ration avec l’Europe. Quoi qu’il en soit de la r\u00e9alit\u00e9, le VH-71 restera \u00e0 Washington comme un exemple de plus de la folie de travailler avec les Europ\u00e9ens qui ne peuvent produire de la quincaillerie technologique de fa\u00e7on rentable, comme ils font aux USA Encore quelques coups comme le VH-71 et il y aura rupture des relations diplomatiques des USA avec l’Europe pour brigandage caract\u00e9ris\u00e9 dans le chef des Europ\u00e9ens.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \tCela \u00e9crit avec tout le venin n\u00e9cessaire, ajoutons que le programme VH-71 doit \u00e9galement \u00eatre consid\u00e9r\u00e9 comme le sympt\u00f4me d’une situation extr\u00eamement grave. Il y a quelques int\u00e9ressantes remarques de Werther sur la pathologie terrifiante de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 US, emport\u00e9e dans un tourbillon d’inefficacit\u00e9, de paralysie et d’impuissance \u00e0 produire quoi que ce soit d’une fa\u00e7on humainement acceptable. La complexit\u00e9 de cette soci\u00e9t\u00e9, ajout\u00e9e \u00e0 sa psychologie malade, conduit \u00e0 une situation o\u00f9 la production de biens technologiquement avanc\u00e9s acc\u00e9l\u00e8re l’\u00e9volution vers le chaos, l’impuissance et la d\u00e9structuration de cette soci\u00e9t\u00e9, jusqu’\u00e0 la destruction finale.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abThe VH-71 is an example of the Potlatch syndrome, the tendency of overweening rulers to be extravagant for the sake of being extravagant. Potlatch was the practice of certain Indian tribes to demonstrate the wealth and power of their chief by piling up food, trade goods, and the like, and destroying them in a fire. Such a society, it goes without saying, is doomed. In less wantonly spectacular ways, many ancient states essentially practiced the same custom.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe American anthropologist Joseph Tainter wrote an intriguing work titled The Collapse of Complex Societies, wherein he posited that as a society matures and becomes more complex, its rulers (and beneficiaries) tend to evolve ritual behavior that does not benefit the survival of the society as a whole. On the contrary, they become so dedicated to defending an ever more ostentatious and extravagant status quo that their behavior actually contributes to the collapse of the society over which they reign.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00bbThe Mayan big men exhausted so much of their subjects’ resources on ceremonial pyramids celebrating the greatness of the big men that the society could not sustain the expense. Pyramids, after all, cannot provide habitation, or defense.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n \t\u00abPeasants toiling on a Latifundia at the borders of the late Roman Empire, should they have been overrun by the \u00a0\u00bbbarbarians,\u00a0\u00bb actually found the tribute exacted by the wild barbarian tribes lower than that mulcted by their erstwhile Roman imperial masters. The sustainment costs of the empire, its sybaritic court, and its hideously expensive military, were simply too high by that point. When enough peasants caught on, the Roman Empire was doomed, not by military invasion, but by the fact that its subjects no longer believed the whole imperial contraption benefited them.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \tMis en ligne le 29 d\u00e9cembre 2007 \u00e0 13H03<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cette fois, ce n’est pas nous, avec notre obsession du JSF & compagnie, qui racontons cette histoire, mais l’excellent Werther, sur Antiwar.com aujourd’hui. C’est la fabuleuse histoire du VH-71, un v\u00e9ritable conte de f\u00e9e de No\u00ebl sur la coop\u00e9ration entre l’Europe et l’Am\u00e9rique en mati\u00e8re d’armement et la formidable rentabilit\u00e9 industrielle et technologique de America… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7330,7331,3435,3194,7332,3762],"class_list":["post-69553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-agusta","tag-ah-101","tag-cooperation","tag-pentagone","tag-vh-71","tag-werther"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}