Monkey.

This is coolbert:

From the web site Fred on Everything we have extracts with commentary, those persons best described as "Military Reformers" proven wrong.

1. "The Fighter Mafia"

"Of Oodle-oops and Error"

"This will bore readers, except military buffs and politics- junkies, into a coma. Apologies. However as a study of the manipulation of the media it may be of some note. Readers interested in more about the Military Reformers and their techniques may read This, an op-ed piece I did before Gulf I [Gulf War One] for the Washington Post."

"I recently found in The American Conservative a piece called Forty Years of the Fighter Mafia, this mafia being a subset of the 'Military Reformers,' who have insisted for many years that weaponry used by the Pentagon 'doesn´t work' because it is too complex . . . "

"Their song was, and is, that America needed simple, robust, reliable weaponry such as the Soviet Union was said to have, instead of the over-technologized equipment that the US favored."

This is the KISS, keep-it-simple-stupid approach!! According to the reformers, the Soviet had it right and the Americans had it all wrong!!

2. "The Military Reformers"

"The tank for midgets, the aluminum fireball, and other strange tales from the camp of those critics who want only to Give Our Boys the Best."

"This will bore most readers to suicide. It is an op-ed I did for the Washington Post in the Eighties, later picked up by Air Force Magazine. Since I recently encountered in The American Conservative yet another piece puffing the Reformers, whom I had to suffer with greatly in the past, I repost this. Apologies to all but military buffs."

"The United States as a nation does not think carefully about the military, an unsatisfactory situation given the dangers of a heavily armed world and the baffling complexity of military questions. One reason for the lack of disciplined analysis is that an odd group in Wash­ington, calling themselves Military Reformers, manages to corrupt thoughtful debate—chiefly by reducing it to clowning."

"The Reformers are diverse, having little in common other than great self-esteem and matching confidence. They include free-lance intellectuals, veterans, employees of the Pentagon, technical men, journalists, men, women, and, if not children, some who are intellectually not much beyond childhood."

"By and large (exceptions can be found to any of this), they believe that we need weapons employing older and simpler technology (which they tend to equate) and that most of our equipment today is badly designed and unreliable, doesn't work, or is unrelated to the realities of combat"

Soviet military equipment so was the thought, able to stand up better in combat, much of that high-tech gear as favored by American military designers not working as hoped.

From "Inside the Soviet Army" the defector Suvorov commenting on the "simplicity" of Soviet military hardware:

"Technology is developing and each year equipment becomes more and more complex. But this does not conflict with the overall philosophy of Soviet designers.  ., . . the iron, unbreakable principle observed by Soviet designers retains its force. Whenever a new piece of equipment is being developed, making the use of highly complex tools and techniques unavoidable . . . The designers will always select the very simplest possible of all the choices open to them."

HOWEVER:

"The simplicity of Soviet weapons surprises everyone. But each type of equipment which is produced is turned out in two variants - - the normal one and the 'monkey-model'."

The 'monkey-model' is a weapon which has been simplified in every conceivable way and which is intended for production in wartime only. [or for export to allies]

To reiterate Soviet era military equipment manufactured in two varieties, one for use by Soviet troops, a second for export only that latter as sold to foreign nations of much greater simplicity.

"I  have seen two variants of the BMP-1 infantry combat vehicle - - one which is issued to the Soviet army and another which is intended for the Soviet Unions's Arab friends. I counted sixty-three simplification which made the second 'monkey-model' different from the original version."

"When one of these 'monkey-models' fell into the hands of Western specialists, they naturally gained a complete false impression of the true combat capabilities of the BMP-1 . . . For what they were looking at was no more than a casing, or a container"

That Soviet paradigm, doctrine and tactics during the Cold War also to present overwhelming and unstoppable NUMBERS to the allied forces of NATO, the "steamroller" in action as has been the case from during the time of Czarist Russian and perhaps even before that.

Reformers with hindsight wrong, high-technologists right? Devoted readers to the blog can comment.

coolbert.