Pentagon Wars

Major General Partridge:
I'm not going to sit here and tell you the Paveway never missed.

Madame Chairwoman:
It missed by a mean distance of five miles, and nearly fifty percent of the time.

Major General Partridge:
You know, in baseball, a guy that hits .400 is considered pretty damned great.

Congressman #1:
In baseball, the losing team isn't killed by their opponents.

Major General Partridge:
We have had some spectacular successes.

Congressman #1:
Such as?

Major General Partridge:
That's classified information!

Caspar Weinberger:
Please be seated. This will be brief, as I'm needed at the Oval Office. I'd like to call your attention to this morning's New York Times. If you'll turn to the editorial page? It essentially says that every weapon we produce is an over-priced piece of junk. Now, that's not news, critics have said it for years. What was news to me touched on our supposedly spectacular "Sgt. York" Anti-Aircraft Gun. It says that there when the "Sgt. York" proved incapable of hitting airplanes, we test-fired it at hovering helicopters. When it failed to hit hovering helicopters, we test-fired it at stationary targets, and it missed those. Now is this possible, General Keane?

Keane:
There was a problem with the proximity fusing.

Caspar Weinberger:
According to this, one missile locked on to a ventilation fan in the latrine, and destroyed the latrine! Were we test-firing at latrines that day?

Col. Robert Laurel Smith:
That's one hell of a cannon.

Jones:
That's the problem.

Col. Robert Laurel Smith:
What is?

Jones:
You go out on the battlefield with this pecker sticking out of your turret, and the enemy's going to unload on you with everything they got. Might as well put a big red bullseye on the side.

Col. Robert Laurel Smith:
But it's a troop carrier, not a tank.

Jones:
Do you want me to put a sign on it in fifty languages, "I am a troop carrier, not a tank. Please don't shoot at me?"

Major General Partridge:
We take atoms and molecules, and by the time we're finished with them, they're everything from combat boots to bombs, the kind of bombs no one from the other side will ever see until the damn thing's plowing down their chimney like Santa Claus from hell!

Major General Partridge:
If the army acted on the advice of every Tom, Dick and Harry who had an opinion on these matters, we'd all end up with a bunch of B-52s powered by outboard motors.

Caspar Weinberger:
Frankly, I don't appreciate calls from reporters and congressmen asking me why nothing we are working on works and I can't answer them because the men in charge of developing these systems tell me everything is just peachy.

Major General Partridge:
But even a heat-seeking missile can miss a target.

Madame Chairwoman:
General, it says here that you taped electric hotplates to the surface of the vehicle to help your heat-seeking missile find its target, and that the surface temperature of the vehicle was so high it could have fried an egg at twenty feet!

Major General Partridge:
The Paveway is one hell of a bomb. Laser-guided, state-of-the-art.

Madame Chairwoman:
And it proved what? That we have an effective weapon as long as the enemy allows us to build a two-story crane over their tanks?

Jones:
Where am I supposed to put the extra ammo?

Col. Robert Laurel Smith:
I don't know.

Jones:
You've already got 30,000 rounds of machine gun ammunition, now he wants to add 30-millimeter shells?

Col. Robert Laurel Smith:
The general wants his ammo.

Jones:
He can't have his ammo, not unless he runs alongside this thing carrying it.

Col. Robert Laurel Smith:
In summation, what you have before you is...

Sgt. Fanning:
A troop transport that can't carry troops, a reconnaissance vehicle that's too conspicuous to do reconnaissance...

Lt. Colonel James Burton:
And a quasi-tank that has less armor than a snow-blower, but carries enough ammo to take out half of D.C. THIS is what we're building?

Major Sayers:
The Brits did a study on aluminum.

Col. J.D. Bock:
That would be the same aluminum sheathing used on the Bradley, sir.

Major Sayers:
When hit by a shell, it has a tendency to burn, and when it burns it gives off a toxic gas.

Major General Partridge:
Goddamnit! We fought a revolution so we wouldn't have to pay any attention to the f***ing British!

Brig. General Robert Laurel Smith:
Are you out of your mind, Colonel? If the Pentagon had their choice of busting us or nailing a Soviet spy, they would choose us in a heartbeat!

Lt. Colonel James Burton:
Who exactly is "us," General?

Brig. General Robert Laurel Smith:
There are some people who work in the Pentagon who are fed up watching billions of dollars thrown away on defective weapons upon which our troops are supposed to stake their lives. People like you, Colonel. We are the enemy!

Lt. Colonel James Burton:
To whom?

Brig. General Robert Laurel Smith:
To majors who want to be colonels, to colonels who want to be generals, to generals who want that fourth star, you bet we are the enemy! Nobody moves up without getting things done! So what you don't want to be is the one who drops the ball, 'cause if you're the one who drops the ball: no promotion! no star! no cushy job with a contract when you retire!

Lt. Colonel James Burton:
You know what's really ironic? General Omar Bradley was a brilliant tactician, and a great leader. No ego, just did the job. And he always looked out for the morale and safety of his men. And then they go and put his name on THIS thing. Talk about a kick in the ass.

Major General Partridge:
Tell Major Sayers I'm busy.

Major General Partridge:
What? I'll have his ass in a sling so fast...

Congressman #1:
Did you, or did you not confront Colonel Burton at the Pentagon pharmacy and say to him, "If I hear one more word about your - expletive deleted - report, you're gonna be sitting on your brains"?

Major General Partridge:
Does that sound like me, sir?

Major General Partridge:
Just because the tests didn't turn out the way Colonel Burton thought they would, was no reason to suspect there was anything devious going on.

Madame Chairwoman:
I ask you General, filling the fuel tanks with WATER before a test to check the combustibility of those tanks, that wasn't devious?

Major General Partridge:
If the tanks had been filled with fuel, there's a good chance the vehicle would have exploded.

Congressman #1:
Isn't that the point?

Major General Partridge:
If the vehicle had exploded, we wouldn't be able to run additional tests!

Major General Partridge:
All right, let's just make the fuselage in Michigan and the landing gear in Mississippi! Yeah, by all means, let's keep Congressman Groves and his blood-sucking buddies happy!

Major General Partridge:
Every other year, Congress decides we're spending too much money, a bunch of eggheads put their pointy little heads together and come up with a plan. This year it's the Joint Live-Fire Test Program. So now we've got the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines doing a circle-jerk over weapons testing, and you get to hold the big dick!

Madame Chairwoman:
Am I to understand you were not in favor of the tests Col. Burton proposed?

Major General Partridge:
Absolutely not.

Madame Chairwoman:
Absolutely not yes or absolutely not no?

Major General Partridge:
Absolutely not absolutely.

Lt. Colonel James Burton:
This is not just a report, it's a deadly weapon.

Sgt. Fanning:
Sir, an M-16 is a deadly weapon. A report is just a pile of paper, unless you're planning to inflict a lot of extremely vicious paper cuts.

Madame Chairwoman:
Seventeen years, and fourteen billion dollars of the taxpayers' money, to design and build one armored vehicle.

Lt. Colonel James Burton:
I'll buy the army a new goddamn door.

Col. J.D. Bock:
You can't afford a door like that; do you see what it stood up to?

Lt. Colonel James Burton:
Exactly! Some SPITBALL from Romania!