Homeland Security Woes

Originally Posted by Master Thief

Disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful. Turf fights? Are they 13 fighting over who owns the playground? People's lives are on the line.

You seem to be unfamiliar with the nature of bureaucracies and other such government organizations, which have long loved to engage in turf wars with each other, particularly when there exists some kind of overlap in responsibility. Expecting different would require changing the nature of bureaucracy, which most beings short of God would find difficult.

The problem affects the military services, too. The Air Force, for instance, is particularly notorious for this.

(Also, you don't need such long strings of periods after sentences. One is all you need, but if you want to use ellipses, you only need to use three.)

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Master Thief

In what way? I don't actually pay much attention to our military beyond what veterans tell me about their tours of duty.

There are plenty of examples, but the best came soon after World War II and the establishment of the Air Force as an independent service. The Air Force was then keen to take over as much military aviation as they could, which would have meant in addition to the separation of themselves from the Army, them absorbing Marine aviation and the elimination of the Navy's carrier fleet. The Navy was not happy about this, and fought tooth and nail against the Air Force and the Pentagon's civilian leadership, which supported the Air Force's position. The event went down in history as the Revolt of the Admirals.

Another example was the A-10. Based on experience in Vietnam, the A-10 was designed to be a premier ground attack plane, which it was (and still is). However, it didn't fit with the Air Force's idea of what it should be; ground support aircraft are less than glamorous when compared to their strategic bombers and supersonic jet fighters. After Vietnam, the Air Force wanted to cancel the program. The Army, which has a vested interest in ground support aircraft being available, was unhappy about this decision. In response, they said they would be happy to take the A-10 of the Air Force's hands if they didn't want it. The idea of the Army having its own fixed-wing air element was even more intolerable to the Air Force than having to put up with the ugly things, so they backed down and kept them.

There's nowhere I can't reach.