With modern technology, one would think creating most things would be easier, quicker, faster and better. But that's not always the case. Indeed, it is often the opposite.
Chinese interests are currently working on a plan to build a massive canal across Nicaragua to rival the Panama Canal. From what I've read, it will make the Panama Canal look like a ditch.
And why shouldn't it? Look at what they used to build it then, compared to what we have now. Those old steam shovels were decent sized, but by today's standards, they were Tonka toys. A friend of mine told me the other day that while taking a cruise through the canal, he wasn't that impressed. "I know guys in Estevan with equipment that can do that," he said of the locks.
Imagine if the Panama Canal was built with the heavy equipment we now see around Fort McMurray. Wikipedia notes the Culebra Cut (aka Gaillard Cut), the most difficult section of dirt work, had its summit lowered from 64 metres to 12 metres above sea level. That's great, but in the Appalachian Mountains, they regularly do "mountain top removal" in mining for coal. It's an everyday occurrence.
We will see such heavy equipment deployed in Nicaragua, should it come to pass. Indeed, a third set of locks and expansion of the existing Panama Canal is underway right now, at a cost of $5.25 billion US - chump change. I doubt it will take 25,000 lives in order to complete, either.
On some things, technology and know how are making things so much easier. Look at how frequently Apple iterates new versions of the iPhone, for instance. But other things, particularly when it comes to military procurement, make one wonder what on Earth is going on?
Take the Sea King replacement - the Sikorsky S-92 Cyclone. Delayed for years, the federal government is now considering throwing up its hands and opening up a new competition. But why?
It's not like Sikorsky doesn't know how to build helicopters. Igor Sikorsky invented the helicopter. Over the years, most of the U.S. military's large helicopters have been, and still are, Sikorsky birds. That includes the Sea King, Skycrane, Sea Stallion and Super Stallion. Then there's the Black Hawk family of choppers, the mainstay of both the U.S. Army (Black Hawk) and Navy (Sea Hawk). The S-92 Cyclone which Canada is supposed to be buying is a close derivation of this family. So why can't they figure it out?
Then there's the F-35 Lightning II. It's called a "fifth-generation fighter." What is not often mentioned is that the first four generations each took about eight years to develop (sometimes less) from pencils hitting the drafting table to operational status. They didn't have computer-assisted drafting, or CAD, but rather paper blueprints.
The "fourth generation" fighters it is supposed to replace saw a call for proposals in 1972. By 1978 the F-16 was in production and two years later, so was the F-18, which Canada eventually bought. Operational service began in 1980 for the F-16 and 1983 for the F-18.
The precursor program to the F-35 was the Joint Advanced Strike Technology program (later Joint Strike Fighter) that started in 1993. We're still a very long ways away from seeing these planes deployed. In the meantime, it has become the most expensive weapons program in history.
The U.S. Air Force is still flying the B-52 because after several attempts to replace it, namely the B-70 (mach 3 capable, cancelled); B-1A (cancelled, brought back in substantially modified B-1B version); B-2 (cut at 21 planes, with each airframe costing more than their weight in gold at the time of construction); 2018 bomber (which might become the 2037 bomber), they have yet to come up with a more practical, economic heavy bomber.
In Canada, our navy still doesn't have its Arctic patrol vessels.
From the time Albert Einstein and several other scientists signed a letter urging President Franklin D. Roosevelt to develop the atomic bomb, to the Trinity test, the first explosion of a nuclear bomb, it took 2,175 days (five years, 11 months and 14 days). Yet in a similar amount of time, the United States government still has not been able to figure out if the Keystone XL pipeline should be built. Dozens of big-inch pipelines are built around North America at any given time, but apparently this one is special, probably because the proponent has "Canada" in the name.
With robotic manufacturing, material science, and enormous leaps in computing power, we have more knowledge and capability today than science fiction writers could have ever dreamed of a few decades ago. In the process of putting a man on the moon, NASA engineers would have given their first-born in trade for the computer I have on my desk.
Perhaps the reason so many things have become quagmires is because we have become too clever by half. Despite all our advances, Western society has forgotten how to get it done.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
