[Pontiac]

Congress needs to keep its mouth shut and let the Pentagon make the decision. I know that the military has the ability to make mistakes, but most of those mistakes are caused by politicians sticking their noses where they don’t belong.

The Pentagon may not be quite as vulnerable to political sway as the Congress but they are not far behind.

The Pentagon has a bad reputation of generals retiring and taking jobs with contractors whose projects they governed and evaluated.

So would be careful of taking the Pentagons word on the value of any given piece of hardware.

[TheNewPundit]

That is a good point, the generals in the pentagon are pretty much politicians.
But they are further away from the politics and I think they are more likely to make the decision based on what the soldier needs than some chud in Congress who is trying to get re-elected.

[Half Vast Conspiracy]

So would be careful of taking the Pentagons word on the value of any given piece of hardware.

Yes...and be even more careful in taking the manufacturer's word on the value of a piece of hardware.