Back in the Cold War they came up with a bright idea called the Bullpup cruise missile. The plan was to arm these guys with nuke warheads and they would be carried by B-52s on bombing missions. The Bullpup would be fired at Soviet fighter bases, anti-aircraft missile batteries and radar stations so the Bombers would be offered no resistance on the way to their targets.

Didn't it ever occur to these geniuses that if you had an aircraft carrying nuke-tipped cruise missiles it wouldn't NEED to "penetrate" deep into heavily-defended enemy territory? It could just stand off safe and far from Soviet air defenses and attack its primary targets from a distance.

The Cold War era was filled with unnecessary (and dangerous) weapon systems like this, technological schemes that were designed to attract DOD contracts, not defend the nation or deter aggressors.

The Reaganites wanted to put MIRVed high accuracy bunker-busting missiles on nuclear submarines, in other words, to convert our most secure and dependable deterrent system into a totally destabilizing first-strike weapon. I personally worked on systems designed to frustrate Soviet second-strike capability. IOW, I was working on a first strike weapon. And I could tell by how they were deploying their systems that they KNEW what we were up to. This is related to my concerns about unnecessary tech. We do these things simply because we can. And because someone will fund them, or because we perceive they will be profitable.

No, I'm not slamming high tech for the sake of slamming it. It has its place, and when its needed, people will use it. Its just that it seems to have an attraction to both the gee-whiz engineering weenies and the Neocons they like to hang out with that far exceeds the potential utility the new tech might have on the battlefield, or the marketplace.

As for self-driving cars, don't tell me you haven't figured that one out yet. They're not making it easier or safer for motorists and commuters. They're trying to come up with ways to fire truck drivers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, and still keep as many internal combustion engines on the road burning fossil fuel as possible.