Modern military contractors vs. 'Iron Man'

By Jeremy Hsu

updated 2:40 p.m. ET May 2, 2008

When superhero Tony Stark isn't donning his Iron Man armor to personally rough up villains, he's pitching the U.S. military on new gadgets to fight the War on Terror.

"They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire," Stark tells a group of military officers in "Iron Man." "I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once."

The Marvel comic book character's suit embodies a futuristic technology that may enhance human capabilities in war, but the current battlefield belongs to a growing swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and robots that could someday give even Iron Man a run for his money. UAVs clocked more than 500,000 hours in the air by the beginning of 2008, performing many of the tasks normally done by piloted aircraft.

"There's a scene of Iron Man flying against [F-22] Raptors," said Pete Singer, Brookings Institute defense expert and author of the forthcoming book "Wired for War." "Those are among the last generation of manned fighter jets."

Someone still needs to develop and sell those manned or unmanned technologies, and that's where Stark might be the new face of military contractors. Private individuals and companies might not be as visible as UAVs soaring above the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq, yet their role has grown just as dramatically during the recent conflicts.

Howard Hughes, the original Halliburton
Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr. , is based partly on real-life wealthy industrialist Howard Hughes, who lent his eccentric genius and financial resources to oddball U.S. military efforts during World War II and the Cold War.

Hughes built and piloted many of his own aircraft, including the Hughes H-1 Racer that he flew to set a transcontinental airspeed record in 1937.

Marvel / Paramount Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr., is based partly on real-life wealthy industrialist Howard Hughes.

"He was really doing this sort of thing even before there was a military-industrial complex," said Alex Roland, military historian at Duke University. He compared Hughes to a "one-man Halliburton empire," referring to one of the largest defense contractors currently working in Iraq.

The military-industrial complex really took off in the 1950s as the United States sought new weapons and technologies for its growing military, which gave Hughes and other military contractors a market to sell everything from helicopters to satellites.

Yet some Hughes projects contracted by the military simply fizzled. The all-wood "Spruce Goose" remains the largest plane ever built; it was meant to carry troops safely across the Atlantic during World War II, but was completed after the war and flew just once. Another effort that foundered involved building a secret ship that could raise a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine from the bottom of the Pacific.

Such doomed investments were just one symptom of the troubles that plagued the early military-industrial complex. A "revolving door" allowed military officers to join companies that they had just awarded defense contracts to, while private executives went to work for the Pentagon and funneled contracts back to their companies, Roland said. He added that tightened regulations now prevent many of those earlier abuses of the system.

Cycles of military spending
Still, those powerful interests combined with the cry of "how much is enough for defense?" during the Cold War to make a seemingly irresistible call for bigger and pricier weapons, according to Roland.

And the military-industrial complex remains hungry today for increased funding. Private companies are eager for contracts, the military looks for next-generation weapons , and some in Congress jockey for new defense-related jobs for their districts.

"That's how Dad did it, that's how America does it and it's worked out pretty well so far," Stark says in the movie.

Roland observed that U.S. military spending has gone up and down in cycles largely unrelated to the constant pressure from the military-industrial complex, with spikes in 1940, 1960, 1980 and again during the Bush administration.

The trouble arises when the sense of national urgency that accompanies those spikes can lead to relaxed government oversight, just as millions of new defense dollars suddenly become available and companies rush in. Such has been the case with the latest boost in military spending, Roland said.

However, there's now the additional twist of reduced competition among contractors.

"From 1986 to 2006, the number of Pentagon prime contractors competing on major defense programs went from twenty to six," said Singer, the Brookings Institute defense expert. "There's often just two going at it, competing on both sides of [contract] bundles, so that they win no matter what."

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