James Ambrose Quotes

1971 … was the year when, for the very first time, the United States bailed out an industrial firm whose own financial management had driven it to the brink of extinction. The company was Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and the bailout was in the form of a loan guarantee worth $250 million.

The cost of building large airships can be prohibitive. The entry barrier is considerable and could be a show-stopper for large-scale projects.

We buy products for our military and they come in at costs that are so far above what they were supposed to be, because we don't have people that know what they're doing.

Everybody in the real world will agree - the moment a project is behind deadline, quality assurance tends to go out the window.

The Military Industrial Complex. President Eisenhower had it wrong. It’s the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

Reducing future risks requires paying some immediate costs.

The officials responsible for acquisitions [at the Pentagon] are loathe to take risks, since they can be held personally accountable if something goes wrong.

The Pentagon is the Poster Child for waste in Government.

While the Pentagon ultimately awards military contracts, there is a reason for the review process. The Senate's subcommittee on Military Construction's approval carries weight.

As a scientist in charge of space sensors and entire space missions before I was at NASA, I myself was involved in projects that overran. But that's no excuse for remaining silent about this growing problem or failing to champion reform.

The military budget is simply an enormous pork barrel of special privilege, the privileges taking the form of windfall profits, of no-risk profits and, most importantly, of enormous outlays of capital supplied by the Pentagon to arms contractors.

There is, apparently, some law of nature decreeing that all home construction must double in its projected cost and take four times longer than originally anticipated.

We build roads and they cost two and three and four times what they're supposed to cost.

In a democracy you get the army that the people are willing to pay for.

There are hugely creative military leaders who have contemplated just the kind of changes that are needed. In Washington, however, strength lies with the opponents rather than the proponents of change. And the opponents possess the ultimate political weapon of mass destruction. They can accuse leaders who want to challenge the status quo of making America weak. So we’re left with all the systems the country has accumulated to counter every post World War II defense challenge: multiple air forces, multiple expeditionary forces; multiple cyber-commands. We can’t afford what we have. We don’t need much of what we have.

In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

We have been compelled to create an armaments industry of vast proportions.

The way to cut the military budget is to go to the commanding officer of each military facility and tell him he will get another star if he cuts his budget, and we will be trampled in the stampede to save money.

There is a cost for investing in pandemic preparedness, but a much bigger cost for not investing in it.

The cost of deploying one U. S. soldier is the equivalent to the cost of deploying 70 Afghan soldiers.

We have multiple challenges competing for finite resources—–and grotesque uncertainty with regard to the military budget.

The military budget must reflect the threats we face, rather than the budget defining those threats.

I do not need a producer. I need only a good production manager. I need only a man who will give me money.

President Trump recognizes that the F-35 is a very large program - the largest program in the Department of Defense. He wants to make the sure that the American taxpayer is getting the lowest possible cost on the program.

The first thing I learned as a producer is that you have very little control over the life of a project. Anything can stall a film from financing to scheduling to casting. Things fall apart all the time. Don't waste time on something that just won't get made. Try to have as many projects going at one time as you can handle.