> I find it astounding the Pentagon can spend trillions on 'defence' but we can't scrape together the pocket lint to have back up offline infrastructure for the power grid ready to go with staffing and processes in place.
Astounding yes, but it doesn't surprise me. "Defence", no matter the country, and much of aeronautics/astronautics is mostly a jobs creation program. Just look how immensely widespread Airbus, Boeing and EADS are - their operation spans continents, mandated by the lawmakers who fund their programs. No wonder that SpaceX (and Tesla!) who are to a large-ish part privately funded can be so cheap and agile - they simply don't have to account for logistics of transporting all the stuff and produce as much as they can on-site, without nasty politicians shouting from the sideline they want a return (=jobs).
Transformer production doesn't yield to creating many jobs or wide-spread jobs in contrast, and thus it isn't high up on priority lists of politicians. Also, keeping large amounts of spares isn't ideal because the technology itself can date - oils can go rancid, metal can rust, and especially isolator material can break down.
> Also, keeping large amounts of spares isn't ideal because the technology itself can date - oils can go rancid, metal can rust, and especially isolator material can break down.
Couldn't that be a good source of jobs, though? Warehousing, guarding, inspections, ongoing maintenance and replacement, logistics for all this. I think it could achieve both meaningful job creation (particularly if you threw in some procedural inefficiencies under the guise of "national security") and meaningful impact on real defensibility of a country.
Astounding yes, but it doesn't surprise me. "Defence", no matter the country, and much of aeronautics/astronautics is mostly a jobs creation program. Just look how immensely widespread Airbus, Boeing and EADS are - their operation spans continents, mandated by the lawmakers who fund their programs. No wonder that SpaceX (and Tesla!) who are to a large-ish part privately funded can be so cheap and agile - they simply don't have to account for logistics of transporting all the stuff and produce as much as they can on-site, without nasty politicians shouting from the sideline they want a return (=jobs).
Transformer production doesn't yield to creating many jobs or wide-spread jobs in contrast, and thus it isn't high up on priority lists of politicians. Also, keeping large amounts of spares isn't ideal because the technology itself can date - oils can go rancid, metal can rust, and especially isolator material can break down.