NIXON: Bob, they’re telling me we need the E-7 Wedgetail. Big airplane. Radar on top. Looks like a 737 with a canoe strapped to it.
HALDEMAN: That’s the general configuration, Mr. President.
NIXON: Don’t get technical with me.
HALDEMAN: I’ll try not to, sir.
NIXON: And then the eggheads from Chantilly come in. Charts, folders, little arrows going around the planet. Space-based AMTI, they say. Persistent tracking, they say. Global coverage. Bob, any time a man says “global coverage,” he’s either selling you satellites or shaving cream.
HALDEMAN: Which eggheads from Chantilly, sir?
NIXON: What do you mean, which eggheads?
HALDEMAN: NRO or SDA?
NIXON: That’s exactly what I mean. Too many outfits. Too many letters. We used to have departments. Now we have alphabet soup with clearances.
HALDEMAN: The NRO people would be the quiet ones. The SDA types would be the ones saying “proliferated architecture.”
NIXON: Proliferated architecture. Sounds like a disease you get from a federal building.
HALDEMAN: It’s contagious in budget hearings.
NIXON: I don’t like it. I don’t like any of it. First they put cameras in space. Then radars. Then they tell me the airplane is obsolete. Then some damned Colonel with a slide rule says we need a Space Force.
HALDEMAN: That term may test poorly.
NIXON: Test poorly? Bob, it sounds like a toy line. Space Force. They could make a television show to sell the toys; the boys at Mattel would make an absolute killing.
HALDEMAN: The Air Force would object to that characterization.
NIXON: The Air Force would object to breathing if the Navy got appropriations for lungs.
HALDEMAN: That’s probably true.
NIXON: They’re out to get me, Bob.
HALDEMAN: The Air Force?
NIXON: The whole blue-suiter crowd. The bomber crowd, the missile crowd, the fellows who sit around drawing arrows over Poland. They want a new branch, new uniforms, new generals. And once they get space, they’ll look down at the White House and say, “There he is.”
HALDEMAN: From Earth orbit, sir, the White House is a fairly small target.
NIXON: Don’t reassure me with geometry.
Pentagon’s Mindset On E-7 Radar Aircraft It Tried To Axe Has Completely Changed: Hegseth
E-7s to replace the Air Force's dwindling and aging fleet of E-3s are even more sorely needed now after one of the latter was lost to an Iranian attack.
twz.com/air/pentagons-mindse…