Italy gives final approval for longest suspension bridge to Sicily | Hacker News Reader

Italy gives final approval for longest suspension bridge to Sicily

bbc.com

14 points2dvisio7 comments

   “Rome is hoping to classify the bridge as a military expenditure to make it count towards the Nato target of 5% of GDP spent on defence.”

Maybe they can classify explosives as fertiliser and increase their agricultural output.

Eh, sounds about right to me, for example the US interstate highway system is more or less a military program.

“amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”

There is probably a secondary reason. I would assume military expenditures probably have better oversight.

> It would not be the first time that the bridge's building has been held up. Since the first plans for it were drawn up more than 50 years ago, various ideas for it have had to be shelved for various reasons and it has long faced stern opposition.

> This has included concerns that huge amounts of taxpayers' money would be siphoned off by the Sicilian and Calabrian mafias, which have a broad influence over politics and society in southern Italy.

It sounds silly but it fits. NATO's new 5% spending target is somewhat fluff. It's 3.5% for actual defence spending and 1.5% for "critical infrastructure" expenses. It makes sense when you consider most of the infrastructure initally created by NATO countries to counter Russia ends in Germany and envisions a different sort of battleplan, but you could also see it as a way of inflating NATO's apparent military investments.

The term “critical infrastructure” sounds inappropriate for building a new (huge) target that can be rendered useless with minimal intervention.

The Kerch Strait Bridge (aka Crimean Bridge) still stands despite repeated directed hits, albeit occasionally disrupting traffic for extended periods during repairs. The resilience of a bridge during conflict is matter of engineering and defensive tactics. But it does pose the question of whether a large suspension bridge is generally more difficult or easier to defend and repair than a very long box girder bridge.

until the 80s political parties could make money with any public project (more then 30%), then EU auctions stopped the game, and now the only way to drain money for parties is to make some kind of exceptional project (best are earthquakes or other disasters, but unfortunately they are not so frequent): so anything unique (olimpic games, stopping the floating of Venice, etc etc) is worth.

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