“I couldn’t be more proud to have Electric Boat in our backyard,” Governor Gina Raimondo said at the submarine’s keel-laying ceremony.

Just a few days later, New York Times foreign correspondent and former Providence Journal reporter CJ Chivers wrote this about what seems to be a different General Dynamics product. “A Saudi Arabia-led military coalition used bombs supplied by the United States in an attack on a market in Yemen last month that killed at least 97 civilians, including 25 children.”

If the bomb in question was made by General Dynamics, it would mark the second time a company with significant ties to Rhode Island has made a weapon that was used by Saudi Arabia against civilians in Yemen.

General Dynamics did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An arms expert for Human Rights Watch told RI Future he could not confirm the make of the bomb. “There wasn’t enough left of the bombs to determine when or where it was produced,” said Mark Hiznay. But here’s what we know:

“Remnants” of a GBU-31 satellite-guided bomb, were found at the bombed Yemeni market, according to this Human Rights Watch report. The guided bomb unit “consists of a US-supplied MK-84 2,000-pound bomb,” says the report. General Dynamics “is the only manufacturer of steel forged MK80 Series Bomb Bodies within the National Technology and Industrial Base which conform to the U.S. Department of Defense Technical Package” according to its website.

The weapon in question could be more than 40 years old, Hiznay said. But the United States still sells new versions of the bomb to the Saudis. In November, 2015 the State Department announced it was selling 1,000 GBU-31 bombs to Saudi Arabia, among many other weapons, for $1.29 billion. Human Rights Watch workers suspect the bomb used on March 15 in Yemen was from the 1970’s.

“The US remains a significant supplier of arms to Saudi Arabia,” according to a new report from the Stop Explosives Investment Campaign. “Licensing data for 2015 has not yet been made available, but during the year, the State Department approved six major arms sales to the country, collectively worth US$20.8bn.”

“Numerous human rights and peace organisations have campaigned over the past months to establish an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia,” Frank Slijper of PAX, a Dutch peace organization that is a leading voice on foreign arms sales, told RI Future via email. “When European arms appear to be used by a country for committing war crimes, stopping the arms trade to that country is the logical answer.”

In February, cluster bombs made by Rhode Island-based Textron were implicated for injuring civilians and high failure rates when used by Saudi-led forces in Yemen. The American Friends Service Committee of Southeastern New England plans to protest outside Textron’s headquarters in Providence on April 18.

• Human Rights Watch condemns use of Textron-made cluster bomb
• Textron still makes cluster bombs despite downward global, US trends
• Textron sold cluster bombs to seven foreign governments

General Dynamics is based in Newport News, Virginia and the division that makes the Mk-84 bomb is located in Florida, the weapons were manufactured in Texas. But General Dynamics has operated as Electric Boat, the company’s initial name going back to the early 1900’s, at Quonset since the early 1970’s. Based, in Groton, Conn., Electric Boat employs roughly 3,000 people in Rhode Island.

Both incidents have attracted local and international scrutiny to US companies involved in what President Eisenhower called the military industrial complex, an industry that looms large in the Ocean State.

“The Defense Sector plays a major role in the Rhode Island economy because of its unique ability to undertake large and small-scale basic and applied research and development projects and to push manufacturers to develop innovative products and revamp supply chains to meet production and/or distribution demands of civilian and military projects,” according to a 2014 legislative report on the defense sector in Rhode Island.

There are 32,900 jobs in Rhode Island, 6.2 percent of all jobs in the state, that are supported by the defense industry, according to the report.

About half of the defense-supported jobs in Rhode Island (roughly 16,000) are private sector positions. There are some 6,000 jobs directly working for defense contractors. Ship building, such as Electric Boat’s submarine contract, constitute about 47.7 percent of private defense employment in Rhode Island.

“In 2013, the Private Defense Industry contributed to the creation of $462.5 million in direct income for households in Rhode Island. In addition, the direct contribution of the Private Defense Industry to the state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is estimated at $947.6 million,” the report says.

The defense industry is responsible for more than $100 million in annual taxes, the report says. The average annual salary in Rhode Island’s private sector defense industry is $72,361 while the average salary for education and health services is $37,000 and the average salary in tourism and leisure is $18,000, according to the report.

Meanwhile, the fruits of economic development from the US military industrial complex, whether directly or indirectly, is causing a human rights catastrophe in Yemen that could be aiding al Qaeda in the highly impoverished African nation.

Ironically, President Eisenhower’s time in the White House was marred by a massive arms buildup spurred on by the “red scare” paranoia of the Cold War. Eisenhower didn’t heed his own advice during his presidency. In fairness, the American global military empire began long before Ike, and overspending on its military budget still persists today. The sphere of influence that the military has on our economy has only grown exponentially. Eisenhower’s prophetic words have come true. Military overspending dominates America’s industry and economy.

Over the past half century the United States has spent $5.5 trillion on nuclear weapons alone. That outrageously exceeds the combined spending on education, social services, job programs, environment, science, energy production, law enforcement, and community development. In the effort to achieve mutually assured destruction with Russia, America has achieved mutually assured stupidity. Granted, such military waste kept the Cold War from becoming hot, and thankfully we never used those nuclear weapons. Yet surely we could have used more diplomacy and saved some of that $5.5 trillion for programs which we really need and would definitely use here at home. America is falling apart internally as we keep our eyes on problems abroad. Our roads and infrastructure are crumbling while “the department of defense pays $511 for 90-cent light bulbs, $640 for a toilet seat, and $5,096 for two pairs of pliers” (p. 503, Social Problems, Charon and Garth).

Absolute power breeds absolute corruption. The United States military-industrial complex lacks any real system of checks and balances. Independent oversight committees exist, but they do not have the power or purity to stop this runaway train. Our military-industrial complex has become too powerful, and it is corrupting our economy from within.

• This post is published as part of the Prison Op/Ed Project, an occasional series authored by CCRI sociology students who are incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institute. Read more here:
  • ‘Prison Op/Ed Project’ teaches civic engagement, writing – Meghan Kallman
  • Does racial injustice still exist? Look at our schools – Aaron Carpenter
  • Rhode Island charges felons absurdly high court costs – Christopher Nemitz
  • Public school students and inmates need more vocational training – Darnell Hie
  • Prison policies put probation and vocational training at odds – Norman Johnson
  • Corporate-modeled prison industrial complex doesn’t serve society – Adrian Rojas
  • Incarceration is the new slavery – James Poston
  • Justice isn’t blind with data-based sentencing – David Brown
  • Ending welfare entitlements opened the door to disability fraud – Dan Davidson
  • Post prison services would stem system’s revolving door – Michael Wheelock
  • You’re vote doesn’t matter as much as your money – David Brown
  • How schools emulate prisons, and prepare students for them – Richard Pimiental
  • Cars that are good for society – David DeGrasse
  • PTA involvement instead of prison mentality in schools – Mustapha Bojang
  • Prison is about re-socialization, not corrections – Christopher Marsich
  • ACI administrator praises Prison Op/Ed Project – Ralph Orleck
  • Alcohol, incarceration and what it means to matter – Laura Baumgardner
  • Was Myron Magnet a genius or just a Republican? – Danny Mercure