Run Silent, Run Cheap

<a href="http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=91197">S Navy photo of USS Virginia</a>

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“Most things in here don’t react too well to bullets,” Sean Connery’s crusty Russian sub captain tells Alec Baldwin in The Hunt for Red October, moments before the latter stalks off to shoot a spy between dozens of the boat’s atomic missiles.

These days, it turns out some things on the Navy’s newest nuclear subs don’t react well to, um, seawater. Or something. Actually, the service isn’t sure what’s causing the $2 billion behemoths’ protective skin to peel off in the water. But it probably has to do with cost-trimming and corner-cutting by the Navy’s two go-to contractors, Northrup Grumman and General Dynamics, who tag-team assembled the Virginia class of attack subs at breakneck speed and (relatively) bottom-dollar rates.

Even though the Cold War is over, the silent service wants to expand its sub fleet, and it’s sold Congress on the Virginia program as the cheapest alternative. Yet as subs get delivered from the factory with their special soundproof tiling already falling off in sheets, the program looks anything but inexpensive. “The demand to build this submarine in a fast, cost-effective way led them to skip some steps that should have been in the process,” one analyst told me. “They’ve got this beautiful, fantastic vessel, and they just covered it in a Wal-Mart tarp.”

Read my complete story about the Navy’s big boondoggle—and its tough time telling the truth—here: “What’s Long, Hard, and Wrapped in a Wal-Mart Tarp?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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