Defense

What I am hearing from our political defense leadership is that our military must scale back. We don’t need all of those expensive weapons systems, nor do we need so many generals and admirals. OK, I accept that the defense department is as inefficient as just about all of the other government agencies. What concerns me is the imbalance.

With all of the domestic spending, defense is about the only part of government that has to cut back. And we are at war! If anything, the roles should be reversed. Strategic defense has not changed all that much.

More than 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water. To project force overseas, aircraft carriers are required. A problem is that we need to have multiples of 3. Just to have one available at any given time requires one in port for refit and another in for yard repairs and travel back and forth to station. Like tanks, carriers are more effective if grouped together. They are not very effective if not grouped together. We must control the air above, which would require space mounted weapons platforms.

On top of everything else, we are limiting our missile defense. If we are going to limit our conventional weapons systems, we need far more research and development in space based weapons. Yet this is another area we are targeting for either cuts or limited growth. Strategic blunders that even a non security clearance person with half a wit can see. We face scary and dangerous times ahead.