Posted on 05/20/2012 7:18:07 AM PDT by Jeff Head
Jeff, good work, but a couple quibbles -
Run spellcheck and edit. In one place you use the word “enigma” when I’m pretty sure you meant “anathema.”
Second, the Army needs to look in a whole new direction. The Infantry always bears the brunt of the casualties but little is done to enhance the infantry’s capability or survivability. It’s time to look into powered armor for the infantry.
Whoops, sorry for the double tap. It’s what I get for posting from my phone sometimes.
Jeff Head for SecDef!
“stabilization of Social Security & Medicare”
Meaningless piffle revealing nothing. Instead of bland semantics, deal with the reality. Just to put those programs on a solid footing you will need to either cut benefits, raise taxes or do both. With the coming tsunami of Boomers along with a war weary public, you have a better chance of winning the lottery than witnessing your dream turn into a reality.
The plan is a military and national security plan. It is not a medicare or social security plan. However, for it to work, the economic situation not only has to become stable, it must improve significantly.
So, it states that those programs (among quite a few other statements) have to be stabilized and not threaten budgetary consideration. I believe they can be...but that is not what this particlar initiative and plan are about...it simply presumes it.
>> “If someone like myself cannot get elected it is because too many of those whose views I represent are busy supporting someone they admit they hate, who does not represent them. So, don’t blame me. All I’m doing is raising the standard.” <<
.
That comment is utterly invidious of the structure and realities of the American political system. Can’t say whether its just ignorant, or if its deliberately deceptive, but it offers nothing of use to the debate for those honestly seeking solutions.
“Certainly laudable goals Jeff, but in an era where the debt service alone equals the total FedGov revenue, and our credit has assumed ‘imaginary’ status, how will we achieve it?”
The theory says grow the economy.
But military buildup is not capable of growing the economy. It’s just as much a drag on the economy as any welfare check is. It rides the back of those that can grow the economy.
Well, in that case, there's no point in reading it, at least not until Harry Reid and John Boehner are deposed from leadership.
“The plan is a military and national security plan. It is not a medicare or social security plan.”
If you’re going to decouple the latter then one can’t take former seriously. Why not throw in some funds for a battalion of unicorns and elves while you’re at it. They have just as much chance of becoming a reality.
With these politicians who are in charge, “growing the economy” would merely mean growing the spending, also. The bigger the economy, the more money these people, on both sides of the aisle, would spend, and to hell with our fiscal situation. More tax revenue from “growing the economy” would simply encourage more spending.
(No, I’m not against economic growth, just against semantic tricks that politicians can hide behind.)
Defense/offense detailts BUMP!
live - free - republic
You need to slow down and read it again. They are not de-coupled...the article states that the military growth will be based and dependent on the other things happening.
Sheez...this particular article explaines the types of things refering to the former, the military and national security, it is not an article going into detail about the latter.
Just because this one goes into some detail on the former, while referencing the need for the former, does not “de-couple” them in the least. It’s just what this article is about...someone (maybeyou) can write the article about making the former happen.
I added the Paladin replacement and referenced the NLOS program as the place to start. Also added the K-46 tanker in there...that program is already starting.
I notice you call for the return of task-specific diesel submarines. I've often said myself that, having been in ASW I know that diesel boats on battery power are quieter than nukes, and that that fact reinforces the observation that you do not always need a Seawolf on location, or even a generic nuclear submarine; sometimes, a submarine will do. And there are some pretty good ones out there now -- Collinses and Scorpenes and Japanese designs among the better ones.
No, it didn't. Not the real mission, which is to keep Germany pacified and oriented toward democratic governance, and immunized against imperial ambitions.
It is a tripartite initiative shared, still, by the UK, France, and Russia, with US encouragement and sustainment.
True, Russia was not a NATO member but a NATO policy object, with its swarm of satellites. But the East-West division was only part of the story.
Part of the original mission -- divided Germany -- has come to an end. That makes the backup mission all the more important, of keeping Germany engaged peacefully with the other European societies.
The European Union is very much, on the surface, about the same issues and objectives (when its bureaucrats aren't gloating over secret imperial ambitions of their own) of German pacification and integration. But it was built on the idea of competition with both the Eastern Bloc and the United States, and its mission is under challenge now, now that the "threat" of domination by either entity has receded.
So what ever happened to the "Crusader" SP gun program? We've all see video and still photography of it in testing. Jerking that up short was Dubya's doing -- not Don Rumsfeld's, but Dubya's. Just killed it dead, so he could do RiNO wooden-gun tax cuts instead (like his daddy did), a month before 9/11.
Why'd they kill Crusader? Because of the politics of the name?
Well said.
A good AIP DE sub would work wonderfully in the littorals, particularly against the emerging numbers of PLAN vessels.
The Swedish have some excellent DE subs too...and the newer PLAN vessels are approaching a level where in choke points along sea lanes and in the South China Sea that they could become dangerous.
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