Posted on 06/09/2024 8:20:05 PM PDT by hardspunned
Thanks, as if I needed that. Anyway, I usually listen to Dima, he chronicles stories in WESTERN MEDIA detailing just how bad both the war is and the state of our military (they obviously go together).
For example, I still cannot get over the SHEER IDIOCY of our military in thinking that their GPS weapons would work against the Russians. If this indicates how unprepared we are in other areas, we might as will surrender, instead of wasting out time - same outcome either way.
What is so ridiculous is that these were known issues 6+ years ago.
Phillip Karber is lecturing here a West Point on his experience in Ukraine observing what the Ukraine military had experienced with Russian electronic warfare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CMby_WPjk4&t=2079s
Yes, I’ve done tours on both Ticos and Burkes. Both great ships.
The problem is that the cruisers are old and expensive to crew and operate, along with needing repairs and upgrades that the Navy is even more hard put to pay for. The Navy’s shipbuilding woes are partly of their own making, but Congressional meddling and stop and start funding have compounded the problem.
I think the point of the article (unspoken), is No, they are not and won’t be, not even close because we are being morons or traitors about this.
Can we expedite the rate of replacement to not leave a gap?
Give them to nations which can make good use of them - Poland and Ukraine. With their Aegis radars they can cover the Baltic and Black seas for AA and ABM coverage. Should go a long way to reduce the rate of cross-border military incursions and attacks on civilians.
The decline of the industrial base is at the core. For ship construction, the civilian side effectively no longer exists and what remains is all dependent on military contracts.
Things got even more downsized for the Navy during the Mid-East Wars where the Navy role was minimal.
But here we are 20 years later, and China is now a Peer threat (and then some) and new capacity and even repair capacity is very limited.
Interesting to read this. The Desmoines class cruisers weighed in at 18,000 tons or so. Maybe the Navy should go up a couple thousand tons.
high US wage rates = we need a 20% import tariff to portect wages and to promote dometic industry.
American industry = freedom.
After re-reading your insipid post you must think the core problem is we don’t have enough cheap skilled labor. The problem as you see it is we are not a third world nation with a first world military( like the USSR). Get this: there is no going back the Republican brand is now the labor party/middle class party. No going back.
Not buying that.
Maybe China could produce a few for us?
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They could, since they have 288 times the shipyard capacity as the US.
The only drawback is the contracts would go to the lowest bidder: who is able to pay the highest brides to the Party, while using the cheapest substitute materials, and still turn a handsome profit.
They do not have a hypersonic glide vehicle. Just booster on older rockets.
Saw a movie once about an MI-X head recruiting a Naval Commander to become part his unit. He was standing next to UKs potential version of an AB class cruiser and the man asked the commander what he thought about it. “It’s everything its X-billion pound price tag says it should be.”
“But what if YOU were in charge?” “I’d trash the cruiser and spend the billions on thousands and thousands of drones.....”
This was a pretty far out there movie - Three Body Problem but I can’t help but thinking there is a bit of wisdom there. A ship - rather inexpensive one, equipped with thousands of drones, launching bays and possibly some longer launch and recovery room for Reapers and or other big ticket long range killers.
Seems like they need to do ships the way they do C-130’s; keep the platform and just bolt in new guts.
If the Burke hull has worked this long, why spend billions on new boondoggles?
“As it is, China’s hypersonics. Not buying that.”
And you’re doing a great job of summing up the Neocon DISASTER in Ukraine.
For example, the IDIOT Neocons thought we could drop GPS-guided bombs on the Russians and they’d actually work (either that or they get off on killing Ukrainians). They weren’t ‘buying’ the claim that the Russians would simply jam them. We got lucky, it only cost untold THOUSANDS of Ukrainian lives. With hypersonics, it’s American lives.
To keep the spending going, we have a strong dollar policy that permits the US to continue (for a time) to finance our out of control public deficits. Yet that strong dollar policy also makes foreign goods cheaper and US goods more expensive, which has helped lead to the decline of American manufacturing.
Yes, we can impose import barriers to support American manufacturing, but if the dollar remains relatively over-valued, all that accomplishes is import substitution at the margins without regaining America's export markets.
Regaining America's export markets requires constraint of wasteful federal spending, a weaker dollar, lower US interest rates, and forcing open foreign markets to American goods. That combination would expand the American industrial base and keep wages high. Otherwise, as has happened for decades, our industrial base will continue to decline.
Of course, domestic policy factors and issues have also hurt American manufacturing: over regulation and bad regulation, especially the green agenda; union work rules that are often so embarrassingly bad that companies are forbidden by their union contracts to make them public; unfavorable federal income tax rates and terms; and bad corporate management. I'll leave these unexplored for now.
“What is so ridiculous is that these were known issues 6+ years ago. Phillip Karber is lecturing here a West Point on his experience in Ukraine observing what the Ukraine military had experienced with Russian electronic warfare.”
You can see the SAME MINDSET here, where they have been WRONG every step of the way in the Ukraine War. Far too many times to list them all (Russia out of missiles, Western tanks impervious to Russian attacks, Russia’s economy crashing...). It’s cost the Ukrainians some 500,000 men - more than we lost in WW2. When they’re wrong again regarding the navel capabilities of China and Russia to take on our navy, then we’re talking tens of thousands of AMERICAN lives.
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