Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.
- Some interesting thoughts on how to improve the US military Navy.
- Should NPR refuse to take federal funds? Is this the new "you can't fire me I quit?"
- Could accomplishments at NASA be one of Trump's biggest legacies? JFK is remember as the President who said we'd go to the moon - could Trump be remembered by history as the one who said we'd go to Mars?
- On the other side of the debate: Are we spending too much on the military? I'd argue the opposite is true - that if you want peace you prepare for war and that much of the world is safe from bullying because of our military might.
Agree regarding mil expenditures. Balancing, however, is if the rest of NATO actually does pay their share, we should be able to contribute less IF the same level of readiness is the goal. I do wonder how much of DOGE savings will go to Boeing, a company that began losing its way the day after "merging" with McD-D, in the form of cost overruns and heavily delayed delivery of the new aircraft contract. Allowing the mergers back in the day was a terrible move then and it is proving to be worse and worse with age from a defense standpoint.
ReplyDeleteTwo things: 1. Think if other NATO countries live up to level of spending they committed to then they just would have enough to get to the level of military preparedness (number ships, tanks, personnel) they are supposed to have in the first place. 2. think military side of Boeing is actually much better (though not at proper levels) than either commercial aviation or space sides of company. Will be interesting to see how F-47 is handled.
ReplyDeleteI think we would be quite safe returning the Army to its original mission of defending the US we might need as many as 100,000 full time soldiers and keep all but the heavy guard formations for our use and emergencies like weather. The Navy can be trimmed to about 100 warships and logistic support ships. I 5hink it’s pretty flaming obvious that amphib operations are a dead letter in this age. The USAF could safely be reduced to not more than a couple hundred planes. You see that there is no one to attack us and it’s time to let everyone else out of the box we helped shape over the last 80 years. We honestly don’t need to intervene militarily in every damned adventure. One thing that must be obvious by now is that no matter who ‘wins’, they will still trade with us. Just look at Ukraine still piping Russian gas to Europe right up until last month.
ReplyDeleteWe tried reducing the size of the military after WW I - how did that work out?
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