Defense

For decades Americans have listened to any number of political catfights over defense policy and defense spending. It always seems that the political party in power wants to spend zillions of dollars for some new weapons system being built or proposed by a defense contractor with the proper political connections, while the minority party favors some other system, being built or proposed by a different contractor with the proper political connections. Making the defense of our nation a political hot potato generally leaves the military between a rock and a hard place of course, often being handed weapons they can’t use/don’t want, and at the same time not getting the weapons they want/need.

All three major presidential hopefuls often cite their vast foreign policy “experience”. Yet that experience seems to be based on visiting this or that country for a short period of time, varying from a few days to several months. (The exception being Sen. McCain’s five year long stint in a North Vietnamese prison, which I hardly think qualifies him as an expert on present day Vietnam.) To the best of my knowledge neither Senators Obama or Clinton have ever served in the military, nor do they have any real experience with military affairs other than sitting on congressional committees. Yet both senators, by reason of visiting Iraq for a day or so, seem to think they are military experts. By their standards (thanks to quite a few years in the USAF and the Idaho National Guard), I suppose I could qualify as a military affairs expert as well, so… I’ll toss my nickels worth out for all to see. Picking on Sen. Obama only because he’s said the most in recent weeks about what he intends to do if elected, I’ll question many of his military ideas. Here are some of his proposals:

“.....I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems...” Unproven? Humm… “Star Wars” (SDI) has proven itself quite effective in numerous tests, and in the recent shoot-down of an errant American spy satellite. The original objection to the Reagan era missile interceptors was that they could not shoot down all the Russian ICBMs aimed at the United States. Quite so, they couldn’t, because, for one thing the technology was still rather immature, and for another there were a lot of Russian missiles pointed at us. Still, even 10% of 1,500 missiles is a lot of megatons that could otherwise have killed American women and children. Today’s missile interceptors have proven they do work, and quite well apparently. Nor do they have to defend us from thousands of incoming warheads any longer, but rather they must stop only a few missiles from one or another unfriendly nation, or possibly only a single rocket from al-Queda. I would give them a high probability of success under those conditions, considering that the satellite shoot-down was a “direct kill”, where the interceptor physically hit the satellite, the hardest to accomplish shot of all.

Sen. Obama went on to say “....I will not weaponize space...”. This is an idea that suffers from mixed reviews. I can’t say that anybody really wants an arms race in space, but still, space based weapons are the easiest, and probably the cheapest, means of destroying incoming warheads, from anywhere, not just from the mid-east. We might also keep in mind the Chinese satellite kill of not long back. China is in a space race with us, whether we want to admit it or not, and the PRC does very little that doesn’t have extensive military applications. With all this, yes, I do think we need space based defenses.

Then we have “....I will slow development of future combat systems...”. Considering the very long developmental time of modern weapons systems, if things got any slower, they’d be in reverse! Why is it that our primary fighter aircraft are nearing thirty years old? Why are we still using fifty year old B-52 bombers, and expecting to keep them in service for yet another twenty years!? If today’s Democratic candidates had their way, the US Army would probably still be armed with Civil War era muskets, and sent out to do battle against tanks and machine guns!

On a “pie in the sky” note, “....I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons...”. An admirable goal certainly, but quite impossible I’m afraid. Once that first nuclear device was detonated at Alamogordo in 1945, the genie was out of the bottle, and we’ll never get it back in despite all the wistful thinking. Once we demonstrated that such a weapon was possible, Stalinist Russia bent on every effort to duplicate that weapon, which they did in surprisingly short time, with the rest of the “nuclear club” quickly followed suite. The basic knowledge needed to construct nuclear weapons is common knowledge all over the world today, with only the lack of certain fissile materials keeping every nation from having their own nuclear arsenal. Following that, “....I will seek a global ban on the development of fissile material...”. Good luck young feller… the prospect of cheap nuclear power is far to important for many third world nations to expect them to just bury the idea. I expect we could find a way to harness all the hot air being generated in Washington DC every day, to provide for this country’s electrical needs, but that’s not going to help the rest of the world. If oil production has peaked as so many experts presently claim, nuclear power will become a dire necessity for every country that hopes to have much more than a medieval existence.

He further said “....and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert...”, followed by “....and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals...”. Unless I missed something really important over the last few years, I think President Bush (the elder) ordered a nuclear stand-down at the end of the cold war, which ended the “hair trigger” response days in both Russia and the United States. I do know that the US Air Force ended their nuclear airborne alert, and I understand it would take an hour or so to prepare an American ICBM for flight nowadays. That hour is hardly “hair trigger”! As to the deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal, I believe that’s already been done as well? I know that a large number of US nuclear weapons have been removed from service in recent years, and not replaced. Even the currently available weapons are far fewer in number than they were eighteen years ago. In fact, the Russians have done exactly the same thing, with our assistance!

So I’ll ask you Sen. Obama, are you just playing to the anti-nuclear crowd, or do you actually intend to disarm these United States? Remember that there really are quite a lot of unpleasant people in this world who would like nothing better than to destroy our nation, and enslave any of us who happen to be left alive. The only thing that stands between them and their goal are the US armed forces, and the ability to deliver massive amounts of death and destruction on those who would attack us. Nobody in their right mind wants a nuclear war, but after all, the threat of one helped to keep the Soviet Union on it’s better behavior throughout the cold war. Today we face an increasingly hostile China, along with minor players such as North Korea and Iran.

Sorry Sen. Obama, but there is no acceptable substitute for victory, and victory is impossible when all we have is little more than a bouquet of flowers to defend ourselves with.