The Daily Telegraph announced that China has claimed it achieved the technology to shoot down missiles.
China has successfully tested a new technology designed to shoot down incoming missiles in mid-air, in a move that Chinese military experts claimed was a “breakthrough” for the country’s rapidly modernising armed forces. The announcement of the successful test, made by the state news agency Xinhua, comes after a week of diplomatic tensions over a US decision to sell advanced Patriot anti-missile systems to neighbouring Taiwan.
“China conducted a test on ground-based midcourse missile interception technology within its territory. The test has achieved the expected objective,” said the terse, three-sentence statement by Xinhua. “The test is defensive in nature and is not targeted at any country,” it added….
AdvertisementThe successful test follows China’s 2007 announcement that it had successfully shot-down a satellite in a move which was seen as a deliberately public demonstration of its growing military capabilities.
The Chinese test goes way beyond the capabilities of Taiwan’s Patriot systems. Wikipedia says China’s 2010 test is the first that is “comparable with that of the United States”. “Additional to ABM capability, China’s missiles also possess ASAT capabilities.” Five countries in the world now have missile defense systems: the US, Russia, Israel, India and China.
The Pentagon said it had not received prior notification of the test and declined to see any link with arms sales to Taiwan. However it confirmed that the test had taken place and was seeking more information.
“We detected two geographically separated missile launch events with an exo-atmospheric collision also being observed by space-based sensors,” said Major Maureen Schumann, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
Most of the worry over China’s test will not revolve around it’s ABM capabilities which would not be able to stop a heavy attack from the United States. Rather they would stem from what these new capabilities imply about its ability to deny the high ground to the United States. For decades, America has relied on its control of space to achieve information dominance, maintain command and control and operate remotely piloted vehicles.
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How’s that coming along?
As Nancy Pelosi said, a lot of things are said on the campaign trail that are meant to be taken with a grain of salt. So the question is, what’s the deal? How much at risk does China hold US space assets? What will the administration’s response be to this? Ben Smith’s long review of the book Game Change in the Politico paints a very unflattering picture of major politicians when viewed at close quarters. They shown to be egocentric, scheming and less than forthcoming.
“Game Change” peels back a decade of careful renovations off Hillary Clinton’s carefully constructed public face, casting her in the terms that defined her at her lows in the mid-1990s: scheming, profane, sometimes paranoid, often tone-deaf.
The authors report that Clinton and her aides plotted behind allies’ backs to enter the 2004 presidential contest and that Clinton herself favored some of the nastiest tactics, such as suggesting that then-Sen. Barack Obama had been a drug dealer, in the 2008 campaign. And she continued to believe — without evidence, and long after her concession — that he had, in effect, stolen the Iowa caucuses by importing out-of-state voters.
It’s interesting whether politicians will find the time or inclination to focus on international strategic issues in the absence of a political compulsion to do so.
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Much more interesting than the US reaction will be that of the Russians.
They expended a great deal of effort to squelch or mitigate US ABM research and/or capabilities ever since Reagan announced the effort, and Russia’s nuclear sword has always been the greatest deterrent to the Sino threat of just “walking west/north”.
Despite successful attempts to settle territorial difference with China in the last few years, China remains the greatest practical threat to Russian dominance in the near-abroad of Central Asia, and is a much more credible player in the new “Great Game” than a hamstrung USA.
It will all be very curious to see work out.
At the turn of the century Britain’w position depended on the dominance of the Royal Navy. It saw the emergence of the German High Seas fleet as an existential threat. It was relatively indifferent to the growth of German land power, but sea power was a different matter. Land power it could concede. The sea it could not.
There’s a passage I cannot now find describing the Fleet Review at Spithead in 1897 at a time when the Great War was already adumbrated over Europe, with the writer wondering what would happen if those lighted ships at the review were scuttled. In half and hour, or an hour at the most the entire world would have changed by the silent sinking of those ships. The bonds of the British Empire would be permanently dissolved and its great appendages like continents set adrift would whirl into the night. It was such and easy and quick thing to do and yet its effect would be so permanent. Such would be the effect of the loss of seapower.
When dominance has lasted for so long it is easy to forget its roots. The sky and oceans have been America’s for 60 years. But for the first time we may have a political class who don’t value it; who are distracted by domestic politics and the game in Washington. Maybe we have a generation of leaders who can look out on the Fleet Review, on the lights of those mighty warships, of the constellations of satellites covering the high ground and say, “they’re spoiling the view. Let’s sell them and buy some more votes”.
What was striking about the Politico article is how it suggests how small and petty political great may really be.
W: would the Spithead review be in Robert Massey’s “Dreadnought”?
…it is no secret that when Clinton, aka “nanren men zai hua sheng dun” (this translates into our man in Washington), abolished the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) in 1993 he outraged the British who warned him that his decision to permit the export to China of high-tech material with military applications would allow Beijing’s military machine to leapfrog years of military research and spending and put the West at risk.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/995809/posts
Thanks for nothing, Democrats!
This must be a different movie… The movie I remember has a Churchill wandering in from the wilderness right about now.
Five countries in the world now have missile defense systems: the US, Russia, Israel, India and China.
In the meantime the Europeans whistle past the graveyard.
If you no play-a da game you no make-a da rules.
Mort @ 5. Not quite yet, I think, fires have not yet merged into a firestorm. Give it a year.
The Chinese perfected their anti-missile missile technology quickly. I can only assume that there were no ad hoc committees of useful idiots to get in the way. All the useful idiots were in this country; and, now, they run this country: implementing policies their once and future master will never allow in China or the Soviet union/Fussia.
It’s seems absurd that we’d mortgage our future to China while still maintaining the notion of protecting Taiwan. If the US eve had a credible threat against the eventual takeover of Taiwan it is waning quickly. It is not so much that Chinese can offer a useful missile defense; it is more that they can do so while buying our paper. One nation; staring down the defenses of its own with steely eyed alacrity, awaiting the inevitable surrender, but who will blink first? If there is a message here it is that China can be the toy factory of the world, the major car manufacturer, and they can build missile defenses for less. Now who do you want to ally with? A neighbor who is a great industrial power or a bunch of yuppie talkers who violently subscribe to lunatic green theories and want to tell you what to eat, what to wear, what to say, what to do? The totalitarian shoe is now on the other foot. Will our nation’s lawyers come to the rescue? Maybe they can’t save us but they can doom us to national irrelevance as they advance the idealistic conquests over nature.
Morton/5; that’s the problem exactlyu. WS didn’t wander in from the wilderness until the nation came out and laid hands upon him (making him First Lord of the Admiralty to hold him in place a few months while the deadwood at the top was getting the heave-ho).
Whatsa matter with China? Don;t they know that Global Warming – oops, I mean Climate Change – is the greatest threat the world faces?
Is this what they have been doing while we build windmills and put up solar panels?
By the way, this morning here in Florida I had to scrape frost off my windshield for the first time since I moved here in 1993.
Also, by the way there is a move afoot in the USA to allow the Red Chinese to once again launch US made commercial satellites.
So do we hope and pray the analysis that China is just a giant Ponzi Scheme is spot on, or what?
AnnoyMouse@9 says:
Now who do you want to ally with? A neighbor who is a great industrial power or a bunch of yuppie talkers who violently subscribe to lunatic green theories and want to tell you what to eat, what to wear, what to say, what to do?
The choice is, in reality, probably not as simplistic as your statement would make it out to be, but I have to admit that my knee jerk reaction also would be to dump the “nanny naggers” in favor of the doers and builders. Hmmmmm…..
“fires have not yet merged into a firestorm.
It will be interesting to see what type of superpower China is to become. I fear they will not be as magnanimous & benevolent as we have been.
First: to survive the aforementioned storm…
not sure that their miltary spending is as subject to the overall economy as to make that a hope, 49er. As i understand it, the PLA sits in on that decision.
“… Rather they would stem from what these new capabilities imply about its ability to deny the high ground to the United States. For decades, America has relied on its control of space to achieve information dominance, maintain command and control and operate remotely piloted vehicles.”
As if our leftist elites care. In their minds this is a good thing — anything that counters America’s military position is to be supported, albeit silently.
# 9/ “It’s seems absurd that we’d mortgage our future to China while still maintaining the notion of protecting Taiwan.”
It is absurd. What is more absurd is protecting an island whose young and up-in-coming elite are eagering investing/working/living in the PRC. The PRC just may achieve its goal of reunification on its own terms without even firing a shot.
OK then… Multitasking this morning (reading BC and reading other stuff somewhat at the same time).
Take a look at this if you have time Natal
Sit calmly and consider systems that can analyze widely disparate data streams and react in real time in a pseudo-human manner. Can you envision tactical (and strategic) uses for such technology? Can you say 24/7 defensive systems that never sleep, never blink, never go to the rest room,… Well, I can.
Whoaaa, Nellie: Wrong link in comment 17. Try this one
Natal
“comparable with that of the United States”
So that’s what Hillary gave them. Along with the mineral rights to our National Parks to back our bonds, I suppose.
Claims, eh? Let’s see it in action. Otherwise, all talk. Not saying that they are not capable some time in the future. Just thinking this is ‘the beating of the breast’ at the present.
Jimmy Carter traded ‘em the Panama canal for a copy of their little red book in English. They told him it was about peanuts and he handed over the canal. Re backing our bnds, i wouldn’t mind seeing a proof-of-life photo of the inside of Fort Knox. and no photoshops please. yup the Democrats are gonna get their ‘one world’ come hell or high water. may not contain a “USA” but what the hey.
Communist propaganda. If we can’t do it, they can’t do it. On the other hand, if we can do it, they can steal it from us. So, I’d be prepared to credit the PRC’s claims, but with the caveat that it indicates we too can do this. Therefore, at worst, still nil/nil on strategic missile capability.
Besides, the real problem, as I see it, is the erosion in the USA of the political will to resist Chinese strategic thrusts southwards and towards Taiwan. China’s population problem cannot be solved by colonizing the Siberian snow deserts – but it sure could be solved by colonizing that nice Canada-sized California to the south, Australia. Certainly the Australians are concerned.
Nevertheless, international relationships will have to be attenuated to a far greater extent than they are currently in order to efficiently accommodate the kind of big strategic reorganizations intimated by these military tits-for-tats. The sine qua non, I continue to believe, is a profoundly destabilizing attack on the USA homeland and perhaps its forward-deployed military assets. Perhaps that is the offer made by the GRU to the Islamists: in the coming war, you shall have prepared your people to accept the New Caliphate, as Russia takes Europe and South America, and China takes East Asia, you, brothers, shall rule that Caliphate. The USA will continue to be our shopkeeper, but it will have no stomach for combat.
Chinese demographics do not bode well either.
BEIJING (AFP) – More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020, state media reported on Monday, citing a study that blamed sex-specific abortions as a major factor.
24 million men, sans ladies? There’s only two outlets for that kind of internal pressure. Get a war going and toss lots of these aimless boys into the meat grinder, or go out and conquer other countries, eliminate the men, giving your young men lots of new women to choose from.
JC (#1),
I assume by “curious” you mean “terrifying”?
Game Change? How about the Journalistic “Game Fixers?” The Big Media “Deck Stackers?”
These Ivy League Journalists! They take an industry worth tens of billions of dollars — built on a reputation for integrity earned by the “high school drop-out” reporters of decades long gone — and ruin it. They did it in the process of promoting the left wing of the Democratic party, which required them to burn the reputation of the industry they were a part of and have done incalculable damage to the nation they were apart from. They have ruined other industries with their slanted “reporting” and now they have ruined their own — with luck, before they have ruined the entire nation. Ruin Nation! Hey? Think they want to skate away from that?
Still, why the change toward Clinton now (or rather, six months ago when it was written)? Is it a matter of rats, ship, gaping hole in hull? Have the reporters given up on the government job? Since they were little more than Clinton staffers, could the sight of Clinton Staffers jumping ship have sent them to the life boats? I don’t know. Perhaps they should interview themselves and tell us (not that we would believe them).
Of course, a few years ago they could put the “spicy” stuff in a book and then Deep Six it before the next election. I remember when Hillary announced for the US Senate. Chris Matthews and the like said, “She hasn’t met the New York Press Corps! They’ll ask the tough questions!” And I thought: She has met the New York Press Corps and they are hers. But maybe not now. Maybe they slipped the leash. What have you done to them lately, Hill?
As for the fate of Western Civilization and President O: Uh, oh. There is the slight chance that, having been forced out of the “red hot house” and thrust into the White Hot House, he may learn a few things from the change of environments. Yes. I know. It is a slim thread to lean on.
Yup, Peterike in 23 got it right – it’s BIBLICAL.
Meaning the solution for China’s excess of guys harks back to the Hebrews’ method of slaughtering every living thing except the virgin females, as they conquered the Lands of Canaan. No room for sissies in the pending future.
The idiots running things in this country – as exemplified by the so-called journalists – make you realize that the cartoonists were not making things up when they show Mickey Mouse sitting on the end of the board which he’s cutting off with a handsaw.
wretchard, I assume that China can and will duplicate every armament that the US has. all that slows them down is that they don’t perceive any real threats, and so are taking their time. I’m rather surprised at how slowly they have gone so far.
also, I suspect they have an internal fear of any military-industrial complex that goes far beyond ours. for their internal political reasons, they may be quite happy with a pax americana in which their resources can ship in peace from Africa and the Persian Gulf, and then out to the Americas and Europe.
so, they also have a little paranoia about the US – and everyone and anyone else, too, from neighbors Vietnam and India, to their twin brothers in Taiwan, and for geopolitical reasons might like to be seen with a strong military, and/or make a few bucks selling weapons here or there around the world.
overall, seems to me they are being quite reasonable, for the world’s most populous country, the world’s current manufacturing hub, and dependent in a big way on global commerce.
does this all demote the US from single global hyperpower? sure. but a lot of that hyperpower business was always – hype.
Josh, that’s the pleasant world we can enjoy provided we don’t tempt anybody’s primal urges with too much weakness on our part.
–here’s a snip from American Thinker:
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin opened the New Year by insisting his country would develop new “offensive” weapons systems before it considered cutting nuclear warheads. He said the new weapons were necessary to prevent America’s leaders from thinking they can “do whatever they want.”
The emerging American strategic predicament is about more than the number of delivery systems and warheads. As Berman points out,
An aging work force and poor incentives for science and technology education also raise the possibility that the current decline could become irreversible unless major investments are made, and soon.
Berman does not go further into details, but the U.S. aerospace industry lost a million jobs during the ill-considered “post-Cold War” defense downsizing of the 1990s. Hundreds of firms left the industry with many simply going out of existence. A decade of small, counterinsurgency wars has stretched the American military without prompting any rebuilding of high-end force levels in airpower, naval fleet size, or strategic nuclear forces.
The same issue of Defense News features a front page story on how theater commanders are competing for the small number of warships capable of shooting down ballistic missiles in the wake of Obama’s decision to cut land-based missile defense programs.
The result of two decades of minimal procurement of advanced systems has been a decline in the nation’s defense industrial base, which will make rearmament more difficult, slower and more expensive the longer it is delayed. Meanwhile, new regional powers and peer competitors are rising around the world, empowered by the global spread of technology and industrial capabilities. Berman warns,
This has dire implications for American security and the durability of U.S. alliances in the years ahead. Already, many countries are beginning to think of the day after U.S. nuclear dominance.
And those thoughts do not lead towards a better world.
(end quote)
Gosh, it seems just a short time ago that our resident Ms T, Merkin was telling us that a blue water navy with angled flight deck carriers was just so much fantasy.
Call me delusional but I do believe that it’s a wee bit more difficult to develop a missile that will intercept another missile than it is to build an angled deck carrier> Granted they are both complwx pieces of machinery but on travels , lets see:
The practical speed limit in knots for a displacement-type hull is approximately equal to the square-root of the hull length at the waterline (LWL) times 1.34
The Enterprise is the longest warship ever built. You’ll find some variation among different sources, but most of them list her length overall (LOA) as 1,123 feet, whereas ALL of the Nimitz class are usually listed as 1,092 feet. The Enterprise and the Nimitz class have the same length at the waterline (LWL), 1,040 feet.
If the hulls may be considered displacement hulls, this puts the limit of both the Enterprise and Nimitz class warships at the square root of 1,040 (32.249) times 1.34= 43.2 knots. Thanks source.
So the carrier travel say 44 knots and uses basically the same method of launch and aircraft retrieval that’s been around since the angled deck , really since the catapult. The arresting gear still comes down to a tailhook and a wire across the deck.
Now, Ms. Merkin would have us believe the Chinese are not capable of that . Well let’s see.
Just a quick look down the headlines of articles and I see the speed of MACH 9 listed. Now I may be just an old ly’in doof but something tells me that’s darn fast……it’s faster than the SR-71 I use to work with when I was in the CIA, Ms T. Merkin. Hmmm..so how could they build such an item…obviously they are lying, right Ms. Merkin?
But I’m gonna be hard my old pugnacious self and say that China is a major threat that is preparing for an offensive war sometime in the next score years. They may simply wait for nobama and the Socialist Democrats to implode this country, especially given the odious performance nobama put in the climate conference. I said at the time the Chinese will not forget his rude behavior and unless we’ve weaponized space (a distinct possibility) we are in no shape today to take on the Chinese.
The Russians may have backed out of selling the carrier based Su-33 ( 10/3/2009….The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said that China and Russia had been in negotiations on the sale of 50 of the Su-33 Flanker-D fighters, to be used on future Chinese aircraft carriers, since 2006, but that the talks collapsed recently over China’s request for an initial delivery of two aircraft for a “trial.” Do you think a kerfuffle over two “trail aircraft will stop the deal? I don’t.
If you begin to connect the dots the Chinese are building an Army, Navy, and other services far exceeding the needs of self defense. They are preparing for war.
BTY Dan, some info…
The Navy’s USS Hopper and USS O’Kane destroyers detected and tracked a missile fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, Kauai in Hawaii during the test, which was latest demonstration of the U.S. military’s Aegis Missile Defense system. The USS Hopper fired one Standard Missile-3 block 1A missile and destroyed the target 100 miles (160 km) above the Pacific Ocean about two minutes after launch, MDA officials said in a statement……
So it might not be ChiCom propaganda.
The Chinese are preparing for war within the next score years.
At present level of technology effective defence against IBSM is not possible, and even limited attempts in this direction are ruinously costly. Chinese move is just a PR stunt. Arm race in rocket defense had bankrupted Soviet economy, just as this was planned.
“…demote the US…? sure. …hyperpower was always – hype.”
I’d like to think that’s a sendup of the glib arrogant fools who have squandered American greatness for petty political purposes… It sounds like Obama’s outer child talking there.
We on the other hand are a nation that just made “The Simpsons” the longest running show on TV.
We on the other hand are a country that has just elevated “The Simpsons” to the longest running show on TV ..20 years of it.
Please read this short Nyquist essay from August 2007 titled Russia’s Undeniable War Preparations –he may be an alarmist but then again there’s data in the essay, and links, so a reader can make of it what he will.
Prior to sticking a tape of the Hearns-Hagler fight in the player while i then proceed to do my stationary biking and watch said fight another item needs to be mentioned.
This is a new decade. Our host I am sure has many engagements on his claendar in addition to running the finest blog on the ‘net.
At the risk of upsetting a great many of you I have but two words to say.
TIP JAR
35. Mongo BL Santamaria
Thanks for the Nyquist piece.
Allow me to add this.
The first page of Mein Kampf containsthe sentence, “German Austria must return to the great German Motherland” ……sound anything like Chinas demands for Taiwan?
Taiwan would give China the entire western Pacific and inflame the Japanese …. war.
Come on, folks. If you were in the Chinese shoes, what would you do?
Mongo, the decline of the US defense industrial base is a far worse problem than anything the Chinese are doing.
Heck, so is the maroon sitting in the White House. Best weapons and military and technology in the world mean nothing, when the POTUS sleeps through the 3:00AM calls.
so, has the site comment editor widget, entirely given up the ghost?
“the talks collapsed recently over China’s request for an initial delivery of two aircraft for a “trial.” Do you think a kerfuffle over two “trail aircraft will stop the deal? I don’t.”
The russians are smart enough not to give the Chinese what they have been unable to steel IE a working prototype.
The Russians realize they will only get one shot at selling this technology, after that it will be reverse engineered and copied.
habu, bookmark the archive, and when you have time, ,a href=”http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/main.html”>glance at the titles from the last few years and then make your own judgement on the guy’s perspicacity. i address this to you, as you were calling a great financial meltdown to come within a couple of years, a couple years before it came. So you two have a little something in common, if only the luck Babe Ruth had that time he called the homer by pointing his bat high off into left field.
It’s absolutely astonishing that we can have a president and a political party that can be so incredibly dangerously wrong about something which has so much plain recent history to indicate the truth. Nuclear weapons are evil because they kill cities? Well duh. But cities have been killed since the beginning of time, by club and torch and sword and battering ram.
Nuclear weapons have been precisely what for almost seven decades now have kept wars small and big nations careful. Had the Manhattan Project begun five years earlier, fifty million people who didn’t survive WWII would have, because there would not have been a WWII.
Yet the idiot Democrats simply accept that nuclear weapons are evil and so we must shed ours as fast and as completly as we can. These –these unholy vessels of wild disconnect, both power-mad yet lethally dreamy, both too stupid and too clever for the survival of innocent bystanders –are (though they will never understand why it is so) the real killers of populations and nations.
Wretchard:
I see where you’re going with this, but for the life of me, I can’t come up with a pithy response. In fact, I can’t come up with a rational repsonse at all. I see what’s happening and I see a number of possiblities where this may lead, but when I ask the question, “Well, what do we do about it?” the only answer I can come up with is, “I don’t know.”
The comment that Barack Obama considers Rush Limbaugh and Fox News greater threats than Al Qieda was offered as sarcasm, but may hold more truth to than even those on the right would admit, and puts a very unlflattering light on how Obama responded to the knicker-bomber attack.
Well, while I don’t know what we can do about this, I know what I’m going to do…which is the usual, and about the only thing right now. I’m going to hope for the best but prepare for the worst, which leaves me shrugging my shoulders and asking, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
KRB
falta los editor, let me correct that first #42 sentence:
habu, bookmark the archive, and when you have time, glance at the titles from the last few years and then make your own judgment on the guy’s perspicacity.
Programmer@17:
“Can you say 24/7 defensive systems that never sleep, never blink, never go to the rest room,… Well, I can.”
Paging Sarah Conner….
Mongo #29:
I am tempted to say that y’all are channeling Cederford, but in fact something I have been concerned about for some time is whether the WOT represents a strategic trap for the USA.
We will learn a lot from the WOT and our military is by no means crippled and depleted, but the procurement emphasis over the past several years has not been good for weapons required to fight modern conventional or nuclear wars. That was my point relative to the UAVs. The Predator and Reaper and even the Global Hawk are not going to be very useful against anyone whose military aircraft capabilities are at least as good as that of a 1941 vintage P-43. Neither will be an OH-58 armed with 4 Hellfires and a guy hanging out the door firing an M-4 Carbine. That was why the SECAF and CSAF got fired – they were pushing for a bit broader and longer range perspective than the current politically-favored conflict – which, by the way, is their real job.
The question I was trying to raise was that a more robust, higher performing platform might be suboptmized for Afghanistan but more useful in a broader spectrum of conflicts. In other words, you can carry cargo in both a C-47 and a B-29 but don’t try bombing Japan with a C-47.
A recent Av Week I read this morning contained a statement from one official to the effect that the U.S. has had aerial dominance for a long time but that we better start thinking about it again. This was said in the context of a new “secret” long range stealth bomber development that Northrop Grumman appears to have won a contract on.
Back in the day we frequently painted the Soviet Fleet as 10 feet tall. In some ways this was used to hype procurement of the latest wiz-bang. In other ways it caused us to lose the clarity needed when evaluating the threat and determining the best tactics and training for those tactics.
I forget who the CNO was that changed that, but when the idea that the Soviets were just men, too, came forward, we finally got a better handle on reality.
The story of the day was the fear that China would pour south if we pushed into North Viet Nam al la Korea. It wasn’t until after the war that we noticed 1. The North Vietnamese do not like the Chinese and 2. The ChiComs did not have the transport required to move that kind of army south. (Yes, I know they could have walked, but logistics is logistics)
Bottom line, while concerned about the news of Chinese prowess, we must be very careful to be realistic…and brutally honest…about our and their capabilities at any given time.
To this day, no one outside the Anglo Sphere can do an alongside unrep.
The Chinese did shoot down a satellite. A missile is a lot harder, but I don’t think it’s beyond their abilities. Anything we come up with can be done by someone else given enough time.
I don’t think the Chinese are a huge threat, yet. They are about what the US Navy was to the Royal Navy in maybe 1895. The USN still kind of sucked, but there was a big economy behind it and a lot of smart people.
Same with the Air Force. It’s something to keep an eye on, but it’s not there yet.
And we should remember that we are only worried about this at all because the Chinese gave up on a terrible ideology that killed millions of people. The success of China should have put socialism to bed once and for all, but there you are. Some people are just that stubborn, I guess.
What’s replaced Communism is Han Chinese nationalism and economic prosperity. As long as those two factors continue, China will continue to be strong. National pride is very powerful. The current rulers of the PRC have brought China from anarchy and foreign domination to being a world power. That’s a lot of legitimacy. I don’t think they are going to throw that away by risking a war that will cost them the entire basis for their rule. Not without making sure they’ll win beforehand.
42. Mongo BL Santamaria
Roger that and bingo, perspicacity appeared before my eyes.
Mongo BL, it just never ceases to amaze me that this country in the face of war after war somehow misses the signals 75% of the time.
Now I realize if you’re a congressman from Dearbornstan, Michigan that you can’t utter the words islam without following it with “religion of peace”. Or a dozen other similar scenarios across the nation. This gets us back to the hyphenated American and the return of the US to tribalism as opposed to some reasoned universal appreciation for the facts, which of late are now just nobama propaganda ……as I have said he is a clear and present danger to this country.
Our history is stinky with these examples but now the stakes are much higher because the speed is greater in the takedown phase.
Right now we’re fighting a phony war, another proxy war, while those who can and will eventually do us in are preparing for exactly that. Take your pick, islam by degrees and demographics, the Chinese by patient planning and execution, or perhaps the Soviets, embarrassed and tired of not doing what their General staff wanted to do and still desires…..a first strike takeout. We have a surfeit of powerful enemies and a wobbly set of allies willing say, to give up Paris to save artwork.
To paraphrase the US Marine poster graffiti, the world is planning for war and we’re watching the Simpsons.
So the Laundrymen have conquered space
At least that’s what they say
They claim that they have won the race
The prize is to Cathay
They claim they’ll shoot our missiles down
They boast A S A T
A bank in every US town
To them A S A P
A billion people buying cars
A billion workers slave
But the road they’re on to distant stars
Still have signs for Burma Shave
Habu,
The biggest issue with the carriers is not the ship itself but the training required for the crews.
John Lynch,
THe problem with just keeping an eye on them is that it will be too late once we actually need to respond. The lead time involved with modern weapons systems don’t give you the luxury of waiting.
Israeli military robots article in WSJ
Here’s a thought, that Israel has been making nice to China for some time, just in case Israel is cut off militarily by the US under the Obamanation. Yes there were some accusations of US technology going through Israel to China, but as the article above shows, Israel has plenty of their own tech they can deal with as they will, as they must.
Back a few years ago there was also some buzz about Israel and India finding some military common ground, haven’t heard much about that recently. May have been difficult to balance against China, I suppose.
51-
Yeah, I know. But we’re broke with a President who’s put a moratorium on nuclear weapon research. And we have a huge deficit that’s going to have to be paid by tax increases and cuts from somewhere. That somewhere will be the Defense budget. And since we are in a ground war, that means the Navy and Air Force. Which is what we’d need to fight China…
So, we really are in the position the UK was in about 100 years ago. They did have good leadership, the the form of Admiral Fischer, who managed to make the most of what they had. He concentrated the fleet where it needed to be, got rid of a lot of old ships, and modernized the Royal Navy with an entire new class of warship, the Dreadnought. And he did it all by spending less money. We’ve already cut as much as we can, but I think we could learn a thing or two from the British experience. Our naval deployments don’t quite match where the trouble is, we’re still locked into huge carriers that may not be the primary weapon of future naval wars, and naval procurement is cripplingly expensive.
I think we should have ship hulls built somewhere outside the US. Our shipyards are mind-bogglingly inefficient and the results are substandard. The whole process is broken. That will take leadership to fix. In the meantime, outsourcing as much as we can to Japan or Korea would get the message across that the shipyards need to clean up their act.
I left out the flashpoint.
Iran attempts to nuke Israel and Israel retaliates with nukes of her own.
Any sentient person knows nobama won’t help Israel, in fact as we speak he has his dogs threatening the only democracy in the ME, so Israel is basically on her own.
Another reason to tac-nuke AF-G now and get it off the plate. It’s a side show simply eating up our military.
And then there’s the question. Did Reagan give Taiwan nukes?
Habu: But I’m gonna be hard my old pugnacious self and say that China is a major threat that is preparing for an offensive war sometime in the next score years. They may simply wait for nobama and the Socialist Democrats to implode this country, especially given the odious performance nobama put in the climate conference. I said at the time the Chinese will not forget his rude behavior and unless we’ve weaponized space (a distinct possibility) we are in no shape today to take on the Chinese.
The China “problem” is going to solve itself in a year or two when the bubble that is their whole economy implodes. They’ve been pouring all their cash reserves into loans for fur-bearing trout farms and building more commercial real estate than they’ll ever fill with paying customers. They’ve built enormous capacity to make crap that Americans are never going to buy because the piggy bank is empty now. No one has any home equity to take out a second mortgage to buy China’s crap, and it will take ten or twenty years to get back anywhere near where we were in 2006 at the top of the housing bubble. The whole thing with China’s $800 billion stimulus is a big gamble that this will be a “V” shaped global recovery. It’s more like this:
\________
Mongo, what about the NY fed? (where there used to be a lot of gold)
51. exhelodrvr
My father back in the late fifties had several Marine squadrons (in seriatim). They developed in short order 1. land launch of non VTOL and STOL aircraft by means of a catapult system for short fields.
2. He perfected delivery of an atomic weapon from the tiny A-4 Skyhawk and for a year then trained all the other A-4 squadrons how to get ‘er done.(won a second DFC for that)
The Chinese might like to steal things and reverse engineer them but they are a very smart people. I mentioned the other day that I was confident their future carrier pilots are shooting touch and go’s right now on land.
Learning to set up a cat shot and retrieve an aircraft isn’t going to stymie them. Sure they’ll lose planes and pilots but that goes on with all aircraft carrier ops. And they’re not simply going to go to sea and immediately into an engagement but it won’t be 10-15 years and we’ll lose the western pacific to them and the future of that region will be in great peril.
I mean how long did it take Oppenheimer to develop the bomb to reciting the Bhagavad Gita? Not long.
55. Teresita
Tend to your merkin old girl.
Peterike #23:
Hey, thanks for the investment tip! Obviously we should put our money into sex change clinics on mainland China. Probably could even induce the government there to run a mandatory lottery. Convert 12.5 million of those little guys to honeys and the problem is solved. And since they can’t get pregnant the government there will really like it.
There’s billions to be made! The Luci Lui and Nancy Kwan look-alike franchises alone will run into hundreds of millions!
We have to move fast, though. I hear the Thais have demonstrated considerable expertise in the area and will move in and take over the market if we don’t get in first.
Hanbu #57:
One of the things I learned in my own officially unofficial analysis of Chinese space and missile efforts is that they will learn things by watching you that you don’t even realize are valuable, because it’s so simple that it never occurs to you to protect it.
China, like Stalins Soviets needs only the sweat and death of (Stalin 20-30 million Ukrainians) to develop a modern industrial country.
China can and will use as much human grist as the mill requires to achieve it’s goals. They are still guided by the Little Red Book with updates and only a fool would sell them short in the world market of achievement. They have a taste of it now and the expendable population to get it.
Teresita #55: Stop drinking the Raimondo-laced
Rockwellaid. Try for some humility instead of Hummelity.
What you are talking about does not have a damned thing to do with the Chinese ability to put steel on target.
Having a stronger economy is only relevant when a sustained conflict makes the attrition
factor a important determinant in the eventual outcome. Other than that it is the same escapist fantasy that I have been hearing for the past 30 years.
Whenever some entity takes a notion for conquest, consumer satisfaction does not rate very high in their priorities.
And do you realize that according to what you have said, all we have to do is deprive ourselves sufficiently and nobody will ever be able to attack us? Want to revise those comments?
Wu Sun Tzu qualifies as an Austrian. Certain soi disant libertarians do not.
Peed accordingly.
Dear PRC,
Congrats for hitting a missile with a missile. Welcome to the club. We’ve been doing that operationally for what, 20 years or so? Want to impress me? Do it 20 times in a row from the pitching deck of a destroyer, and then hit a tumbling object in a decaying low earth orbit with the same hardware…from the same ship.
I hear you shot down a satellite using a modified MRBM, after you adjusted its orbit to make it easier to hit. That’s quite a technological feat, and again, congrats. We did it first in 1985, using a cobbled-together missile some engineers built and launched off a F-15. Try that — I mean, I know you will, and we’ll hear about it if it’s successful and all, but seeing as we did it 25 years ago, you’re not blowing my skirt up here. Don’t know if you have that idiom or not. ASAT missile tech is so old we’ve build at least one whole operational system we abandoned and had to reinvent on the fly with the SM-3. Just to put this in perspective, our first aircraft-launched ASAT was designed when the IBM PC was the hot new “microcomputer”, when people actually said “microcomputer”. A tech demonstration is a long, long way from an operational system.
We have broken up more aircraft carriers for scrap than the PRC has ever fielded. There are only two countries that have ever operated a CVN, and the US owns about 95% of the world’s supply. The prospect of Chinese CVs on the seas is not daunting to me, first of all they’re bait for Virginia-class boats, and second, there’s no comparing the operational and institutional experience of the USN in operating jet aircraft from carriers. Who are the Chinese going to learn from in terms of carrier operations? Not the stuff in journals but the stuff that really matters, the kinds of wisdom that senior enlisted folks have that keeps our carriers operating all around the world? Can they resupply their carriers at sea the way we have been doing since WW II? There are a lot of hurdles before they are a near-peer competitor, not insurmountable ones but not ones to be discounted, either.
I’m much more worried that they’ll stop playing Santa to BHO’s spoiled brats in Congress and tank our economy. It’s probably overall cheaper to collapse our economy and forego their T-bill investments than to build up a military to be our competitor.
59. RWE
In your response to Peterike #23: you must have missed the larger point , glaring as it was.
Peterike said, “Get a war going and toss lots of these aimless boys into the meat grinder, etc…..
As I just mentioned they have the expendable manpower to get what they want, in spades.
62. Darren
We have broken up more aircraft carriers for scrap than the PRC has ever fielded. There are only two countries that have ever operated a CVN, and the US owns about 95% of the world’s supply . Wouldn’t that be sailed, not fielded?
You barely escaped a non sequitur implying that the Chinese can’t operate a CVN since only two countries do so now…..close call
But tell me about this?
Who are the Chinese going to learn from in terms of carrier operations?
How did Jimmy Doolittle’s men learn to take off from the Hornet? How do you get to Broadway?
Practice ,practice.practice … yes, they’ll lose pilots and planes but to intimate that they can’t get it done … hmmm. Just go to some old salt and wave a bundle of cash and say teach us. Then they’ll know how to do it. Plenty of people know how it’s all done but most are in penury … lots of cash will help them become great teachers.
They’ll get it done.
Habu: Expendable manpower is another factor
that becomes a determinant only in a war of attrition. Mao liked the idea, his successors, starting with Deng Xiao Peng, have rejected it.
If they try to rattle all those two-legged sabers, just say “Ridgway”. I rather imagine they will get the point.
I was speaking with a Marine Gunny the other day and he mentioned that any contractor dealing with a U.S. military base must certify that all parts were built in the USA (perhaps effective Jan 2010?). My first thought was that this would go a long way towards reanimating our manufacturing base. Anybody?
Darren: Your viewpoints are not without merit. However, the type of numerical comparisons you are making are pertinent when
everybody is carrying “muskets”. When people are carrying “rifles” the math changes.
Reason: Steel on target.
As I just mentioned they have the expendable manpower to get what they want, in spades.
There’s a difference between spending men and gaining women. All those “Little Princes” march off to war and the 48 million Moms & Dads at home have absolutely nothing to say? What China needs is women. They won’t be getting that with the PRA, no matter how many of those Little Princes they arm. Besides, human wave attacks are great on land, but far less effective at sea, where the actual waves appear to take precedence. Thermobaric weapons make attacks over open ground pretty costly, without even going nuclear. What is the Chinese response to the CBU-97/CBU-105, with up to 40 vehicle kills per unit? If those are infantry carriers, that’s up to 400 dead Chinese per press of the bomb release button. Most of our conventional weapons development over the 50 years since WW II has been designed to defeat a land force of overwhelming manpower and liberal use of artillery and armor. If you are postulating that kind of force, that happens to be what the US military was designed to defeat up until the last five years or so. I’m sure our conventional combat prowess is down a bit since the reorientation to counter-insurgency, but the boys & girls can still shoot straight, and the Navy really hasn’t been retasked that much. Not only do we have the best-armed military in the world, we have the most experienced NCO and junior officer corps on the planet. This the Chinese do not have.
It would be crazy to fight us in any event, we don’t have what they want. We’re competing for the resources they need, not sitting on them. Siberia would make a wonderful Greater Manchuria, plus Russian men don’t live that long and the Russians are upside-down the other way on the female-male ratio. It’s a match made in the bowels of Hades, but a far better match than the one we would make, with that inconvenient Pacific Ocean as a supply line.
It’s not that we don’t have weaknesses, mostly our over-reliance on technical systems that are themselves vulnerable, not to mention a lack of nationalism of the kind the Chinese have “in spades”. These things are not to be ignored, but neither is the amount of havoc we have sitting in warehouses should our political leaders ever choose to unleash it.
It all makes me wonder how popular Mandarin Chinese is as a subject in Malaysia & Indonesia. Both nations have petroleum the Chinese crave, as does Siberia, as was pointed out above. As much as I believe an advanced PRC navy and airforce can be a threat to the U.S. I think the blow is more likely to fall on the Koreans, Japanese, Malaysians, Indonesia, etc. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to see China try to rebuild the co-prosperity sphere. This time perhaps successfully since the U.S. is hamstringing itself. That F-22 decision is going to haunt us for a very long time.
Dave,
You might be misattributing a numbers argument to me. 24 million excess Chinese men with AKs (or their new QBZ-97) still fall under the category of “target” in my book. It’s a lot of people, but then again…it’s a lot of people. To feed, clothe, arm, pay, give healthcare, do paperwork for, keep at a fighting edge and still under control. A PRA/N/AF of 24 million is a direct threat to the Chinese government, and they still have to get them out of China to do something significant. Our military is designed to deep-penetrate and wreck columns of tanks and APCs on the move, along with all the people in them. If you’re riding a train to a war with the US, you’re fighting the wrong people. Probably worse with ships.
I don’t see China directly attacking the US, well, ever, short of an EMP prep-strike on the continental US. At that point they will get more cooperation with food than armed men, a month after we’ve eaten our Wal-Marts to the walls with no way to resupply given the absence of civilian transport after a quality EMP attack. They are much more likely to use their military to continue to set up mercantilism across the globe, and only confront us at a time and place of their own choosing, and then at great peril. They don’t need to be our peer if they’re, say, putting their navy somewhere in Africa for gunboat diplomacy.
Habu,
Hey, life is long, and they will eventually learn to do everything we do if it is their intent to do so. CV and CVN are negligible distinctions, fewer fast fuelers for the carrier, but just as many fast resupply ships for the people on board and just as much avgas for the jets. Anyone can operate a CV, the Argentine Navy was still doing it in the 1980s, the Indians are doing so with STOVL jets, and I believe even the Brazilians and Thai Navy have flattops. There is just a huge difference between having a carrier and having a real instrument of power projection, the fact that your guys can take off and land most of the time does not a fighting ship make is my argument. Give them a decade and they may be impressive.
It’s the T-bill bomb that they have and can use any time that worries me more than a half-completed Russian carrier and some repurposed non-stealth Su-33s. Heck, even the Russians couldn’t figure out catapults for their own jets, the Chinese may decide to spend the blood and treasure to figure it out, but by the time they do we’ll be launching autonomous stealth UCAVs that can pull 15-20Gs, pack 100kW lasers for air-to-air and Lord knows what for anti-ship. A head start remains a head start, if they get to where we were in the 1980s they will be formidable, but they’ll still be behind.
Annoy Mouse @ 9: Since at least 1989, there has been ZERO chance that the US will use force to defend Taiwan. It’s an empty threat, if it’s even a threat anymore.
43 Kay Arby
“I see where you’re going with this, but for the life of me, I can’t come up with a pithy response. In fact, I can’t come up with a rational response at all. I see what’s happening and I see a number of possibilities where this may lead, but when I ask the question, “Well, what do we do about it?” the only answer I can come up with is, “I don’t know.”
Well the time for pithy responses is fast coming to an end. Lake stated we need to come up with an action plan. But your preparing for the worse is always and should be every Americans plan.
Consider this. Both parties have shown that the only difference between them is the level of stupidity. So what do we do about that. Well, in the state of Tennessee there is a guy that has ditched the Republican Party and is going to run as and Independent Tea Party Candidate. That is a start, a small one but this is how we can change the rules of the game. You mark my words there will be many more that declare that the Republican Party is defunct and run as Independents.
What can you do? Send them money and if in your area, vote for them and encourage others to do so. Hell drive the ol’ folks like me to the voting booth. Just bring beer.
We have to throw all of these politicians that are not of the people and for the people out on their ass.
47 michaelhoskins:
“Bottom line, while concerned about the news of Chinese prowess, we must be very careful to be realistic…and brutally honest…about our and their capabilities at any given time.”
You made some very good points. But remember the ol’ saying that you just can’t consider capabilities but you also must consider intentions. And when talking about the Chinese, their intentions are the same as the Islamics. Total Control and it should be apparent from history the Chinese have the patience of well…the Chinese.
Another thing when talking about the Chinese is to remember that they have thousands of people both military and civilian that have done nothing but steal industrial and military secret (and even top secret) information. They have been doing this for years and it is going to intensify in the future. They are good at it. And as someone said unless we can counter them from space based assets or some other secret war toys they have not copied or countered, we may be screwed.
The Russians are starting to get more money from their resources but still their Army and Navy are going to be years and years before they recover, except that they also build pretty good subs to launch those missiles from. But they are good at building missiles and nukes and that is the real power they have and that we must counter.
49 Habu
“Take your pick, Islam by degrees and demographics, the Chinese by patient planning and execution, or perhaps the Soviets, embarrassed and tired of not doing what their General staff wanted to do and still desires…..a first strike takeout.”
Very concise and scary conclusions that our government has been ignoring or poo-pooing for decades. While destroying our Industrial Base and letting the liberals teach , Marxist sociology, eco-terrorism and climate change instead of engineering and science.
50 Walt
Yes, it is a race to see who we wind up slaves of. The Islamics or the Chinese.
53 John Lynch
Your so right about our present situation and condition. Has a Nation ever filed for Bankruptcy? Well, maybe we can talk China into taking California and a few other blue states.
“I think we should have ship hulls built somewhere outside the US. Our shipyards are mind-bogglingly inefficient and the results are substandard. The whole process is broken. That will take leadership to fix. In the meantime, outsourcing as much as we can to Japan or Korea would get the message across that the shipyards need to clean up their act.”
So true, but it goes much deeper than that. I have a friend who is a welder, not just any old welder but one who is qualified and experienced in all welding on anything anywhere, even under the oceans. He works all over the world but won’t work much in the U.S. because he just can’t stand the cut in pay. He also says that the welder’s that are in the pipeline now are not trained sufficiently to work outside of the U.S. Welders are not exactly born, but there seems to be a shortage of qualified excellent welders in the world. Yes, I know welding is only one part of the ship building job but I believe it is indicative of our trade schools in the U.S.
62 Darren
Your excellent descriptive narrative of the U.S. past achievements kinda reminds me of myself describing what I have accomplished over the last fifty working years of my life.
But let me remind you that all those achievements in the past and a dollar won’t even buy you a cup of coffee nowadays.
We have for generations educated Chinese in our engineering schools and the Germans and others have done the same. And you know how good the Chinese are at stealing secrets and reverse engineering just about anything.
Also, in case you have never actually been in a battle (and yea, I have been in several) numbers count. When they just keep on keeping on coming you just can’t kill them fast enough.
And you lose.
Papa Ray
NOW HEAR THIS! NOW HEAR THIS!
HEAR YE! HEAR YE! (kin you’all hear me?)
Seems we have all gotten off topic on this one. We keep talking about what Joe Chink
will or will not do. The point Wretchard
was driving at is what Old What’s His Non-Negro Dialect will do.
In conjunction with Wretch, some commentary by John Bolton, and some personal observations and thought, here is my take.
Obama has a utopian vision of propriety.
When it comes to international affairs, the utopia requires the USA to be a warm and fuzzy ATM machine. This means be subservient to hostiles and snarky to friendlies. Ballistic Missile Defenses do not have a warm and fuzzy image, so Poland and the Czech Republic are to be rebuffed in no uncertain terms. Combating Climate Change has the proper image, so be real nice to Robert Mugabe and promise him and Hugo Chavez more money to deprive their populaces of necessities.
With this type of vision, the only kind of people Obama can accomodate are the nasties.
Only way he has to do that is to neuter critical, primarily military, US capabilities.
He has to do that by somehow avoiding a domestic backlash that will not quit.
So everything that is coming out of the White House these days is for the purpose
of bribing “them” while pacifying “us”.
As there is notable resistance to the latter, efforts gravitate towards the former
in the hope and expectation that those bribed will assist in chastising all us natives for being so restless.
Points everything in the direction of the supra-national state albeit in a rather incoherent manner. (Note: incoherent does not mean harmless.)
For these reasons I estimate that 2010 will be a year in which foreign affairs and arrangments will be critical, wehtehr or not they are publicized. I daresay that anticipation of this is what led to that Peace Prize.
While I do not see Black Helicopters in our forseeable future, all these Pastel Ornithopters are a bit hazardous.
Habu,
Yes, it certainly is possible. And developing the capability to launch a few sorties in a non-threatening environment would be relatively easy.
Developing the ability to come anywhere close to the level of operations of one of our carriers (including the task force coordination that would be required to operate in a hostile environment) will take them longer than 20 years. That is far more difficult, by orders of magnitude, than the processes your father went through, when you consider the relative starting points.
66 Knight1
“My first thought was that this would go a long way towards reanimating our manufacturing base. Anybody?”
Well, sounds good until you realize that it will take years to get the U.S. back in the manufacturing business. What do we do for all the gee whizes and gosh dangs in the meantime?
Anyway, in a couple of years it will be a mute question, because we will not have the money to buy much of anything.
Papa Ray
Darren: You just hit the key word, “mercantilism”. It is redistributionist in nature. BHO goes to that like a moth goes to flame. If we prove reluctant to follow, then he will ask the flame to come to us.
Who was it that coined the phrase, “Humanitarian with a guillotine”?? I cannot remember. Describes Obama though. And since we are refusing to politely stick our necks out, he seeks assistants.
Chew on all this and my rantings up in #73 would you?
I’ll get back after a while. Past time for me to take a break.
Head is spinning and stomach is growling.
Well, I read that the chineses missile was rather a response to the US missile launched on Yemen, meaning to the Chineses, “stop” your game here, you can’t get more of our pawns there.
73 Dave
If you want your head to spin the other direction, watch this little video. This plan has been in the works for a couple of years and they are going to try and stuff it down our Congress throats late this year or next.
It depends a lot on how long they are snarled up over the coming Immigration bill.
Please watch this to the end.
UN Doomsday Treaty
Papa Ray
Papa Ray: He works all over the world but won’t work much in the U.S. because he just can’t stand the cut in pay.
That is just … pitiful. Where does he work for better pay?
One of my new year’s resolutions is to be more outspoken about the plunging pay for IT workers in the US. Especially my own. I am always quibbling with recruiters about one more dollar per hour, when the rates are already 30% less than just five years ago, 50% less than fifteen years ago, and 75% less than when I graduated college. Of course, all adjusted for inflation, etc.
Current cover article in business week: The Disposable Worker. Mentions pay cuts as *an* issue, but it is perhaps *the* issue, if you really believe in markets.
The US, including Bill Gates, absolutely spits in the face of anybody today attempting to make a living as a STEM worker (science technology engineering mathematics), making them all into “jobs Americans won’t do”. Go ahead, ask me what I really think about it!
Another little problem the U.S. has in store for it is the growing population of Muslims. I’m wondering how many of them will try and get on the Amnesty train. Many that are here are on overstayed visas and other nefarious methods.
I am not looking forward to this kind of behavior in the U.S. but I think it is coming. If we continue to have Obama or another democrat as the President you will see them get positive news and support from the left.
Guilty? It’s a badge of honour say Muslim hate mob (and because we’re on benefits, the state will pay our costs)
Nice huh…?
Papa Ray
79 Josh
“That is just … pitiful. Where does he work for better pay?
Well, presently he is on vacation somewhere in [e]urope, but for the last three months he has been working the in the North Sea.
Heard that song…”I’ve been everywhere”…that is him.
BTW. He does have two business here in the States. One Mom and Pop type General Store and one oil field equipment sales and service in West Texas. But I think those are just for tax purposes. Or maybe to launder money.
His only failing is that when not working he tends to drink too much. I’ve had to go get him several times long ago and pour him into bed.
He says he has slowed down in the past few years. I hope so. He is getting close to 55 and older bodies just don’t carouse like they used to.
Just ask me.
Papa Ray
He is getting close to 55 and older bodies just don’t carouse like they used to.
Just ask me.
Don’t have to, I’m close to 55, too. On the far side.
Teresita is right that China faces real economic, social and strategic constraints in the near (2 to 10 year) term. Habu is right about their capabilities, intentions and potential to challenge us. The present problems afflicting the US politically and economically and culturally often have “Made in China” on a hidden label. AGW and the attendent corruptions are linked to the Beijing resident and tool Maurice Strong. The corruption of our politics going back at least to Clinton was openly linked to the PLA. On a related topic the Obama administration is letting Riady back into the country. So if both are correct what does it mean? The answer is that if China is facing increased turbulence then the risk of conflict increases.
The arguments regarding Strike North and Strike South that China will consider mirror those faced by the Japanese 70 years ago.
To be blogged under the title “Everyone is Right.”
74. exhelodrvr:
Developing the ability to come anywhere close to the level of operations of one of our carriers (including the task force coordination that would be required to operate in a hostile environment) will take them longer than 20 years
Sounds like a great statement but there is no empirical data to support it. The Chinese pilots did a fairly decent job in Korea and I’m sure they’ve improved . In the meantime we’re cancelling everything in sight that’s military so our forces in 20 years will be so degraded that it could be a jump ball …how many new carriers do we have in the works and how old will our newest carrier be in 20 years? etc. etc.etc.
I know it’s tough to entertain the thought that our Navy could be bested in 15-20 years but it’s a distinct possibility the way things are going right now. At minimum we must acknowledge it could happen and prepare but we’re not …so where does that have us in 15-20 years …in front or behind?
Hey, tomorrow the CINC could say ,no more carriers, no more pilots, or he could cut flighttime back to 3 hours a month, no live fire, etc, etc….most of the population won’t even know because they’ll be watching the Simpsons.
Hey, hey, hey, I hate the hell out of it but that’s not gonna stop the Chinese from moving forward ..I mean we’re talking about a civilization that invented spaghetti for goodness sakes.
Plus it’s back to the old money deal. Wave enough money at flight simulator companies or former employees and you’re there. Give Sandy Burger some new underwear and bingo , you’re there….the Chinese will work the challenge and get it done …
#80 Papa Ray: “…growing population of Muslims…”
Yes the prospect is very bad under Obama’s administration, but we must not forget that Bush did this too. Soon after 9/11, Bush reinstated the easy visa program for Saudi nationals (some describe it as a veritable visa waiver program), and he placed US visa applications/reviews in SA under the hands and eyes of Muslim US State Dept. and Muslim FBI operatives. Bush also authorized more than 10,000 new visas for Saudi “students” to come to the US. The military and prison Muslim chaplain training/vetting programs remained (and still are) maintained under Saudi auspices, paid for by them. Muslim “outreach” grew exponentially under Bush, (exponentially worse under Obama), and his endless assertions about the “ROP” and “great world religion hijacked by extremists” played right into the Islamic insurrection’s hands.
This is all catastrophic, but never forget that Bush sent thousands of our bravest to die in part to establish not one, but TWO shiny new Islamic Republics in Iraq and Afghanistan where Sharia law is permanently enshrined in their resective constitutions! Monstrous!
habu,
LOL! And you have no empirical data to support that the Chinese will be able to successfully operate a carrier task force vs teh U.S. in the next 15 years.
It’s not just training the pilots, although that is a significant issue. It’s the flight deck crews, too, and it’s working as a coordinated task force that has to defend against submarine and surface and air threats.
I don’t question that the Chinese navy will present a significant threat to our Navy in the near future, but I don’t see that as coming from their carriers. Subs, surface-to-surface missiles, air-to-surface missiles, yes. But not from carriers. Doesn’t mean that they couldn’t use carriers to project power elsewhere (i.e. third world), though.
72. Papa Ray
“Also, in case you have never actually been in a battle (and yea, I have been in several) numbers count. When they just keep on keeping on coming you just can’t kill them fast enough.”
Been there too, in Angola. Also had an uncle who was in two different companies in Korea where fewer than 20 came back alive ..Bloody Nose Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge …
In Vietnam check out Operation Buffalo up at the DMZ http://tinyurl.com/ygweek5
My brother in law earned three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star .. it was horrible…. battle is horrible …I’m just glad I had dark pants on.
86. exhelodrvr
Yeah, I know that. We’re both just jawing with no way to prove where the ChiComs are now or where they’ll be or we’ll be …..I’m just saying they are at a gallop and we are mucking out the stables.
Plus they do have a whole lot more folks than we do working the challenge. I’m in your camp, just not in the same platoon.
I hope you’re right and I’m wrong but I don’t see it that way.
84 Habu
I think your preaching mostly to the choir. And I’m sure that you know that our AF has already cut back on pilots, their practice and the use of fuel for non-critical flights, according to my oldest grandson who is in the AF.
Not withstanding of course all of the fuel burned by our CongressCritters and THE WON.
85 Morton
No I didn’t forget, just thought it was apparent that it had been going on for years. And yes, it is good that you specify that the Kingdom is at the root of all of the money, not just for immigration but for most of the Muslim mosques and other structures and expenditures of money in the U.S. The rest is financed by the Muslim Brotherhood which is HQed in Egypt.
Well, I’ve got to go warm up left overs because my SS check won’t be here for a couple of days and so no grocery shopping till then.
Papa Ray
Well I’m sick of seeing “Habu” all over the thread so I’m calling it a night … tomorrow is another day.
Pretty sure I’m the last commenter to read it, Dave, but I am reading “A Conflict Of Visions” by Thomas Sowell. It explains a lot about why there are so many people from various walks of life and locations around the globe end up at this fine establishment. Along with our proprietor, we share what Sowell calls a ‘constrained’ worldview. Our conclusions and analysis of current events, life the universe and everything are filtered through what we perceive as the inalienable limitations of humans: self-interest, greed, venality. Victor Davis Hanson calls it the Tragic worldview: humans are limited, so don’t expect too much out of them and you won’t be surprised.
The reason we scratch our heads at BHO’s policies and conclusions from the data pool we share is because he is a scion of the ‘unconstrained’ worldview: humans are limited only by their upbringing and social constructs. VDH calls this the Theraputic worldview. People don’t have defects, they act badly because of their situations. People would not be greedy if they weren’t saddled with capitalism, which creates greed in those forced to bear it. We think this is nuts, but it’s because we and BHO are starting from very different places. I believe he is doing what his worldview tells him is precisely the right thing to do, he has good intentions, but from what we see as a very skewed position relative to our reality. He is an internationalist because there are whole countries that have yet to kiss his ring. The one counter to your utopianist/transnational progressive agenda idea is that it does conflict with a very obvious Obama trait: his ego. By definition, it has to be about the World Order, but I don’t see BHO setting his own ego aside very often. This is one thing to hope for: that his character flaws will prevent him from being as effective a transnationalist as he would like to be.
I agree that it seems like a major military neutering is part of the Obama plan, with “the budget” being the justification — but remember that during the Great Depression the military was atrophied horribly. I think I read somewhere that our Army of the day was 31st in the world in size, right behind Romania’s. This is not unique to BHO, Clinton cut the post-Gulf War and post-Wall military back significantly to 3% or so of GDP. The mid-century Democrats had the communists to contend with, Truman built up the US military and Kennedy had the defense budget up to 9% of GDP at one point. Even Carter built up the military, the Trident subs, the Tomahawks and the CVNs we sail today survived or were initiated under Carter, as was the F-16.
The worst thing that could happen for BHO is a near-peer competitor and a credible existential threat that would cause him to, for political reasons, have to shift to defense as a priority. China will have a hard time being a credible military threat before BHO leaves office. They may be able to achieve limited local superiority (e.g., Taiwan) but blue-water to blue-water they are just not a threat. Terrorism is to be downplayed because were he forced to recognize it as an existential threat that might divert resources from his redistribution project. More than just creeping utopianism or one-world-orderism, the left side of the Democratic party has a strong ‘ick’ reaction to the military. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish disgust from antipathy.
Yes, I believe BHO is a utopianist, but I don’t think he has the political skills to get to his goals in that regard. Were he King of the United States, maybe, but he is a little over a year from losing his ability to push much of anything through Congress, and the harder he pushes this year the more firmly the electorate seems to be interested in pushing back in the 2010 midterms. Credit to Bill Clinton, when the Congress was jerked out from under him he pretty much went with the flow. Maybe BHO will see political survival in tacking to the center. If not, he will surpass Carter on the “Worst Post-War President” poll by a large margin, and will be an unlamented single-term President. If he would rather be relevant than a transnationalist, if ego trumps utopia, then we should be all right if at least one house of Congress can be jerked away from his party.
–just wanted to comment that the connection between military and economic power has to account for the state of North Korea –which happens to be a readily accessible model to (not to mention a cat’s paw of) the foreign military establishment under discussion.
Also, parenthetically, re LotM’s mention of “mr. forcible and radical depopulation by any means necessary” Maurice Strong:
http://www.bing.com/search?om=0&sig=C59CEC3797A640FB85B86AD04105BC9D&q=maurice+strong+north+korea&FORM=Z9FD4
or
http://www.bing.com/search?q=maurice+strong+north+korea+nuclear+weapons&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
China has for years run a sophisticated military and commercial cyberwarfare effort. It would not surprise me if some of the IPR for this was in fact from western countries originally.
And now we have Google announcing they may pull out of China, based on coordinated cyberattacks and hacking into the accounts of activists in China.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/asia/13beijing.html
A new dawn will soon be upon us.
BTW, I may have meetings in China late in the year. If I go, I’ll be required to use a disposable mobile phone and a netbook that can be destroyed when I return (and I can’t handle or remotely access any confidential documents while there).
JL/93; by way of update on the NYT story, re “…coordinated cyberattacks and hacking into the accounts of activists in China” — a Google spokesman appearing on the financial cable tv shows late today said the targets were not exclusively Chinese activists in China, but also in Europe and ‘possibly elsewhere’.
There are a number of topics, inter-related, to comment on. Keeping in mind that I am just a slant-eyed small mountain town boy with an interest in defense, and not a professional analyst; I acknowledge that the fecal impaction quotient may be unacceptably high. Habu, if I say something too stupid, please jump in.
The consequences of Chinese demographic disparity caused by the one-child policy go far beyond the prospect of having 24 million horny Chinese males armed with small arms crossing borders. Aside from my family acquiring two very smart and very cute nieces via adoption of some of the “expendable” surplus female population; there is the effect on Chinese society. I suspect that the 24 million number is lowballed, but have not crunched any numbers yet. I do offer that male humans who do not form societally acceptable pair bonds, are not truly civilized into their society. They form what are analogs of animal packs. [see the gang problem in this country and others]. In the absence of pair bonds, the men become anti-social animals. This is NOT good for any society. Even one as large as China’s. Deep and intractable societal instability in a society that has nuclear weapons is probably not something we can consider a good thing, since we are sharing the world with them.
This effect is multiplied by the other part of the demographic imbalance. The goal of the policy was to reduce overall population growth. It succeeded. Just as Europe is an aging society with a smaller and smaller proportion of the native European population in the age cohort that does things compared to the larger, aged dependent class; China is suffering from a similar problem. This exacerbates the disruptive effect, and limits the ability of Chinese society to take countermeasures.
This is reflected by the recent change in the one-child policy in urban areas. Shanghai reports that there is an impending crisis because of the imbalance between working age and elderly people.
This will aggravate any problems we will have with China in the future … and we will have them.
Sergey in #31 says:
At present level of technology effective defence against IBSM is not possible, and even limited attempts in this direction are ruinously costly. Chinese move is just a PR stunt. Arm race in rocket defense had bankrupted Soviet economy, just as this was planned.
The goal has never been an absolute defense. It just has to be enough to induce rational uncertainty of sufficient success on the part of any rational aggressor. That includes several necessary precursors. The defense has to keep pace with the level of threat. There has to be credible threat of a deterrent response; both in the number and effectiveness of weapons systems, and a credible will to react.
As has been noted, we have a multi-decade lead over anyone in the actual implementation of ABM systems. We can do it up to some level of attack, the Soviets could not. There is question as to whether the successor Russians can. #1 JC in KZ posed the question as to what the Russian response would be to a Chinese ABM system. This is very cogent. From what I have seen, there is a level of paranoia about China [a left-over from the Mongol conquest] that underlays the Russian view of China that combined with the de facto colonization of the Russian Far East by China [an artifact of the Russian demographic and economic collapse] does not bode well for Sino-Russian relations. While Russia can be positive that under no circumstances will the EU launch against them, and be pretty sure that the US [especially the current regime] will not; that level of certainty does not exist when they look to the East.
The ability of China to more safely engage in “adventurism” in the same areas that the Russians are targetting or already control will probably reinforce the current Russian military build up, and put them back into the ABM business in a big way. With concommittent effects on Russian and world stability.
I mentioned precursors. One is that the aggressor is rational. I offer that our most likely opponents; Iran and North Korea, are not by any Western standard, rational. They may be in their own terms, but successful deterrence depends on a shared set of assumptions that does not exist. Our third likely opponent is both sitting on our economic jugular, and aggressively moving against us in a number of other ways. That opponent is facing internal social and possible economic [# 55 Teresita may be right about the Chinese economic bubble, she is far from the only person to note this; but the process of such a collapse enhances the chances of irrational behaviour and does not mitigate them] disruptions that can lead to dangerous and unpredictable behaviour.
Another precursor is the maintenance of a sufficient level of defense to keep the uncertainty of an aggressor high enough to deter attack. The current regime in the US is dedicated to degrading our ability to attrite a nuclear missile attack by any means. We have abandoned our Eastern European defenses [which incidentally would have also protected Western Europe, but then again, now the EU is on its own] and funding for further ABM deployment and maintenance of what we have to defend our own country is at severe risk.
Third, there is the matter of deterrent response. Our nuclear forces are aging, the necessary maintenance and upgrading of it to keep it operational is not being funded. Production and deployment of our last strategic missile, the Trident D-5, ended quite a few years ago. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are all developing and deploying missiles as fast as they can and aiding each other in the process. And to be honest, if you were any of our potential adversaries [or one of the nations that used to consider us allies] would you automatically believe that our National Command Authority would respond to anything short of a full on nuclear strategic strike against the United States? Or even in the event of that strike? If you hesitated for a second on reading that, you answered the question.
We have a lead, for now, in missiles, missile defense, and power projection. But we are standing still, if not going backwards in all those fields. The question is largely one of will. Our potential adversaries are enhancing their capabilities in all those fields. I have no doubt that my ethnic cousins are very capable of developing their military capabilities on their own, and paying the costs to do so. They definitely have the will, which we do not. They are actively demonstrating that the will is being converted to actions. On multiple axis’. And what they are not developing themselves, they are either receiving as a gift from our government, or as a purchase in fee simple absolute, or they are stealing very successfully.
The gap can be closed, and as it does the world will become a far more dangerous place for us. If our rational calculation of the effectiveness of our deterrent is in question, if hostile power projection is something that we encounter [think of a Chinese CVBG] and we are given a choice of backing down or going to a full strategic exchange, if our ability to protect our interests is in question; we are going to have what my ancestors referred to as “interesting times”. And this is all outside our own domestic political and economic problems, and our ongoing existential conflict with the Ummah. I am known as a bloody pessimist; but even granting that, the best that I can see is a long struggle that we may not survive, and even if we do we will not survive intact.
#54 Habu:
And then there’s the question. Did Reagan give Taiwan nukes?
My navel-gazing analysis: Short form no. Long form, they may still have them. You look at what people are doing, not what they say. In the field of defense, you look at what they buy and what they deploy.
We know that Taiwan had an informal arms development alliance with the other “pariah states” in the 1970′s and 1980′s. Those states were Israel and South Africa. They shared development and deployment of a number of conventional weapons, and it is notable that both Israel and South Africa developed nuclear weapons. Taiwan has both a nuclear industry and more than a few of the scientists who worked on US nuclear weapons development ended up in Taiwan.
It is openly acknowledged that early in the Clinton administration they put pressure on Taiwan to force them to dismantle their nuclear weapons program. That effort was supposedly successful, but being under such a threat, I would not be surprised if Taiwan did not hide the program.
Taiwan is producing the HsiungFeng series of missiles. The HsiungFeng I was derived from the Israeli Gabriel II short range missile. The HsiungFeng II looks more like our Harpoon missile than the Gabriel, and has longer range [80 km. with a 225 kg. warhead], and is deployed both on Taiwanese surface vessels and from shore.
The next variant is the HsiungFeng IIE, and supposedly has a range of 5-600 km. which places parts of the mainland within range in an arc from about Shanghai to northern Hainan Island firing from Taiwan. [test fired in 2007] There would be a larger arc if it can be mounted on a naval vessel, especially a submarine. There are further reports [Janes?, not sure where I saw it] that the procurement buy for the HF IIE was 50-100. There is supposedly a HF IIER version with a range up to 1250 km in development, but this one has not been seen.
China has literally thousands of missiles openly targeted at Taiwan. 50-100 HF IIE’s with 225 kg. conventional warheads are far too few to be used in a counterforce role; even IF time urgent targetting data could be acquired and it had a CEP small enough to hit a mobile missile launcher. Nor would it make any sense in a counter-value role with that puny warhead. The numbers and weapon capability make no strategic sense with a conventional warhead. However, if only a few of the HF IIE’s carried nuclear warheads, Taiwan would have a tacit deterrent force that could prevent invasion. Would the inhabitants of Zhongnanhai trade Shanghai, Hangchow, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong for Taiwan? And more cities would be at risk if a mobile launch platform was developed.
Based on circumstances, available resources, and procurement, I would not rule out a small nuclear deterrent on Taiwan. Especially since they know that they have been abandoned by the US, as have all the countries in Asia formerly under our nuclear umbrella. It never has been a salient point of Chinese statecraft to blindly place your trust in the good faith of an ally for survival, or to keep that faith yourself at the risk of your own destruction if it appears that your ally is betraying you. And culturally, Taiwan is Chinese.
Subotai Bahadur
Regarding the Isreali war robots – unless they look like the T-800 (no exo-skin) I won’t be impressed.
But a squadron of T-800′s advancing on Gaza – now that would be awesome.
great piece, Subotai. ”Beware” is the word. A contraction of ”be aware” or ”be wary”, from the root word ”war”.
Darren: Thanks. “Kissing his ring”. Means that his unconstrained vision may cause him to conclude he has all of us under control and must now bring the ingrate foreigners to heel. Yep, he could go that way too.
And when nothing goes like he wants it to, will he go with the flow like Clinton did or will he make a martyr of himself? And how will BHOs personal actions affect others close to/behind him? We live in interesting times.
Subotai: Candidate George W. Bush in 2000 promised to help Taiwan defend itself. He may well have made good on that promise. From your OB, it seems that Taiwan has both sword and shield while the PRC had only sword
and is now bragging about their brand-new shield. They are talking about maybe pulling even, not charging way ahead.
The PRC anti-satellite efforts now come into sharper focus. The Taiwanese Patriots can be very effective but they do need guidance from up high. Direct US capabilities are not what they are out after, at least not primarily. Taiwan is an effective barrier
to any notions they may have of regional hegemony, let alone global.
In that scenario, superior economy does come into play. Taiwan can sustain this kind of “arms race” much better and longer than can PRC. Good enough fer me.
Papa Ray: John Bolton pretty well chilled the Great UN Gun Grab for a while. In the absence of a pro-American US Delegation the the UN, it will be back some day or other
or find a replacement.
This reflects what I have tried (with scant success) to say. “Others” get all the prior restraints they think the human race needs. They suffer the consequences and of course blame us because we are not under the same restraints. Our own (self)”Anointed Ones” fail in their attempts
to restrain the rest of us because we are such a bunch of ingrates so they the (allegedly) enlightened seek reinforcements from abroad. Not desirable, but to be expected.
Whoops! Forgot my masterful closing line:
Our situation is critical, but none too serious.
Our situation is critical, but none too serious –Dave interprets the famous line from Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly at the Battle of the Marne
RWE @ 46 says something that I also wrote about a month or 2, ago.
Our military, not just procurement, but organization and doctrine, is tilting heavily toward COIN and counterterrorism, at the expense of our ability to deal with high-intensity main-force threats. Strykers are all well and good, but if we need another 200 F-22s with pilots, maintenance crews, weapons and facilities, and several dozen ASAT systems in a hurry, like last week, not to mention a couple of carrier groups or 20 top-end submarines when the balloon goes up over Taiwan or Korea or Poland, what’re we gonna do?
We seem to be planning for the current threat, which is not nearly as existential as the next one may be.
We can be pretty sure that we will be called upon to fight the war we are NOT prepared for. Given a choice, I would rather deter the existential threat, even if I have to use some time and money to respond to the lower-intensity one that doesn’t immediately cause my ejection from Eurasia.
I imagine there are a few people in teh Pentagon and security agencies who share these concerns, but there is little evidence anyone is listening.
I see this all the time in my job, in local government—concentration on what seems urgent, at the expense of that which may be less urgent but is much more important.
exhelodrvr @ 86 to habu’s comment:
Okay, please provide the data where they cannot. See? This works both ways. IOW, we cannot say but the close analysis says that they will with practice. And they have lots of people to practice with.
Papa Ray @ 78:
I watched to the end. The treaty STILL would have to undergo Senate ratification – otherwise, ‘from my cold, dead hands’. molon labe
I have nothing else to lose these days.
JL @ 93:
By software guys educated and trained in the US. And maybe even with tech sold to them by Clinton.
Anyone that does not think that the PRC cannot mobilize massive resources to problems it needs to solve is delusional. Learn Mandarin.
Marty: I of course want the right kind of force at all times. BUT: If I cannot have it, I would prefer the Frontier/COIN model to the
heavily mechanized.
The lean force seems to have a comparatively easy time adding muscle (Pershing in World War I) while the over-equipped force finds it next to impossible to shed the useless (Westmoreland in VN.)
Likewise, guerrillas seem to have an easier time going conventional than conventional forces have trying to adapt to any form of irregular warfare.
Mass seldom trumps Economy of Force. Of course, seldom is a long ways from never and the exception to the rule could smart a mite.
I find the… animosity, for lack of a better word, towards China here interesting.
Think, what does China want? What are its internal problems? What are its historical goals?
For that matter, Taiwan, as I learned only last night, is important to the US as forward defense and control of the Pacific, a painful lesson taught by Pearl Harbor. What about the freedoms and self-determination of the Taiwanese themselves?
As somebody before noted, what will you do if the Taiwanese suddenly decided to toss their lot in with the PRC? From the way matters look now, the US is on the slide down in all aspects, and the authoritarianism of the PRC may seem preferable to the stupidity of the rule of deranged US elites.
I think the upcoming US elections in 2010 and 2012 will be critical points. Should the democrats prevail, either by brain dead voters of massive vote fraud, the states of the Asia-Pacific region will probably dismiss the US as a concern and work out their own deals with the PRC.
If I’m China, I’ll just concentrate on building up my economy, work my tendrils into Taiwan, and foster gradual unification. The way the US is going, the Pacific is going to fall into my lap anyway. I can, of course, speed it up by promoting socialist ideologies and supporting such candidates in the US government. As a recent victim of socialism, China knows very well its effects.
What should the US do? It must maintain good relations with Australia and Japan at the very least, and possess the prerequisite military capability to project force around these two nations. China can have the center portion of the Pacific, but lacking the flanks should be contained, and the Chinese might be content with just Taiwan (but I think they’ll cede Korea very reluctantly). To maintain that level of military capability requires a strong economy, which in turn means you cannot afford idiots like Obama much longer.
I don’t sense animosity, wobbly guy –more an apprehension about the rate of the PLA buildup. PLA/PRC not having a pentagon-and-CIC structure such as the western nations, but PLA being more like a branch of gov’t with its own horizontal integration it may well be already in a momentum it can’t retard very easily.
the new gov’t of Japan as you know was elected in a sort of landslide on a platform a major plank of which was to distance away from USA and toward east Asia –or IOW China. This all started upon the event of the 2006 elections, with an angry and aggressive trade-protectionism taking both houses of congress.
of course then followed the meltdown and the obamanation landslide, with the optically disastrous isolationist emotions on 24/7 cable, rampant among a party which seems unaware (and proud of it!) of how trade actually works and what its traducements have caused in the past and mean for the future.
Allies looking toward our 2010 and 2012 elections for a sign that 2006-2010 has been a one-off outlier are no different than our own American middle class managers and small businessmen who have adopted a likewise stance of hunkering down and waiting to see just how bad this is going to get.
I think (more than think, my son’s Japanese GF reports, and he and she just got back from a few weeks vacation there) they’re worried less about the gov’t which can be voted out than they are about Americans themselves. long/short, to restore the good old days, the next lection cycle has to show not just that the AmeriNazis can be elbowed aside, but that the people themselves, who have always been trustworthy as essentially decent people who can be safely supported as world cop and counted on to protect vital community interests such as the Dollar, have not undergone some sort of breakdown, and now need to be gently, globally, restrained until the giant world cop apparatus runs out of money. and hell, if pelosi reid obama is the best we can do, i agree, we belong on probation and the ball’s in our court to prove we haven’t gone stark raving mad. “as a people” –as obama would say.
wws/96
Regarding the Isreali war robots – unless they look like the T-800 (no exo-skin) I won’t be impressed.
But a squadron of T-800’s advancing on Gaza – now that would be awesome.
I would be more impressed if they all looked like Cameron Phillips/Baum! (Is there such a thing as enough of Summer Glau?)
95. Subotai Bahadur
You’re beginning to make the superb look mundane. Fabulous response to my query re: Reagan and Taiwan nukes. Thanks
100. Mongo BL Santamaria
Yes, Sgt. Dan Daly US Marine and winner of TWO Medal(s) of Honor. Yes folks, one, TWO.
O/T with permission requested.
Did I miss a thread or has the RAND Corp report ( released 12/09) about a Stability Police Force IOW brownshirts been done?
Here’s a sample. I copied to Word last night the 200+ pages that detail the hobnail boots coming to your neighborhood soon…….”A Stability Police Force for the United States
Justification and Options for Creating U.S. Capabilities
By: Terrence K. Kelly, Seth G. Jones, James E. Barnett, Keith Crane, Robert C. Davis, Carl Jensen
Establishing security is the sine qua non of stability operations, since it is a prerequisite for reconstruction and development. Security requires a mix of military and police forces to deal with a range of threats from insurgents to criminal organizations. This research examines the creation of a high-end police force, which the authors call a Stability Police Force (SPF). The study considers what size force is necessary, how responsive it needs to be, where in the government it might be located, what capabilities it should have, how it could be staffed, and its cost. This monograph also considers several options for locating this force within the U.S. government, including the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Secret Service, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) in the Department of State, and the U.S. Army’s Military Police. The authors conclude that an SPF containing 6,000 people — created in the U.S. Marshals Service and staffed by a “hybrid option,” in which SPF members are federal police officers seconded to federal, state, and local police agencies when not deployed — would be the most effective of the options considered. The SPF would be able to deploy in 30 days. The cost for this option would be $637.3 million annually, in FY2007 dollars.”
109 Habu
“Did I miss a thread or has the RAND Corp report ( released 12/09) about a Stability Police Force IOW brownshirts been done?”
I don’t know about the thread, but you missed my comment because it is still in my “read it later” file which I use to keep stuff I am going to post and comment on.
I’m just too far behind, and can’t seem to keep up. but glad that you caught that study and it’s results .
That along with what the U.N. and what the World’s Socialists have planned for us. Like Gun Control combined with the coming new Amnesty program for all the illegals here and [e]urope…plus all the other crap that we don’t even know about yet, are just too much for this old man to keep abreast of.
But while I’m here there is this:
Bankers Get $4 Trillion Gift From Barney Frank
At this rate the printing presses at the Treasury are going to have to be replaced with new equipment. Paid for of course by more fake money backed by the Chinese who actually have said…”NO MORE”.
And last but not least…
Outcry on Wall St at ‘absurd’ levy plan
Can you say OUCH!..?
Papa Ray
110. Papa Ray
Papa Ray, while I have not read the entire 200+ pages a quick perusal gives limned features of an organization with extra-territorial responsibilities, ie.. outside the US borders. However we have a full military compliment to handle that task so I believe RAND is simply using the international angle as a ruse. In part here is the Summary, but just a part of it.
“Objectives and Tasks
Analysis of stability operations over the past two decades indicates that
an SPF should have two major objectives. The first is to help establish
a secure environment in which people and goods can circulate safely,
and where licit political and economic activity can take place free from
intimidation. Recent history clearly indicates that external assistance is
often needed to achieve this goal. The second is to help build a high-end
indigenous policing capacity so that the host government can establish
security on its own. An SPF’s tasks logically flow from these objectives.
It should perform high-end policing tasks—identifying and deterring
high-end threats, criminal investigations, SWAT, crowd control, and
intelligence collection and analysis—and build the capacity of local
high-end forces . An SPF will not solve all of the gaps that exist across
the rule-of-law sector—or even the police forces—of the host nation,
and should not try to; it is only one of several important players……..
I love the crowd control part. Maybe they would want to crowd control the Republican National Convention or the right of the people to peacefully assemble. Perhaps some other activity the Executive branch might task it with……buy ammo friends for RAND is listened to and nobama has already promised us this was one of his core objectives. As he becomes more unpopular he will become more desperate…..and of course all the definitions for what is and is not a target of this force will be in the hands of POTUS …… and I don’t care which POTUS at what time, this is NOT a good idea.
#109 Habu
By all that is holy, and a half dozen people I personally know who are not ….. as far as I am concerned, permission is granted. Way to wake me the [expletive deleted] up before the morning coffee ration is consumed! I downloaded a copy and will read it. And it will be forwarded.
Other BC-ers should know that the RAND Corp. Arroyo Center is, as far as I know, solely dedicated to work for the US Army. The paper states it was funded, not by civilian law enforcement, but by the Army. There are a number of really serious implications here. The Federales seem to be moving into territory that they are not supposed to.
For those who are interested, here is the link:
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG819.pdf
It is a pdf file, so you need Adobe Reader, which is free. .8 meg file.
I mentioned our domestic political difficulties in passing in #95 above. For some reason, I have a tune running through my head. If I remember correctly, the lyrics start, Die Fahne Hoch!. That and the phrase, “Sword and Shield” in a different language I am not fluent in.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai, Habu, here is Rob Kirby’s take on it –scroll down about halfway to “The Enforcement of a Broken System”.
112. Subotai Bahadur
I understand that POTUS is using a Gullah speaking Hilton Head, S.C. voodoo priest attempting to reach Leni Riefenstahl for a remake of Triumph of the Will
Habu, Subotai, Papa et all, interesting. And all in public–”this is how we will f***k you over and there is nothing you can do about it.”
The RAND PDF, funny how it talks about extraterritorial activities of the SPF and then mentions the limitations of MP by Posse comitatus. Just upon a cursory scan. One wonders what pearls are further down in the doc.
POTUS will use the “high end force” to put down the protests against Federal seizure of IRA and 401k accounts. See link:
http://market-ticker.org/index.php?serendipityaction=search&serendipitysearchTerm=401k&serendipity
They want to pay for their games with the IRAs and 401ks? No problem, just pass a hierarchical table for them to follow in allocating collections. No category to be touched under the preceding is 60% exhausted.
1. Current Federal civilian TSP accounts
2. Retired Federal civilian TSP accounts
3. Current Federal civilian IRA and retirement accounts
4. Retired Federal civilian IRA and retirement accounts
5. Retired military TSP accounts (my change in sequence, guess why)
6. Current civilian private sector IRA and retirement accounts
7. Retired military IRA and retirement accounts
8. Active duty military TSP, IRA and retirement accounts.
How long would it take them to come up with a Plan B, like cutting spending?
My assumption is that the Stability Protection Force is designed as part of a Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) in the event of a 9-11 type attack that does disrupt government functions or a WMD attack on an urban area. With CBP, ICE, USCG and others there are around 100,000 federal LEOs. Unlike some here I am less concerned about the capability in the SPF plan than in the nature of the people in charge of it.
To be blogged under the title “Retirement Plans.”
LotM,
Unlike some here I am less concerned about the capability in the SPF plan than in the nature of the people in charge of it.
Not sure where you got that “unlike some here”. Seems to me that in one way or another, practically everybody expressed a concern, though sometimes just implied, about “the nature of the people in charge of it”.
Of course, availability of a temptation is influencing people trajectories. Power corrupts, and unchecked power corrupts without restrictions.
Having read the SPF summary, I am not particularly worried about this being a domestic door-kicker force, even if it comes into being. This is a militarized police force in a box to be deployed internationally, not domestically. It would have been used in Baghdad after the fall of Hussein had it existed. It’s basically a cadre-cum-Marshall force to stand up security operations at short notice.
We already have 100,000 trigger-pullers or so in the US military. Posse comitatus exists until the Congress decides it does not, it’s not in the Constitution, that’s why it’s called an Act, not an Amendment. The military could be used for domestic purposes if Congress so decided, to this point they have not. I am not sure what the outcome would be if the Army was deployed against the civilians. I believe that the kind of people in the military are not the kind of people that would deploy the military against civilians, which could create problems more for the military than it would for the civilians.
Yeah, thats why almost every philosopher has spoken about the use and misuse of power by governments, it matters not which flavor they all eventually come down on the common man.
This act that act, the fact that another force in addition to the US Military is being set up creates a perfect force for use inside the US.
You know the ATF could have arrested the Branch Davidians in town any number of times and Koresh hundreds of time. Remember the Army tank deployed against them that was immediately loaded on a truck and sanitized?
I know…we have a happy citizenry satisfied to trust the government and watch the Simpsons. Well just keep watching and ignore the history of Man vs. the State or the Road to Serfdom , or hundreds of other books screaming for the common citizen to keep his government small and in line ….. it’s now completely opposite and it’ll be damn hard to get any lost freedoms back in a reeducation camp …..think this government won’t use force … read up on our history ..yeah the government always has a reason, that’s never a problem … try out the Bonus Doughboys at Anacostia … Kent State ….and on and on … or remain in a state of ennui over the entire thing until it’s a fait accompli.
Habu & Subotai Bahadur, thank you for the heads up. I’ve downloaded and read/skimmed quite a bit of it. Anybody, besides me, note the references date back to 2007, though the report was published in 2009. I’m wondering when it was commissioned by the Army, i.e., which administration?
Y’all are missing kind of an important point. Why the hell would Obama or anyone else need to confiscate anyone’s IRA’s and 401k’s when all he and the fed have to do is create however much they want out of thin air? It’s a lot easier to snap your fingers and make stuff appear than it is to go through the trouble of confiscating a bunch of stuff. And the marvelous part of this (for them) is that by degrading the value of your IRA’s and 401K’s by destroying the currency, he essentially gets to take them but this way there’s nothing you can do about it.
Show me some reason to believe that the creation of new money at the drop of a hat is going to stop and I might take these other claims seriously.
till then – come on.
wws/122
Break Obeyme: “Yes we can!”
Habu,
It’s not that I don’t believe this government won’t use force. It is that I think they will fail in the attempt, because the people in the military are of a far different political orientation than the people ordering them to point their guns at civilians.
The Prussian Junkers were nominally in charge of the Wehrmacht under Hitler and held a different worldview, but there were mitigating factors and scores to settle that led them to set aside their reservations about Der Fuhrer. I don’t see shared grievance or common worldviews between the Eric Kurillas of the Army and the Eric Holders of the current administration. Not entirely sure what particular combination of events will make a Junker-Nazi style meeting of the minds, it is very hard to get those mindsets to agree. False-flag domestic terrorism, maybe, the Reichstag fire got Hitler a lot more control than he had before — but there is no Treaty of Versailles weighing us down or victory stolen from us and a stain on our martial honor from external enemies and internal treachery. Obama is not preaching nationalism, in fact he’s a minister of the opposite religion.
Military dictatorships occur when the military culture is more effective than the civilian culture and the civilian government. I don’t think we’re there yet, but the point at which the government, and specifically this current government with a sub-50 approval rating for the President and sub-30 for Congress tells the military to shoot people resisting unconstitutional actions is the point where their plans fall apart. I do have faith in the members of the armed forces to decline to carry out those orders.
The Clinton-era ATF screwed the pooch big-time with the Branch Davidian thing, and I believe they are well aware of it. Clinton had what, six more years to try another one of those? Didn’t happen. Political consequences were bad, the visuals sucked. Hard to believe that Obama is willing to create the American Nadia out of some pulchritudinous young Tea Partier. I recognize that it is human nature to either repeat old mistakes, or make new and more spectacular mistakes, but Obama is holding on by his fingertips here politically. He can get four more years on charm and BS from the same credulous moderates and true progressive believers that put him in office if he can tack back to the center. Push harder to the left and he’ll lose both houses and virtually all relevance after 1/20/2011. Push as hard as deploying military troops against peaceful civilians and he’ll find out where all that stockpiled ammo from the last 16 months went.
Hint: it ain’t in Mexico.
well, 200 million rounds of it were just lately purchased from Winchester by Homeland Security (.40 cal)
One lesson of the 1985 FBI ‘Miami Massacre’ was to not bring a pistol to a rifle fight.
That is for Customs & Border Patrol, some of it might end up in Coast Guard hands as well (they switched to a .40 S&W SIG recently). If it is for law enforcement the Coasties can use expanding ammo. Also, the purchase is for five years’ worth of ammo.
Has anybody seen this, from Canada Free Press?
American Republic replaced by “Council of Governors”?
Excerpt:
“President Barack Obama Monday established a panel of state governors to collaborate with Washington on a variety of potential emergencies, the White House said.” (UPI.com, Jan. 11, 2010 at 11:54 p.m.). “Obama signed an executive order establishing a panel to be known as the Council of Governors, which will be made up of 10 state governors, to be selected by the president to serve two-year terms. Members will review matters involving the National Guard; homeland defense; civil support; and synchronization and integration of state and federal military activities in the United States, the White House said in a statement.
My apologies if someone else has already linked this article.
122. wws..
Why would he ?……same reason all governments and the tyrants they eventually produce…POWER ….they come with one goal in mind acquire more power…not for the people but for themselves and their SS component….as Stalin said, “Power is the one thing you can’t fake” .. so he just killed 30 millliion of his own people and decapitated his military down to the regimental level.
We the people are losing our rights by degree every year. Will Roders was corrrect when stating that America has one indiginous criminal class ..Congress and the President.
It’s all about POWER.
127. rickl
Thanks, I had not seen that …… all in all it’s another brick in the wall.
I wonder just how many citizens believe that we should, as Thomas Jefferson and others admonished us to do, have a revolution from time to time?
I’ll bet in this now kow towed country not 15% believe it.
Not picking out BC for any specific reason but even on this sitethat thought for discussion is Malum prohibitum …I would however make the point from Manilius, in Astronomica
that translates ,i> from the moment of birth we begin to die …. this holds for unattended individual rights and consequently nations as well.
One of the most troubling things about the proposed Stability Police Force (SPF) is the deployment timeline. 30 days to deploy a battalion sized force anywhere on the globe. Are they f-ing kidding me? There are a couple US Navy/US Marine Corps Expeditionary Units (MEU)s at sea in the Atlantic / Med theater and in the Pacific / MidEast theater at any time. That battalion plus sized force with built in air, mechanized and amphibious support can be at any port on earth in less than three weeks. The USMC is far from unfamiliar with “stabilizing” situations in a city-sized environment.
For places a long way from water, the last time I checked, there was a ready battalion of 82nd Airborne troops down at Fort Bragg who can deploy anywhere on six continents in about 5 days (most within 72 hours) if the NCA allocates the necessary air assets and a working runway can be captured by the initial parachute inserted troops.
This being the case, we already have military troops who can rapidly deploy worldwide to provide “stability”. The arguments in favor of a US Marshal Service force of 5000-6000 who are necessary to perform this does not ring true. What’s a battalion sized unit going to do anyway. A previous poster commented about how useful such a force would have been after we captured Baghdad. I hate to break it to them, but the security and “stability” force just for the Green Zone in Baghdad includes more than two battalions of troops. Any US military or police forces plunked down overseas to enforce law and order and provide “stability” is going to be perceived as the boot heel of Uncle Sam on the local’s necks regardless of it’s military or civilian police label. 99% of the locals aren’t going to care or differentiate between Marines in body armor with M-16A4 rifles and US Marshal Service cops in body armor with the Sig 556 rifles. If I had to guess, I believe the reputation and training of the US Marines would be better received in most places in need of “stability” than a heavily armed group of “Polizi” who as a class are largely distrusted as thuggish and corrupt in many such areas anyway.
That leaves domestic use as the sole real reason. We already have local, state, and federal law enforcement. We already have a National Guard / militia and FEMA to keep order in case of a disaster and to help with disaster recovery. If the current organizations are inadequate, either fund them properly so they will be effective, or if lack of funding is not the problem, fire enough dead weight to fix those broken organizations.
The RAND report cites the Italian Carabinieri and French Gendarmerie as models for the proposed SPF. This model combines huge authority, like our FBI, BATF, Customs Service, Secret Service, Coast Guard, etc all rolled into one with heavy military and intelligence components as well. It is important to remember that France and Italy are both much smaller nations than the US in land area and population. Such a powerful organization would be ready made for abuse by politicians now or in the future.
They should stop trying to pull the wool over our eyes and just go ahead and change the proposed unit name from SPF to “Praetorian”!
The idea of national elections every 4 years is to give us the chance of staging a revolution without all the killing and burning and laying waste to half the country part, which seems to be part and parcel of the great majority of revolutions.
The fact that these elections are seldom revolutionary may just mean that most people *don’t* want a revolution.
131. Armageddon Rex
Your assessment is exactly what mine was. Knowing we have the military etc. to handle any conceivable threat this is simply a force targeted at rounding up the US population when the government deems it prudent. Rand no doubt believes we are all rubes out here and can’t see the truth behind the blizzard of BS they have produced. Great evaluation A. Rex. Thanks
132. wws…. I am glad you joined the colloquy, however your belief that election are what Jefferson and the philosophers of the Enlightenment had in mind is totally incorrect. They had studied history closely and were acutely aware their thoughts were new, achievable, and vital for the freedom of the individual. They knew governments of all stripes eventually enslave the people they govern and consequently were speaking specifically about armed revolution when ideas such as this Rand recommendation are placed before those whose desire is to acquire and hold power. It is the moral duty of the citizenry to rise up and prevent the usurpation of our rights by any government.
I would recommend reading Herbert Spencer’s Man vs the State…in part here;
“Although in one letter he described The Man Versus The State as the “finished form” toward which he had been working for forty-two years and as “a positive creed for an advanced party in politics,”*3 for the most part he was deeply pessimistic about stopping the drift to “Communism.” By the time this work was composed Spencer no longer saw his task to be charting the course of progress which mankind would be following. Rather it was his duty to oppose the process of “re-barbarization.” The essays of The Man Versus The State are Spencer’s most sustained, brilliant and bitter act of resistance.
The Road to Serfdom is a must read and essays by Jefferson will help a great deal.
132. wws
I failed to mention that it was Herbert Spencer and not Charles Darwin that coined the phrase “survival of the fittest”
I have include below a brief review of Spencer’s work, Man v State.
“When Hayek said “We understand now that all enduring structures above the level of simplest atoms, and up to the brain and society, are the results of, and can be explained only in terms of, processes of selective evolution…” He was reiterating the insights that Spencer was already expounding over a century earlier. Given my current state of ignorance I believe that Herbert Spencer is the greatest intellectual of all time, with F.A. Hayek coming in a close second. It seems like the world is just beginning to catch up to Hayek. Who knows how much longer till we rediscover Spencer.
This book is a masterpiece. It has been a long time since I read it and the essay I remember most is “Over-legislation” where he does a great job criticizing government interventions into what he referred to as the social organism. He was right! We really are a social organism… or has Hayek would mention “extended order”. I quote this wonderful essay often in my book.
No wonder Darwin himself said to him “Every one with eyes to see and ears to hear (the number, I fear, are not many) ought to bow their knee to you, and I for one do.” and in another occasion referred to Spencer as “twenty times my superior .”
Praetorian Guard body-guarded the emperor –but also removed (assassinated) some emperors –on the grounds of national security. Dunno who gave THOSE orders. Maybe Citigroup.
Without searching the titles and topics, which i forget, i DO recall being amazed by several Rand studies during the Bush admin that opposed Bush policies in such a manner that a layman could see the large hole in the premise.
Whoever sends Praetorian Guards to kill the boss is whoever orders up Rand studies that ‘shape’ conclusions.
135. Mongo BL Santamaria
And another dot is placed on the board.
Just a guess but later on when we connect them I don’t think we’ll uncover a benign group. but rather some Black Panthers, union enforcers, and “community organizers ” who specialize in reeducation.
bedtime…
remember, when PRC’s gov’t attacked the rebels of Tianamen Square, they did it with uniformed armed forces, i assume army, raised far from the city –from the sparsely-inhabited hinterlands far to the west.
http://mises.org/books/TRTS/
” The Illustrated Road to Serfdom ”
I’d say we are, depending on which issues, affiliations, regions, incomes, and/or melatonin profiles, all a-boil among the the first ten of the eighteen ‘toons. Pot’s beginning to splash over into numbers eleven through sixteen.
Somebody turn off the heat.