Breaking (Not)
Drudge has red-linked a USNI report that China has a “kill weapon” designed to take out USN aircraft carriers. (Link is busted at the moment due to overwhelming traffic.) This is an old story, dating back at least to November and reported on StrategyPage:
China appears to be developing an over-the-horizon (OTH) radar that can spot large ships (like American aircraft carriers) as far as 3,000 kilometers away, and use this information to guide ballistic missiles to the area,. Such radars have long been used to detect ballistic missile launches, and approaching heavy bombers. Some OTH radars have been modified to take advantage of the flat surface of an ocean, to pick up large objects, like ships. Cheaper and more powerful computers enable such OTH radars to more accurately identify ships thousands of kilometers away.
China’s principal weapon would be their DF-21 ballistic missile, equipped with a high-explosive warhead and a guidance system that can home in and hit a aircraft carrier at sea.
To guarantee a successful strike, China might have to use a nuclear, rather than HE or kinetic, warhead — even with the new radar. I doubt that’s a game they really want to get into. Our targeting is still a whole let better than theirs, and there’s still an awful lot of water for soldiers to cross between the mainland and Taiwan. If they get into nukes, well, the Straits would become a “target-rich environment” for ours.
Mostly I suspect the Pentagon is worried about budget cuts — and that’s a fair cop. So brace yourself for more scary reports about this new “kill weapon,” along with stories that the Chinese are also arming themselves with shoot guns, flight planes, launch rockets and sinky ships.
UPDATE: Here’s a working link to the USNI story.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The Pentagon, of course, has every right to be worried about “painful budget cuts,” because that’s exactly what they’re going to get.
So billions for ACORN, but not once cent for defense is to be the new battle cry?
Nuclear or non-nuclear, this is a threat that could magically vanish with a working missile defense system.
Oh, wait, we’re cutting that part of the budget.
rbj,
Could you show where ACORN gets a penny of Federal dollars? Citation please. As for defense, I challenge you to find where it’s fully cut from the new budget.
Makes a great battle cry only if you’re a brain-damaged nitwits.
That should be “leader of brain-damaged nitwits”.
Could you show where ACORN gets a penny of Federal dollars? Citation please. -jon
mmkay, how’s this?
http://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=17857&tx_irfaq_pi1showUid=161&tx_irfaq_pi1back=P2lkPTE3ODU3&cHash=3b5f677fec
“…The contracts that ACORN receives on these projects are for delivering specific activities, all of which are tax-exempt qualified in accordance with federal grant guidelines.”
Did you even read the information in that citation? It admits that ACORN uses or may use money from others (read: not ACORN) who get money. However, “The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now does not apply for nor does it receive any federal grants” seems to undercut the rhetoric somewhat.
Thanks for the link, now find me where a budget cuts Defense entirely. And no, those budget deficit charts where the Bush-era budgets that don’t include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t count.
In the mid 90′s, training to track and shoot down ballistic missiles was a pretty standard feature of pre-deployment workups for cruisers and frigates. Destroyers focused more on land attack missiles. The larger concern was sea skimmers like the Sunburn and Shipwreck missiles and the 65cm thermal wake homing torpedoes. There’s not much you can do about a torpedo in the water.
I guess the maneuverability issue is what makes these different?
Er?
You may want to do some research on exactly what subcontracting is.
Acorn may not receive money directly from the government, but that doesn’t make money associated with federal grants or contracts something other than federal money, which is why Acorn is stating that it complies with the applicable Federal regs.
Acorn knows where they money comes from. What I want to know is where it’s going.