The Air Force wants to wean itself off oil with.. uh, coal?
Gitmo post-mortem
Strange happenings on the 38th parallel
And speaking of the peninsula, what’s up with that Nork reactor?
Preach it brother — build a bigger Navy
–John Noonan
Monday — Fire for Effect
–John Noonan
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
“Taking Chance”… I actually had no idea that this would become a movie, until I saw this trailer, but it looks great.
As for the rationale of a bigger Navy being to match China’s… this layman thinks that “bigger” will only be “better” if it’s the right ships, with a sound strategy in mind.
Build a bigger Navy to counter the Chinese by borrowing more money from the Chinese. This may have to wait till the economic situation improves.
hell build one the right way and it could help rebuild the economy. hell imagine how many ppl it would put into work from the steel mills etc.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, had Hitler not declared war on the U.S.A. then the Second World War would have been fought by two different “fighter teams” in two entirely different hemispheres of the World, politically unrelated to each other. It would rather have looked like TWO different wars (two duels) being fought at the same time, but in different places.
Should the U.S.A. and China one day agree on a nostalgic repetition of the Pacific War, I just hope that Europe and Russia remember that this is NONE of their business! They can just lean back, let the barbarians kill each other and then reap lots of benefits from it, especially in the aftermath.
What’s the big problem with using coal?
No, they’re not going to have a fireman shovel the coal into the F-22′s firebox!
They’re going back to the Fischer-Tropf process to convert it into liquid fuel, and trying to make the process a little less of an environmental disaster in the process…
Now, this made a LOT more sense with gas at $5.00 a gallon, than now, at less than $2.00, but there’s at least a reason for what they’re doing…
Good Evening Folks,
The Weekly Standard like China has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to military commentary. I have been following the China Naval build up since the 1960′s and oddly the same predictions are made every ten years regarding a Chinese Naval build up.
In short China is not will to commit double digit percentages of GDP or GNP for building a world class military. The Japanese and the Germans of the first half of the 20th. Century did.
All reports such as the weekly Standards does is stimulate the Military/Industrial Political complex into wasting more tax payers money on useless weapon system that will never be used.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
In case anyone didn’t get the Hope and Change Memo-O-the-Day, Rising China is also a concern of the incoming administration.
From the China Daily two days ago:
Am I reading this whole article on the Nork reactor slightly wrong or what??
It constantly says phrases like
1) ” ‘some’ in the US intelligence community (aka DIA) have ‘increasing concerns that North Korea has an ongoing covert uranium enrichment program’ “,
2) “this leads to a particle diameter of between 80 and 120 microns or, in terms of mass, between 2 and 7 microgrammes”,
3) “a very large particle. In fact, it is two orders of magnitude larger than the size normally found on a swipe sample: 1-3 microns”,
etc. .
The author almost asks the question whether North Korea is indeed capable and willing to enrich enough plutonium from wasted civilian rods to build a bomb!
But on the 9th of October of 2006 North Korea DID akready conduct its first nuclear explosion, (something eagerly confirmed by the U.S.A., of course…) and probably by using enriched plutonium too:
“By 1994, the United States believed that North Korea had enough reprocessed plutonium to produce about 10 bombs with the amount of plutonium increasing.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Plutonium
WTF ?
“No, they’re not going to have a fireman shovel the coal into the F-22′s firebox!”
Dammit Will you just made me imagine this! Hahahahahahahaha…!
freefallingbomb
SH&T!!! danget bomb go away i thought you died or something its just been so much…..cleaner sence you havent posted insane things every post….awww
To the poster “Valcan”:
You wrote: “…danger bomb go away i thought you died or something its just been so much…..cleaner sence you havent posted insane things every post…”
You prefer only pure U.S. American stable stench?
To the poster “SMSgt Mac”:
You wrote: “An expert would acknowledge that the tales of spectacular undesired outcomes will always outshine the quiet successes though the ratio might be 1 failure for every 100 successes.”
I give you only
1) Pearl Harbour,
2) Bay of Pigs
3) Fidel Castro’s overthrow of Fulgencio Batista
4) Sputnik
5) Tet Offensive
and you console yourself with a 100 (comparable!) “honest” “cerebral” “adult-like” “successes” of the C.I.A. for each one of those three! IMMEDIATELY , preferrably!
FFB, what is your point?
You’ve listed numerous examples of the US being unprepared for aggressive action by foreign powers. Okay, fine. So… what is your point?
Should we prepare for an aggressive Chinese naval building program? Should we do nothing? You really haven’t said anything constructive other than “the US makes mistakes, their intelligence programs miss things, ha ha ha.”
So therefore, we should treat this Chinese threat as real, correct? Or we should blow it off because obviously our intelligence that says they’re trying to embark on a major militarization project, well, it obviously can’t be trusted…
Personally, I don’t think China has the ability to put 3 aircraft carriers in the water in 10 years time. But it DOES seem that they are aggressively modernizing, and they DO seem to be trying to swell their naval forces dramatically. It wouldn’t hurt to be prepared.
Good Morning Folks,
I think a recent case compareson of what to expect from China in a Naval build up would be France. Before being occupied by Nazi Germany France had a robust ship building progrom that included all classes of capital ships of the era.
After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the restoration of a Democratic French Government France has been unable to restore Naval parody with either the U.K. or the United States. A very recent example of the is the nuclear aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle (PA1). If there is any screw up in a modern military ship the DeGaulle has it it. To small, underpowered, hull out of symmetry, etc. Yet France is considered a technology advanced western country, much farther along the tech. curve then China is. France has had 60 years since WWII to redevelop it military ship building program. The fate of the De Gaulle, currently it has a broken propeller and bent shaft and is sitting without a crew at the dock, is it uncertain but sometime round 2015 when the Deuxieme Porte-Avions (PA2) is supposed to be launched, French pride will suck it up and the De Gaulle will be salvaged and broken up.
Basic ship building, although not rocket science, as with all trades requires the skills learned and passed on from one generation passed to the next. Military ships are not passenger or commerce ships, to be built as cheaply as possible, but a complex manufactured product. Both France and China has a long time before they can in the case of France reestablish and in China to create and build these skills.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
To the poster “Brian”:
You wrote: “Personally, I don’t think China has the ability to put 3 aircraft carriers in the water in 10 years time.”
A Navy is designed to either control the sea (like the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy do) or to deny the sea (like the Nazi Reichsmarine or the Soviet Navy were built to do). It depends a lot on the basic concept of an Armed Forces and on its country’s regional or global plans, maybe also on its geography.
Frankly, I can’t imagine what the Chinese have on their minds for themselves for the next 50 to 100 years (conventionally-tipped I.C.B.M.’s against aircraft carriers? Hmm…), though I still haven’t heard or read from any Western Intelligence “experts” either that they already know what comes next (the poster “SMSgt Mac” actually thinks that our spies fulfill some r
Good Evening FFB,
I don’t disagree with your assessment of the Chinese labor force. There is no reason they could become as skilled as any western country or even the Japanese, who coincidently have yet to design and build a post WWII on their own a modern Warship larger the a Frigate.
The problem of course is economics. Skilled industries that produce a skilled labor force take time to develop, and have many years of negative economic returns before modest profit sets in.
On the other the production of cheap consumer consumable goods by un to semi skilled labor force can generate a good economic return form the start of operation. Even for the historically patient Chines the ability to make quick profits is an irresistible pull.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
FFB,
Well, I agree with pretty much everything you just said. Some people have dismissed China as inferior and not a threat, either through arrogance (“we are better than them”) or ignorance (“China will never wage war with us because of economic ties”). I prefer instead to be prepared. I think some of what you are seeing here by American posters is an internal debate as to whether China needs to be viewed as a new Soviet Union, or instead as merely a hostile foreign power.
I do not believe China can gear up to become a naval power on par with the US, not for a long time. You are right, however, that this does not mean that they can’t put a crease in our panties by denying us access to that corner of the Pacific. We don’t want a Japan the size of China.
The good news (from a military perspective, where we want a weak opponent, not a social perspective, where we want China to become a wealthy capitalist country and have a nice lazy middle class just like us), is that China has numerous internal problems they need to resolve. I don’t believe their rate of economic growth is at all sustainable, and there will be a bust at some point in the future. They’ve got a ton of environmental and population issues they need to resolve as well (that one child policy left China with not enough girls to go around — this will hit them hard in years to come). That said, I like to play things safe and be prepared.
I don’t think we need to gear up for another Cold War, but I do believe you are right that China deserves every bit of attention we can spare. I think many posters here would agree with me.
To the poster “Byron Skinner”:
You wrote: “Warships are a whole different manufactured product. A modern U.S. Aircraft Carrier has over 4000 water tight compartments, extensive damage control systems, etc….”
and
“…even the most cursory investigation into accidents at sea show that these commercial vessels burn and break up with relative east compared to a modern warship.”
The U.S. Navy definitively needs an occasional sobering and enlightening experience of the Falkland-type, say once every 50 years or so… As an ap
To the poster “Byron Skinner”:
You wrote: “The question of nuclear ordinance on carriers is not secret though, there isn’t any, period.”
1) So the Soviets trembled half a century in vain that jets from U.S. carriers stationed all around them (= in the Mediterranean, in the Black Sea, in the North Sea and in the West Pacific) would nuke them in a nuclear war? NO U.S. American carrier plane type was ever nuclear-capable??? Come on, Mr. Skinner, come on…………………………………………… What are you: The last believer in political declarations on Earth?
The successful Backfire and its dangerous air-to-sea ordnance were all the Soviet answer to mere hallucinations or vodka-inspired concepts or something?
2) Then why do the Japanese refuse to let U.S. aircraft carriers dock? Last year a nuclear-powered U.S. American submarine released radioactive substances into the harbour waters of Nagasaki while on courtesy visit (very skilled Diplomacy from a great ally indeed. Was the Chimp-in-Command perhaps aboard that sub?), but nevertheless the Japanese still have no problems with any other kind of U.S. embarkations (except once the “U.S.S. Ticonderoga”, for similar reasons) !
3) How do you explain any amount of news like this one here on the Internet:
“August 18, 1959
A severe fire aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp threatened to engulf the nuclear weapons storage space and required flooding of the forward ammunition stores. Foam was pumped through the flight deck, and the crew prepared to flood the nuclear weapons storage spaces.”
http://www.user.dccnet.com/welcomewoods/Nuclear_Free_Georgia_Strait/cdi.htm
Sing me a song again about those “super-safe”, “unsinkable”, “nuclear-free” U.S. American aircraft carriers!
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You wrote: “The Germans simply entered North Africa through French ports that can under Vichy control.”
The Afrikakorps landed in 1941 in Lybia, not in the French colonies (“protectorates”) of Morocco and Tunisia, but Lybia was an ITALIAN colony between 1912 and 1943. (The Nazis started a second Blitzkrieg in Africa only because of their Italian allies, who were being rounded up by the tens of thousands the British!) Most of the convoys that supplied the Afrikakorps across the Mediterranean were also Italian, not German. The huns were confident that the wops and the seized frog navies together would be enough to control the tommy navy, so they hardly brought any warships of their own into the Mediterranean.
In Narvik the Nazis also invaded first by sea and worried about logistics only afterwards. Had they arrived only a few HOURS later, as you know (for example due to a delayed departure), then two Royal Navy flotillas would have invaded Narvik before Germany did! Time is of the essence…
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You wrote: “Another interesting attempt by the Nazis at invasion is Crete and their airborne assault. In short any invasion away from Continental Europe was to expensive and not worth the efforts for Hitler.”
Uhh… I don’t know well how to administer you that painlessly (ever considered letting me review your posts?), but the Nazis D-I-D occupy ALL of Crete, 7.000 dead parachutists or not!
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You wrote: “China in the 60′s tried to build an amphibious assault force of 3 PLA Marine Brigades, but… they… were scrapped.”
News break: We’re living in a wholly new century… sorry… millenium now! The P.L.A.A.F.’s Airborne Troops muster about 10.000 parachutists (a cautious 1999 D.o.D. guess) , including a rapid-reaction force, and the P.L.A.’s Air Force has about 400 transport helicopters to ferry ground soldiers around (= not just airborne troops). That’s as many frontline soldiers as the crews of how many U.S. Carrier Groups combined?
Now imagine one or two Chinese airborne waves PER HOUR streaming across the narrow Taiwan Strait. Rhethorical question: And how far does a U.S. Carrier Group travel each hour (if it doesn’t get distracted by the P.L.A.’s Navy) ?
Could work, in spite of everything.
See you!
Well, it looks like I missed the little one-troll riot while I was (am) on the road. I’m sure the civilized folks have moved on so