Saturday, July 11, 2009

Five Hundred Platforms?

I'm not having much luck at finding much information on this bright idea about cutting way back on nuclear arms. The first thing I don't understand is that Russia has hundreds, if not thousands, of ramshackle, rusting missiles that they haven't tried to keep operational. So, they give up those. I'd be interested in hearing from Air Force and Navy types that work with such things. Now I didn't have anything to do with the maintenance or delivery of such things but letting any kind of weapon rot away wasn't much on the agenda back when I wore Uncle's suit.

So it looks from here that Obama doesn't understand much about negotiating, it looks like we are giving up stuff that works and they are giving up stuff that doesn't work. Excuse me for wondering how that benefits anyone but them.

Here is something else I don't understand. Maybe it's just that I'm not smart enough to be a community organizer but the missiles that don't work that the Sov, er Russians are giving up are single purpose birds. If they did work, which they don't, they're only good for one thing, nukes. Now we've given up at least some of our land based ICBMs. We have, as far as I can figure, some five hundred Minuteman 3 launchers scattered about.

Here is what I don't understand. We can have as many nukes as we want, we can only have five hundred delivery vehicles, right? Trouble is, except for the Triton Missiles in the subs and the Minuteman Missiles, the other delivery vehicles are all multipurpose. The B-52s, the B1bs and the B2s can also deliver smart bombs and cruise missiles. The cruise missiles themselves will carry conventional warheads or nukes.

Now I'm not smart enough to spend millions of dollars to not help Chicago schools a bit. I realize that. Heck, I can't even use a state senate seat to spend millions of dollars on Rezko homes for the poor, only to have them all shut down for being uninhabitable just a few years later. I am smart enough to know that if we only have five hundred total launch vehicles we are going to be awful stingy mounting a conventional warhead on a cruise missile to shoot through a bad guy's bedroom window. Or to risk a B-52 to drop conventional bombs on Li'l Kim's missile sites, if it comes to that.

I'm racking my poor little brain trying to see how this benefits us. I can see how it benefits the Sov, er Russians. I can see how it benefits the Norks and China. I can see how it benefits the Mad Mullahs of Iran. I can even see how it helps Robert Mugabe to starve more of his own people. What I don't understand is that Barack Mugabe, er Obama is paid to protect the citizens of the United States of America.So, what's up with this?

Funny thing, the Firefox spell checker says there is nothing wrong with the spelling of Mugabe but is still giving the "mistake red underline" for Barack and Obama. Yes, Firefox, I know.

So, we're getting rid of at least one Carrier Battle Group. maybe more than one. We're getting rid of some eleven hundred launch vehicles. We don't have any battleships or other ships with great big guns to bombard miles inland from any coasts. So, we are cutting way back on our ability to project power. History tells me, though, that power will still be projected. So, if we don't project power, who will?

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