{"id":31456,"date":"2020-12-08T21:22:56","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T03:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=31456"},"modified":"2021-01-05T17:55:45","modified_gmt":"2021-01-05T23:55:45","slug":"i-guess-ive-been-distracted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/12\/08\/i-guess-ive-been-distracted\/","title":{"rendered":"I Guess I’ve Been Distracted"},"content":{"rendered":"

This fall has certainly been one of distraction, so this Max Boot article<\/a> in WaPo<\/em><\/strong> left me breathless:<\/p>\n

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Now add this fall\u2019s\u00a0Nagorno-Karabakh war<\/a>\u00a0to the list. In six weeks of fighting, the oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan defeated Russia\u2019s ally Armenia to reclaim territory it had lost in the early 1990s. A key to Azerbaijan\u2019s triumph was its use of killer drones such as Turkey\u2019s\u00a0Bayraktar TB2<\/a>, which is armed with antitank missiles and is similar to the U.S. Reaper, and Israel\u2019s \u201ckamikaze drones<\/a>,\u201d which home in on radar emissions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wait. What war?!?!?!?!<\/p>\n

Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me about these things!<\/p>\n

Well, since I’m here, I’ll quote Boot on the chronic American problem:<\/p>\n

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That inertia is reinforced by the \u201ciron triangle\u201d of defense contractors, members of Congress and the Pentagon bureaucracy. The new\u00a0defense authorization bill<\/a> set to be passed by the House on Tuesday authorizes 93 F-35 fighters \u2014 14 more than the Pentagon requested \u2014 and an extra Virginia-class submarine that the Pentagon did not ask for. A Virginia-class submarine costs about $3 billion and an F-35 at least $80 million.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And there’s no guarantee that those extras were the idea of Republicans, because Democrats are vulnerable to the pressures that can be brought to bear by huge defense contractors. And then:<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s a lot of money \u2014 but it\u2019s chicken feed compared with the cost of building new aircraft carriers that could become target practice for Chinese missiles. The new\u00a0Gerald R. Ford,\u00a0<\/i>still not complete, cost $13 billion, and the Navy is building two more in its class. In 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis\u00a0proposed<\/a>\u00a0that the\u00a0Harry S. Truman\u00a0<\/i>be retired halfway through its service life. But President Trump overruled him. The Navy will need to\u00a0spend<\/a> $20 billion to keep this flat-top, already a quarter-century old, at sea for another 25 years.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>And I wonder at our bloated defense budget. We should probably retire the USS Harry S. Truman<\/strong><\/em> and abort construction of the USS Gerald R. Ford<\/strong><\/em>, and begin looking into small vessels capable of transporting large numbers of small, unmanned (remotely controlled? Or take a big change<\/del> chance on autonomous?) fighting vehicles.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This fall has certainly been one of distraction, so this Max Boot article in WaPo left me breathless: Now add this fall\u2019s\u00a0Nagorno-Karabakh war\u00a0to the list. In six weeks of fighting, the oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan defeated Russia\u2019s ally Armenia to reclaim territory it had lost in the early 1990s. A \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31456"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31797,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31456\/revisions\/31797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}