Declining U.S. Navy vs. Chinese challenge

How long have I been saying we were on the way to being a 2nd rate power in the world?  Quite a while.  Now the policies and spending plans for the military that began under Bush 41, accelerated under Clinton, plateaued under Bush 43, and are now accelerating to ludicrous speed under Obama are going to ensure that we are a reactive and purely defensive force rather than a proactive and stabilizing force around the world.

Our military equipment is aging rapidly, and it can’t be replaced overnight.  It is often a decade or more from request, to drawing board, to production on any significant military such as airplanes, tanks, and ships.  The replacements have to be in the works long before the retirement of a system is necessary.  That’s why we have screwed ourselves in the arena of tanker, fighter, and transport aircraft.  It takes years to build modern warships, and a long time to train the crews.  We are well below the number of ship required now to protect our interests around the world or to act as a stabilizing force.  The army needs new tanks and helicopters.  Not on the horizon.

We are endangering our future by weakening our defenses.  Our government has led us to believe that spending hundreds of billions of dollars on welfare programs is actually their job, and that it is more important than providing a strong national defense.

Without the ability to defend ourselves from all comers, the discussion of anything else is irrelevant.  Unless we protect our borders and our interests, and provide a safe environment for the discussion of social issues, those issues will be decided by whoever owns us after the dust settles.

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http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=124930

Fleet’s ‘much-diminshed’ status creates door of vulnerability to other powers

Posted: February 13, 2010
10:30 pm Eastern
WorldNetDaily

A growing Chinese fleet could keep the declining U.S. Navy out of the Western Pacific, according to an expert cited in a report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

The U.S. also could be faced with new military challenges around the globe because of the projection of power a growing Chinese navy would present.

Yet, the U.S. Navy has cut back the number and type of ships to the level it was prior to the Reagan administration. Indeed, the Navy hasn’t been as small since the administration of William Howard Taft, according to naval expert Seth Cropsey.

The dire development leaves the U.S. vulnerable to “proliferation, resource scarcity, environmental change, the emergence of new international power centers including non-state actors, significant changes in relative U.S. power, failed states and demographic change … (in) an increasingly unstable future and a challenging international strategic environment,” Cropsey said. …

… “The size, shape and strategy of the U.S. Navy are a critical element of America’s position as the world’s great power,” Cropsey said. “Our ability to protect or rend asunder the globe’s ocean-going lines of communication is inseparable from our position as the world’s great power. …

… Globally, Cropsey said, the U.S. Navy’s continued attrition also means a serious threat to the security of the world’s sea lines of communication and the choke points such as the Straits of Hormuz near Iran through which some 40 percent of the world’s energy and other trade pass.

“The consequences of a much-diminished U.S. fleet are complemented by the American public’s ignorance of them, the slow yet steady pace of naval deterioration, and the increasing time and dismayingly large resources needed to recoup sea power surrendered slowly over decades,” Cropsey said.

The gradual decline in the U.S. Navy comes hardly as a surprise to Congress. Last May, Adm. Gary Roughhead, chief of naval operations, told the House Armed Services Committee the Navy was stretched in its ability to modernize and “procure the Navy for tomorrow.”

He said the Navy would reduce its carrier fleet from 11 to 10 for at least three years, which would increase the interval between a departing carrier and its replacement’s arrival “along with the associated risk of absence during a crisis.”

A separate Congressional Research Service report by naval analyst Ronald O’Rourke told Congress that China has built or is in the process of building four new classes of nuclear and conventional-powered attack and ballistic-missile submarines.

(Complete article HERE)
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Can You Define “Wasteful?”

How Obama defines wasteful spending is beyond me. Let me see if I have this straight. Funding new tanker aircraft for the military is wasteful, but spending $3 Billion on a wasteful cash-for-clunkers program that does nothing for the economy isn’t. Buying F-22’s to ensure we have a fighter force capable of defeating anyone threatening our dominance of the air (such as China and a resurgent Russia who are fielding 5th generation fighters in large numbers) is apparently wasteful, while pouring billions of dollars down the black hole of a failed auto company only to give a majority stake in said company to the unions apparently isn’t wasteful. In summary, supporting and funding the one and only thing the constitution mandates the government to fund via taxes or other means (national defense) is wasteful in the eyes of Obama and the liberal left, while doubling the national debt of the entire history of this country in 6 months and plans to double it again within 10 years spending on wasteful social programs that mostly reward political supporters and only put our nation in more debt apparently is not wasteful to Obama and the liberals. Hope and change. Not quite all it was cracked up to be.

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http://www.airforce-magazine.com/Features/modernization/Pages/box081909obama.aspx

Inexcusable

Inexcusable

At VFW, Obama chides Congress over wasteful military spending.

August 19, 2009—President Barack Obama on Monday reiterated his staunch opposition to funding what he calls wasteful military projects such as the F-22 and the F-35 competing engine.

In a speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Phoenix, the President said it didn’t make sense to spend nearly $2 billion on more F-22s in Fiscal 2010—as the Senator Armed Services Committee had supported, but the full Senate later overturned—when the nation “can move ahead with a fleet of newer, more affordable aircraft,” meaning the F-35.

Obama also decried the ongoing attempts by Congress to fund the General Electric-Rolls Royce F136 engine for the F-35, the competing powerplant to Pratt & Whitney’s F135, saying it’s wrong to continue to invest in the F136 “when one reliable engine will do just fine.” (Defense Secretary Robert Gates also recently reaffirmed his desire to ax the F136, downplaying any purported cost and development issues with the F135.)

Obama continued, saying such “waste would be unacceptable at any time, but at a time when we’re fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, it’s inexcusable.”

(Full transcript of Obama speech)

Army gets short term boost in numbers

That’s all fine and good, but we are STILL ignoring the same facts that we ignored when we announced that we were going to be a lighter, leaner, mobility oriented, rapid deployment, expeditionary, military.  To deploy rapidly, to move additional troops and their associated equipment, to keep those troops re-supplied at the end of a very long logistics trail requires HUGE amounts of airlift capacity.  Ever since we moved to this “strategy” or justification for cutting the size of our military, our airlift fleet hasn’t gotten any younger or larger.  We proved in the 1991 Gulf War that we didn’t have the airlift capacity to support the two Major Regional Conflicts (MRC’s) upon which our force structure was supposedly designed.  We literally flew the wings off of the C-141 fleet to justify getting rid of them sooner and to finish the C-17 buy.  We bought far fewer C-17’s than there were C-141’s.  While the total tons of cargo that can be carried by the C-17 fleet is greater than the total for the C-141’s, those airframes can’t be in the same number of places at the same time.  Due to the shortage of strategic airlift, the C-17’s have also been used inappropriately in that role as well, more rapidly eating into the design life span of each aircraft.  We are now seeing the same results in our C-130 fleet as many of those aircraft have operational restrictions on them because of age and airframe stress.  The increased operational tempo for all of these aircraft is accelerating the aging process.

The other best example out there is the tanker fleet.  The backbone of this fleet is the KC-135 tanker.  These tankers were purchased when Eisenhower was president.  They were originally intended to last about 10 years, and many weren’t constructed in such a way that they would last longer than that without major surgery.  These 50 year old aircraft have had millions of man-hours poured into to them to keep them air worthy.  The ratio of maintenance man-hours to flight hours is increasing rapidly as these aircraft age.  When these tankers can no longer fly, we can no longer project air power beyond our shores.  All of those airlifters and fighters that need gas become very expensive static displays when they can’t get gas.  Yet when will we get a new tanker?  At the rate Obama is spending our money, likely never.

air-forcemagazine.com, 22 July 2009

Army Gets Short-Term Boost: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has approved a temporary increase of up to 22,000 soldiers for the Army that would sustain an end strength of about 569,000 for a three-year period. This is over the 65,000 soldiers that Congress previously approved as a permanent increase. Gates said Monday afternoon, in making the announcement, that the Pentagon would not ask for additional funding for Fiscal 2009 or 2010 budgets to support the initial increase, but he would work with the Administration for funding for the remaining two years of the temporary boost. He explained the need to further increase the number of soldiers, saying “the persistent pace of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last several years has steadily increased the number of troops not available for deployment in the Army” at the same time the Administration has called for more troops for Afghanistan. Without these additional soldiers, which he acknowledged would result in “additional tough choices” in a fiscally strained environment, the Army’s ability to deploy combat units would be “at risk.” (Transcript of press conference)

‘Manchurian Candidate’s War on the U.S. Military

Yes, war on the military. This is just the tip of the iceberg. When this Saul Alinsky patterned Marxist/communist is finished, our military will be in worse shape than it was under Carter. He wants to destroy the military that has taken an oath to “support and defend the constitution,” and replace it with his brown-shirt militia that whose allegiance is to Obama and the left.

From Air Force Magazine Online, 11 Mar 2009:

Nightmare Scenario: The White House has purportedly given the Defense Department guidance to delay the KC-X tanker program by five years and cancel plans for a new bomber. CQ Today reported this March 9, citing sources close to the ongoing budget discussions for Fiscal 2010. It said this guidance is not yet the final word on what will emerge from DOD’s $533.7 billion topline. Rather, this guidance is part of Office of Management and Budget and Pentagon deliberations over possible budget trade-offs. Still, it is alarming to see how ready some in the Administration are to dismantle the service’s No. 1 acquisition priority by delaying KC-X significantly. And, it is equally disturbing to see the White House’s willingness to scrub the bomber project. We’re talking here about a new aerial tanker to replace a fleet of KC-135s built in the Eisenhower-era. Without tankers, global reach, power, and vigilance cannot be sustained. And, without a new bomber coming along near the end of next decade, the Air Force’s ability to penetrate deeply into heavily defended airspace and hold targets at risk with a good-size load of weapons will fall on the backs of 20 B-2s.