How to Save a Trillion Dollars

[upstatecajun]

On a damp, gray morning in late February, Navy admirals, U.S. Congress members and top officials of the nation's biggest shipyard gathered in Norfolk, Va., to watch a computerized torch carve bevels into a slab of steel as thick as your fist.

The occasion: the ceremonial cutting of the first piece of a $15 billion aircraft carrier slated to weigh anchor in 2020. That ship — still unnamed — will follow the just-as-costly Gerald R. Ford, now 20% built and due to set sail in 2015.
(See the hardware of Operation Odyssey Dawn.)


Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, China is putting the final touches on a new class of DF-21 missiles expressly designed to sink the Ford and its sister ship as well as their 5,000-person crews. China's missiles, which will likely cost about $10 million each, could keep the Navy's carriers so far away from Taiwan that the short-range aircraft they bear would be useless in any conflict over the tiny island's fate.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2065108,00.html#ixzz1Jq7jEJcK

[Magron]

1. Ah yes...the first payoff of industrializing China

Isn't it GOOD our wise leaders saw fit to teach them how to build a 21st century military decades before they could have on their own?
OH..By The Way..when exactly DID China stop being a Totalitarian Communist Dictatorship? Was it sometime in the 90's? I must have missed the news story.

[TheMadMonk]

10. They and we Aussies have been "sinking" US carrier fleets, by...

...popping subs up in their midst for decades. The missiles are just one more item on a long list of carrier killers that had been building since the 60's at least.

[whoneedstickets]

2. In an arms race, everyone loses.

The opportunity cost of productive investment capital shunted to make weapons.

[Magron]

3. trouble is, YOU can't be the only one to stop, now can ya? Everybody has to play.

[whoneedstickets]

5. Actually, that depends...

According to Lewis Richardson's arms race models. One side unilaterally reducing arms might reduce the arms building impulse if the domestic constraints coefficient is larger than the 'fear' coefficient.

http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~pbrown/armsrace.html

[Magron]

6. Heh. The only thing I'M sure of is that Taiwan will be rejoining the mainland fairly soon.

[Bigmack]

11. Yer shittin' me, right...

Nobody... or everybody all together.... is anywhere near our level of spending.



And I think this figure on US spending is waaaay too low.... Chris Hellman makes a very good case for US spending on "defense" and Fatherland Security totaling $1.2 Trillion per year.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175361/tomgram%3A_chris...


Posted earlier on DU... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=288702&mesg_id=288702

[Magron]

13. It's not the level of spending. It's the will and the economic clout. Mark My Words.

[truedelphi]

14. Yes, thank you.

Finally some truth about the overall equation of the world's arms race.

USA is like at 99, the rest of the world put together is like at 15.

[orwell]

4. The definition of madness...

...doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result...

[RC]

7. Tell me again how much we depend on China for our electronics?

You know, the parts we use in our the missile guidance systems and remote controlled drones and stuff.

[Magron]

8. LOL yeah..but i'm starting to think the Chinese are the only hope the world has

to save us from our own 'capitalists'. They might be the only monkey wrench in the machinery to save us all from a world corporate state. Define 'rock and a hard place' rotflmao.

[AndyTiedye]

12. China Today Seems to Combine the Worst Features of Capitalism and Communism

Marx must be spinning in his grave. Mao too.

[TheMadMonk]

9. They have also repeatedly demonstrated their ability to pop up...

...in the middle of carrier fleets engaged in active exercises, in cheap diesel subs armed with $100,000 torps.

We Aussies used to do it too (as part of those exercises), before we replaced our low tech Oberons with noisy strech Collin's Class subs.

The Iranians (or anyone) can do it with enough speedboats and explosives.


Carrier fleets have been essentially obsolete for decades.