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posted by martyb on Friday March 24 2017, @11:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the which-swamps-are-we-draining? dept.

President Trump has proposed a $54 billion increase in defense spending, which he said would be "one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history."

Past administrations have increased military spending, but typically to fulfil a specific mission. Jimmy Carter expanded operations in the Persian Gulf. Ronald Reagan pursued an arms race with the Soviet Union, and George W. Bush waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Trump has not articulated a new mission that would require a military spending increase. This has left analysts wondering what goals he has in mind. Erin M. Simpson, a national security consultant, called Mr. Trump's plans "a budget in search of a strategy."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/22/us/is-americas-military-big-enough.html

Donald J. Trump - Military Readiness Remarks

[Related]: 2017 Outlook for Navy Shipbuilding

What do you think about the proposed increase in military spending ? Does USA really need more weapons ?


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 25 2017, @03:11AM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 25 2017, @03:11AM (#484015) Journal

    We also seriously need to work on restoring our tech advantage over any potential enemy, especially China.

    You'd be able to do it only if you match China's manufacturing capabilities. That's a race you fell behind quite a long time - good luck with that, you'll need it if you want this to happen soon enough.

    Tell you what: you'll start to be able to beat China the moment your PhD theses and scientific articles will be signed by Johns and Janes rather than Lius and Hengs.
    In the eventuality of a war, China will pay your post-graduates better than you'll be able to do; besides, you have a habit to put them in camps [wikipedia.org]

    But we need railguns.

    Bullshit - not until the energy storage in chemical bonds is surpassed by the capacity of electric energy storage.
    Granted, for big atomic ships it may make sense (producing the energy at a high enough rate), but even there the current materials used for rails will wear very fast - much faster than a gun bore.

    We need anti-missile tech, perhaps using railguns!

    But be my guest, drop your explosive driven guns for railguns if you like them better.
    Let yourself opened to attacks favouring cheap low-tech en-masse, the type a big nation with large manufacturing capability can mount.
    You'll finish in spending 10 times the amount of dollars to fend a low-tech attack.

    We need our entire military hardened against EMP ...

    That would go on a collision course with ubiquitous use of electronics, don't you think?
    Especially when it's so easy to craft a non-nuke EMP bomb [wikipedia.org] - big capacitor [aliexpress.com] discharged into a conductive loop that's explosively compressed.

    Carpet-bomb Wall Street with them and chaos ensures with minimal human loss.

    Maintaining the certainty we can win any conventional war

    You delude yourself that you can win any war... pretty much as the delusion you have the certainty of employment or income nowadays; nobody can.
    You win a war only when you can pacify whatever territory you won - and yet... you can't pacify yourself.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @03:51AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @03:51AM (#484021)

    Yours is the only sane post I have read yet.
    Trump is merely another maniac waiting for his time to come.

    I personally think he's dreaming for a crisis to happen so he can go and kick everybody's asses and take their money.
    Shallow man. Shallow dreams. Money is all.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 25 2017, @10:35AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 25 2017, @10:35AM (#484070) Journal

    Bullshit - not until the energy storage in chemical bonds is surpassed by the capacity of electric energy storage.

    Which in the case of rail guns systems has already been done. There's no way to put that much kinetic energy on ordinance without a complex, mass-inefficient rocket system, using chemical energy. And by mass-inefficient, I mean that it's more mass effective to stow fuel for an efficient diesel or gas turbine generator than it is to store propellant on a shell intended to go several km per second.

    But be my guest, drop your explosive driven guns for railguns if you like them better. Let yourself opened to attacks favouring cheap low-tech en-masse, the type a big nation with large manufacturing capability can mount. You'll finish in spending 10 times the amount of dollars to fend a low-tech attack.

    The US would spend gobs anyway. Current military procurement costs are grossly overinflated no matter what military technology is being developed, be it a better gun or supposedly better food or not developed (obsoleting the A-10 without a replacement).

    That would go on a collision course with ubiquitous use of electronics, don't you think? Especially when it's so easy to craft a non-nuke EMP bomb - big capacitor discharged into a conductive loop that's explosively compressed.

    Carpet-bomb Wall Street with them and chaos ensures with minimal human loss.

    Because no one would ever exploit an obvious military vulnerability.

    You delude yourself that you can win any war... pretty much as the delusion you have the certainty of employment or income nowadays; nobody can. You win a war only when you can pacify whatever territory you won - and yet... you can't pacify yourself.

    Certainty is not a bit flag you set. No military is prepared for sufficiently incompetent leadership.