Russians Report on American “Military Collapse”
[ Editor’s Note: This is a good article to read not because of its validity, but because it is a window into the NeoCon strategy of pumping the US military up to Cold War levels when it is vastly superior to anything out there.
The National Interest is one of the founding NeoCon propaganda rags, which is confessed to in the first line of their about section, “Over almost three decades,The National Interest, founded in 1985 by Irving Kristol and Owen Harries, has displayed a remarkable consistency in its approach to foreign policy.”
In short, what is really being said here is that the US military is not strong enough to dominate “the whole world”, which is true. So what they are posing is that if we have anything less that a total control we are “under a threat”. The National Interest crowd would all drink hemlock before they would debate the VT A-team for three hours with the cameras rolling.
Sure, a lot of older hardware is in a state of disrepair, but who pushed for whizzing away trillions of dollars, all borrowed money, on stupid wars fighting a terrorist group that was a prime construct of the CIA, and with as CIA colonel my the name of Tim Osman, Osama bin Laden, as its titular head?
If you do a search of National Interest stories during the period when the $4.5 billion dollar Zumwalt “destroyer” was being build, you will find nothing about how that money could have gone into getting our already built military power, our planes, all up to operational status.
You will not find a story posing that if all the drug profits from Afghanistan had gone into a plane repair fund, many of them would be flying today. So step one in America revitalizing its defense is to take a hard look at our enemies within, which our Founding Fathers warned us about, and was even included in the military oath, “to defend the country from all enemies, foreign and domestic”.
Whenever I occasionally trot out the subject in front of a veteran or military crowd about what do they think about our abysmal record of taking care of “domestic enemies” they go deer in the headlights. I actually have to take them to the oath.
Virtually none of them have even considered why that was put in there, and it is not a topic they like to discuss. Gosh, I wonder why? Would it be that they would prefer not having to deal with that part of their oath? And why are those of us who do deal it considered “trouble makers” by those who don’t. I think you all know the answer… Jim W. Dean ]
Mounting evidence presented by high-ranking US military officials to the United States’ Congress make it clear that the American army, once a powerful might backing Washington’s policies around the world, is now slowly, but surely, unraveling.
According to The National Interest, the gradual decrease in military spending by a whopping 25 percent over the last five years has led to erosion of the American armed forces. The news outlet made a chart of six top revelations by military authorities that point to the horrifying scale of problems the nation’s army is now facing.
Marine Corps’ Aircraft Grounded in Droves
The US Marine Corps revealed that two-thirds of the branch’s 276 F/A-18 Hornet strike jets had been grounded because of a lack of financing and equipment weariness. To keep the rest of the aircraft in service the Corps has resorted to “cannibalizing,” which is the practice of taking out components of one multibillion-dollar jet to repair another one.
This has resulted in a situation in which every serving pilot has only four hours of flight time per week instead of 30 a decade before that.The Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, faces troubles that the military has long struggled to fix, including issues with onboard oxygen generation/filtration system, which if not fixed properly, could lead to the death of pilots.
Further, one hundred of the 147 Super Stallion helicopters have been grounded due to various technical problems.
Army Brigades Losing Tactical Efficiency and Shrinking in Numbers
As of 2015, only two-thirds of the Army brigades were ready for decisive actions due to budget slashes, according to the Army Vice Chief of Staff General Daniel Allyn. At the same time the US military contingent is shrinking in numbers that “increases the threats and danger to the United States,” Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno said. By mid-2018, the authorities aim to shape an army of 450,000 soldiers that will be 20 percent smaller than the army in 2012.
Air Force Jets Being Refitted With Parts From Museum Planes
The Air Force’s B-1 Lancer bombers are being refitted with parts pulled out of museum jets to be kept in-service. The components of the F-16 Fighting Falcons are also actively used in repairing other F-16s that constantly need spare parts.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James unveiled that less than half of the branch’s forces are prepared for engaging in “a conflict…. where an adversary could shoot us down, interfere with us in some major way in space or cyberspace.”
The Navy’s Dying for More Ships
The US Navy is consistently seeing shortage of ships in their fleet. The budget shortfalls “forced the Navy to accept significant risk in key mission areas,” Admiral Jon Greenert admitted. Currently, the branch needs 350 battle vessels, but it only has 273.
Marine Copters Keep Crashing, and Ageing B-52s
The average number of Marine Corps’ aircraft crashes has increased twice in a decade, resulting in a string of fatal accidents earlier this year. Over a hundred helicopters were grounded for additional technical checks afterwards.
The Air Force has to throw into the fray B-52 bombers, which are more than half-a-century-old, to carry out anti-Daesh operations in the Middle East as the more modern, stealth-capable B-1 Lancers performed poorly in the same campaigns.
By GDP