Ghost of a flea

Quit lumping me in with the mere 52% that voted for Obama. THX

Seeing as we can't even get convicted terrorists who lied to the IRB deported, I'm not too worried about a repeat of the St. Louis scenario.

The rest of it sucks, though.

Add to that the knowledge that the entire US nuclear triad is being allowed to rust out or retire with no planned replacements, and you have a recipe for a toothless strategic deterrent in 15-20 years.

These days, bombers take 20-30 years to deploy, from initial spec to technology demonstration to vendor competition to prototypes and crew training to IOC. The last nuclear-capable bomber the US designed was the B-2, and thanks to the Congress of the time, there are only 20 of them. All twenty aren't available for a strike at any given time (some will be in depot maintenance or other repair work), so the actual mission-capable strike force at any given time is more like 14 birds.

Then you have missiles, Minuteman IIIs which were initially designed and built 42 years ago. Sure, they fire off a random one every couple of years to make sure it still works as advertised, but a more modern launch platform would certainly offer some advantages. Like having scientists younger than retirement age familiar with designing and building the backbone of the nuclear deterrent.

Beyond that the Minuteman IIIs were already seriously threatened by late 70s Soviet missile technology (like the SS-18), which carry a heavy enough punch to probably destroy the Minutemen in their silos. So land-based deterrent is effectively a wash.

As far as the Ohio-class SSBNs go, there are only 14 of them, and as they age out they are being converted into SSGNs carrying conventional weapons. Their Trident D5 missiles have been treaty-reduced from 12 warheads down to 4 or 5.

Boats, incidentally, take even longer than planes to spec, design and build. The genesis of the Ohio class dates back to the Navy's ULMS study of 1971.

If the US had planned to maintain a credible strategic deterrent they should have been studying and building successor classes a decade ago. By the 2020 timeframe they will have a massive shortfall in USAF combat aircraft and capability, and no replacement classes for currently extant boats and missiles.

Basically we can see the end of Pax Americana within our lifetimes. American exceptionalism, like British and Roman before it, is predicated on moral, economic, and kinetic strength, and it's coming to an unavoidable end. And it is unavoidable -- hands up everyone who thinks Obama (or McCain for that matter) would ever have funded DoD to the level required to modernise both the nuclear and conventional forces.

As I cast about for potential advantage to an Obama Presidency, one of the greatest sources for (ahem) hope is that he will make such a bad job of things the alternatives will become more clear than they might have been. In this respect, his administration is an institutional equivalent of 9/11: The enemy moving perhaps a generation ahead of its moment of greatest strength. The cultural Marxists - as with the jihadis - have achieved too much too soon. Obama and his puppet masters no more expected him to become President this time round than bin Laden expected to bring down the WTC towers.

Let's face facts, a McCain administration would have been disastrous on immigration policy and just as bad as Obama (and Bush) on tax and spend in a host of areas. The difference being a Republican party at war with its own President and yet another Republican President the left could blame for all the worlds ills (and their own psychological deficiencies).

We must be like Gandalf and encourage the Enemy as he spies advantage and rushes his forces into the field. We have to look for his consequent mistakes and somehow get the Ring to the mountain.

i - Ring to Mount Doom
ii - ????
iii - Profit!

Best to think of Churchill's observation of the US, Flea: "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.”

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