This is one incredible parody video of what robotic warriors of the future will be able to do.
The robot takes an incredible beating and never misses a shot!
They even hit him numerous times with a battering ram for Pete’s sake.
Also, amazed that none of the actors in this video ended up taking a bullet or two.
Wow, the future is going to be amazing. 😉
(Thank you to my wonderful son-in-law for sending this to me)
(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)
The United States is ranked as the most powerful country in the world:
But the U.S. spends more than the next 7-8 countries COMBINED!(See below chart from Forbes 2016)
In fact, military spending is more than half of all U.S. federal discretionary spending.
So the question is why are we spending so much more than everybody else, is the United States getting its money’s worth, and most importantly are we able to defend ourselves?
The U.S. defense budget is going up and has been approved at $717B for 2019.
All the other 28 NATO countries together spend less than half ($296B) as much as the U.S. alone.
If you add NATO spending as a complement to the U.S. then the total spend on our mutual defense approaches $1 trillion!
Russia ($69B) China ($146B), North Korea ($6B), and Iran’s ($16B) military spending in total pales in comparison at just $237B.
NATO as a whole is outspending Russia + China + North Korea + Iran by a factor of 4 times yet these countries are still considered major threats to us!
Despite all the truly incredible brave, hard working, and excellent men and women that serve with distinction in our military,
Therefore, again why is it that the U.S. is spending more on what others seem to get for cheaper? Is there significant fraud, waste, and abuse in the system? Are we as a rich capitalistic nation simply getting fat, lazy, and stupid?
Notwithstanding the outsized spending by the United States, incredibly from today’s Wall Street Journal, there is another article about our inability to defend ourselves:
“These are admissions that the U.S. cannot proportionally and equally defend itself in space, cyber, and response to tactical and nuclear weapons except through the threat of escalation and intrusion into other domains.”
Some poignant examples given:
– Our stationary land-based nuclear missiles are no match for Russia and China’s mobile-based ICBMs.
– Our ten busiest U.S. ports do not have an adequate defense against an underwater nuclear missile launch.
China and Russia variously are beating us out in:
In fact, it was just reported that China conducted its 8th hypersonic test of a plane–with this one said to capable of Mach 10–and that it is capable of carrying nukes!
Further, our carrier group fleet and land forces are at risk with respect to Russia and China’s hypersonic weapons.
Of course, EMP weapons can fry our electrical grid and a large cyber attack could disable our critical infrastructure.
Let’s not even talk bioweapons–think Black Plague from the Middle Ages that wiped out 30-60% of Europe.
Yes, some of these are asymmetric warfare, but why are we still thinking and fighting so kinetic and conventionally.
If we are fighting the wars of yesteryear instead of the battles of today and the threats of tomorrow then what good is our military investments and assets.
To become a more capable fighting force that is less vulnerable, more capable of defending this country, and making better use of our large investment dollars here are 10-steps we need to take to transform our military; we need to transition as follows:
Over $700B per year should buy us a lot of defense, hopefully in the future we can really use it to defend ourselves. 😉
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has come up with a Reconfigurable Wheel Track (RWT).
The tires can switch shape from round tires for flat terrain to triangular tracks for soft or rugged terrain in just 2-seconds!
You can see in the screenshot the rear wheels in tire formation and the front wheels changed to tracks.
The agility of this technology makes for better maneuverability and survivability for our troops and their transports and combat vehicles.
I wonder if someday soon, they will commercialize this technology so rather than all season/year tires or snow tires on our cars, we have these gorgeous ruggedized military grade babies.
I for one would gladly pay extra! 😉
(Source Screenshot: Andy Blumenthal from here)
OMG, I can’t listen to this politically correct nonsense for the masses on North Korean anymore.
Yes, North Korea is a nuclear threat and they are ramping up the ante.
And we are still technically at war with the North Koreans.
But all the in-the-box ideas for stopping the North Korean threat is wasting everyone’s time and efforts.
Today in the Wall Street Journal, we had everything from telling China that we’ll recognize the Axis of evil North Korean regime and sign a peace treaty with them in return for limiting the North Korean missile program and having inspections (because those worked so well in the past or with Iran) or we put the “squeeze” on China by threatening to remove their 328,547 Chinese students from American universities.
Listen, it’s time to face facts:
China will not give up support for North Korea against us, until we would agree to give up support for Taiwan against them.
Is that really so hard to understand?
No China will not be sanctioned by us or threatened by us economically or militarily–they are a superpower in their own right!
And we cannot expect to ask or force China to stop supporting North Korea, just because we don’t like it–in fact, that is exactly the point.
We don’t like it, and that’s what China wants in order to push us out of supporting an independent and democratic Taiwan.
So now we are at the root of the choice here for America.
Either America is willing to negotiate with China for real and in effect compromise our values for democracy and freedom in the world or we can deal with North Korea on our own.
And dealing with North Korea on our own–without destroying much of South Korea and even Japan in the process–probably means just one (or two) big bangs. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
We spend $600 billion on defense and this is what we get?
In the middle of the night our U.S. Navy DESTROYER crashes with a ginormous container ship.
The commercial vessel (yes it’s bigger, but it’s a civilian ship) is lightly damaged, but the U.S. Navy BATTLESHIP (after having undergone a recent $21 million upgrade) has 7 dead, the captain injured, and it can barely make it back to its port except with tugboats for extensive repairs.
WTF!
How does an battleship with the latest sensors and technology collide with a civilian ship–how did such a foreign vessel even get close to our navy ship let alone collide with it–was someone completely “asleep at the wheel?”
This is no joke!–this is our first line of defense in our ability to project force globally.
What if this had been a terrorist ship laden to the hilt with high explosives or an Axis of Evil Iranian or North Korean fast attack craft or even a Russian or Chinese attack submarine–surprise!
Doesn’t a battleship need to be ever-vigilant and -ready for battle?
How can we fight sophisticated 21st century militaries with advanced ship-killer cruise missiles, torpedos, and mines, if we can’t even avoid the essential sinking of one our own fighting ships in peacetime.
Our brave men and women who take up the uniform to serve this great nation–and this country–DESERVE BETTER!
Does this paper navy ship with a punched hole in it represent a larger forgotten or war-weary military in dire need of modernization and genuine readiness to defend the beautiful and free America?
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal via The Guardian)
So today we hear that there was a horrible mistake in which at least 52 sites (in 18 states here and 3 other countries) were inadvertently sent LIVE anthrax!!!
This after a prior incident in December where ebola had been mishandled and a technician potentially exposed.
Again last August, they announced that a lab had accidentally cross-contaminated benign bird flu virus with a deadly strain of it.
And there are at least five other major mishaps just since 2009 including more with anthrax and bird flu as well as with Brucella and botulism–these involved everything from using improper sterilization and handling techniques to inadvertent shipments of deadly live germs.
Also in July, the CDC discovered six vials of LIVE smallpox in an unused storage room at the NIH.
This is reminiscent of similar gaffes by the military with an inadvertent shipment in 2007 by the Air Force of six nuclear warheads while the crew was unaware that they were even carrying it.
And here we go again (a doozy this time), information was disclosed in 2013 that we nearly nuked ourselves (specifically North Carolina) with 2 hydrogen bombs (260 times more powerful than that exploded on Hiroshima) in 1961.
Yes, mistakes happen, but for weapons of mass destructions that we are talking about here, there are layers of safeguards that are supposed to be strictly in place.
After each incident, it seems that some official acknowledges the mistakes made, says sorry, and claims things are going to be cleaned up now.
But if the same or similar mistakes are made over and over again, then what are we really to believe, especially when millions of lives are at stake?
We have too much faith in the large bureaucratic system called government that despite how well it could be run, very often it isn’t and is prone to large and dangerous errors and miscalculations.
With all due respect for our experts in these areas, we need to spend a lot more time and effort to ensure the safety of our most dangerous stockpiles–be it of nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological origin.
We can’t afford any more mistakes–or the next one could be more than just a simple (not) embarrassment.
What good is all the preparation to win against our enemies, if we are our own worst enemy or we have meet the enemy and it is us! 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
This is a photo of a beautiful embroidery.
It is called “Creation” by Leonard Nierman.
Really liked it!
Also, wanted to share something funny I heard from a colleague about time management (as learned at DoD).
It doesn’t have to do with creation being 6 days and on the 7th day, G-d rested and it was good.
Rather it had to do with being on time (or not) as follows:
“If you’re on time, you’re late. If you’re 10 minutes early, you’re on time.”
Wish that was standard fare. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
I liked this post in downtown Washington, D.C. inscribed with the following:
“May Peace Prevail On Earth.”
It left me wondering, if Earth includes:
1) ISIS advances into large swathes of Syria and Iraq
2) Taliban attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan including the one that left 132 children dead in a Peshawar school last week.
3) Boko Haram kidnappings and killings in Nigeria including the hundreds of children taken and given as wives to their captors
4) Al-Shabaab fighting in Somalia including attacks in the capital, Mogadishu
5) Hamas in Gaza and their barrage of rocket attacks on and terror tunnels into Israel
6) Hezbolah in Lebanon as a proxy for Iran-sponsored terror
7) Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and threats to annihilate Israel off the face of the map.
8) Russia in Ukraine and Georgia and ongoing threats to Eastern Europe/NATO.
9) China’s military build-up, including nukes, submarines, and anti-satellite weapons.
10) North Korea cyber attack on Sony and threatening “the White House, the Pentagon, and the whole U.S. mainland.”
Peace is more than a wish, right now it seems like a dream. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
We went to a Veterans Day Concert yesterday, and it was quite moving.
Before the music–60’s and 70’s (and some dancing)–started, there were a number of heartfelt speeches by distinguished veterans of the Vietnam War.
One lady was a nurse in Saigon working 16 hour days tending to the wounded and dying from the battlefield. She joined the army after 8 of her high school friends from her small hometown were killed in the war. The nurse told us how on the flight to Nam, they were told to look to the person on the immediate right and left of you, becuase one of you will not be coming home.
Another speaker was a special forces Army Ranger who was fighting in North Vietnam on very dangerous covert missions. He led many draftees, who he said had only minimal training, yet fought bravely on missions with bullets flying overhead and mortars and rockets pounding their positions. He described one situation where he knelt down to look at a map with one of his troops, and as they were in that psition half a dozen bullets hit into the tree right above their heads–if they had not been crouched down looking at the map, they would’ve both been dead.
A third speaker was a veteran who had been been hit by a “million dollar shot” from the enemy–one that didn’t kill or cripple him, but that had him sent him to a hospital for 4-6 weeks and then ultimately home from the war zone. He told of his ongoing activities in the veterans community all these years, and even routinely washing the Veteran’s Wall Memorial in Washington D.C.
Aside from the bravery and fortitude of all these veterans, what was fascinating was how, as the veterans reflected, EVERYTHING else in their lives was anticlimactic after fighting in the war. The nurse for example read us a poem about the ladies in hell (referring to the nurses caring for the wounded) and how they never talked about the patients in Nam because it was too painful, and when they returned home, they had the classic symptoms of PTSD including the hellish nightmares of being back there.
Indeed, these veterans went through hell, and it seems that it was the defining moment in (many if not most of) their lives, and they are reliving it in one way or another every moment of every day.
Frankly, I don’t know how they did it being dropped on the other side of the world with, as the special forces Vet explained, maps that only told you in very general terms wherer you even where, and carrying supplies for at least 3 days at a time of C-rations, water, ammo, and more–and with the enemy all around you (“there were no enemy lines in this war; if you stepped out of your units area, it was almost all ‘unfriendly.'”). One Vet said that if you were a 2nd Lt., like she was, your average lifespan over there was 20 minutes.
The big question before we go to war and put our troops in harms way is what are we fighting for and is it absolutely necessary. For the troops being sent to the battlezone, everything else is just anticlimactic–they have been to hell.
(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)