US faces most serious threat of major war in 80 years, and we aren't prepared: experts

[TedKennedy]

They're (politicians) already suggesting that. I'm not sure I really care for the idea, but I think few of our citizen "kids" are military material. Another readiness issue. Also I think they must want to fight for America in order to gain citizenship but heck we are paying them to do nothing so being a citizen may not be motivating. This may be a post already...

I went to see my son's Marine graduation ceremony. There were a half-dozen young Marines getting their citizenship at the event. At one time the Marines were heavily Southern and Caucasian. Now they're even more Southern, but not so much Caucasian.

 

[TANSTAAFL]

I went to see my son's Marine graduation ceremony. There were a half-dozen young Marines getting their citizenship at the event. At one time the Marines were heavily Southern and Caucasian. Now they're even more Southern, but not so much Caucasian.

Congratulations on your Son Graduating USMC! You've definitely have much to be proud of.

 

[TedKennedy]

Congratulations on your Son Graduating USMC! You've definitely have much to be proud of.

Thanks - it was a few years ago, but yes, I'm very proud of him.
(also folks that have kids in the military should be a bit more skeptical of the BS the war mongers always repeat - most of the cheerleaders don't have real skin in the game)

 

[turkeyrun]

**** Joe giving away pallets of cash
**** Joe depleting Strategic Oil Reserves
**** Joe giving away $Billions in equipment
Lack of manufacturing to replenish stocks
Socialist, libturd, woke school system leads to lack of national pride, lower military recruitment and apathy, in the event of another Pearl Harbor type attack.
Clinton depleted and dismantled the military
Odumbo and **** continue. Marxist Spread Eagle will NOT support the military, or the Nation.
Isolationist isn't the answer, we are a global economy, but we should be capable of independence. We had oil independence under Trump. **** Joe made sure that disappeared on Day 1.
Open borders, allowing unchecked floods of military aged INVADERS, all but guarantees an internal attack is eminent. Spread Eagle is all for such an attack. Bring down the US and put in place what the cackling idiot believes is her supporters. She would be one of the first to hang, as the NWO takes over.

 

[RickN]

**** Joe giving away pallets of cash
**** Joe depleting Strategic Oil Reserves
**** Joe giving away $Billions in equipment
Lack of manufacturing to replenish stocks
Socialist, libturd, woke school system leads to lack of national pride, lower military recruitment and apathy, in the event of another Pearl Harbor type attack.
Clinton depleted and dismantled the military
Odumbo and **** continue. Marxist Spread Eagle will NOT support the military, or the Nation.
Isolationist isn't the answer, we are a global economy, but we should be capable of independence. We had oil independence under Trump. **** Joe made sure that disappeared on Day 1.
Open borders, allowing unchecked floods of military aged INVADERS, all but guarantees an internal attack is eminent. Spread Eagle is all for such an attack. Bring down the US and put in place what the cackling idiot believes is her supporters. She would be one of the first to hang, as the NWO takes over.

China shutting down some of the supplies we get from them to build our military equipment.

 

[turkeyrun]

China shutting down some of the supplies we get from them to build our military equipment.

How could that be problem? At least, **** Joe and **** Jr get their China checks.

 

[Snattlerake]

To tell the truth, I agree with both sides to an point. We need to cut off all funding to all but our closest allies, only stick our nose in places that effect us, but we do need a much stronger military. In between major wars we tend to let our military shrink way to small, and it always ends up costing more American lives than it should have.

I have read several times that if we had a strong military at the beginning of WW2, it would have saved us a quarter of a million lives or more and I believe that from all I have read. We need to build up our defenses starting right here at home.

Yeah, I doubt if Japan would have tried us if we had 2 or 3 million under arms.

 

[dennishoddy]

TSMC, the company that makes those chips, is opening facilities to manufacture them in the US.

While Intel lays off 15,000 employees in the US despite an 8.5 billion dollar grant from the Biden administration? Can we talk about Solyndra and the obama administration? Election pay backs.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-clinches-nearly-20-bln-awards-biden-boost-us-chip-output-2024-03-20/

 

[Bill_Long_Tan]

A new report to Congress and the president warns the U.S. is not equipped for a major war.
The bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy warned we face “the most serious and most challenging” threats in 80 years.

The commissioners, who said they were unanimous in their findings, said the U.S. faces “the potential for near-term major war.”

The nation was last prepared to fight a global conflict during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago.
“It is not prepared today,” the report states.

Bradley Martin, the director of the RAND National Security Supply Chain Institute, said Tuesday that he agreed with the commissioners’ dire assessment.

“I think that the chances of a major-power war are unfortunately significant,” he said.
RAND assisted with the commissioners’ report.

Defense spending as a share of the U.S. economy has declined since the Cold War.
The U.S. spent over 11% of gross domestic product on defense in the 1950s. It was down to about 6% in the 1980s. Now, we spend about 3% of GDP on defense.

Another RAND expert, Raphael Cohen, mentioned America’s diminished defense capacity since the Cold War while discussing dangers related to Israel’s Middle East conflicts.

“Our defense industrial base is struggling for a host of reasons,” Cohen said. “This goes well beyond Israel and Gaza. It goes well beyond Ukraine. It goes largely to what we did to the defense industrial base after the end of the Cold War. We need to scale that back up again, but we're struggling under that.”

Martin, a retired Navy captain, said today’s American military does a good job with its day-to-day tasks.
“But the real lack of preparation is in the fact that the defense industrial base has shrunk,” Martin said.

The military recruitment struggles have gotten a lot of attention, but we also don’t have the technically trained workforce or the factory capacity to make the munitions and critical spare parts for our combat vehicles, he said.
“One of the bad habits, I would call a bad habit, of (military) services is they want to build a few really, really expensive things because of the belief that, ‘Well, I've got all this capability. You know, one of these can take on seven of something else,’” Martin said.

But effective deterrence takes combat capability stationed in lots of different places, standing by and ready to roll in the event of a crisis.

They don't have to necessarily be $4 billion destroyers to be an effective deterrence, Martin said.
“Quantity has a quality of its own,” he said.

There are probably some efficiency savings that could be achieved within the Defense Department, Martin said.
But increasing America’s defense capacity won’t be free.

Increased defense spending could be paid for by reductions to existing government programs or increased taxes, which Martin acknowledged might not “be a popular, politically palatable” solution.
“I guess I would just say that the defense capabilities that we're talking about are what underwrites stability and prosperity,” he said. “That's a collective good. You know, that's something that people don't notice until it goes away.”

Martin said the many trillions of dollars we’ve spent over the decades on our military is a relatively small price to pay for what it’s provided our country.

“The isolationist impulse is certainly understandable, but I think that, that comes from a failure to recognize how much U.S. prosperity has depended on a stable global environment,” Martin said.

The U.S. was better positioned before World War II to quickly ramp up capacity than the country is now, he said.
We had excess industrial capability and more available labor coming out of the 1930s than we do in 2024.

That’s all the more reason to take action now – in peacetime – to build up our defense capacity, he said.
Threats loom from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and others.

“To a degree, we may find ourselves surprised by what the next big thing is,” Martin said.

He doubts Russia will want to take on NATO or all of Europe.

And China likely doesn’t want to risk the economic calamity that could come from invading Taiwan.
The Middle East can be more unpredictable, and that’s dangerous, he said.

It’s also a region that could prove so valuable to other nations that a spark in the Middle East could ignite a conflict that spills far outside that part of the world.

China, for example, has interests in Africa. And it receives energy from the Middle East.
Plus, there’s the danger that a U.S. adversary could try to take advantage if they think America is distracted by conflict elsewhere.

“If that starts to become a problem where countries are taking sides, then we're dealing with a world war,” Martin said.

https://www.ktul.com/news/nation-wo...force-navy-middle-east-russia-china-cold-war#

Wouldn't it be great if we could just pay some other country to deplete / destroy the military resources of our long standing enemies so our young men and women don't have to?

 

[HillsideDesolate]