I just read this article, and posted the following rant at Veritas, one of my favorite Fbk discussion groups. ;-)
That's how services compete among themselves in the Pentagon - by trying to grab as much of the budget pie as possible. At one point several years ago, when the USA started getting heavily involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan, plus in counterterrorism activities around the globe, the Navy found itself relegated to a secondary role as the Army's cargo drivers. With the once mighty Soviet fleet rusting in Kiev and Arkhangel, NO ONE in the world had a Navy that even got close to ours.
We were no longer fighting the vast armor columns of the Warsaw Pact, or the splendid supersonic naval bombers of the Soviet Atlantic fleet. Now we were fighting Ahmed the Towelhead with a Chinese-made AK-47 and 10kg of C4 strapped around his balls, and his 10 thousand cousins. The Army, once thought to be an obsolete left over from mid 20th century in an era of missiles, fighters and carriers, was once again king of the services and getting the lion's share of the budget. The Air Force, after doing away with its Iraqi counterpart in like the first 7 minutes of the 2003 invasion, morphed and settled into its close ground air support role and never looked back. Even the Marine Corps found itself at home in the sands and cliffs along with the Army, thousands of miles away from the nearest beach.
That whole state of affairs, of course, didn't sit well with the admirals. Yeah, they fired Tomahawks from ships and subs, yeah the SEALs are doing awesome things everywhere, yeah they get to launch drones every time Obama wants to execute an American-born terrorist without them pesky niceties such as due process. Sure, they got to blow up Qadaffi's butt and provide command & control while our esteemed Euro NATO allies were still sorting out which of them whose turn it was to bring the Grey Poupon.
But that's not what the Admirals got into the Navy for. It's SHIPS, big and scary and shiny, bristling with mighty missile launchers and mysterious antennae and full of white-clad sailors saluting them and polishing brass to a mirror and kissing their ass. Yeah, SHIPS. That's the ticket.
So... how do they keep the Navy from feeling irrelevant in the Brave New World of enemies with no navies to speak of? Hmmm...
Of course! The People's Republic of China! The big bad dragon replaces the big bad Soviet bear! They bought a floating pile of shit from Ukraine and spent 10 years scraping the rust off - they have a CARRIER !!! Forget that we have like 14 of them, and that ours are bigger and mightier, and that even countries like Brasil and Thailand have carriers... No! They.Are.THE.NEXT.BIG.Threat!
THAT's how the Navy gets its budget appropriations passed!
And now, after this not-so-frequent stroke of Generalísimo wisdom, I have to go design @#$%^ primers for PCR because this week I've got to clone genes.
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