Weapons Update 15 August 2015

Russia is expanding their role in the arctic and has recently sent a fleet of their best planes there to protect their people. They have also filed a document with the United Nation requesting more Arctic land. Some are saying they are doing this to take advantage of the riches of that area, but there is always the chance it is for another reason such as putting planes closer to the U.S. in case of war. Could there also be missiles being deployed there? I haven’t seen anything about that yet. It would be good if we could try and have better relations with Russia. They have become a Christian country with church attendance reaching over 70% every Sunday. Instead of trying to surround them we would be better served by treating them the same as we treat a European country.

The Chinese are making incredible advances in the design of their planes. They managed to go from archaic to stealth in about ten years. I am sure much of this was due to the fact they were able to steal some of our designs. We never seem to learn our lesson and now that everyone has computers we can’t afford to be so careless when storing important data. Hackers have now stolen the plans for the F-35 stealth fighter and at least some of the hackers are Chinese. They will probably fix the problems with it and turn it out for about 1/8th the price it costs us to build it. We just don’t seem to have the ability to protect our data and computer records. This is why I constantly say there is no way our personal information can be protected by us, because it is others who are losing it. You may wonder where I got the 1/8th price tag. I noticed the Chinese JF-17 Thunder fighter costs them only 25 million dollars to build verses at least 200 million for a cheap model of the F-35. Sure the F-35 is superior to that plane, but picture this, eight planes coming at it which are in the JF-17 class. That would probably be the end of the F-35. Remember what happened to the German jets in World War Two.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough for us, the Chinese and Russians are working on hypersonic missiles which can be maneuvered in flight. These types of missiles are said to be impossible to be shot down right now, since they easily change their course. There have already been several test flights of this type of missile by China. Admiral Cecil D. Haney is the senior leader of the Strategic Command. He said, “Nation states continue to develop and modernize their nuclear weapon capabilities. Nuclear and non-nuclear nations are prepared to employ cyber, counter-space, and asymmetric capabilities as options for achieving their objectives during crisis and conflict, and new technologies such as hypersonic glide vehicles are being developed, complicating our sensing and defensive approaches.” Having these types of weapons would be an advantage if no one else had them, but the fickled finger of war doesn’t allow this to happen. We will all have these weapons, thus eliminating any advantage to having them and this will make the world even more dangerous.

As the world develops more advanced weapons it is also turning to artificial intelligence. Weapons are being developed to operate on their own using computer brains. Recently Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Dr. Stephen Hawking urged in a letter that Artificial Intelligence a/k/a AI, is far too dangerous to develop. They said while the battlefield might be made safer by these weapons, they would lower the threshold of going to battle and result in greater loss of human life. The worry is once one country deploys systems which are able to select their own targets, every other country will do the same. They go on to say it will be very hard to monitor a country’s AI weapons. I can’t help but think that like everything else computer controlled, these weapons may be able to be turned against the very people who create them. This could create a bloodbath in many different countries as hackers from all sides do their thing.

When we see trillions of dollars being spent secretly by the Defense Department we have to ask the question what was it spent on besides lobbyists and corruption? We know for sure trillions are missing, because a speech was made one day before the 9/11 attack where Donald Rumsfeld said there was over 2 trillion dollars missing from the Defense Department, but before we could check the records, the area with the records at the Pentagon was blown up the next day and all records were said to be destroyed. What a coincidence. Could at least some of this money have been spent on futuristic weapons which might be able to nullify some of the advanced weapons being built by other countries? It is an intriguing thought.

The US Navy is building drones. This is not news as everyone is doing the same thing, but the navy drones I am talking about are part of a project called LOCUST. The LOCUST launcher will launch drones in packs and this is the way they will be deployed. This drones will be able to operate autonomously and swarm the enemy. LOCUST stands for Low-Cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarming Technology program. Since these drones are autonomous they are the beginning of AI, which was mentioned above. Humans just can’t resist building deadlier weapons. The program manager states, “This level of autonomous swarming flight has never been done before. UAVs that are expendable and reconfigurable will free manned aircraft and traditional weapon systems to do more, and essentially multiply combat power at decreased risk to the warfighter.” Unfortunately this is a two way street.

I am sure the military industrial complex doesn’t want to hear what I am about to say, but now is the time to try and get the entire world to agree not to develop anymore advanced weapons. It isn’t just the nuclear weapons which can wipe us out, it will be the AI controlled ones which will also be capable of doing this.