U.S. Weapons

We keep improving our weapons at any cost, but we let the quality of life slip in the country at the same time. We have just deployed a laser weapon on a ship and sent it to the Middle East. Here is what I truly wonder about, we keep hearing about how efficient the laser would be, but is it truly an improvement on such things as a guided missile or is it just another way for companies to make money? Every weapon has problems and the laser is no exception. Lasers use a lot of energy so right now the bulky and energy hungry laser is best mounted on a ship and even better on a nuclear powered one. Much of the energy used by a laser is wasted as heat. Thermal blooming can happen which defocuses the laser and if there is fog, smoke or dusty air the laser is not of much use. To combat this a large very fragile mirror focused perfectly is needed and there has to be some way to keep it in focus. A guided missile can be fired at a target in any weather. I have to wonder if a target purposely causes a cloud of gas around it, if it would be impossible for the laser to shoot it down.

Not everything is bad about the laser or we wouldn’t be using it would we? It uses six commercial welding lasers and focuses them on a target. Each time the laser shoots it only costs the navy about one dollar. The beam itself cannot be seen by the human eye. It was designed to be used on small fast boats and drones. Let’s hope these don’t defeat it using something like smug pots to create a smoke screen. I remember the Iranians defeated our heat seeking missiles by towing rafts behind their ships which were on fire and drew the heat seekers to them instead of the ship. Sometimes our most sophisticated weapons can be defeated by the simplest of tricks.

The pentagon has been working on a weapons system which can reach any target on earth in one hour or less. The testing has reawakened the missile arms race between the U.S., China and Russia. It is being said the reason we want faster missiles is when we wanted to blow up Osama bin Laden in 1998 after he was seen, we fired missiles at him, but he left before they reached the target. The missiles had been fired from a warship in the Arabian Sea. The missile we are testing has the longest reach of any conventional weapon in our arsenal which is about 5,000 miles and so far it has reached a speed of about 3,500 miles per hour, but the military is looking for a big increase in that speed and range. Experts are very worried about these types of weapons and for a good reason. They are afraid they might be confused for a nuclear attack and well they could be. It would be hard to tell the difference between one of these weapons coming at you or an ICBM. If these weapons get perfected it will be time to move the Doom’s Day Clock up closer to 12.

When we are told other countries are building up their militaries we have to remember one very important thing. The United States has consistently outspent the next seven countries in the world combined when it comes to military spending. When we keep this in mind we begin to realize there is a lot of scare tactics being used to keep the spending going, after all the military industrial complex needs us to think we are in jeopardy. It is true a country might develop something we should worry about, but taken as a whole look at our military carefully. We have more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined. We probably have way more planes than anyone when you add up all the planes in all the services. We may not have the most manpower, but with the technology we have it is not necessary to have it. Look at what we did to Iran who had the biggest army in the world at the time. We would still be a superpower if we had half of what we have. We have 10 carriers active with 2 in reserve and 3 being built. The world has 10 carriers 1 in reserve and these are mostly very old. Currently there are 5 carriers under construction by the rest of the world and this includes 2 for Great Britain.

The United States had gone into drones in a very big way. We currently have the MQ9 Reaper Drone which is designed for very long endurance missions. It flies at a medium altitude and was designed for gathering intelligence, but can also be used against targets. It is also able to perform close air support combat missions along with search and rescue. It is able to go on 24 hour long missions. We also have the Avenger jet-powered drone which can fly up to 500 miles per hour and reach 50,000 feet and do this for 18 hours. This drone has the capacity to carry 3,500 pounds internally. It can carry 2,000 pounds of weapons on its wings. The CIA will be one of the main users of this drone according to many different articles. Other drones are being developed and might already be in use. One type is said to have cutting-edge stealth technology and can evade radar. An all-electric fuel cell-powered drone is being developed to launch from a submarine. We already have many different drones in our arsenal.

The U.S. Navy has launched a new destroyer. The USS Zumwalt is basically a drone ship. It fires rocket-propelled, GPS-guided rounds from its cannons. The over 600 foot long ship looks like a tiny ship on radar. It has computer intelligence built into it and can defend itself without human intervention. The people who made this ship said to think of it as a 5 Billion Dollar UAV. It will still have a human crew aboard. The ship is capable of handling fires on its own and when the fire is out it will drain out all the water so the crew can investigate. The amount of crew on the ship will be about half of the usual amount for a ship this size, about 150, but it can operate with as few as 40. The ship has what Raytheon calls a total ship computing environment. I personally do not like computers making decisions such as when to fire on other ships and putting out fires by locking all doors and turning on fire-fighting equipment. There seems to be a good chance for error. Can you imagine the ship firing on another ship by mistake and starting a war or locking the doors during a fire and trapping some of the crew? All this automation may not be a good thing in the long run.

The known US military spending for 2014 is pegged at 738.8 billion dollars which does not include secret programs. It could be a trillion or more. China’s military budget for the same period is said to be about 145 billion dollars without knowing their secret programs and Russia’s is said to be 69.3 billion dollars not counting their secret programs. Is it no wonder we are going broke. Every time we build an aircraft carrier or nuclear submarine the cost increases and most of the time they go severely over budget. It has become a well-known fact when you build a carrier or work on a secret weapons system you can ask for more money several times and you will almost automatically get it. Are we really building up our defenses to such an extent to protect America or enrich the military industrial complex?