Much Ado About Nothing: Western Wunderwaffen

Added “Value”?

In my career as a media whore, I have worked with a huge range of companies in almost every field – including the so-called “defense” industry.

The defense industry is rather like the auto industry, which must turn out new models regularly with new features,  for the most part not necessary for a vehicle’s essential functions.

“Planned obsolescence” was sooooooooo 20^th Century.  In the 21^st Century it is “added value”. Certainly, for cars, each new one, a wunderauto.

Back in the “old days”, a lot of people fixed their cars DIY.  They could do that because the technology was pretty simple and hadn’t basically changed much over many years.

Now, it aint that easy.  You need specialized dealer maintenance and a really good warranty – all of which are factored into the cost.

Want basic transportation: ride a bicycle!

Carmakers always pretend that you really, really need the electronic bling, 0 to 100 in 5 seconds, stepless transmissions, collision avoidance radar, reclining seats, etc, etc.  Some things have their uses; others are simply useless.

But…without the newest and latest, you will never have sex again.

Borrowing from your kid’s future

No money? No problem.  Get a loan!  Debt is the American Way.

 Dad buys a car. Mom buys a face lift.  The kids eat crap.

The makers of weaponry do something similar. 

Unlike in the Consumer Universe, debt is never a problem for the Pentagon. For the US, foreign debt and foreign policy is like love –never having to say you’re sorry.

The primary consumer, the US government just borrows the money from …wherever…because the dollar is – or used to be -- the Universal Reserve Currency—and the US never has to pay those loans back.    

Just keep on raising the debt ceiling.  Who cares if the people really paying are poor people in the Global South?  They starve over there, so you can eat Doritos here and get fat.

Of course,  in the long term,  Americans suffer too.  You don’t have enough money for roads and bridges, railways, healthcare, education, homes, and even school lunches.

The crap your kids eat will kill them.    You, too.

Choices—and “killer” products

What would you rather have? 

A brand new $100 million dollar F35 that only costs $42,000 an hour to fly.  The whole fleet at $412 billion and $1.3 trillion to maintain and operate the fleet over its lifetime, not counting add-ons and extra doodads over ten years or so. 

Or-- pay off student debt: just 3.79 billion over 10 years. 

Or good healthy food.

The answer is obvious--we gotta have the F35-- even if it is the most expensive piece of junk in military aviation history.  It’s a “killer” product – literally.

The aircraft is designed as a battleground bomb truck, with a miniscule radar footprint, assuming a war in Europe like that one almost a century ago.  Not useful against China of course – but, hey! -- one war at a time.

The F35 has stealth! 

Remember when you were 9 and you sneaked next door to peep in Mrs Jones’ window to watch her undressing?  Stealth is sooooooooooo cool!

From the frontal aspect, radars designed before 2010 can “see” the F35 – but as nothing more than a flying golf ball or at best a bird.  However, how many flying golf balls do you see at 20,000 feet – or birds moving at 900 km per hour?  OK. There is background. Noise or if distracted by listening to rock music in your helmet like Hollywood flyboy heroes. You might miss it. Might!   

Anyway, the F35 isn’t really designed for air-to-air.  Supersonic flight or operating above 20 degrees angle of attack reduces “stealth”, so the golf ball becomes a large balance ball.

No matter--the métier (as I have said) is battlefield interdiction.

The internal bay is not that large and the more BVR (Beyond Visual Range) missiles you put inside, the fewer bombs. The moment it opens the doors open to drop internally mounted bombs or fire missiles; stealth disappears.

All this means the F35 better off avoiding an Su35 – and better off going low—where unfortunately it is observable by the Mark I human eyeball.  Not to mention infra-red.  Hang bombs or missiles on it and its radar signature increases.   

Or, of course, it can stand off about 500km and launch JSM standoff missiles.  The range of the S400 is about 400 km - so what does it need “stealth” for? 

Add to that-- old fashioned dust, dirt, insects, etc. which degrade “stealth”.

A lot of time and money has to go into maintaining its expensive anti-radar coated finish. 

Stealth fighters and bombers are not undetectable. They can be shot down, as the US learned to its cost over Serbia in 1999.

To complicate matters, the Russians have a new radar for stealth aircraft.  And the Chinese have an even better one. Quantum radar.  Which you can be sure the Russians will get the technology for.  Such stuff is still under development, but you can be sure that it will working long before the F35 is cleared for combat.

IMO, “stealth” ain’t what it used to be. And $1.3 trillion doesn’t buy air superiority. Come to think of it, a trillion dollars doesn’t seem to buy much of anything these days.  The US is forcing its vassal states to buy its overpriced junk – F35s, Abrams, Patriot missiles, ATACAMS, NASAAMs, and the like -- which in almost all cases they don’t need.

“Added value” means added problems and added expense.

Let us keep in mind that the only country to invade Canada has been the US of A. Umm…at least 3 times.  

The Saab Gripen would meet Canada’s needs for a fraction of the cost, with a boost for Canada’s manufacturing industry …but … whatever The Big Boss in the Big White House says he wants. We know Justin Trudeau is lacking in commonsense.

And so is Canadian foreign policy. Justin does what the Boss tells him to do.

Canada and the UK are slave states, who benefit from the suffering of other slave states, lower in the Boss’s regard. This kind of relationship was described by Malcom X in his comments on the horrors of American racial slavery.,

.,,. the house Negro always looked out for his master. When the field Negroes got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put 'em back on the plantation. The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived better than the field Negro. He ate better, he dressed better, and he lived in a better house. He lived right up next to his master - in the attic or the basement. He ate the same food his master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like his master - good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. That's why he didn't want his master hurt. If the master got sick, he'd say, "What's the matter, boss, we sick?" When the master's house caught afire, he'd try and put the fire out. He didn't want his master's house burned. He never wanted his master's property threatened. And he was more defensive of it than the master was.

And today you still have house Negroes and field Negroes. I'm a field Negro.

Malcolm X

Canada loves the US more than the US loves itself.

That Trudeau thinks blackface is funny tells you, however, how he sees the world. Slavery is a state of mind. A pernicious mentality.

The profits made from slave states like Canada or the UK, won’t really pay The Boss’s bills, although they may get the CEO of Lockheed Martin a new Ferrari. Even the New York Times is calling the F35 a “trillion dollar boondoggle”.  Justin can’t keep the Boss’s house from burning down.

Remember: DEBT?

The US never had to worry about paying back its loans when the Dollar was King, but now the kingdom quakes --dedollarization is proceeding slowly but accelerating gradually as the US loses its twin economic wars with Russia and China and as the EU fails.

Let us keep in mind that the US no longer has the industrial or engineering base to keep up with the Russians and Chinese, not even to replace the weapons it sends Ukraine.

US loans there will eventually have to be paid for by the American public. 

Oh, Joe Taxpayer, why support a bankrupt country?  Dump that country like moldy cheese and get something fresh

.Still, most of the media still trumpet the superiority of American technology, which after all, won WWII didn’t it? 

Oops. Sorry the Soviets won the war in Europe. And the US didn’t win the war in the Pacific against Japan as much as Japan lost it --making the same mistake that the Americans are making today – assuming that the today’s war is like yesterday’s.

 Still, the Media buys into military industry’s hype. Just as it does Big Pharma’s.  Maybe it’s all those shows about D-Day, Top Gun, etc, etc, which are re-assuring for Joe America in front of the TV, drinking beer and cuddling his 44 Magnum.

You must discount most of what you hear about the superiority of American weapons. The F35 is just one example. But almost everything that the US produces suffers from over-engineering, complexity, and impracticality.   

Take the Abrams M1 MBT. 

It was designed for the kind of tank-on-tank combat that hasn’t happened since WWII.

It’s huge, expensive, full of sorts of electronics. And powered by a repurposed jet engine.

 It breaks down quickly and needs its own army of mechanics, runs out of gas quickly and requires fleets of IFVs to protect it from guys hiding in the bushes with missiles.

At almost 70 tonnes, it is too heavy to cross most bridges and needs specialized bridge crossing equipment.  And it sinks in the mud.

Even with reactive DU armor – it is vulnerable.

It can be destroyed by mines from below and from above by missiles from aircraft and helicopters. 

In Iraq, despite stories to the contrary, it wasn’t the main tank killer.  That honor went to aircraft and IFVs launching ATGMs. The M1A2, the newest iteration costs almost $9 million. Whoops!  Price just went up to 10 million.

The Saudis used Abrams tanks in Yemen – and lost 20 to the Houthis, not exactly the most sophisticated military force.

I have a theory about this. The Americans and their allies all wear boots.  For years, their opponents have been people too poor to afford boots—they wear sandals. But the sandals win. I’m gonna buy some sandals right away.  

American Abrams are used to fire DU ammunition, highly effective armor piercing rounds designed for tank-to-tank combat. Trouble is that this stuff is also highly toxic and poisons the environment—and has been widely used for urban warfare, shelling buildings. The result?  Cancer and birth defects for generations.

The Americans learned nothing from Agent Orange. The US said that was safe too.

Not that the Americans really want Abrams in the Ukraine.  It is simply bad PR for the American defense industry for people to see these much-hyped Super Tanks wiped out by ATGMs   by new generation of robot tanks.  Russia has a lot of experience with these tanks, mostly in Syria where Uran proved it was too complex and unreliable. Now, the RF has gone for basic and simple.

Small, cheap, and easy to operate by any video game player. Oh, and you can buy about a hundred for one Abrams.  

Doesn’t look like much but drones generally don’t.

Does it actually work?  Dunno about the machine. But the ATGMs certainly do. There are only four Marker bots being tested. But the simplicity of the design means that the fully developed version will be available in quantity sooner than later.

The Americans have got the Europeans to supply Leopard 2s. That won’t worry the Russians.   The Ukrainians destroyed most of the bridges across the Dnieper and Leopard 2s, like Abrams, are too heavy to cross the remaining bridges.     And the Dnieper is a BIG river!

What’s appropriate for the UAF?  Considering that the Ukrainians are conscripting people without regard for age, sex, weight, and mental or physical disability, this might be the answer.

I could go on and on. And talk about Patriots and aircraft carriers and all that stuff. But I have to watch Top Gun and eat some junk food. Sorry.

Me…and YOU!

I am 76.  Yes, I know—my profile picture, which is recent, looks younger.  There is a reason my book is called "Ageing Young-- You're Never Too Old To Rock and Roll", the title given to me by David Bowie's lead guitarist and songwriter, Mark Pritchett.

In Canada, I have to carry a passport to prove I am over 60. You could do that too. If course, it helps to “on the spectrum”, like 90% of centenarians with the DrD4 R7 alleles gene. Sadly, the mortality rate for people with this gene set is LOWER on average, due to high-risk behaviors. BUT, if you survive to 70 and are healthy you can on …and on….

I write mostly about health issues, ageing successfully, cognitive issues like ASD—and… umm…genius. (Oh, I wish! But I will have to learn to tie my shoes first). I am pretty much “dys” everything. You will notice lots of typos. Dyslexia. Correct me please.

But recently, I have turned to geopolitical issues.  People like me — and likely YOU— if you are subscriber—tend to see things differently. Not “I think therefore I am” But “I see therefore I think there I am”. First you must see with your own eyes.

So I gave up my Fulbright for PhD work at Harvard, which was about “thinking” not “seeing” to work as I was a stringer in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.  Then I was in Korea. And after that in Japan where I studied martial arts and Buddhism and did a lot of things: union organizer, writer, broadcaster, media analyst, beer and pizza. That’s the “spectrum” fer yah.

ASD is not one thing. There are a zillion variations. And in human evolution these were survival characteristics. People with them tend to “see”. They make connections. They are contrarian. They question. Is that YOU? Very likely you don’t consider yourself “left” or “right” or even in the “middle”. You are just you. Cognitively ambidextrous.

Most people are knockoffs. But each of YOU is an original.