Slow, sneaky, and electric is hard to stop, and has been for a long time.
The GOP can't fix the navy, nor the military. The problem is that they love their contracts more than their country - a simple example is the lack of advanced diesel-electrics in our inventory.
The Pentagon has long been a fan of sexy & high tech over cheap and practical. See John Boyd's biography for a detailed account of his battles to get the F-16 built in the face of what the Pentagon wanted (a heavy, gadget-filled, overly complex movable wing, brick)
And the bulk of the military contractors wouldn't have it any other way.
The GOP is only guilty of enabling them by providing them with dump trucks filled with money.
This reminds me: I had an idea for a novel where the Navy has developed a large, high-speed WIND-driven (using kites, wing-sails, and advanced non-metal materials) anti-sub catamaran to track and destroy just this kind of threat.
Why a return to sail? Mostly for the obvious nostalgic reasons, but deploying a dozen of these very cheap boats with a carrier group, which make NO engine noise, have NO heat signature, and have nearly no draft, would make them invisible to submarines and unthreatened by them. Their sonar would be unmasked by engine noise, making them efficient searchers - a dozen of these zipping back and forth would be a paltry cost compared to any modern ship, and you could arm them with two advanced anti-sub torpedoes.
The issue isn't destroying the subs of course, it's finding them.
Of course, even superfast sailboats aren't normally going to be able to keep up with a carrier group at full speed. Oh well. Send me a truck of money and I'll think of something.
4 Comments:
Slow, sneaky, and electric is hard to stop, and has been for a long time.
The GOP can't fix the navy, nor the military. The problem is that they love their contracts more than their country - a simple example is the lack of advanced diesel-electrics in our inventory.
To be fair, it's not the GOP's fault, per-se.
The Pentagon has long been a fan of sexy & high tech over cheap and practical.
See John Boyd's biography for a detailed account of his battles to get the F-16 built in the face of what the Pentagon wanted (a heavy, gadget-filled, overly complex movable wing, brick)
And the bulk of the military contractors wouldn't have it any other way.
The GOP is only guilty of enabling them by providing them with dump trucks filled with money.
This reminds me: I had an idea for a novel where the Navy has developed a large, high-speed WIND-driven (using kites, wing-sails, and advanced non-metal materials) anti-sub catamaran to track and destroy just this kind of threat.
Why a return to sail? Mostly for the obvious nostalgic reasons, but deploying a dozen of these very cheap boats with a carrier group, which make NO engine noise, have NO heat signature, and have nearly no draft, would make them invisible to submarines and unthreatened by them. Their sonar would be unmasked by engine noise, making them efficient searchers - a dozen of these zipping back and forth would be a paltry cost compared to any modern ship, and you could arm them with two advanced anti-sub torpedoes.
The issue isn't destroying the subs of course, it's finding them.
Of course, even superfast sailboats aren't normally going to be able to keep up with a carrier group at full speed. Oh well. Send me a truck of money and I'll think of something.
Back in the 80's my dump-truck filled with money idea for the pentagon?
Well, remember, this was the era of Reagan's Star Wars defense shield.
Anyway, my million dollar grant idea can be summed up in 4 words:
"Zero Gee Martial Art"
Oh wait. It's the era of Star Wars all over again!
Load up the truck Lamont, we're going to Hollywood!
Uh, I mean Washington!
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