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The Impressive Scale Of The U.S. Air Force In 3 Charts
Original graphics by: CI Geography, who makes the following graphics available in prints.
In the war against the Islamic State, the United States has relied heavily on support from the skies. It’s for this reason that more than two-thirds of the $9 million-per-day of military spending on the war has been allocated to the Air Force.
Total spending on the war, according to data released by the Department of Defense in June 2015, has been $2.74 billion. Of this, $1.83 billion has gone to the Air Force, with the rest being divided between the Army ($274 million), Navy ($438 million) and Special Ops ($204 million).
But what is the actual scope of the U.S. Air Force? These three charts tell the story.
Make sure to click on the below charts to get the full size versions of each.
Combat and Combat-Support Squadrons
The first graphic shows aircraft involved with combat, either directly or for support purposes. This includes seven squadrons of the world’s most expensive fighter jet, the F-22 Raptor, which ultimately cost taxpayers a hefty $412 million each.
Bomber and Refueling Squadrons
In the second graphic, bombing and refueling squadrons are covered. There are 11 dedicated bomb squadrons, and 30 aerial-refuel squadrons that help top up other jets in mid-air.
Airlift Squadrons
Lastly, airlift squadrons include everything from the Presidential Airlift Group (89th Airlift Wing) to squadrons that can carry tanks or Humvees.
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those are tiny airplanes though
http://www.philiacband.com/propaganda.html
Your taxdollars at work, slave.
So where are the F-35's? Must be still trying to make them both fly and actually do anything useful in combat roles involving other jets?
If the F-35's actually take off do they catch on fire?
Pierre Sprey talking about how bad the F-35 is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw
Where is Curtis "Bomb 'em Back to the Stone Age" LeMay when we need him?
Executive airlift squadrons?
If they don't carry ordinance, they ain't airplanes
You mean to tell me that for all that money, these are all the planes we got?
< Peace through superior firepower.
< Peace through unilateral disarmament.
Leaving ISIS intact is a huge mistake. They need to be wiped out like roaches. This group poses an existential threat to the world. Word to your mother.
Don't worry so much.
With that many planes dropping stuff on ISIS, the death toll from accidental resupply mishaps will wipe them out eventually.
It might take a few decades, but no-one said this would be easy!
you misspelled ..... IRAN
there will never be enough planes ships tanks soldiers sailors marines missiles guns bombs bullets to protect the united states of america when that country is doing evil around the world each day of every year.
@Philipat, the F35's are on the 1st chart, 3rd column, almost at the bottom.
Amazing charts though...very impressive...but how good it turns out to be against falling stock exchanges and Syrian suicide bombers flooding Europe remains to be seen... :(
the chart leaves out the flying saucer type systems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar
Peace through superior firepower is my choice. Think of Sweden's buildup before WWII. They were not attacked. They also chose not to be the attackers. Something-something walk softly something-something big stick.
Don't look at the number of planes, look at the training and stick time, along with the maintenence rates which show that none of the military is anywhere near ready for a major conflict. Notice that the military are only deploying small numbers to trouble spots mainly because readiness training has gone to shit, but not to worry, they've got their shiny new, non-deployable toys.......
Horse built by committee = camel
fighter built by committee = ?
The first USAF F-35A squadron will reach initial operational capability in about August 2016. The only F-35 squadron in its initial (i.e. partial) operational capability phase (IOC), was declared on July 31, 2015, but not with the USAF, it was with the USMC.
But more importantly the chart only tells a fraction of the picture as the USA actually has 3 separate giant air forces, and one 'middle-power' sized air force:
US Air Force - expeditionary air power
US Navy - expeditionary air power
US Marine Corps - expeditionary air power
US National Guard - supposedly not expeditionary air power
So much for 'national guarding', as its squadrons also got used in Iraq (for some bizarre reason), but why they even have a separate air force I'll never understand. Talk about extreme mission-creep.
The US Army also has a vast fleet of combat aircraft but mostly helicopters in their case. So the fuller picture of US air power potential is much larger than those charts illustrate and this is why it's a major mistake to under rate it, as it simply isn't being used - almost at all. It never is. Even during the major air attacks on Iraq only a comparatively minor fraction of it was actually used.
US air power is scaled to overwhelm and beat a genuinely giant power and that is the only time it will ever all be used. The weapons platforms tech and tactics used in the series of air attack is all very old, the new stuff will never be used in such battles.
The US also maintains a massive 'black' air power budget of $60 billion per year. That's a staggering about of money, enough to buy a completely new air force of a middle-power and fully train it, every year! That 'black budget' is used in advanced research, development, testing and secret aircraft and weapon acquisition. This is another whole air force, which you and I don't know about, and we won't ever be seeing on such charts. You'll only know about it, and its weapons, and sensors, and what they can do, if it's ever used to defeat a major power's air force. Even then we will only become aware of the part of it that can't be successfully hidden.
Take note that the US (and Western military's in general) always hide their best weapons and systems. It's done this since WWII, and only reveals them when their cover is already busted, or unable to be hidden. The West's opponents since WWII however, tend to do the opposite (to surprising extremes), they immediately put new weapons into street parades as evidence of technical success, and as a deterrent, and to add political veracity to lead the population, and sate nationalist insecurities.
The US is absolutely committed to the concept of "Total Air Dominance", and they clearly have it on demand, and will maintain it. It'll be a very long time until anyone even gets close to it's potential, maybe by the end of the second half of this century some country and a large alliance may be able to challenge it. But the US runs an allied 'wolf pack' that's huge, and as long as the US does not disenfranchise that 'wolf-pack' (Cold War commies used to call them "capitalist running dogs" in their propaganda), it will remain the top dog, as the wolf pack will not have any real incentives to change sides, to support a new upstart challenger.
That is the only way this will be changing. The upstart wolf challengers have to actually be the better wolf, to the US's allies also, and the ones pretending to challenge now are actually really, really bad at doing that.
And this is why people expecting a grand historic change in global power have miscalculated badly.
Do you know what makes an airplane fly? Money. That is the only way the US will be defeated. Bankrupt like the USSR and unable to have a limitless budget. The Fed is the biggest enemy of the US Air Force.
Which is why having a supportive global alliance of major economies, and networks of economic relations (TPP, etc.) is going to be critical to that end. And why the US's greatest weakness is its corrupt politicians and their credibility eliminating and diplomacy attenuating ... activities. Impromptu leakage and reveals, like Wikileaks and Snowden, were the result of that deep political corruption, and a two-tier version of application of law and order for the corrupt political elite (i.e. never imprisoned for clear major crimes against the country and society), and another extremely oppressive law system and intrusion for the weak. Thus broad resulting sub-cultural disaffection (and not so sub- any longer, either), and the general demoralization that it causes. Which is by far the US's biggest problem (and the one the US's opponents most ruthlessly exploit as a result). And that is the tool that has been used to target and weaken the US's 'wolf pack' linkages, and thus economic and strategic sway.
It would help if US's profoundly corrupt disgusting politicians and over-reaching draconian extra-constitutional agencies were not making the US such an easy target.
You must be a prepper, mainly forr food and basics. Sure, continue to wait, but when the war starts, do the shopping.
fully prepped here ... prepared to die at all times ... I don't get scared easily ... nor interested in living in a perpetually freaked-out condition ... I'll just die quietly ... ... as horrifying as it is for you I'm OK with it. ;-)
Somebody forgot the Confederate Air Force.
And Hells Angels on choppers.
you are right element. all this hardware and software and wetware is only really good at fighting similar opponents. it is nearly powerless to bring to office through voting those whom "our" government wishes to govern other countries. it is not even very good at guerilla combat where the difference between enemy and ally is in the mind of the beheld. the results of our warmaking since ww2 speak for themselves if we would only listen.
The surprising thing jeff is so many automatically think a different power would actually be 'different'. But probably far worse, and in many ways.
Trump anyone?
He's a different power and people are lining right up to his authoritarian ways...
DaddyO
TPP is a disaster at first place.
For Russia it may be that, but for the US, not so much.
lt will be a disaster for all those signing it giving corporations power over the laws.. But what we can expect from fanboys who love spinning news and facts . US is supreme in everything isnt it flog ? I guess you must be a supporter of Abbott's douchebagry.
You seem bitter. Are you OK? Yup, I'm often in favor of things Abbott says, what he does, and what he proposes. He's an honorable man and most Conservatives are (I didn't vote for him though, I don't vote, no point, I'm not a partisan). John Howard was similar and Abbott was a protege. It's unusual for a politician to be honorable and direct, and Abbott seems to strongly believe in what he does and in serving the medium and long-term interests of the country and he seems almost tempted to disregard the short-term media noise at times.
Sometimes I do think WTF though, but in this country you can critique a PM and nothing happens. Oh I'm sure it's all recorded and logged for sure, but there's no political retribution. I would trust him far more than any left idealist in that regard, but the thing about Conservatives is they get lost in absolutes and boundaries too easily. It weakens them too.
However, genuine Conservatives are also long-term planners and they tend to make strategic decisions with very long-term aims and relations, and this is why twerps like you, maxi, hate them.
I get that. ;-)
The thing about military spending is: you actually get something for your $$. Especially high tech weapons, which are key to our country's technological superemacy. Most people think Google is great (and it is), but as a tool of national power, it's a little soft. Nothing liike shitloads of military hardware to initimidate those who want to fuck with you. The Romans understood this well--hence their famous maxim: If you want peace, then prepare for war. Unfortunately, this wisdom is over the head of most low-information, indoctrinated Americans.
When you spend $$ on entitelments, what do you get? More poor people. And, like a moth to a flame, millions of migrants coming from around the world to avail themselves of your ecellent social services. I'll take military spending any day.
Spoken like a pilot. The same thing that will take down the nuclear infrastructure will destroy this massive armadas of airplanes- deflation.
The fact is, the Air Force doesn;t make airplanes- and the main defense contractors only make part of the airplane. All the thousands of parts- servos, relays, switches, hydraulic motors, screws, ad infinitum, are all made a a plethora of smaller contractors, and these guys get sub-compnents from even smaller suppliers. It's these guys that will go under in a deflationary economy, leaving the Air Force with a fleet of unflyable planes. "For the want of a nail, the horse was lost..." never rang so true. There must be entire quartermaster's brigades that contualy lose sleep over such a scenario. Or there isn't, which is just as possible.
China makes everything you need and they have warehouses full of rehypothecated materials.
Ok, but the US did not build this system to let it fall apart at the first hurdles, their intent is to do anything necessary to sustain it. This is also not a case like the Soviet Union, where the shop stores, bakeries and factories were literally all 100% empty of everything, before the Russian system self-snuffed. Just the opposite, the West is abundant and productive in pretty much everything needed, as opposed to wanted. So the US and West in general will not have anything like that dilemma.
Plus there is a vast program called "Continuity of Govt", and it includes provision for military services and the continuity of contractor arrangements.
That said the UK did recently start to run out of spares to keep operating its Tornado IDS fleet for another year's operational extension, so is now cap in hand to other Tornado operators to try and obtain the parts it needs to keep them flying because the contractors were closed down when the decision to retire them was taken. Strange that it took so long for the UK govt to hear from the RAF that there was a problem with deciding on an ad-hoc basis to keep flying the Tornado for another year. Embarrassing.
Element
Great commentary, thanks for taking the time.
the chart is missing most of the F-15 squadrons
Our (the US) Navy's Army's Air Force is bigger than most other national air forces. (USMC aviation)
F35's are only in service with Marines at this time I think.
This chart is not 'all fighting aircraft'.
The Marines have something like 200+ F18's alone (and the navy has over 400 of them)
CHart says "US. Airforce" The Marines are NAVY.
But I get ya.
Plus all the stuff in the "Boneyards"
58th and the 61st F-35 fighter squadrons maybe??-----------duh
"Your tax dollars at work, slave."
Yep... 18% of the federal budget gets spent on military. Sixty eight percent (68 - over two thirds) is spent on the Free Shit Army. If I had to pick I'd say spend the 18%. At least I get planes, ships, and leading edge research for that. All I get from the FSA is to be told to eff off and gimme more.
Imagine if interest rates ever normalize at, say 5%. The military budget will be less than interest on the naitonal debt.
Military is the biggest free shit army on the planet. People pretending to do work, and doing it poorly, while grabbing a paycheck, health benefits, travel expenses, and retirement. Contractors (an FSA subculture in DoD) do the actual work.
Those who have retired from military, simply return as consultants. The smart ones seek employment elsewhere, while cashing retirement checks.
The most "productive" activity of the military is "broken windows." Chew on that for a bit.
Yes, in some universe 68% might be smaller than 18%. The FSA 68% spends an incredible amount of time breaking windows as well (see pound sign BlackLivesMatter for proof). Chew on that for a bit.
I guess we all have to pick our favorite welfare recipients.
Personally, I really enjoy helping to pay for other people's Teslas.
my favorite free shit army is the banks that can never fail. after that i like those who are never jailed (the negroes on food stamps who so offend you do spend some symbolic time in the slammer or so i hear).
I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but a very large portion of the 68 percent you claim for the Free Shit Army is not free shit. It's Social Security, which is more than paid for by FICA. Only 23% of the total budget is SS, but FICA is 34% of tax revenues. Even if you add in Medicare, it's still only 38% of the total budget. In addition, the rest of the budget owes SS and Medicare about a trillion dollars which was amassed over the last 30 years via excess FICA payments by today's retirees and those close to retirement. It's mostly already been paid for.
And don't start spouting the crap about younger workers paying for retirees. SS relieves those younger workers from supporting those older workers when they're no longer working. Inter-generational transfer is the oldest retirement system in the world, as evident from fossile humans who were so crippled that they could not possibly have survived without the support of their society. It is also the only retirement system, since even if a retiree has enough savings invested to be able to live off savings in perpetuity, a younger worker has to "work" that capital in order to generate cash flow for the retiree. No matter how much capital you've accumulated in your life, if there are no workers around to put it to work, not even the principle can be returned to you as it's tied up in plant and equipment or theoretically a younger person's mortgage.
As to your 18% spent on the military, that does not include VA, nuclear weapons (the Department of Energy), military retirement (Treasury) nor interest on the debt, which has accumulated mainly to pay for the military and wars. Nor does it include the "supplemental appropriations" used to pay for the Afghan and Iraq Wars.
Bad ass, just bad ass.
Some of the basement dwellers on this website may not like it, but you have to respect it.
The British kicked the shit out of the Zulus a few times with their amazing military machine.
And they had a far superior military force compared to America at one time.
A decade or so ago (before I figured out about 9/11 and the oligarchs), I used to be damn proud of our military machine. Now I'm pretty sure it works for an unelected King and not the People.
Maybe, but Frere wasn't flying a B2.
US may not be what it once was, but it isnt too late to change.
actually, it is too late to change. Have you met and talked to many 'average' people lately? this country is hopeless.
I feel ya' Rand. Seeing the graphics reminded me of when I was young and ignorant, and used to get all whispy when seeing all of that hardware. I still have an appreciation for the engineering, but the application is such a waste. Depressing.
This is one hell of a lot of firepower. Knowing the amount of support needed to keep 'em flying and the total logistics of flying sorties in the small fly zone is mind boggling.
There is more firepower here than in any past conflict ever.
Sorry to say it but having a history in massive combat aircraft missions many years past sure got the blood flowing. (no pun intented)
They are, aren't they. I imagine they were designed to fly right up your ass and cause you a world of discomfort.
Stop posting this bullshite site. NO ONE ONE GIVES A SHIT
So leave.
It's as simple as that. Close your account/deactivate and go play in the street, shoot a Palistinian, or whatever you do to get your jollies off that most thinking people find offensive (like posting on site's that you disagree with and have no reason to frequent) but just leave.
Unless of course your paycheck revolves around you changing the subject, creating alternative discourse (DWTTards had some real boneheads tonite), or creating animosity within the adults in the room (your 9/11 facts aren't as good as MY 9/11 truth), etc. In which case, just fucking die already...I'm ready for this shit show to end and you to be hanging from a lamp post already.
I may not agree with any of the Tyler;s about what they post, but I do know it is for direct engagement, to see what is laying in the background, and what is being forced on us by the opposition. A thinking person would understand that this is TRUE argument and dialogue. Everyone else, yeah, we call them sheeple around here and they have to be lead by the nose on what to think.
But you, you're a fucking shill, probably paid by some foreign government with my children's hope for the future, and I wouldn't think twice about spraying a wall with your grey matter anymore than you would think about not taking a paycheck to undue the future for humanity.
Spot on.
That's what this all comes down to, namely, which in humanity's fractions are actually interested in humanity's interests and its capacity to expand itself, without physical material limitation, i.e. to move past earth's closed niche, and to move well past where we're at, within every generation, going forward from here.
There's a large segment of morons who would have us stagnate, reverse, and fundamentally doubt our capacity to go much further than this, and far further than we can currently even envision. They're all dead wood, dead minds. dead ends - they want to undo and to damage all they can, and impair humanity as much as possible, both physically, socially and mentally.
The ones that don't fall into that utter nonsense, and just go past that idiocy, are the humanity that I can at least fully respect.
(no so much the brains on wall part though - means to an end is another whole topic)
If this current endeavor we call the human race heads much further down the road to ruin, I will expect nothing less of myself than to exact reasonable justice for those who should have had a chance to expect it as a matter of course for drawing air. That comes from the idealistic side of me, coupled with the ex-military who joined for all the right reasons but was thrown into all the wrong scenarios under all the wrong reasons. I apologize to anyone who has transcended those thoughts, or never had them, for any offense given. I haven’t been so fortunate as to not be presented with it as an option and realize that in a society that learns from its major errors that thinking along those lines won’t be considered ‘taboo’ they just won’t be considered as ‘thinking’.
I’ve learned a lot, but it took be willingness to learn on my own in order to learn anything at all.
Public education with hard working parents with the same education, but smart enough to accomplish a lot in their lifetimes and still never be able to explain to me how to save for the future, find the right mate, or even how to do my own taxes is the basis of my younger knowledge. I never felt like it was enough. So I volunteered to see the world and found a lot of humanity in every country I spent time in. And the more I found, the more I started questioning what the hell I was doing there. I found ‘people’. Not ‘the enemy’, not ‘subversives’, and most especially not ‘people who hated me directly or my freedoms’. I found people who did what my folks and community did, day in and day out. They attempted to find their own way in the world, with whatever core belief they had, with what ‘skewed’ education they were afforded, and with what meager/plentiful resources they had at hand. And just like my folks, they were doing it. Oh yeah, that was until we came along and fucked it all up because of someone my country said was causing these people more harm than my 5.56mm would if they didn’t do what my command said they needed to.
In those things, I hate myself and the ‘freedoms’ my country takes away from me everyday just as much as the ‘people’ on the other end of my barrel did.
Il have learned something though. It took lots of years, and lots of willingness to look at myself in order to be willing to. I was a cheerleader for ‘Nationalism’ in order to make myself feel better until I looked at the guy in the polished glass and realized he was full of shit. When someone asked me a question that I couldn’t answer, I realized that all the things I was building my beliefs on was a pile of crap, and my home stunk with the residue of their pervasive distortions fed nightly through my T.V. set.
So I set about learning the truth. I was my parent’s kid; smart, willing to learn, a questioning asshole who wanted more than just some sound bytes. I was also the guy who didn’t fit in with nerds at school, because I was too idealistic; and didn’t fit in with the geeks because I didn’t want to ‘own’ anyone or anything. I played ball with the team, but told the prima donnas to shove it up their asses and regularly had them and their friends pummeling me for it. I wanted to believe that humans had a chance.
I also knew that I wasn’t one of ‘them’ either locally or nationally, and would never get the chance to make a difference. It’s a tough road to travel when you finally realize the machine you’re up against. And I should know I was part of the bigger machine at one time.
Side story: I went to a school for the Army, many years ago; working on a system prior to Gulf 1, that we couldn’t (to this day), share with our own allies. It was bad ass no matter how you cut it. I had quite a few years under my belt at the time and had seen a lot of systems. I asked an instructor about crossing over some of these systems to make an unbeatable system at the smallest size and easiest to deploy and still maintain its effectiveness. I was brought up on a hearing within 6 hours with the ‘civilian’ leader of the course. He asked about my personal political affiliations and what organizations I worked for, and then he put my jaw on the floor. He brought up something I did as a kid (stupid, but not felony material), that only 1 other person knew about, who had never joined the military and who had been sworn to secrecy as he was just as implicated as myself. That’s when I knew something was up. I know now why they asked, and what was at stake, but it taught me to keep my mouth shut, which is a lesson I wish I never learned.
Fast forward to today, and I realize, keeping my mouth shut has kept me from doing the things I’ve always wanted; further humanity. Does it help to say that my forte has always been to see multiple systems and a way to collaborate them into a final product? How about if I said that I have all the plans needed to create energy (not free energy, I’m not a moron) that absolutely dissolves the need for the local power company? It still provides work for the locals, and it totally needs at least the same upkeep as a plumbing or HVAC system, but it is using already available tech and can be put into place block by block. It’s my life’s work at this point. When I go, or am taken out (most likely at this point; and ‘no’ I do not want to end my own life, never have, never will) I’ve already taken the steps to get it out to the populace who actually gives a shit to do something for themselves. Or at least the people who are left after our dear ‘leaders’ finish killing off the majority of the herd and heroes.
Anyway, I got a little side tracked, had a few to drink, (hey, I gotta find SOME way to deal with the reality) and now I’m done for the night.
But I’ll still dream about humanity, the stars, a future for the two to meet, and the death of the fiat salesman. Oh, and the little shills who have more regularly frequenting ZH. And above all else, I’m not here for the free stuff, I’m here to learn, and Man! what a lot of lesson’s this place has given, including the occasional loose tooth and black eye ones.
My favorite thing about "systems" is entropy. I learned to embrace it and love it. It is the waiting that is difficult.
Good to have you around here AetosAeros.
"I was a cheerleader for ‘Nationalism’ in order to make myself feel better until I looked at the guy in the polished glass and realized he was full of shit."
Invariably it dawns on every critically thinking person at some point, this concept of "nationalism" and what it actually is.
What it is, is "national leaders" telling you that you must sacrifice for the good of their leadership, to bleed out if asked, to achieve some great hero status so that they can continue to hunt tigers in Siberia or as the case is here, golf on Martha's Vineyard. Perhaps your name will be attached to a statue but more than likely, just a sign erected on your behalf by FDOT that you see along some non-descript Florida back road..."Memorial Sgt. Don Baker Highway"...aka, CR241.
So impersonal, so unfeeling, so heartless, so cold.
But it's a much better example of nationalism that "leadership" come together and force everyone to buy health insurance!
That just feels better, after all, they're doing it for you ;-)
I think that people who "hate" America do not do so because of her ideas of freedom, many of which were once real. Any dislike originates in the hypocrisy practiced by the nation in economic and military foreign policy used to further predatory empire. This approach has come home to weaken the character of the American people as the empire building mechanisms are turned inwards on them. The majority seem insouciant to the decline.Furthermore, being infested and ruled by a tiny apartheid nation, that America helped to foment, that now uses America to protect itself and co-participate in global mischief making does not help matters any. Thinking people see these things, and many in fact watch their families die because of these things. Yes, people the world over are stupid and sheep-like, but it doesn't help when the kindergarten teacher is a pedophile parading as sanctimonious.
Quite a rant ... quite a rant.
Look through hystery (yes, that is its correct spelling, and you will see that it does not matter which country is top dog in its day, the behavior is always the same as you described. It's futile to think a different top dog will be different, go right back 5 or 6 thousand years, it's the same thing every time.
There are no perfect humans, no perfect cultures, and there are no good-guys, there are just really really good PR consultants and hystery re-writers who all work for the top dog.
No what are you going to do with that knowledge? Fester? Pretend next top dog will be different? It's a lot to process, but life was never meant to be easy, understanding makes you work for it, every step of the way.
All understandings that come easy, or from someone else, are not worth having.
AetosAeros,
ChargingHandle was bitching about CaptainAmerika, NOT Tyler.
It is difficult with this blog format to track back pages and pages to see exactly who one is refering to, and you failed this time.
ChargingHandle is correct; CaptainAmerika's link is full of viruses and shit.
ya but it was a great rant----admit it---
I admit it. Great rant.
But I find it sad we're all so trigger happy for arguments.
We no longer give the speaker the benefit of doubt and look for confirmation before ripping their eyes out.
In human-to-human dialog, body english and language inflections typically quickly resolve the logical ambiguities.
Absent these signals, online we jump without getting clarification of the speaker's intentions.
I'm afraid my computer is headed for that deep hole, next to my TV.
And one day, perhaps, I will join them.
Meh. We saw this during the vietnam war. 30-million dollar (in 1960's fiat) B-52's trying to hit VietCong on $10 bicycles. Not to mention the training disparity (bike training wheels at age 4 and bike maintainence compared to that of a USAF pilot and the infrastructure necessary to keep his plane in the air and his retirement etc)
Who won the war? Who is there and who is "all gone"? Who is still paying for that war (injured vets) Just sayin'
Don't confuse the political will to win with the the military will to win...
Remember Hal Moore?
As long as you have corrupt politicians sticking their noses into military matters things will always fail.
We have no business injecting ourselves into country building.
This has been going on since the barbary coast...
Just ask Jefferson, a man I admire immensely but who set the stage for offshore interjection.
DaddyO
That's the wrong question, and it presumes occupation and colonization was the aim, which it sure wasn't. And as deluded as it may seem now, the point of the exercise, from Washington's point of view, was to stop "The Domino Effect" of Chinese communist infiltration into South East Asia. It was the age of "The Yellow Peril", in western propaganda.
The strategic goal of the air attack campaign mostly worked too, but just not in the way the public expected a 'win' to be, or to look like.
Namely, the Communists were left so busy with the massive destructive mess and poverty created that they were unable to infiltrate elsewhere much nor to parade around as a model of political success, or as an option and way forwards for the region. That was the long-view goal.
Plus it polarized the region against communism in general, and was followed shortly afterward by the emergence and explosion of the "Asian Tiger Economies" a decade later, and the unifying stabilizing influence of the rise of ASEAN.
When the Cold War ended and commie world view completely flopped, the US immediately pulled out of the Philippines and the SEA area was basically worried that this meant the US may completely militarily disengage from the SEA region, and almost no one in the Tiger economies actually wanted that, or were ready for it.
So there's a much more nuanced strategic long-term view as to why US B-52s were used in that way. The strategic aim was not to merely win a Vietnam War it was to stop a Domino Effect progression all the way throughout SEA. The B-52, and air power use in general was just one of the tools used to achieving that desired end.
And why did the US want to do something so radical?
It's because it was just 15 to 20 years since the US had kicked the Japanese out of SEA and they were not just going to let the PLA and Soviets take it over by infiltration. So North Vietnam's plastering was the message they wanted to send. It was also a warning to all the other states in the region to not support Chinese communism and infiltration. i.e. there is nothing we'll not do to win here.
Top dogs do that when challenged and China and the Soviets were definitely pursing global armed revolution against US/Western Capitalism and infuence.
The Capitalist Asian Tiger economies were the result.
I'd say US geopolitical strategists would call that a convincing strategic win.
No, Element, sorry, I'm not buying your argument that Viet Nam was a "strategic win."
It would not have hurt us in the least if all the countries of S.E. asia had chosen to follow the communist model. They were no threat and never would have been. In fact, it would have to our advantage that they fall into the communit orbit -- less competition for our workers from people one step above starvation.
As for the Soviet Union, it was not aggressive. It talked tough, but was actually cautious. It was what the Russians have always been, distrutful of foreigners, and willing to fight to the death to protect native soil.
The real cost of the Viet Nam was incurred here, at home. When Kennedy indicated that he was going to pull back from Viet Nam and reach an accommodation with the Russians, the cowards in the CIA and the miltary shot him in the back (and front). I'm talking about the coup d'etat of Nov.22, 1963. This ended the American rupublic, and left the government entity in Washington vulnerable. Into vacuum flowed the Jews, the Zionists traitors and agents for the state of Isreal. The American military went along for the money. The American military is now nothing more than a house of prostitution. It is worse than treasonous. It is iky in the way that male gay prostitution is iky.
This is the long term cost of Viet Nam.
Whether you agree or not, it still was. Vietnam and China had a border war after the US pulled out, and the viets had a war with the radical Cambodian Maoists, which had differentiated themselves by being even more barbaric than the US attack on Laos was. And that's as far as the dominoes went. Pol pot was the dead-end, Laos was a ruin, and Vietnam was scarcely at 'peace' with it's former Communist ally. Proving the North were really Nationalists all along, not hard-line communists, and communism was the flag of convenience they used to obtain armed support against the US. As ugly and brutal as it is, the US strategy did work.
I have a different perspective of a communist take over of SEA as I live right beside it, the problem for the West was real, especially for Australia. Australia ordered F-111 nuclear attack bombers, and began operating a uranium enrichment program in 1965 that continued until 1972, due to the domino theory, and only stopped the nuclear weapon program when it withdrew from Vietnam, and the US twisted its arm to sign the NPT, which Aust had been refusing to do, up until then. Also the US can not be nor remain a full superpower without control of the Indo-Pacific and Australia is that ally that makes it easy for the US to be a fully global superpower. The US was definitely not interested in that changing, in the 1960s. Surprised you think that would have been acceptable to anyone.
Oh seriously? Tell it to Japan, Korea and all of Eastern Europe. The alleged native Russian soil just happened to all too often be someone else's native soil instead. We are seeing it again today! DEFINITELY AGGRESSIVE.
I can't speak to your conspiracy, as far as I'm aware there have been no kike Presidents, though Hillary could definitely pass for one. Close enough. But yeah, staff jobs, appointees etc, loaded to gills with kikes. Definitely butt-fuck-icky. probably the only reason there hasn't been a kike President is they realized the US public would not go for it.
How good is it really? It hasn't been tested against a technological equal in a long time.
All bark, no bite ! What exactly has USAF accomplished for all the money it spent "against" ISIS (other than clocking flight & maintenance hours) ?
They did very well for the intended purpose - massive wealth transfer to the MIC and banksters, with plenty left over for kickbacks to keep the political puppets on board.
I wouldn't like to be the guy flying that JSF thats supposed to be junk against another modern fighter aircraft, thats for sure.
Given our recent outcomes against Iraq, the afghans, and vietnam, ISIS looks to have a pretty good chance at eventually perserviering. Afterall, despite the fact that they could never defeat us in any kind of battle, they probably will come out on top. They don't have to win, all they have to do is survive until we bankrupt ourselves or the American public finally gets sick of all this nonsense and demands an end. Which one comes first is anyones guess, but one or both will happen eventually.
The country should be outraged about this war!
Just to try to put in perspective the magnitude of $2.74 Billion per month or approximately $36 Billion per year.
Market capitalization:
Sears: $2.8 Billion
General Motors: $48 Billion
Delta Airlines: $37.3 Billion
McDonalds: $90.2 Billion
Starbucks: $82.4 Billion
Target: $48.5 Billion
Dell: $24.1 Billion
These are corporations that took generations to build and that offer products and services that serve the public.
In one month, the Air Force consumes the equivalent of Sears and in one year the equivalent of Delta Air Lines.
For the purpose of obtaining the right of way through Syria for a natural gas pipeline from Qatar and Israel to Europe.
It is mind boggling!
It's more than that. The Zionists want possession of Lebanon. They can't do that with Syria next door, supported by Iran.
The Russians have a duty to maintain the balance of power in the Levant. This is why Putin is ordering in armed forces. The pipeline deal is really almost a red herring, but it is an important factor.
Now, if the Russian Federation supplies real anti-aircraft systems to Syria- manned by Russian Armed Forces, the sky will become a No-Fly zone for ZATO and the Zionists.
But the damned French have been wanting Lebanon and Syria since Sykes-Picot. They are always afoot.
I think they might settle for Lesbanon. It is my understanding that Gay Pu**y tastes the same as straight.
==============
Re: AA. I think the whole deal is to draw the Russians in. "It's a trap." Russia now has a two front war. There is only one country in the world that has done a two front war moderately well. So far.
Turn loose the B-52s and problem solved.
It isn't that the Air Force lacks capability, but rather that they are required by their political masters to keep most of it in the garage on a Saturday night.
Hard to believe there's still that many B-52s in service. I think the newest ones are still older than me and I'm almost ready for the boneyard.
All these have been since scrapped. Which sucks - I wanted to live in one. It would have made a great mobile home. I would have stripped the paint off and shined up the aluminum just like they do to those old Airstreams. I would prefer a B-52G or earlier with the quad 50's in the tail. Never know when unwelcome guests might try to sneak up on your party shack. Plus, they would be great for taking out squirrels and other miscellaneous varmints (neighbor's dog).
Even the Vietnamese didn't have any problems shooting down B-52s... and that was almost 50 years ago !
Will it take 1 EMP or 2 to ground the whole fucking lot...
and Hi Weekend Tyler ;)
The Air Farce also created with Lockheed Martin that piece of shit the F-35 which wasted $2 trillion. The plane is a flaming pile of shit.
Endless corruption in the US Govt, The Pentagram and the military. What a joke. These generals should be tried for treason.
Haha, Freddie, they sourced chips from the Chicoms which no doubt will have backdoors or malfunction.
Taiwan Semiconductor makes everyones chips.
Not true. But you are welcome to believe what you want to.
It's a sign of the epic corruption infesting the Empire that so many retired generals then make a career off of seditious bribery - even at the highest levels of command there is no honor nor loyalty to the country.
Freddie, I'm surprised you've bought into the 2 trillion dollar lie.
That figure is the total budget from inception through operational and covers total program costs to the year 2065.
Initially, I too thought, holy cow, that's a lot of money until I did a little research into it.
Granted the F35 is an example of trying to build one plane to do multiple roles which doesn't work too well.
It has never worked and never will, but hey the pols and beauracrats will never stop trying.
DaddyO
Sometimes I wonder if that huge cost isn't in fact part of a money laundering scheme.
All military eqpt is designed to withstand EMP. Think of EMP as a spark developed by rubbing your feet on the carpet and then delivering that spark directly to a piece of boxed civilian eqpt. Very little of that eqpt will be affected. Now think of mil eqpt with 10X to 100X that protection.
EMP is a HUGE DANGER only if you don't get modern electronic design.
It is a cannard for the ignorati. Quite a few ZHers in that club. And the best part? They count themselves among the best informed.
So why do I hang out here? For the Jew hatred. The Jews THRIVE on being hated. Clever boys.
You are actually completely kidding yourself there, MSimon. EMP is nothing like what you just asserted it to be, you are ignorantly minimizing as it has multiple mechanisms and expressions, and they are quite real and also proven in testing to be highly effective, permanently damaging and comprehensively disruptive.You may wish it were not so, but that does not make it so. I am well aware of Mil hardening methods. They are highly prone to failure as well.
But even if they were not, the Military is organized on the functional basis of a civil society and economy, and those are certainly stuffed in the event of H-EMP, so the military is stuffed as well.
Read the SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING TEST REPORTING SUMMARIES in the following link, and you can then email the authors and argue with the expert panel about how dumb and uninformed they are, and how their results and conclusions are all inaccurate hyperbole. I'm sure they will think you a powerfully deluded fool.
Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack - April 2008.
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A prior comment I made on the topic
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-27/10-reasons-washington-has-war-f...
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EMP Strike
Question: Will there be a 'recovery' from EMP attack?
When people talk about this topic, especially when addressing it in quantitative terms, they always discuss a theoretical event which ignores or fails to appreciate the context of why there's an EMP strike occurring at all, and what else will be occurring in parallel.
As a result analysts, writers, bloggers and MSM tend to frame it in terms of a serious area threat but one that is manageable, painfully and terribly disruptive, yes, but a recoverable shock of limited effectiveness and limited in regional scale.
That is thoroughly wrong for many rather obvious reasons.
I suspect most of the befuddlement stems from them thoroughly confusing of EMP attack effects and recovery options with theoretical E3 geomagnetic storm effects and recovery.
These are not the same thing, they are not even the same effects (though some are), they have radically different implications and outcomes, and they could not be more different in terms of potential recovery - which I will make painfully clear.
A geomagnetic storm is much more benign, it may be global but it is an 'E3' EMP effect, which is a physical distortion and displacement of Earth's magnetic field lines. Moving a magnetic field in that way induces the release of electrons, which are then preferentially conducted in cables and thus into 'Earth' (i.e. it is electrically 'earthed'). You can observe these storms forming, they are not instantaneous, it takes time for them to build, so you can obtain advance warning and make switching changes to reduce many of the damaging effects. A country can and in fact would recover from a solar induced EMP storm.
But nuclear weapon EMP is much more dangerous and quite impossible to manage or contain, for many reasons. The EMP from a very large high altitude nuke can also distort the earth's magnetic field simply by the enormous scale of the thermal fireball rising through the field lines and rapidly dragging them out of their usual position and causing them to quiver and 'ring' from the insult. Like a guitar string vibrating within the magnetic field of a pickup coil, this also produces a copious supply of induced electrons.
That likewise is an 'E3' EMP effect, just like a geomagnetic storm can induce.
But nuclear EMP also comes in the much more insidious and dangerous forms as well, as an almost instantaneous release of an immediate 'E1' pulse, on detonation, which moves outwards at ~90% the speed of light. Plus a slightly delayed 'E2' pulse which follows right behind it. So nuclear is a 1, 2, 3, combined hit that follow on from each other (over several minutes). And not only this, but any real EMP attack will involve literally dozens of 1, 2, 3 hits spaced over a period of hours, days, weeks, and months which follow the initial devastating opening strikes.
E1 is a sudden release of elections via the gamma rays escaping from the exposed expanding weapon core smashing the electrons off the atoms in the upper atmosphere. It's like a giant 'E3', except that instead of the insult being spread over minutes or hours the rise-time to peak is almost instantaneous. it is the E1 which instantly fries digital computers and integrated circuits and electric motors and automated control systems. Plus it weakens, degrades and or softens-up all remaining electronic systems which did not instantly fail, so that the following E2 and E3 will in fact stand a much better chance of frying it too. So E1 is incredibly, and instantly and permanently damaging. There is no warning, you can not prevent it, you can not manage it, and in operating practice, you can not minimize it either.
E2 is slightly slower and behaves more like billions of simultaneous lightning strikes hitting all exposed above ground electrical conductors. As most power systems are designed to cope will electrical storms, the E2 pulse would ordinarily be much less damaging. Except for one thing, th E1 has already massively shocked and undermined all remaining electrical infrastructure, heated it, scorched it, shorted it and stressed it to the point of electrical failure, then a fraction of a second later the E2 bolt out of the blue arrives and belts it hard again. Consequently a lot of the remaining electrical components likewise will fail from the E2 insult.
Then the E3 pulse builds up over the minutes that follow as the fireball rises and resistive heating from excess electron flows to earth heat, melt and burns the cables and power grid, destroying the network's infrastructure and causing thousands of fires in thousands of buildings, from the melting and exploding electrical equipment.
Because the E1 has already destroyed the ability to operate an electrical switches that could disconnect and isolate systems to manage the damage, a nuclear E3 can not be mitigated or managed at all. If the weapon yield(s) are very high, then it will relentlessly fry and burn the entire electricity generation and distribution network.
And this will not happen just once, this will all happen again and again, maybe a dozen times in the first hour. Maybe 50 times in the first week. It will be done again and again to make sure every bit of electrical infrastructure and operating electronics is destroyed, plus to cumulative catch out anyone using a backup or emergency supply, or survival mechanisms that were in storage, such as generators, and solar panels, etc.
The attacker intends to make sure the government, its military and civilians and even remote survivalists have no electrical system that still works. They will make numerous follow-up intense EMP attacks for months to make sure they have rendered unserviceable 99.999% of electrical systems on the continent.
This is Strategic Total War. The attacker intends to make sure you have nothing left, and that you have no chance whatsoever to ever recover either the state, your military power, or economic capacity. They intend to either make you die, or to completely disarm and surrender - in order to live - and they are fully ready to ensure you die, if you do not surrender. In fact, they may prefer that.
That is inevitably going to be the nuclear attacker's Strategic imperative.
So a recovery from EMP attack is not even on the cards, it's simply not going to happen until at a minimum the attacker has invaded and secured all nuclear weapons hardware and materials, destroyed all deliver systems and their production capabilities and removed all of it and personnel from your totally ruined country - which the attacker will now occupy, colonize, pillage and completely annex and dominate. The attacker must do that or they run the risk of being attacked in kind if you do recover and remain sovereign. The only way to prevent that is to invade and annex your country.
It is only understanding that which provides realistic understand as to the nature of such an attack and the potential for a rapid recovery. The rapid recovery people talk about is a bizarre and thoroughly unrealistic myth. Nothing like it will ever happen.
Fortunately there are not many countries which could pull-off such a strategic EMP attack with any confidence. Realistically it's the US and Russia which have the numbers of weapons and the numbers of missiles that could do it, plus also (simultaneously) defang other nuclear powers in order to prevent them from retaliating in kind once they see the unprecedented barbaric act of pre-emptive genocide they've just witnessed.
If they saw that the remaining nuclear powers would feel compelled to counterattack the original attacker, or else they might do it to them as well. Plus they must be punished for premeditated pre-emptive mass-murder, so the original attacker would understand this is going to occur, so it must act first to take out any opponents to their genocidal attack.
Only the US and Russia could hope to have the necessary clout to do that to the other nuclear powers, simultaneously, and demand they immediately surrender, or face a total wipe out attack on its cities. In other words, if Russia or US launched an EMP attack they would also necessarily need to trigger a global pre-emptive attack, and must retain enough reserves to hit any other actor that attempted to hit them back.
Which means they would have to be VERY READY, VERY CAPABLE, AND VERY DISCIPLINED to do that, or else they're taking a huge risk of total failure. It would be a very desperate act. And that would be the act of a mad man (guess who .. well, take your pick!), or a mad woman (yeh, no need to mention her name, you can guess the suspect).
We know such mad and violent leaders do exist, we have seen them, in the flesh, in our life times, and there's an endless stream of them over the past two centuries, so we do know that militaries they command will use nuclear weapons on a civilian city, because we've seen exactly that done, all too easily, in the past, on two occasions already.
So it's unfortunately not out of the range of our known observed range of possibilities that such mad people, who do obviously exist today, or else mad collectives, will in fact do this to civilization, one day. Just look around at the nutters in this time!
Surely, those two ingredients, and hubris, and desperation, and enormous miscalculation, will come together, at some point. In fact it is entirely within the bounds of realistic possibility for it to happen later this year. We have two quite mad 'Leaders', we have the necessary weapons and readiness, we have military conflict between the proxies of the two most likely to do it, both pointing their nuclear gun at each other's head, and we have growing strategic desperation and wildly erratic and impulsive actions on both sides, a thorough lack of trust, and a good dose of paranoia.
All the pre-requisite ingredients are in place.
So it's a bit disappointing to see/read/discuss EMP attack because the discussion often results in the same tired denial of empirically measured catastrophic nuclear EMP testing reality. We know the effect is real, that it will occur, that it will be devastating over regional distances (see NOTE 1's link if you doubt), and we know it's incredibly dangerous to any electronic civilization, and especially to an electronic digital computer based civilization. Yet supposedly educated people still use daft irrational derailing 'arguments' about Faraday cage protection, circuit breakers, and how you can just 'unplug' to avoid the impulse damage to PCs and TVs, fridges, and similar complete rubbish, used in order to avoid and deny the reality of the situation, which is that all of these are ALWAYS plugged into al least one cable, at all times, and are virtually always on. No one ever unplugs, and you definitely will not know an EMP attack is coming and you definitely will not beat an E1 pulse to the outlet.
Nevertheless, people keep using such brainless 'reasoning' to ignore the fact that they have no chance at all of ever surviving a full-scale EMP attack and the full-scale thermonuclear bombardment coming in right behind it.
And they are certainly not interested in the fact that the only possible chance for 99.999% of so-called 'survivalists' to survive such an attack it in fact for them to get off their apathetic self-satisfied arse and demand the conditions in which it is no longer possible to happen. Faraday cages provide almost zero protection against EMP in operating hardware, due to the intrinsic cable-based inter-connectedness of its operational status, hence you can completely forget about an earthed Faraday cage protecting it. And how exactly are people comforted by a metal cage around a car's electrics if both the cable-connected and computer-connected fuel pumps at the garage are fried, and the financial institutions backing your fuel card is not able to communicate with any one, and the refinery has already exploded in flames? Well, that's the level of cognizance the topic of EMP attracts.
The very suggestion that no recovery or any kind will be coming after a concerted EMP pulse attack is a bridge too far for some, but nevertheless it would turn out to be so. People really do think EMP is just like a bad geomagnetic storm but hopefully by now you can see that they are entirely different situations. One you can readily plan for (although this is also not actually being sufficiently done), manage and recover from, and the other you can not adequately plan for, and you certainly will not be recovering from it, and its not clear if your children will be recover from it, either.
EMP attack is almost always downplayed and underestimated in completely unwarranted ways, using unfounded reasoning, and the electronic and systemic destructiveness of such an attack is very rarely admitted to by official documents and authorities.
That may be intentional to some extent as the big nuclear powers won't want a potential EMP attacker to think it could actually work and be so successful. The big power has much more to lose. They also won't want a potential attacker to think they could largely get away with such a strike so the US media and commentators tend to postulate a 1-year electronic system recovery myth whereupon a very pissed off superpower then goes after the evil attacker with all the barbarous intent they can muster, etc.
But it is in fact mostly complete nonsense, there will not be no progressive optimistic recovery back to former power, quite the reverse will occur, in practice.
Most technical discourses on the topic of EMP attack on the US or Europe, usually discuss the effects of a single modest-sub-optimal yield fission bomb fired by an unidentified rogue state with no warning.
WHICH IS A THOROUGHLY UNREALISTIC STARTING-POINT FROM WHICH TO BEGIN ANY SUCH 'RECOVERY' ANALYSIS.
Sadly, an EMP attack is vastly more likely to come from a direct strategic rival which is technically proficient, capable and competent, well-trained, motivated and disciplined and has an abundance of hardware required to make a massed EMP attack, simultaneously, on multiple continents, and to employ as many as 20 EMP optimized 2-stage high-yield warheads in the first wave, to maximize E3 resistive thermal damage and massively disruptive sudden large fires and explosions in numerous completely unexpected locations.
The likely development of any real EMP attack is a much darker and nastier affair. There are really only two possibilities and their unavoidable imperatives in making such an attack:
(1) The potential attacker decided not to attack at all and plays nice.
or;
(2) The attacker launches a pre-planned full-scale simultaneous synchronous pre-emptive EMP decapitation strike, using at least two very rapid-fire launch waves, with two to three initial warheads per continent from submarines in the first wave, to assure total surprise and devastation in the first strike. Then a follow up with a much larger second wave strike within another two minutes, then a third wave within 5 minutes. Then keep hitting in the same way about every hour or two, so that anything electronic that had survived and is subsequently switched on and connected to a cable is subsequently knocked out too. Continue to attack randomly once or twice per week, without relent, and do not allow any opportunity for nation-state based organised recovery to take place until you have invaded and colonised the continent.
That is by far a more likely starting point for any discussion about recovery from nuclear EMP strike.
If the original attacker failed to follow-through with option (2) it would invite an eventual revenge counterstrike, and the likely total destruction of the original attacker, if the attacked state were ever permitted to recover. It would require at least a partial invasion after a couple of years, once most of the local population were dead, to prevent any residual military element from eventually making a retaliatory counterattack.
So you can very safely discount the bumbling MSM myth of almost full nationwide recovery occurring just 12 to 24 months after an initial EMP attack, because no such attacker is ever going to allow that to take place.
Occasionally the full scope and horror of nuclear EMP is fairly clearly admitted to, and even laid out in detail within and official but unclassified civil government report, and the following link is to just such a report, one of the best sources on the topic of current day measured real-world EMP effects, and their compounding and contributing factors:
Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack - April 2008.
The information in that report remains fully applicable to present circumstance, so download it and spend a couple of days reading and digesting the implications. It's particularly informative due to many experimental tests performed in support of its findings, using a full-scale EMP simulator to test a wide range of commonplace digital computers, digital (remote) control systems, communications networks, cables and associated major infrastructure enabling technologies in widespread use, in 2015.
In every case of the EMP simulation tests performed, they all produced an observable and describable system transient or else a permanent malfunction, and either a partial control failure, or else a total system failure. This occurred in every piece of vital national digital electronics infrastructure that was tested in this study. Not everything permanently failed, some of it could be restored to full or partial operation, especially radios, and even some stand alone laptop mobile computers, but only if they were not connected to anything else, not even to a power source, when exposed to the EMP illumination.
NOT EVEN ONE OF THESE TESTED SYSTEMS OR TECHNOLOGIES, CURRENTLY IN WIDESPREAD USE ACROSS THE USA AND EUROPE PASSED THIS EMP PULSE TESTING WITHOUT SOME FORM OF ELECTRICAL OR LOGIC DAMAGE, AND SYSTEM FAILURE OCCURRING - MANY SYSTEMS REQUIRED PARTIAL OR COMPLETE REPLACEMENT.
The salient fact here was the EMP conditions simulated, "... occurred at the lower end of this scale", of the typical EMP field strengths from a high altitude regional EMP. Which is to say the experimental tests simulated conditions of the outer periphery of an EMP affected area from a high-altitude detonation.
Some quotes from the above linked PDF document:
_____
______
So, in a nutshell, the measured prompt E1 pulse field strength on the ground from actual high altitude nuclear EMP tests have been observed to typically fall into the range of 20 kV/m to 40 kV/m over large regional areas, and to rarely exceed 50 kV/m.
Consequently it must be expected that 90% of all modern digital computer electronics and integrated chip dependent circuits will suffer permanent damage and requiring replacement, or an attempt to operate via other means without such equipment. A computer hard-wired to almost anything via cable will almost always became immediately damaged at even very low field strengths, consistent with being on the outer most periphery of an EMP exposed region.
In other words we can expect that every economic interaction and financial transaction will cease until every computer in the region, and every router, and every wire cable, and every comms tower, and every power supply in the national digital financial and economic infrastructure has been removed, re-manufactured and replaced.
Solar panels are also effectively large integrated circuits, so will also short out than be fried, as will be their attached inverters, relays and the now probably destroyed and melted gel-cell batteries. Same goes for generator coils in wind turbines. A stored away generator may work until the fuel runs out, or until local authorities notice it and commandeer it, or a late follow-on EMP strike finally fries it.
It is not clear such a system wide failure could be recovered from under ideal circumstances let alone within the mutual compounding chaos that would predictably result from virtually assured 100% impact on all vital electronic modern infrastructure and to anything containing computer chips or attached to a wire cable.
EMP attack is merely an essential precursor to a full-scale thermonuclear attack, that will follow within minutes of any EMP strike. This will be occurring in the context of an actual nuclear war.
Hundreds of military bases and cities and industrial production sites, and Government authorities, will be systematically eliminated within the first 24 hours following an initial EMP strike commencement.
EMP attack is not fiction, it's not exaggerated, it is however empirically observed, measured and repeatably tested, and the implications of it are far worse than you've ever been told.
We also know from these recent experiments that almost nothing effective has ever been done about EMP vulnerabilities. In fact the Commission's report goes on to make it acutely clear that rather than the EMP threat diminishing over time, via better designs, materials and engineering, it has in fact been steadily growing ever since the effect was observed and systematically measured during atmospheric high-altitude tests in 1962.
Can you now hazard a guess why the Government doesn't even seriously bother to do anything significant about reducing EMP vulnerability today? Yup, if we do ever find ourselves on the receiving end of an EMP attack, it's because we're already in a full-scale nuclear war. So why bother electrically protecting what's going to be nuked anyway, in just a few more minutes time? Now it becomes clear why Governments, via their complete inaction over the whole topic, reveals that they believe 'managing' or 'recovering' from an EMP attack is pie-in-the-sky.
The Governments know that if your country suffers an EMP attack that country is going to cease to be. And why would such an EMP strike always be a full-scale attack, rather than partial attack? Would any country's military consider attacking the US or Europe, with a partial EMP attack? No! That would be totally suicidal.
So if you want to remain alive you have to go all-out and nail your enemy completely, and immediately, with incredible levels of EMP overkill.
So it's very safe to presume that any EMP attacks will always be a maximum effort attack, with no warning of any kind, when you're least ready for it or able to respond adequately. So it can be expected that any initiated attack will most likely come from a very large nuclear power, and will be (at least initially) massively successful at overwhelming the target state(s). It will instantly enfeeble any great military power rendering organized countering responses almost achievable or much less efficient, except via unaffected independent submarine-based retaliatory strikes, when it's already far too late to nationally survive, or expect the state to be able to recover.
So if that occurred it would be completely unlike the usual limited-case examples that are often discussed within theoretical discourses on the subject of nuclear EMP attack.
It could easily involve at least 25 dedicated EMP strikes within the first hour alone, over two or three continents with maybe 50 or so high altitude detonations occurring during the first 24 hours, and at least 100 occurring during the first year after the initial strike.
THERE WILL BE NO CONTINUITY OF GOVERNMENT.
That whole concept is unworkable, unrealistic and a fantasy within such circumstances, as some remnant reserve nuclear force will continue to be used by the attacker to make sure that the enemy Government can never rise again. The attacker must necessarily ensure the population will rapidly lose national focus and will die back to almost nothing.
After the resulting much diminished second an third generation of children after the initial attack, they will not even understand what occurred, nor what had formerly existed, or how their parents had lived.
The winner writes the history of war, and guess what it will say?
Every effort will be made by the attacker to ensure the 'evil efforts' to rebuild their technological industry fails. After one or two such failures by the 'evil ones', there will be no more attempts made and attrition and 'justice' will overtake the evil remainder, etc.
Question that if you want, periodic EMP attacks will only stop once the attacker has already successfully depopulated, sickened and invaded what remains. The 'evil' enemy country and its evil government will never be seen or heard from again - that's a given. The evil continent will be invaded and taken-over after it can offer no more effective or organized resistance. The attacker will then secure any residual viable nuclear weapons materials, facilities and delivery capabilities and the remnant evil population will be colonized by their attacker.
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Now read that report and explain the the authors why they have it all wrong. But pardon me if I take their word for it, while you are clarifying the facts for them.
EDIT: Just noticed the powers that be in the US have now purged the report from the Internet, and even taken the host site "Temporarily Offline". OK, well let's just put that down to sequestration then. lol
The US has lots of "flying coffins" that can't fly.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jet-crashes-shortly-after-takeoff-tennessee-air-show-n426496
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/indian-air-force-beats-ra...
Lotta' markers on that table!
"Impressive scale of Asshatery"
Panem Et Circenses
They have a perfect record. They have never left one up there. Oh --- bitchez!
All that stuff and they can't take them out? LOL
All that stuff and they're LOSING!
At least we took out Granada. That counts for something, right?
No they didn't. Clint Eastwood did.
On Purpose.
obscene
Enemy doesn't have to defeat us.
The Air Force will bankrupt us.
I'd like to see same graphics for Navy ships + planes; Army divisions & regiments; And Marines.
These are made on the Contemporary Issues and Geography blog - lots of great graphics & maps.
"About: Created in March 2013, Contemporary Issues and Geography produces maps, charts and infographics on a wide array of geopolitical topics."
He's got Marine and Navy Air, but no similar ones for all Navy ships or Army/Marine units.
I see summer homes that won't happen, roads that won't get built, forests and parks that won't get maintained, underground infrastructure: water, sewer, and storm drain pipes that won't get built or repaired.
Bridges that collapse as you drive across them.....
Little Jonny and Sue won't get breakfast or lunch because the school is closed on the weekends.
a 1953 speech by Eisenhower
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. [...] Is there no other way the world may live?"
Asshatery ????? Even gayier than asshat !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Damn right. What is it with all the assholes afraid to use the word asshole?
I know, right? It's asshattery, with two t's. Education standards are in the dumpster.
Military spending is just one big massive public works program.
Too bad they work for the banksters instead of the citizens of the United States of America.
What use are these articles? Is someone insecure?
The coming war of the world against tiny usa, won't be fought with armies.
knuppel:
Well, in this case, it is to show that all of the shuck 'n' jive in the world doesn't stand up to the will of a 7th Century man.
- Ned
lotsa planes but not much use against Russia... of course they wanted to draw Russia into a third country... so Russia had better get lots of S500 there and be prepared for retreat.
US aircraft are not much good at EU bases... those bases could be wiped fairly easily.
Aircraft carriers also...
I hope Russia has lots of drop tanks... China needs to take a stand soon. Stop whimpin out China.
and this is why the world reserve currency status must change to a basket of curriencies weighted upon gdp of participants...
all the planes and printed fiat can buy.... Don't know why Russia and China don't play the same game
Okay,
Contact the Filmmakers on IMDbPro » SEE RANK The Omega Man (1971) GP | 98 min | Action, Sci-Fi | 1 August 1971 (USA) 6.6 Your rating:-/10 Ratings: 6.6/10 from 21,066 users
Reviews: 196 user | 108 critic
Army doctor Robert Neville struggles to create a cure for the plague that wiped out most of the human race.
Director:Boris Sagal Writers:
John William Corrington (screenplay), Joyce Hooper Corrington (screenplay) (as Joyce H. Corrington) , 2 more credits » Stars: Charlton Heston, Anthony Zerbe, Rosalind Cash Long NRA & Charlton Hestons ghost.
Yeah and Spike Lee that racist hated Chuck Heston.
Heston had black people in his movies which was pretty rare at the time. Ditto Clinton Eastwood.
Heston also marched with the Civil Rights marches with Brando.
Heston was also probably profound with Solyent Green which probably will be a new food that Mon-Satan, ADM and Heinz come out with. "It's people!"
If The Omega Man is not for free viewing, I'm not interested.
I'm a Cheap Bastard.
Nice try ...I'm a cheap bastard as well
If you're smart enough to have gone off the grid, you've likely seen the movie multiple times.
Panic in Year Zero. Ray Milland. Frankie Avalon.
"I know where there's food. Lots of it."
It's the internet. You'll find it if you know where to look.
Not impressed.
The AF is full of fucking useless pansies.
But thanks to the Air Force Academy, every single officer is a born-again Christian!
No some are butch-dykes and fudge packing members of the Rainbow Brigade. Evil socialist scum begging for a Haitian Necklace, no? xxoo
in a squadron of 100+ planes in the sky all you have to do is detonote a nuclear nuke 1/2km away from their path and they all will be destroyed.
Less fallout, though, from the non-nuclear nukes.
That's a lot of broken windows. Keynesians loving it, the rest of us not so much.
What about all those never talked about weapons saved for alien invaders?
Like the Nazi's had all those "super weapons" during WWII that never made it into the battle theatre.
Re Germans, it all came down to numbers and effects. Same now, you can have the best fighters and weapons in the world, but if you don't have enough of them (see F-22A), and they're not rapidly highly effective, you'll get mobbed by 30,000 cheap and nasty T-34 and Sherman tanks any way.
But it works the other way around, also. If the US/West can both push up the technology and quality level and make it extremely rapid in compounding effect, and also mass-produce it to incredible numbers, and sustain it, it means no amount of asymmetric cheap 'n nasty will ever be enough to beat it.
Guerrilla insurgency and militia result when the enemy then can't compete or survive in battle, hence the current focus on spec-ops and information forces to deal with the resulting asymmetrics of being noncompetitive in high tech combat. The US/western approach is to cover all of those areas also.
What people don't yet get about the asymmetry battle is the US does not need to 'win', that is not its aim, it just needs to not lose and to make the other side wish the US/West was not their enemy. And the US/West alliance can do that pretty much indefinitely.
Element, I must say, you have my number. You strike me as the perfect example of everything that is wrong with government entity in Washington.
There is a reason why the people now in charge of the goverment entity in Washington are going to lose. They stand for nothing. They believe in nothing. They are brtual. They have destroyed something -- a legal tradition with roots that go back to Magna Chareta -- that they are too uneducated to understand, or even be aware of. They can do one thing and one thing alone: kill. They kill everywhere they go. Viet Nam. Iraq. Iran. Afghanistan, Dallas, Italyt (innocent civilians in what was called operation Gladio), Oklahoma City....and on and on. Brutality works for a while. But sooner or later it stops working. In the old Soviet Union, the same type of man was in charge in Moscow that now is in charge in Washington. The men in Moscow killed 20 million Russians, and it wasn't enough. The government entity in Moscow stood for nothing. When people would no longer kill for it, it collapsed. The same is going to happen here -- and it is going to happen long for the coward/bullies in Washington run the number of political murder up to 20 million.
Your jargon talk --"the current focus on spec-ops and information forces to deal with the resulting asymmetrics...." blah, blah, blah...is just the way the military bureaucrats talk to sound important to themselves. Once they have to account for themselves without the cover of lies, brutality and false flag operations, they will collapse. People will just walk away -- and start putting back together the pieces of a shattered civilization.
Geostrategic pragmatism is a direct response to actual global dynamics and trends, as best as they can be determined and analyzed.
You are mistaking my recognition of this as taking sides, pro or con.
But all I'm doing is pointing out that this is the level on which such choices are really made. That the PNAC type agenda is real and simple, a no-brainer, because that pragmatism is deliberately backed by the most heavily weaponed best resources state(s), by far. And as long as the narratives of security via global control sticks, among the US and allies, this approach will continue to be their approach. And if they are ever deposed, it will be by an alliance that was more effective at it, and also had the military to pull it off.
Taking a judgmental reflexive swipe at me though is water off a duck's back, I'm impervious to it. You see I already have such a low opinion of my own opinions and self construct already so you're not likely to ever dig down deeper into it than I already have. :D
Nice try but excuse my mirth.
Let me retort with this; the world of heartfelt rights and wrongs that you would ideally love to exist, doesn't.
This fact has been repeatedly shown in every conflict since the last glaciation, it is a cultural socio-political fantasy of the mind alone. It is a tool of State power and control as well, hence the nonsense of US president praying in a chapel on inauguration day. It's quite ridiculous given they invariable commit acts of mass-murder thereafter. (OK, maybe Jimmy Carter is a 'decent' man, but he would have pressed the button, and we all know he would have)
The human memory focuses on the conflict between the imbued State mythos and its heartfelt idealism in contrast to the harsh temporal reality of armed conflict which shockingly reveals its fakeness to all people confronted with how the world really works in conflict zones, and the day to day extreme flexibility (or absence) of such rights and wrongs.
That memory confliction in the being of people exposed to it is the deeper source of the physiological disturbance and dysfunction and unstoppable suicide and violence responses in soldiers when they return and realize the world is actually nothing like where they were raised, and also are horrified that everyone is imbued with this intolerable mythos and blindness.
So they introspect, they cogitate, they re-run memories to excess, and this is the 'PTS syndrome'. Many in that state often crave to be and feel 'real' again, as they did when it was in their face every second, but they also know they can't coexist in conflict zones either. It's lethal.
But the State's mythos and the socialization of the modern world's alleged 'values', makes no allowance for the real to creep into the modern cultural constructs they are plonked back into.
So dysfunction results. And they will inevitably think repeatedly of just killing themselves, or taking a few of the perceived hypocrites and fakers with them, which usually turns out to be those they have former and current close relations with.
But if the State was not imbuing and insisting on this fraudulent mythos, and society was commensurate with the way the world really is, that jarring conflict on return would be minimized or just not occur at all.
So the state attempts to empower itself with the mythos and fights against and denies the material realities of how the world really works, and it insists right thinking citizens more-or-less conform.
But that attempt by the state to empower itself is also the mechanism that leads to the demoralization and weakening of the fiber and power of the State, via the psychological conflict between State power and reality. It is effective early on, but then becomes self-impairing and self damaging as the fraud is discovered. the State can attempt to deny and suppress discussion of it in the Ranks, and they may not talk much, but they know, an the demoralization sets in anyway.
My suggestion is there is no need for this confliction between State mythos and reality, and the self-impairing demotivating damage it causes. We are in fact capable of dealing with reality as it is.
But I'm pissing into a hurricane if I suggest that. :D
Nevertheless, the State should have much more faith in the capacity of citizens to cope with reality, it is the attempt to hide it from them that leads to the dysfunctions and ineffectual outcomes, and citizens that inevitably will deeply resent and hate the State construct.
I would like to think Human beings can move past that silly status-quo and become much more effective and efficient in their actions, and far more motivated to excel.
For the truth is the rights and wrongs of mythos are a construct, and the way the actual world works is totally unconcerned with that psycho-social construct we use. Hence the freaked-out minds and suicidal responses and general insular rejection and distrust of society and Govt, as it is, which results.
So I suggest to you that it is not the soldiers that have it all wrong, the problem is caused by the imbued mythos and the attempt >> by people like you << to insist on imposing that unreality on to them, which creates the misery they feel, ultimately to suicidal levels of anguish, at the nonsense that psycho-social mythos projects.
So you can prance about and feel morally superior, if you wish, I don't mind, but that also has been done since the last glaciation. But you will move me, and them, not one fraction of a mm from reality being and operating how it really does. ;-)
You mistake that high minded-principles matter. But in reality, they don't - at all. You also mistake that this leads to inevitable collapse of society. Well, in some ways it will, as the prime reason for weakness of State is the unrecoverable demoralization and lack of conviction and support from a disunited public without common cause. Hence the tempting utility of false-flag ops and fear campaigns, to attempt to build common-cause and renew state power and public will.
But this also is falling apart as exposure to it and imparted conflict of mind that sets in, more generally, within the populous that realises it is always deliberately systematically manipulated, lied to and spied on.
[hello guys! :D having a good one? ... terrific stuff!]
But I assure you, 7againstThebes, my own conviction is infinitely based, not subject to going away, or ever being overturned or weakening. ;-)
In other words, I'd be the most horrific and motivated enemy, but fortunately I'm also highly receptive to peace and cooperation for mutual best interests.
And as I see it that's exactly the approach geopolitical strategic pragmatism takes.
How it gets there is just exceptionally unpleasant and vile with respect to the mythos, at times but only to those who accepted the mythos was valid.
The other horrible fact is that state war is nothing other than murder. If you engage in war you are murdering people. It does not matter what they're wearing, or if they carry a flag, it is murder. We are all capable of it. There are no good guys in war.
Good guys and high-minded ideals and staunch principles are integral to that debilitating state mythos, which reduces capacity rather than enables it at and after such times. It is intended to empower war for a state, but it actually damages and demotivates combatants. It is counterproductive to the role of mutual defense and makes geopolitical strategy less efficient and lengthens war and the psychological repercussions on combatants. The 'conscience' is conflicted by the breach of the high minded ideals, which are still being pushed on them, by the state and a thoroughly unrealistic deluded lied-to manipulated society (which they then often reject).
Now I don't fear any of that, I accept it is this way, and I don't take sides, why should I? Taking sides will change none of the dynamics, but it may make them significantly more counterproductive. And that's not my gig, I'm not at all interested in damaging anything, but renovation often requires knocking down some walls and old decrepit structures.
So the State's weakness is not the weakness of low or unavailable physical resources, or inadequate technology or tools and platforms, the weakness is always rooted in weakness of mind.
It is overwhelmingly clear to me that the clarification of mind via removing that State mythos entirely - which is the very source of the weakness of mind - will make us vastly stronger, vastly less apt to conflict, vastly more motivated, and vastly more effective if anyone were silly enough to want to try and fight it out.
Stronger minds will massively benefit every human being, and will move us past the current dangerous global malaise which is but the symptom of that weakness and demoralization expressed of lied-to and manipulated minds, that are increasingly fed up with States doing that to them, and are rejecting it and working (badly) through the psychological detritus.
You see this as collapse and sorry phase of recovery from a great mess.
I see it as a golden opportunity to express a far greater natural human capacity to embrace the world and our humanity as it really is, and excel like we never have before, from here. I am 100% convinced that can occur no problem at all and I am anything but an optimist or dreamer. I know that we possess vastly more potential than we've so far utilized. ;-)
So don't be tempted to wallow in a fantasy that my inevitable automatic discard of that fictional mythos of Western modernity weakened me, disordered me or demotivated me. You'd discover the hard way that your internal philosophy and belief along those lines would be terminally deluded, if you concluded that would be the inevitable outcome and thus underestimated or failed to recognize the innate internal cohesion, balance, strength of mind and will to act which results. ;-)
All the best.
Element, I would like to say that I appreciate your thoughtful response to my post.
I think you say interesting things. I'm a bit put off by your vocabulary. Why not just use the common word, "conflict" instead of "confliction" and "myth" instead of "mythos." Or do you mean something different with those different words.
I don't have time right now to give a proper answer. Plus, I'll have to think about what you said, and also try to un-convolute your somewhat convoluted style.
I'll make one very brief comment. If I understand what you are saying (and I may not) it is this: 1) the state is beyond good and evil, and: 2) get use to it because that's the way it is. And because it is the way it is, to accept it and work with it is the only way to go.
If this is what you are saying, then I don't agree with you. A pragmatic state (i.e., an amoral state) may be what we have now, but it is not a stable system, and it will not last more than a generation or so, let alone last generation after generation.
How we move away from a state that is "beyond good and evil" and create a moral community is the big issue. Current institutions cannot do it. But it can be done because it has been done.
The kind of social order that has to exist, such that there can be viable moral communities, is the task of the next age -- if there is a next age for our species.
Take care. If I see you wondering these threads, I might try to send a more thoughful response in your direction.
I can report from that, that you did not read, or rather grasp what I wrote, almost at all.
You interpreted what you considered it to mean, but based on a limited conceptual vocabulary that you have, and it was not up to the task of understanding it within the terms and frame of reference that you currently have.
My writing is plain and direct, not at all convoluted. It is minimalist and transparent but it does not appear that way for you.
You probably consider yourself educated and erudite, maybe clever even. But your comments above indicate you're not that. You've filled up on ideas that are without a foundation and are thus lost in them, so find yourself in a 'searching' mode for 'solutions' to your confusion, imparted by these foundationless conceptions that you've been imbued with and adopted as a part of you.
They are not.
Now this is my assessment, based on your remarks alone, it is not a slight, and not intended to be such, OK?
You are thinking in a way that I am not.
I do know your thinking though, because I have been through that while in my teens and early 20s. I moved well past that 'lost' 'searching' mindset, fairly quickly, and by early to mid-30s was completely unrecognizable to where you're at now. I'm in my fifties at this time and have moved so far along from where you're at, that mentally were are almost like two different species. Or rather, you seem like a larvae and I a metamorphosed larvae that turned into a creature that operates entirely differently to the larvae I once was.
So you can not comprehend the simple and direct things I am saying in what you read above. That's all it is. It's meaning thus completely eludes you.
So, what to say to you now?
You do not have a lot to learn OK? You have a lot to un-learn. For what you have 'learned' is leading you around in circles, and taking you nowhere at all. It is the mythos that you were taught.
Mythos is a Greek word btw, it's more subtle in meaning and depth than the coarse and bland English usage of, 'myth'.
This 'mythos' you have consumed and adopted, will grate on you badly until you move past it. And I assure you, that you will not enjoy that much. You will not enjoy it in the way a woman giving birth to a watermelon might not enjoy that much. In fact it might be the end of her. Life is a teacher, and every real lesson that you can learn is potentially or actually the end of you.
And that is why most people remain at 'larvae' stage, for all their lives, they lose heart, and stop being exactly what they are. They conform instead, they are molded by mythos, and it is a straight jacket, but it is also the devil they 'know', and fear the devil they don't know.
So they remain undeveloped. and that is in our society, called being an 'adult'. But we are not what we are told we are by society.
A real developed world is a world in which people develop beyond being the larvae level human, and develop into what they really fully actually are, without that mythos even being in them, or part of them - any longer.
Society is all about that mythos, but a human being is not - AT ALL.
That is the confliction created in human beings. Ending the confliction occurs via ending the mythos in you. It has been my forlorn realization, over the past two decades, to realize that not many people ever do it, and even more disappointing is that they don't even know this.
They don't know what they don't know, about what they actually are, if they develop.
That probably sounds convoluted, but it is actually direct, there's no hidden meaning in any of what I am saying. We are just not thinking from the same frame of reference.
So I encourage people to go past where they are at. I don't know if anyone ever does that, but I'd like people to at least know and hear and maybe grasp that there's more in them and to them, than they are currently expressing, and being. That you do not have to stop developing fully even though the society acts like it's OK, and actually 'normal' and expected, to still be in a state of apprehended development.
I expect that didn't mean anything to you either - but there it is.
This thread won't die.
Yep, I'm just a country boy from the South and not erudite. You have to spell things out. Let me try again to grasp what you are saying.
According to you, to get power the state claims to embody high ideals. But it actually does not believe in ideals. After a while people begin to understand that the state is a phony, and they get demoralized. To gin up a little passion, the state runs false flag opps -- and this works, too, for while.....but then...... damn....people begin to see through the opps -- plus they get tired of being killed by their own government. The outcome is they get even more demoralized.
Now everybody is demoralized. What to do? What to do?
Ah, here comes Element. He's got a solution. Grow up, he says, you're not adolescents anymore. The solution is obvious: don't try to bring the state up to the level of the people ( who want to have something to believe in), but instead, bring the people down to the level of the state.
Then what?
According to you, we are finally plunked down in reality, andwe keep on developing. But what exactly is it in us, or about us, that keeps on developing. You need to supply a simple answer ( if you want a country boy like me to understand).
Let me be presumptous and suggest a formula to use in providing an answer. To wit: in post-Mythos society, what develops is X.
X, you understand, has to be a word or a phrase. If the phrase is like the one that you used above --"apprehended development"-- you need to provide a definition.
I'm out here throwing corn to the chickens, and slopping the hogs, and I'm thinking about "apprehended development." I don't know what it means, but I am wondering that if I could apprehend development, could I get me some of it, too.
I wrote you a long reply, and was about to post it and the page auto refreshed and took out the draft window. was a cracker too. too tired to redo it, maybe next time.
Quick points though, this quote below in particular has zero to do with what I wrote, not even close, in fact everything you wrote was very flippantly put and basically disingenuous.
That could not possibly be further from what I wrote. It's pretty much the diametric opposite of everything I've said. Hard to see how that's accidental. And I see you're far from serious in your remarks from there as well, which indicates you made a prejudgement otherwise known as prejudice before drafting questions which you pretend to be interested in. Well why bother? You're not even asking questions, you're making incorrect assumptions and pretending to ask question about your incorrect assumptions. You pretty much totally mangled what I said but claim your just a country hick who just wants defined answers? Really? I kinda doubt that.
You seem to be an extremely disingenuous person in your remarks and you also were down the page, where you deliberately misrepresented what I said, asserting I said something I didn't even mention.
A pretty clear pattern of intentional misrepresentations.
This thread really does refuse to die. I hope you check it out one more time.
I will concede that I have been a bit flippant. I will try to clean up my act, and put a few cards face up on the table.
I like the confidence and energy of your posts.
I am curious to see if you are really saying anything. Part of my strategy is to provoke you. People who are a little angry tend to be more honest. And anger sometimes has the effect of clarifying thought, too.
Also I am curious to try to figure out if you are an example of the kind of thinking that goes on in the milatary. You seem to know a lot about airplanes and things like that. I am probing a bit to see what turns up.
What I am going to say right now, right here, however, is not me trying to be provocative. This is a straight comment: I don't think your posts are as clear as you think they are.
Look at one statement of yours:
" the State's weakness is not the weakness of low or unavailable physical resources, or inadequate technology or tools and platforms, the weakness is always rooted in weakness of mind."
This is a statement that -- as far as it goes -- I might be inclined to agree with. But, as it now stands, you have said nothing more than this: "the state's... weakness is ALWAYS rooted in .... X....." You have to define "weakness of mind." Until you do that, you might be saying something interesting, but there is no way to know.
Also, why all the bravado. You accuse me of "intentional misrepresentation." That's a bit strange. This is a conversation between two people, you and me. I might have misrepresented what you said, but why do you attribute my error to moral failure, instead of stupidity on my part.......or.......or.......just possibly....a lack of clarity on yours.
In this short post, I have tried to put my cards on the table. But I will concede that when you are dealing with a certain type of country boy from the South, claiming to put cards face up on the table is just another way to play the game.
Ah....but then....I probably do not have to read to you your Miranda rights.
Yeah, it was clear the first time you did it that you were provoking to see a reaction. ;-)
The second time is was a little more sly/slimy.
The third time you just seemed disingenuous.
The post that got shafted by my own screw-up yesterday was basically an amicable open reply to your disingenuous post, I actually did reply with clarity to the weakness of mind aspect, and tried to straighten your BS remarks, and put aside your prejudiced tone with a little humor in return.
It was only at that point (of losing the comment) I decided to point out the pattern in your posts, which you've replied to again.
In short, I need to grab some zzz now, but why would I make this up? This is zh, they kick the shit out of you, so there is nothing in it for me. But I would rather people were aware to the fact that where most people are at, they are in stasis, and it is unnecessary, there is in fact much more to human beings than almost any are aware of. I will have to defer this to another time though, but I'll refer you to a comment I made awhile back, and it'll give you some idea of what I'm getting at.
An older discussion here, see the first post on the second page for where it starts:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-05-28/founding-fathers-guarant...
A more recent expansion on that sort of thing is here:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-28/pentagon%E2%80%99s-new-%E2%80%9...
Skepticism is entirely valid and proper, and I would be very skeptical if this had not occurred to me firsthand, but it also does not stop me insisting this to be the case, and I can't prove it at all. But it does occur, and people can turn more fully into what they really are, and they don't have to do anything but to stop holding themselves back, with false constructs and societies bullshit stories and boundaries.
As for military, it is the ultimate setter of mind and physical bounds, that impair the development of human beings, and keeps them in a state of arrested development. I am not saying it is wrong for its purposes, as it is effective for the purpose, but it is totally 'wrong' for human beings, and that is why people come back from breaking all the rules of society, and are dropped back into that bullshit machinery of society, and they often immediately flip out, or may suicide, or worse. The boundaries are the mind development killer. Anything you hang on too impairs you from becoming what you actually are, when a fully developed human being.
And almost no one goes all the way and lets go of every idea, without reserve or alternatives or safety net.
Almost everyone is far too scared to do that, and those that go only partially the way in that direction, generally 'lose it', or become morose/depressed or dysfunctional. It's all, or nothing, you either take it as a given, and go for it, not knowing what will occur, or you should stay the hell away from doing it partially, and just go back within the safe bounds of common ideas and conformity. The red/blue pill 'choice' metaphor is a very real one when it comes to removing the barriers to full development of the mind to be what it can be.
You don't develop into a real human via filling the brain with idea-crap, you develop it by emptying out all the idea-shit that went into it as you got older from birth. The moment you are verbalizing and conceptualizing as a small child, the constraint on the mind's development is already being firmly imposed. But we are told and we thoroughly believe and accept that filling the brain with idea-crap during education, socialization and entertainment, is the correct thing to do. Well, for specific functional purposes, it is essential, but we take it WAY past that valid level, in to a profoundly invalid application of idea and imaginations.
All and I mean ALL ideas are imagination, and nothing else. Some are highly consistent, materially, and we regard as 'factual' material, verified, testable, but most idea-imaginations are not even close to that, and are true fictions.
One is valid and useful, and the other is the mind development trap that binds us. and even the verbally defined facts and truths are also pure fictions, but you don't even find that out until this occurs. Oh yes, you can grasp intellectually that they are fictions too, but you don't KNOW/SEE it firsthand DIRECTLY yet.
You won't and can't develop in bounded thoughts. Impossible, never going to happen. One enforces a finite-based mind (defined thinking), the other has no finite whatsoever. They are immiscible, they are separate, via definition, but one is surrounded by the other.
Definition is the limitation of the ability of the human mind to operate fully.
But what are you asking for above? THE DEFINITION OF 'X'
The very thing you correctly logically identified as the core to finite-based logic is in fact the very thing that limits a human being.
Look, our physical existence is paradoxical (to the way a finite-based mind perceives it, but not to me, not anymore) and a part of it is a material flesh that has an activity we call 'mind', that operates finitely (it defines 100% IMAGINARY 'limits', bounds), but also there is a 'mind' of the flesh being with no finite at all. That mind it DIRECT, and it has not imagination at all.
It is absolutely logical too, but it is not in the finite-based way that you think of as logic. That finite-based definition defines a boundary, and I'm talking about a natural flesh/body capacity of human beings, that has no boundaries at all.
And X is totally nonexistent in that, for X is nothing other than the machination of imagination that accesses, processes and stores memories, on the fly. This sorting on-the-fly, of imagined memories, we call 'thinking'. The definitions are all remembered, so memory is implicit to the finite-based flesh 'mind's' operation.
But X actually does not exist at all, you imagined your way to it from memories of defined conceptions.
And you did not even realize it. The finite-based mind is based on imagining defined bounds that do not exist at all in actuality. And you mostly never discover this. You can understand it if I explain it carefully. You can turn it into a defined concept, but I am telling you I turned it into a concept ony after I saw it was not real - DIRECTLY.
Firsthand - an actual natural human capacity.
Damned if you don't, and probably damned if you do if you don't go all the way.
It is a life risk to go that far, but is it worth that risk to where you end up?
YES ... absolutely YES.
But the person must go all-in or there is no way you're getting there. The onus is completely on us, as are the results of not being 100% prepared to go all the way. And that means living it for years, sticking to the elimination of all limits and ideas of mind, everything must go. Nothing can be held on to. And I do not know why it is not commonplace in human beings (except modern educated people are terrified of letting go of all their ideas) but it sure isn't commonplace - but it is us. It is what we really are, as a natural organism's function, what we really can and naturally would do, if not for the intervention of State and Socialization of ideas to bound us to a a network of constructs.
We see those networks of constructs as our greatest achievements (and they are in their way impressive and useful to a point before they become our trap), but in fact they are what damages and brings us undone and leaves us well short of what human beings can be, and latently are. We also perceive imagination as a tremendous feature of us, of that limited defined 'mind', but don't even realize it is also the greatest limiter of all human beings. We think of imagination as the greatest of human mental tools!
No, it isn't even close.
We think of imagination exactly the other way around! And we think it is our great insight generator - it isn't! Jarring to read that, isn't it? But imagination is the core functional part of the limitation structure of the finite-based thought mind. But we believe it extends and maximizes us! Oh good grief, no, that is in fact the other way around. So we have no way of getting to this via thinking about it. You can only see the inevitable falsehood and fiction of all ideas and constructs, which thus empties out all the finite-based crap we were filled with. You are systematically undoing the limits and its damage of the limitation engine I call finite-based mind (and you don't know that is what you are doing, while you are going through it for a few years).
We were never supposed to entrap ourselves with extraneous ideas that only bind us to arrested development.
We're supposed to naturally develop into this, or else there is no way it could possibly have happened to me, or others (and it has), so I want people to know about this potential in us, and maybe some fools at the end of their tether with the 'systems' that are untenable, will go all-in, and then maybe some of them will discover this in them too, for the first time.
It is more worthwhile than drawing breath.
The purpose of that first breath we take after birth is not just to live, but to get to this - the full natural human expression of being. There is no other reason to be breathing at all for us. I take this more seriously than anything else. In fact there are no other things that are even 'serious', at all. All the usual 'serious' things are of total irrelevance when this happens to you. I've got nothing more to say here and I took longer than intended to reply. I'll check back in a day or two to see if you reply once more, good luck sorting that verbal drivel out, and cheers.
Don't hesitate to toss it away if it all seems like a steaming pile of crap to you, I wouldn't blame you at all. I'm not at all interested in pushing mere ideas on to people, just the reverse. ;-)
I think you and I are working different sides of the street.
"the finite-based mind is based on imagining defined bounds that do not exist at all in actuality....."
Without question we limit ourselves by mental activity, but this does mean that there are no constraints. Gravity is an idea. My understanding of it is based on a narrative about falling objects. If I come to the conclusion that gravity is a self-induced limit, and step out of a third floor window, I am going to get hurt.
It seems to me that you talk a about a personal transformation that changed you, and that made you see how most of the limits that we think constrain us, in fact do not.
As I say, I work the other side of the street. My notion is that we cannot think at all -- we cannot add 2 + 2 and come up with 4 -- separate from the circumstance (i.e., the world of things, people, stories, events, history).
I am not interested in self-transformation. I am interesting in WHAT IS, that is, in trying to understand what the limits are.
zen student: what is ultimate truth?
zen master: the tree at the foot of the garden.
I'm with the zen master on this one. The greatest challenge is WHAT IS.
I don't respect or relate to anything any person says about any word or concept - ever.
There are no 'Masters' at all, there never has been, there is no guide or authority to learn anything from, no one who can instruct another, there never has been instruction in anything actual, not even our own thoughts can do so, which are all monkey noises and nothing more - actually.
There is a flesh body that does what it does and is 100% physically literally DIRECTLY connected to everything in the cosmos, in a way entirely unknown to the 'intelligent' finite-based mind of thinking.
There is nothing else in all of existence.
The 'meaning' of what I am appearing to convey in formulating that string of symbolic 'words', is utterly useless to communicate any of what is intended, to another human being. No matter how it is worded, collective or mutual communication is not occurring and impossible via words. Symbols are not a means of direct communication of anything actual. It is an invoking of remembered imaginations, only.
The finite-based mind you use is convinced they do, but can not even understand the meaning of actual communication, at all.
Your ability to understand other than your own definitions, when reading the symbol strings in this 'reply', is, and perpetually remains, absolutely zero.
To you, this is clearly not that case, and a totally ridiculous suggestion, for here you are apparently conversing with another, and yet it is the case, and you are in fact conversing with your own memory's prior stored definitions, not with others 'meaning'. there is only your imagined 'meanings', available to you, at any time - no matter what you do.
No communication at all has occurred in the entire 6.5 million comments on zero hedge in actuality, even though to you there is a very compelling and utterly convincing strong impression that you have routinely communicated in detail with others, every time you vocalize any words as symbols or actual utterances.
The very learning of 'language' only occurs as you associate your own imagined definitions to every symbol.
You never 'learn' them from another, EVER.
You are still convinced that you do, but your first word ever thought and spoken was the product of imagining a defined boundary and associating a monkey noise with that boundary, you heard the noise from others, via memorizing a vocalization, but you attached your own defined boundary to the noise.
The abstracted 'meaning' of the noise is entirely your own, and never is, and never can be that of another.
No one ever 'taught' you that boundary, you imagined it, and that boundary actually has ZERO reality, then, or now. Same for every word in your 'vocabulary', or symbol in your repetition 'repetior'.
All that has happened right now is you see strings of symbols, and you attach your own imagined definitions to them, and then you also use your own imaginative definitions once again, to formulate more symbols to define your own imagined bounds - none of which exist at all.
Every thought you have is an intrinsic fiction. This is inevitable, as 'finite' also does not exist, but the creation of definition is the imagination of finite, which is simply not present in our cosmos.
The new symbols that arrived as a 'reply' here were again 100% defined by you, ad-nauseum.
It is never different to this, in any instance.
At no time have you ever directly communicated with another human being.
The structure of the finitely based mind is entirely isolated, but imagines it connects directly via symbols.
It does not, but it never knows this, it simply assumes it does.
There are not two even metaphorical sides of a street to be on, at all. There is imagined finite non-expression, and there is ACTUAL mind which is DIRECT only, and is thus not based in memories of past imaginations of defined boundaries, and thus it is not storeable, nor needing to be stored at all, nor recallable, nor needing to be recalled, as a secondhand product of old INDIRECT memories. Only through finite-based 'thinking about' Actual-mind, after it has been occurring, can memory classify then remember anything it imagine, in order to translate it into symbols to describe it verbally.
But that is not even it, that is mere imagination about it!It can not be touched by imaginations. It occurs only in the living process of the flesh body itself, and only if the imagination process the produces and processes thoughts, stops operating. Then a human being operates for the first time, DIRECTLY.
So it does not and can not translate in to words and remembered definitions, or transferred to another person via abstraction or meme spreading.
The the thinking mind thus can not actually think about the Actual Mind, at all. I can not think about it, because even my own thought can not touch it. I can not remember it, I can only present an interpretation or abstract translation of it to my own thinking process. So there is no way you can know it, if I also can not know it.
And yet it happens, and changes the whole bases of the finite-based process as well, it's whole reference frame permanently changes to a completely different orientation to thinking, (whilst retaining its former old reference frame capacity as well).
It can only occur as it is occurring and that mind can only be direct, where as memory based processing can only ever be indirect and from remembered abstract imaginings.
Actual-Mind operates fundamentally differently to the thinking mind
And ... it also permanently changes the thinking mode orientation as well (but it is still just as faulty as the former reference frame, as it is still based on defined discontinuity that does not actually exist at all).
They are not even comparable either. And only one of the minds is real, no imagined and non abstract and never indirect, and it is not the one you think is 'real'. The overpowering illusory impression that thinking is 'real' is based around the impression that finite can exist in the cosmos, via imagining discrete boundaries, but actually, this cosmos has no such discontinuity anywhere within it. Only the skull of human beings that 'think', invent this imagined discontinuity that is integral to the operation of finite-based processing of the idea-syndrome addicts, we call a 'thinker'.
In other words, the impression of finite discontinuity in definition making is the mother of all human illusions.
It also produces a change in reference-frame for the finite-based thinking with memories, after it has occurred for the first time, and consequently a permanent change in all thinking thereafter in intrinsic to it.
One is actual, one is a fiction -- the fiction mind believes absolutely that it is a 'real' conscious mind.
It is not. This fact is impossible for it to grasp from its reference-frame.
Now you may be able to 'follow' that 'intellectually', if your present definitions and reference-frame can be stretched that far by you, but you will never know what it is in its actual expression, via thinking about what the symbols 'mean', you can never find out, for your imagination can never get to this, for it is actual, not imaginary, and it is not a thought from the processing of prior memories, of something prior determined and stored away and recalled on-the-fly.
You possess no connection to it and no definition exists that can connect to it, and I can not connect you to it either.
It can only happen via you ending the idea syndrome that you bound you with.
There is no 'sense' to any of this for you. It is quite impossible for you to understand any symbols presented to 'you', by 'me'. Communication transmission is not happening at all.
But there is a communication with everything that is DIRECT, is ACTUAL, is not imaginary, and that you have never encountered, and most likely won't. The pondering of conceptual trinket like 'what is', is a game of the idea syndrome, which thinking is locked in, and inseparable from. Such ideas take you nowhere but around in self-referential finite-based isolated circles.
It never goes DIRECT, it never is without the bounds of finite, it never connects, it is always intrinsically isolated. For if it you ever did go DIRECT, you would never consider any conception of the idea-syndrome to be of any worth whatsoever, for the rest of your life.
This is the clearest simplest statement I can make about what happens and what changes, and it is totally misleading, if you imagine you know what I really mean.
You don't and you can't.
Even I can't.
It simply takes place and it changes everything to DIRECT CONTINUOUS connection to everything.
Thinking is nothing more than an abstract perversion of this underlying human process, that is occurring continuously in all living things. There is no living human being that does not already have this latent capacity integral to their body. And it can emerge in them at any moment without warning, in shockingly fully-developed instantaneous operation. You can not even imagine (literally) the staggering shock of discovering it suddenly explosively spring into operation.
It is what our very first breath is intended to get us to at some point in our lifetime, if the idea syndrome simply ends and this springs to the fore in us. At which point there is not other value in life but this.
There are no 'values' on things at all at that point. All social values and ideals have zero basis, they are imagination, only.
DIRECT is the whole basis of all life.
DIRECT is the source of what we call living.
It is an integral aspect of the cosmos itself, a human body is just a product of that continuity, and attunes to it. It is the human body which is the interface. DIRECT 'means' there is no such expression as a 'discontinuity' in all of existence.
In other words, the fundamental basis of physical phenomena is the total absence of discontinuity within it, or bounds to it. There is not outside, there is no inside, there is just what we call 'space'. And all matter is made out of this 'space'. Matter does not independently exist. Matter is space.
'Matter' is just another physical expression of a physical 'space' itself.
Infinity is physical. Infinite life is physical, and life can only ever be infinite. Human beings are already living an infinite based life, but their body has not yet 'interfaced' to know this. A human body is just an arrangement of this 'space', that has a latent capacity intrinsic and inbuilt to it by evolution of life, which is evolution of space, apparently with the ability to interface with that space, while alive, in a way the idea-syndrome of thinking can not and never will.
Developing this interface capacity is far more important to humanity than anything else human beings are currently doing, including everything.
I do not believe anything, it is impossible for me to believe anything, once this occurred. Thus I am not a religious person in any way, I reject all forms of religion as irrelevant. I am speaking of DIRECT alone. I do not care in the least about any idea or any stream of thinking, by anyone, ever, or any alleged 'perception' of any thinker, or of any 'world view' or philosophy, I have no heroes whatsoever, and respect no person or construct, of any kind. There is no possibility of actual influencing. All thoughts are innately rendered comprehensively automatically irrelevant - without exception. I also have intrinsic zero fear of death. None of us have a capacity to end. Only finite things end and there is not finite at all. The invention of finite bounds and the discontinuity intrinsic to thinking, inevitably makes us fear death.
The DIRECT discovery of the total absence of finite is synonymous with a permanent total absence of mortal fear or concern for the future. Thus the deepest conflict and disturbances within think human beings instantaneously permanently completely stops.
There is finite-based isolation of ideas, and there is the total absence of finite in perception by the flesh organism we call 'human', and humans are not what the idea-syndrome defines it to be, and thinks it 'knows' of itself. It does not.
T h e E n d
Impressive, Problem is it didn't solve the problem created by a few people living in caves. In fact if one looks everything is much worse and moving closer.
Muslim Arabs states have young populations breeding an even larger generation into a gradually declining export energy resource and economic condition. Plus Saudis (and all others) are pimping a ludicrous 7th century apocalyptic death cult so not like that was going to get better by bombing anything ... or even by not bombing anything.
Iran's TFR is 1.6 - replacement is 2.1. The rest of ME Islam is going the same way. You know who is growing? "That shitty little country"
Check the data MS, the Arabs are building bigger populations not smaller ones:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/saudi-arabia/population
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/qatar/population
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/iraq/population
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/kuwait/population
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/yemen/population
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-arab-emirates/population
Whoo! Whoo Go 421st Spiders!
Those birds have got to be getting a little old by now...
Pantons Rule!
I thought the US was phasing out the A-10.
They are, to replace it with something vastly more expensive and less suited to the close support role, the F-35