Last year, Robert Gates claimed (on the basis of incorrect intel data produced by the same intel community which denies that Iran has a nuclear weapons program) that Russia’s first 5th generation fighterplane would not fly for the next several years. And he closed the F-22 program.
He was wrong. Yesterday, Russia’s first 5th generation fighterplane flew for the first time. The fighterplane, called PAKFA (Prospective Aviation Complex of Frontline Aviation) is a product of the Sukhoi corporation, the producer of the popular Su-30 Flankers and the Generation #4++ fighterplanes designated as Su-35s. By the USAF’s own admission, F-15s are inferior even to these two planetypes. Of course, they’re also inferior to PAKFA jets. The PAKFA type is the Russian counterpart of the American F-22 type, and has made the Russian AF a true equal of the USAF.
Su-30 Flankers are superior to F-15s by almost every measure, yet the DOD plans to maintain ca. 120 F-15C/Ds and all 224 F-15s even after 2025. It does not plan to increase its order for F-35As from the inadequate 1763-plane-number. It closed the F-22 program last year.
The DOD should radically increase the order for F-35As from 1763 to 3048, i.e. by 1285 planes. It should pay for these aircraft using the savings which I advised it to implement – savings estimated to total over $60 bn per year if implemented.
On 9th May 2009, as Russian military vehicles were riding through Moscow, the pro-Russian traitor Peter Lavelle made a number of false claims on TV.
Peter Lavelle is an anti-American traitor of American origin. He was born in the US and graduated from UC-Davis, but he relocated to Eastern Europe no later than by 1985. He lives in Russia. He’s a pro-Russian traitor who serves as the Kremlin’s propagandist.
His claims are treasonous and false.
He made a claim that, „it really gets on my nerves that the United States spends more money on the military than all other countries in the world combined”. That claim is treasonous and false. America doesn’t spend more on its military than the rest of the world combined. America’s defense budget is $534 bn dollars. If one counts the Chinese military budget in ($150 bn for CY2009), as well as the military budgets of Russia ($100 bn for CY2009, although the official budget is $50 bn), France (38 bn EUR), Britain (38 bn GBP), and all other countries of the world, and the military budgets of Russian ministries other than the MOD (budgets used to buy items for the MOD), one gets an amount of money larger than $534 bn. But even if the US defense budget had been larger than the defense budgets of the rest of the world combined, that budget wouldn’t been bad or excessively large for the reasons that: 1) America defends not only itself but also dozens of other countries; 2) America has the right to defend itself; 3) America has the right to whatever military budget it chooses; 4) the US defense budget doesn’t threaten other countries; 5) things are more expensive in the US than in other countries (including Russia and China); 6) one can buy less for one dollar in the US than in Russia and China. 7) America must continue to rebuild its military after 12 years of treasonous defense cuts by the Bush I Administration and the Clinton Administration. Clinton, by his own admission, loaths the military. 8) America’s FY2010 defense budget accounts for merely 3.61% of GDP, which is a low figure (historically and absolutely).
The fact that America has the defense budget it has irks him because he’s a liberal traitor who hates the US and the US military and doesn’t desire a strong US military.
Lavelle’s claim that Russia hasn’t been buying new military equipment „for 20 years, and in some cases for 30 years”, is treasonous and false. It’s false because:
1) it’s ridiculous to claim „30 years”. 30 years ago, the Defense Minister was Dmitry Ustinov and the Soviet dictator was Leonid Breznev. It’s ridiculous to claim that they didn’t buy new equipment. If that had been the case, SS-19 ICBMs (introduced in 1982) and other weapons introduced after 1979 would’ve never been introduced.
2) During the last 20 years, the Kremlin has also been buying new equipment. As long as the USSR existed (i.e. until 25/12/1991), the Kremlin was buying huge tranches of equipment (e.g. SS-25 ICBMs that were introduced in 1988 and since 1990, the Kremlin was producing them en masse). In 1991, the Russian Federation inherited hundreds of SS-25 ICBMs from the USSR. After the collapse of the USSR, Yeltsin’s Russia was also buying new equipment – albeit limited tranches of it, due to budgetary limitations. Nonetheless, many new weapon systems were introduced in Russia during the 1990s, including modern S-300 variants (introduced in 1993 and produced continously ever since then), T-90 tanks, SS-27 ICBMs (introduced in 1997), et al. After Putin became President, the Russian defense budget increased significantly, and so did Russian weapon orders.
Regarding his other false claims:
His claim about „the base from which Russia starts” is false. There are no bases from which a country starts.
What he meant was that, allegedly, Russia has a significantly weaker military than the US. He’s wrong. Russia’s military is as strong as the US. The 1980s weapons inherited from the USSR (such has hundreds of SS-25 ICBMs) gave the Russian Federation a large, decent arsenal to begin with. Yeltin’s Russia was buying few weapons, but Putinist Russia is buying large tranches of weapons. Besides, Russia is also modernizing its Soviet weapons such as SS-18 ICBMs, SS-19 ICBMs, submarines and tanks, thus prolonging their lifetimes.
His claim that Russia is not interested in an arms race and is not waging an arms race is treasonous and false. Russia is interested in an arms race, and it is waging an arms race, as of 2010 – it’s waging an arms race against other countries because of Putin’s anti-Western, imperialist, anti-American policy.
His claim that the Bush missile defense system was a threat to Russia was treasonous and false. The Bush missile defense system was not a threat to Russia or any other country. It was a plan for merely 10 interceptor-missiles, which couldn’t undermine the Russian military, which has 466 ICBMs, 290 strategic bombers, 12 SSBNs, over 3000 SLBMs, and 8 SSGNs.
Russia is not just modernizing its military – it’s also rearming its military.
Russia is a genuine threat to the West, as „mainstream media in the West” (referred to by Lavelle) said.
Russia does not have a very defensive foreign policy. Russia’s foreign policy is not defensive. Russia’s foreign policy is aggressive. A country that practices a nuclear strike against one of its neighbors (Poland) AFTER Obama scrapped the missile defense system practices an aggressive foreign policy, not a defensive foreign policy. A country that threatens to aim its nuclear-armed missiles against all European countries practices an aggressive foreign policy, not a defense policy.
Russia doesn’t need to work until 2020 to become as strong as the US. It’s already as strong as the US.
McCain did cause a surge – but not the Iraqi surge. He caused the surge of the number of readers of my blog.
On 24th January 2010, I posted a refutal of the myth that McCain is “an honorable man” or “a hero”. A day later, 42 people read my blog, causing it to achieve the 3000-visitors-milestone. The next day (26/1/2010), 50 people read my blog. On 27/1/2010, 30 people read this website.
The blog’s stats indicate that the post about John McCain is the reason why so many people visited this blog. It’s currently the most popular post on this blog (previously, the fifth edition of my Defense Reform Proposals Package was the most popular post). The second most popular post is “Russia is still a communist country”. The third most popular post is “The USA is the most generous country of the world”.
Here are the links to the three most popular posts on my blog:
Yesterday, Donald Tusk alleged that humanity was silent while the Jews were dying in gas chambers (1941-1944).
But a few days ago, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko awarded the title “Hero of Ukraine” to Stepan Bandera, the chairman of the OUNB Ukrainian nationalist party of WW2, whose IRA-style arm, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), murdered 150,000 Poles, whom Bandera and his OUNB party hated.
Yet, ever since Yushchenko granted the title to Bandera (posthumously, because Bandera died in 1959), neither Tusk nor President Kaczynski nor any other Polish official protested.
On 27/1/2010, Professor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, PM Donald Tusk, a TVP1 presenter, and 3 publicists damnated the so-called “Anglosaxons” (as they called the Americans and the Britons). They claimed that the Americans and the Brits “did nothing” to stop the Holocaust and save the Holocaust’s victims.
Their claim that “the Anglosaxons did nothing” to stop the Holocaust and save the Holocaust’s victims is a blatant lie, and simoultaneously an insult to these nations and their countries (the US and Britain).
The facts pertinent to the Holocaust are: the “Anglosaxons” implemented the ONLY policy that could’ve saved the Holocaust’s victims: the policy of defeating the Third Reich as soon as the Allies could do so. Only that policy could’ve saved the Jews. There were no alternative policies. No bombing of Auschwitz or the rail lines connected to it could’ve EVER solved the Holocaust issue.
There were no guided missiles and no guided bombs as of 1945, and the CEP for even the best USAAF bombers was half a mile (i.e. 800 meters). There were no B-2s, no B-1s, no UCAVs, no U-2s and no satellites. USAAF Airmen wouldn’t even have recognized from the air what buildings were the gas chambers and what buildings were SS barracks. Photos marked with descriptions indicating what building was what weren’t delivered to the US until June 1944, when most of the Holocaust’s victims were already dead.
The USAAF’s best bombers (also used by the RAF) were B-24 Liberator bombers, whose operational radius was 1050 kms, meaning that they could attack targets only as far as 1050 kms away from their base (their range was 2100 kms, but they needed to come back to base). The first USAAF base close enough to fly B-24 bombers from it to Poland was Foggia AFB, near Bari, which was opened during the 1944 summer. By 1944, most of the Jews whom the Nazis planned to murder were already dead.
Bombing rail lines connected to Auschwitz-Birkenau was not a solution, because railroad lines can be easily repaired, as the Americans witnessed during the Korean war and the Vietnamese war.
Moreover, gas chambers weren’t the only genocidal methods used by the Germans. The Germans used dozens of methods, including: shooting pregnant women, drowning the victims, ordering their dogs to eat the victims, shooting the victims, freezing the victims in “medical facilities” in camps, murderous “medical experiments”, beating the victims, starving the victims, crushing the heads of children at walls, and ordering the victims to run along staircases (vide the Mauthausen camp, which did not feature gas chambers). None of these methods involved gas chambers, and none of them could’ve been ended by the USAAF or the RAF.
Bartoszewski’s claim (repeated by TVN and Donald Tusk) that the world did nothing to stop the Holocaust and save the Jews is a lie for the same reasons as above.
Bartoszewski’s claim that the world didn’t determine a method to end the Holocaust and wasn’t interested in the task of finding one is a lie for the same reasons as above. If the world wasn’t interested, it wouldn’t have tried to defeat the Third Reich.
The world did determine a method to end the Holocaust, and that method was the plan to defeat the Third Reich.
Russia’s arsenal of strategic weapons is bigger, and technologically better, than the American arsenal (224 Trident-II SLBMs, 450 MMIII ICBMs and fewer than 200 bombers).
According to Wikipedia, the Russian AF has 56 Tu-95MS bombers, 16 Tu-160 bombers, and 70 or 120 Tu-22M3 bombers, whereas the Russian Navy has 15 Tu-142 bombers (derivatives of the Tu-95 type) and 83 Tu-22M3 bombers. That’s a total fleet of 290 bombers.
According to Wikipedia, as of the 1990s, Russia had 2 SS-25 regiments patrolling the country permanently, and 40 regiments garrisoned. One Russian SS-25 regiment has 9 missiles. That means that as of the 1990s, Russia had 378 SS-25 ICBMs. It probably still possesses 378 SS-25 ICBMs. Add to that 75 SS-18 ICBMs, 75 SS-27 ICBMs, and 136 SS-19 ICBMs, and you get 664 ICBMs.
Another Wikipedia page (the page on the RSVN) says that the RSVN have: 75 SS-18 missiles, 136 SS-19 missiles, 180 SS-25 missiles, and 75 SS-27 missiles, which means Russia has a grand total of 466 ICBMs. According to the former commander of the RSVN, 96% of these missiles can be launched 1 minute after an order to launch them would be issued. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Rocket_Forces#Overview)
SS-18s are not comparable to their American counterparts. One SS-18 missile can deliver up to 38 nuclear warheads. One LGM-30 MMIII missile can deliver only 3 nuclear warheads. The modernization programs of the Russian military have prolonged the service lifetimes of SS-18, SS-19 and SS-25 missiles by at least a decade, allowing the Russian military to maintain these missiles until 2020; afterwards, the Russian military will replace these ICBMs with SS-27 “Stalin” (RT-2UTTH Topol-M) missiles.
Russia’s submarine fleet consists of 12 serving SSBNs, a number of reserve SSBNs, 8 serving SSGNs (as opposed to 4 American SSGNs), and dozens of SSNs (which can launch nuclear-armed cruise missiles). Russia also has a next-generation SSBN, the RFS Yuri Dolgoruki, but that vessel doesn’t have SLBMs and is therefore not counted towards the 12 SSBN total number.
America is currently the only country (other than the UK, whose government might or might not order new submarines and warheads) not modernizing its arsenal of strategic weapons and nuclear warheads. Every other nuclear state is modernizing its arsenal.
That is why 41 American Senators (including even John McCain) declared that they will vote for the START-3 treaty ONLY if Obama enacts a nuclear arsenal modernization program first.
Some of McCain’s fans defend him with the ludicrous arguments: “John McCain is a hero”, “he’s an honorable man”, “he’s been morally tested by Vietnamese torturers”, etc.
But they’re wrong. John McCain is not a hero, nor an honorable man, nor a good man. He’s an immoral political player.
1) John McCain cheated to get to the US Naval Academy. McCain’s high school grades were so bad that he did not qualify for a nomination to any service academy. McCain used his father to get to the Academy. The children of admirals were allowed to study at the Academy regardless of their HS grades.
2) McCain cheated to get to the USN pilot school. McCain’s Academy grades were very low. He graduated 894th as a member of a class of 899 cadets. He did not qualify for the Pilot School (only the best students are allowed to join it), so his father intervened so that the Pilot School would accept McCain.
3) When John McCain was captured, he acted as “a Vietnamese songbird”, according to the Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain group. He revealed military secrets after the Viets promised to take him to a hospital.
4) McCain claims he was a footsoldier during the Reagan Revolution. The fact is that he OPPOSED Reagan’s policies. For example, in 1990, one year after Reagan retired from the White House, McCain voted (together with the Dems) to severely reduce spending on the SDI. In 1993, the SDI program was killed by the Clinton Administration.
5) During the 1980s and the 1990s, John McCain rejected evidence indicating that there were still American POWs in Vietnam and refused to intervene for them. McCain even punched a disabled relative of one of these POWs after leaving a Senate room. McCain shouted angrily at the families of the POWs and at POW liberation advocates during the hearings.
6) McCain was the RINGLEADER of the Keating Five, i.e. the perpetrator of the Keating Five scandal, which cost American taxpayers 160 billion dollars. Charles Keating thus enriched himself with taxpayers’ money. McCain was never punished. The Senate merely reprimanded him. The Senate should’ve expelled him to enable a prosecutor to arrest and prosecute McCain. John McCain belongs in jail, not in the Senate.
7) During the 2000 presidential campaign, McCain falsely called Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance”.
8) During the 2000 presidential election, while speaking to anti-Reagan media, McCain insulted Ronald Reagan by making a cracked joke about people afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. McCain KNEW that Reagan was afflicted with that disease, and KNEW that the media to whom he was pandering hated Ronald Reagan.
9) In 2002, McCain and his buddy Russ Feingold authored the McCain-Feingold Act (“the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act”), which President Bush signed. This Act is a law designed to protect corrupt incumbent lawmakers (such as John McCain) from competitors. A large part of this Act was recently declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court.
John McCain is not a hero nor an honorable man. Period.
Not all DOD budgets are available, but I’ve managed to find several pre-FY1980 DOD budget topline figures, and I’ve converted them to 2009 dollars using the inflation calculator of the DOL’s BLS:
As the table shows, the defense budget grew significantly from FY1961 to FY1968, but was later reduced to a pathetically low level. As per a request of SECDEF James Schlesinger, the budget was later slightly increased by FY1976, but it was still insufficient.
The largest of these budgets was the FY1952 budget ($463.08 bn). It was larger than the first two budgets of the Bush Administration. The first one amounted to $414.79 bn; the second amounted to $425.93 bn. The FY1968 DOD budget was also larger than these two budgets.
So Bush was not the first president to raise defense spending to such a level, and neither was Reagan.
It is remarkable that all of those defense budgets amounted to a higher proportion of GDP than all of the Bush-era defense budgets. During the Bush era, defense spending never exceeded 4% of GDP. During the 1950s, it never fell below 9% of GDP, and during the 1960s, it never fell below 7% of GDP. The FY1968 budget amounted to 9% of GDP. During the Schlesinger era, defense spending never fell below 5% of GDP.
Secretary Schlesinger rightly said during the 1970s that his defense budgets were much smaller than the defense budgets of the 1960s. The FY1974 DOD budget was 23% smaller than the FY1968 DOD budget.
I shall add these figures to my defense spending Excel file later.
A final note: This post doesn’t mean that the Eisenhower Administration was always reducing defense spending. During the years 1953-55, Eisenhower and his SECDEF, Charles Wilson, did reduce defense spending significantly (even though service chiefs, including the USAF Chief of Staff and the US Army Chief of Staff, warned them not to). But in 1955, because of the defense cuts, Eisenhower sacked Wilson, appointed Neil McElroy (succeeded 4 years later by Thomas Gates Jr), and began increasing defense spending. The FY1961 DOD budget was 8.2% larger than the FY1960 DOD budget. Overall, Eisenhower strengthened the US military.
Today, I’ve read the biography of Hoyt Vandenberg, the 2nd Chief of Staff of the USAF. He opposed the policy of draining DOD funds away from armament programs to pay for the Korean War; and he opposed Wilson’s defense cuts (which Wilson implemented), e.g. Wilson’s decision to reduce the USAF’s budget by $5 bn in 1953 dollars.
Vandenberg’s policies are lessons for all politicians. I’ve learned those lessons.
Lesson #1: Necessary wars must be funded in parallel with, not instead of, defense programs (e.g. weapon programs). This means that defense programs must not be cut nor closed to pay for any wars. A war is not an excuse to cut nor close defense programs.
Lesson #2: Defense cuts, regardless what pretexts they’re based on (e.g. the requirement to balance the budget), are wrong.
