AngstOfThePeople wrote:

"the navy and army both do climate research to better prepare for diverse battlefield missions. Keep in mind too, most of the research gear that makes its way to the scientific community and to the public, is actually first tested and developed by the military."

The idea that military spending pays off in civilian technology is basically false. As long as the technology developed by the military is useful, it is kept top secret so real or potential enemies can not benefit from our military research. By the time the technology filters out into the civilian world, it is pretty much obsolete - last generation technology - and has been replaced by newer top secret technology in the military.

In addition, the military draws scientific talent and vast amounts of R&D money away from the public and private sectors, so that, while other countries are able to use these resources to develop new technology that goes directly to the the marketplace and the benefit of society at large, the U.S. is weakening its civilian and university research efforts in order to feed the military - more accurately, the private defense contractors who grow obscenely fat feeding at the Pentagon's trough. Even work done in universities and private research labs is often funded by, and immediately co-opted by the military and buried under their cloak of top secrecy.

dderry, you make a good point.

If the government "can't be trusted to spend your money" on important social welfare and infrastructure projects, what magically makes it trustworthy to spend far, far more of our money competently on military contractors and the giant defense and homeland security complex?

The wingnuts can't have it both ways (though somebody needs to tell them this).

Besides, there is something unseemly about the descendants of patriots who once cried "Give me Liberty or Give Me Death!" to be whining and mewling, "Take my money, take my Liberties, just protect my admittedly unworthy life and keep my cowardly ass safe."

And, that's what all too many Americans now call "patriotism." Its enough to cause the Founding Fathers to rise from their graves and beat these cowards like a rented mule. God, these faux patriots are nauseating enough to knock a buzzard off a guts wagon.

Fascinating how "conservatives" like angstofthepeople are all for "small government" and personal responsibility not handouts until it comes to taking 270 bucks from every man, woman and child in the U.S. for this sort of useless boondoggle. I'd far rather give the 270 to a straight up wino bum at least they aren't pretentious douchebags like most self proclaimed small government conservatives.

Back in the USSR there was a great joke, understand that a young Soviet conscript had the choice of serving two years in the army or three in the navy.

When asked in which branch Yuri wanted to serve he said Navy; Afghanistan has no ports.

81 Billion on a sub? Man, that's an expensive little toy. All for a critter that ain't gonna be around much more than 30 years from now...

being as submarines are a vital part of surveillance and operational support, I think the price is commeasureate with its obvious return on investment. while Al Qaeda has no Navy, subs can be used to deploy weapons systems such as hellfires and nuclear missiles from great distances, supporting ground and air forces. Submarines can also carry a myriad of climate study instruments essential for research and yes, supporting operational units throughout the world.

Stories like this make it difficult not to wish for a total collapse of the US economy and system of government. The longer it goes on, the more likely it will all end very badly, for the people of the US and the world.

Gosh, that's only $270 per American. I wanna get some photos of this baby for the "Serious Malinvestments Collector Card Series".

If you don't like the "leadership" of money from your wallet into the MIC funnel done especially well by Reagan and Bush II, then you need to be very worked up about defeating McCain. Since that cannot be done with either Hillary Clinton or Ralph Nader, all your hopes this time are pinned on that self-described "skinny kid with a funny name." I know half the people at CD don't like that, but it's true nonetheless.

Mr Scheer,A fantastic and timely article.Of course "Electric Boat" in Connecticut would get the contract,and that would be political grease for Joes next election bid.Your third paragraph is spot on.With a huge nuclear submarine fleet in service you would think that we could deal with a land locked non-navy ,non army with a box cutter arsenal.As you pointed out the trillions for the M.I.C. are a gift that keeps on giving for........ decades.Unfortunately it keeps on taking ,from all of us for decades as well.
Angstofthepeople,do you really think the U.S. sub fleet is doing "climate" research ? impeach for peace

Read TECHNOWAR by Bill Gibson and replace the word Vietnam with Iraq and you see the inner workings of a modern empire. It's also evident that our empire is in rapid decline and that use of force is now political. Enemies will be manufactured to justify the means to kill them. It works for a while, but eventually an empire will eat itself.
Hoa binh

actually I do. the navy and army both do climate research to better prepare for diverse battlefield missions. Keep in mind too, most of the research gear that makes its way to the scientific community and to the public, is actually first tested and developed by the military.

The good news is that military spending has so effectively bankrupted the American economy that the average "consumer" can no longer afford to go shopping !

A line from a Prairie Home Companion sketch:

"Of course we need a strong military. Why, we're making more and more enemies all the time!"

The point that the author is trying to make here, in addition to how much Americans waste trying to buy perfect security, is that in the current conflict with al-Qaeda and its Fascislam fellows, a submarine is the wrong weapon with which to control what the guys at the Pentagon call the "battlespace."

Food aid, health clinics, education (for girls as well as boys), and the like will do much more good than anything that goes "bang."

AngstOfThePeople;
How many subs do you have now?

Your post about the military researching the environment is quite amusing, given their propensity to drop weapons like 'agent orange' the odd nuke, or the environmental consequences of a nuke sub sinking; not to mention the effects of conventional munitions which either go down with sinking ships, or get dumped into the auggie when they're past their expiration date.

skippyagogo41,

There is actually a grain of truth in that statement about the military doing the initial research on a wide variety of subjects. That is because the military gets the lion's share of federal money for research. And when they discover, often inadvertently, any technology with non-military benefits, we might get something positive out of it. It is like a Rube Goldberg version of government at work.

skippy, all im saying is that as a weapons delivery platform and surveillance tool, submarines are essential to military operations.

Watch out, one al-Quida operative, floating on a aircraft tire, inner tube, armed with with an RPG, is gonna take out that sub. Next thing you know, they,ll be landing on our shores. ___ We're doomed.

"Stories like this make it difficult not to wish for a total collapse of the US economy and system of government."

Kivals,
I gave up resisting that urge a long time ago.

This military spending is an outrage that will bankrupt this country. The Congress has decided to repay the lobbyists that get them reelected with vast contracts for military systems that either don't work or don't protect us. I don't know how much pain the American people will have to endure before they realize just how much damage mis-allocated funding choices are doing to this country.
So many Americans seem to be going through their lives in a trance-like state either apathetic or desensitized to the madness and deterioration of their government and standard of living. I wonder what kind of shock it'll take to jar them out of their passivity.
Seeing now how endeared to the military industrial complex our politicians are, 9/11 needs to be fully revisited. The event seems to have created unprecedented opportunities for the private sector to enrich themselves at the national security trough. Like all excesses, sooner or later things will correct, but the longer we wait the more drastic the pain. In the meantime, they will get away with all that they can.

last I checked, China and Russia still had an expanding submarine fleet. that we make ours more technically advanced simply means that we are doing what needs to be done to keep ahead of them.

Yeah; God Forbid America was checked in any way.

well, id rather our military be ahead of the game than behind it.

Too bad the game is playing with itself, there is only behind and it's up our financial TAXa$$es

Defense bribes... er, payoffs... er, contributions, '08 (so far):

HRC - $220,275. She's Number 1!!!

BO - $136,045. Number 7 with a bullet!

Ralph Nader - $0.00

Ron Paul - $0.00

Hmmm... a coupla of those fine candidates keep talking about "change" - apparently, not taking war profits from corrupt scumbags doesn't fall into the category of "change."

Oh, that's right, those "change" candidates also insist that they can take the bribe and stand tough against the briber, too. All-riiiiiiighty, then...

If "terrorism" really were a "threat to our very freedoms" (as GWB said after 9/11), it would be well worth it to delay spending on submarines and pour every dollar into the subjugation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The fact that we have not done so demonstrates that the game we're playing is not "Defense of Democracy"... it's "Expansion of Empire".

In that game, nuclear subs, fighter jets, and missile defense are all essential - because our real rivals are Russia, China and the European Union.

Those pesky mountain rebels out in the colonies are just a sideshow.

They lie to me
They lie to you
They lie to our troops

For those of you who wonder what is next on the Islamofascist's list of "terror weapons" see:

http://www.derfcity.com/n/newtoon1.html

Really, go look--we all need a little chuckle today--Nine months till we get a new team in the White House--What will Beth Quinn have to write about after that!

2034 just proves a point...

"...make it difficult not to wish for a total collapse of the US economy and system of government." Kivals, you've echoed a feeling that is felt by many concerned people around the world.

America has lost the plot. In its ambition to dominate the world it has embraced the madness of Hitler against whom it once fought. Ironic, isn't it?

Question is: should the rest of the world stand by and let it happen? I think not. We need to join together, force the monster that America has become back into its hole before it destroys us all.

P.S. My latest post is called "Please Help Us To Stop Killing."

www.dangerouscreation.com

Good points: RAY DONDRASUK, PANGOLIN, VINLANDER & Y2COCKROACH

DAVID GRAYLING: My thoughts ran parallel with yours, and it seems to me the World Court should SUE the U.S. military industrial complex for its varied and sundried ways and means to secure funds for dubious weapons systems that WILL kill people, generally innocent civilians as the numbers from the present (and past) wars indicate. Just as police can sometimes offset a violent crime by noting the proliferation of evidence, the military industrial complex of the US is one murdering machine that intends to keep on giving it to the world. SOME body of power must stand up to it, as our congress people (and the states many represent) are beholden to this death machine!

OK, I need someone to tell me how "they" are going to take us over.

Are they going to invade?

I can't see how. Muster a large enough invasion force to cross one or more oceans and militarily sieze the territory from an armed populace?

Seems unlikely.

Well, if they DON'T invade, how do we get taken over?

Now, I am AM clear that it is possible that someone could carry out some sort of terrorist attack inside the U.S. I mean, maybe they could even, in the worst possible scenario, detonate a nuclear weapon in a major city. An incredibly horrible possibility.

But even if they did, what do you think would happen?

Would we throw up our hands, fall to our knees and tearfully greet our conquerers?

I don't think so.

So tell me: How can we lose our country?

Unless we fundamentally alter it ourselves, surrendering our civil liberties, abandoning our human rights values, investing increasingly secretive power in a burgeoning and increasingly authoritarian and unresponsive central government, pour ever larger parts of our national treasury into warmaking, and borrow ever greater sums of money from entities hostile to our values.

Oh ...

To put it in layman's terms, that $81 billion sub is $270 for every man, woman and fetus in America. But hey, no problem, just put it on the federal credit card.

This new "Super" Nuclear Submarine is really "DARTH" Lieberman's version of a "Death Star.

It can be stealthily positioned to threaten every nation on the planet. .This will restart the arms race. Russia, India, nor China can let the United States or Israel have this unchallenged superiority.

The NeoCon Gang and the Jewish Lobby both want Global Military Dominance........this high tech WMD will destroy the world.........

Pay attention to angst of the people. He is the enabler that the government uses to rob the people. The mind set of this poster is exactly what they are counting on to make more and more money. There will always be suckers like this who fall for this line of reasoning and open up their wallets thinking its the right thing to do. Classical scam. A sucker born every minute. They think going to the moon was worth it because Nasa developed Teflon on that crusade, as if Teflon could not have been invented any other way. Ok, spend billions on going to the moon and get a few rocks, pictures,pride, and....Teflon.

I agree "lizard"; the amount of money that has been poured into the military-industrial complex over the past forty years has only served to divert precious resources from the economy, and has left the United States with a deficit in education, in health care and in standard of living (that is of course aside from the monstrous national deficit/debt that gold-plated funding of the DoD has contributed to). The American preferred solution to international problems has become one of throwing either bombs or money at them, and the likes of Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics have been only too happy to oblige that sentiment (and to them you can now add the likes of Haliburton, Blackwater, Triple Canopy, etc.). These companies exist to make money, and they necessarily feed on the fear that our government has peddled, and on the nonsense that sycophants such as "Angst OfThePeople" serve up. Without a doubt these past five years have truly been the salad days for war profiteers in America; if and when sanity returns to the U.S. budget proceess people might look back on this time and marvel at the phenomenon that was the targeted, and systematic looting of the U.S. Treasury during the period 2001-2009. In particular, the idea that military spending is the vehicle by which technological advancements come to serve the general public in civilian life, and that somehow this is money well spent is exactly the lie that this GAO report tries to unmask. One wonders what the GAO would have to print in order to get those such as AngstOfThePeople to figure it out.

The $81G is to develop and buy 30 subs, therefore they would be $2.7G each before cost overruns, more likely 1.5X to 2X that if the program goes through.

These subs, and the F-22 and F-35, are not for the purpose of defending the US. Their purpose is to kill overseas, for the benefit of international corporations and a few other special interests, such as Israel. One effect of having these weapons is that they will be used, create enemies, and weaken the military security of the US. Of course, they greatly weaken the financial security of the US due to their cost.

AngstOfThePeople: Russia's sub fleet has a long way to go to catch up to the US fleet. Much of it rusted away and is in bad condition. Remember the Kursk? The Chinese do not really have all that much either. US anti-submarine defense has been greatly eroded in the last 15 years, despite a massive increase in DOD* spending, because the US Navy does not consider the threat to be significant. The fact that the Navy is far more oriented toward offensive capability than defensive capability is another reason.

*The idea of calling it Defense spending is ridiculous, even with the capitol D as a qualifier of defense.

What I still want to know about is the three trillion that the pentagon was reported to have "lost" right befor 9/11.

I'll bet that for the cost overruns on the Joint Strike Fighter you could fund enough free ski/mountaineering academies in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan to occupy all potential suicide bombers.

well, id rather our military be ahead of the game than behind it.

Is there anywhere in the world but especially Iraq and Afghanistan that the military is NOT ahead of the game ?

Second question : Is there anywhere in the world but again , especially... that the military is winning ?

From the David/Goliath to Greeks/Persians to Afghans/British to Vietcong/Americans the ultimate victory goes to home field of usual military inferiority.

Remember Angst... insanity can be attributed to a person repeating the same behaviour thinking that "results will be different this time" like if only we keep our military strong , things will turn out better this time. Have another glass of kool-aid.

Idiots. Every sub in the ocean could be cleared in a matter of months by any nation willing to deploy robotic gliders armed with torpedo warheads. These superquiet robots are used for research now and can travel hundreds of miles in days using only solar power and gravity.

Oh look they've got a wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Underwater_Vehicle

So much for massive military force. The same goes for those super-fighters, robot fighters piloted by an Ipod could out-distance, out-speed and out-fly any manned craft. The days of the big plane Air Force are numbered.

In Iraq $500K armored vehicles are regularly taken out by $100 explosively formed penetrators that can literally be made from materials found at the local Home Depot (note: requires a masters in chemistry and suicide wish)

The whole point of the military industrial complex is to produce profit vehicles. Submarines and fighter aircraft make for easier poifit vehicles as they are complicated and make for good Tom Clancy movies. This makes it easier to sucker "patriotic" idiots back home.

We've lost the war as well we should if nothing more than the sin of leaving our citizens to live in the streets while houses sit empty due to the fraud of wealthy elites. We can't hold Iraq and Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. It's all over but the crying.

To justify looting the treasury while giving taxpayer dollars to the death and destruction machine, an enemy has to be created. The boogeyman stories scared us when we were children and as adults, we fall for the same scare tactics. When you don't have representative government, you wind up with a regime like the current one in office. The Senate and the House might as well go home and find honest jobs because they have reneged on their oaths after being sworn in.

I'm only an amateur historian, but to me the USA in the early 21st Century is beginning to resemble Spain mid way through the 16th, ie. a full armoury - but a less than empty treasury.

The USA's July 1936 could be nearer than we think.

How can it be considered a waste? Our global corporations make a ton of profit. Money is sucked from the tax payer to feed the beast. The money paid to China and OPEC for oil gets recycled back to loan the government the money it needs to buy more toys, the interest being paid for with your taxes.

At the end of the day, when we are bankrupt, government will confiscate everyones gold and we will sell off our military which has been increasing in value as is the gold, and then the UN's IMF which will pay off our debts to the countries we owe the money to.

The new global government will be run by the same people who run America today (not all of them Americans), but we get Left behind while they move to London. Bush will move to his farm in Paraguay, and all will live happily ever after, except for those who do not. Maybe Gore will be the new President and he can collect the carbon tax for our global government to make sure we do not rebuild our economy out of fears of Global Warming.

"The new global government will be run by the same people who run America today'

I ask this as a Third Worlder ,who has never set foot in the US (nor ever wants to):

Going by all that one reads in the media , isn't Obama expected to change all this - in particular , cutting US corporate vested interests to size and empowering the people -once he is elected .

Remember, the government cannot be trusted to spend your money to feed the hungry. It cannot be trusted to spend your money to house the homeless. It cannot be trusted to spend your money to educate your children. It cannot be trusted to spend your money to insure that at the end of a long career laboring for the good of the "owners" you can relax and live out your final years in decency. It cannot be trusted to spend your money to maintain the roads and other infrastructure that once made this a great nation. In short, your government cannot be trusted to spend your money in any way that would benefit you or your fellow Americans.

But if you feel that your government is not spending enough of your money to 'keep you safe', then you are Un-American; you *must* be on the side of those who "hate our freedoms"!

RJKT

Here's my opinion:

We find our government teetering on the edge of Fascism, if not already slipped over the edge.

Obama, or any other person elected to the presidency, enters a system already in full throated operation. One person or party may advance a visionary agenda, and the entrenched forces at work already pull toward continuing to do just what they are doing.

Personally, I am convinced that the system will continue to alternately limp and lope along as the interests who run it see fit to have it do.

If we gradually, over years, precinct by county by state implement a voting system that actually can be accountable for accurate counting and, when necessary, recounting, we MIGHT gradually take the country back.

Short of that it will take either a revolt or some sort of actual invasion or a natural catastrophe on a scale we haven't seen in human history (resources dry up, the ocean rises twenty five feet, that kind of stuff) to bust this up to the point where it might be remade fairly.

By the way ... I like Obama ... He's not America's savior, and America isn't yours there in the third world. We, and you, are on our own. We will either do it or not.

Power never relents willingly.

and that's what it looks like to me.

Good point from BlueSun,

The term "Brain Drain" used to refer to foreign students who came to study in the U.S. and never went home.

We have another kind of Brain Drain to deal with. The best and brightest of our engineering students disappear into the military-industrial complex, where their talents are devoted to producing cruise missles and spy satellites.

Japan's best and brightest produce hybrid cars, Germany's produce wind turbines and solar cells...

I guess we can always bomb their universities again and force their students to come study at UCLA and Princeton.

Good points about Obama too.

The struggle for peace and justice won't end when he gets elected. He's merely less compromised than the other candidates, and the system is waiting to entangle him even further.

"A Submarine to Fight al-Qaida's Navy"

Well, given Al Qaeda is a covert U.S. op. and organisation, ....

Does anyone pay attention to the people pushing for war and massive defense spending? The majority of our "think tanks" and presidential shadow advisors come from a certain country and it aint France.

I quess we need these submarines to help bring "democracy" to "those that hate us for our freedoms" over there.Otherwise those terrorists may try to bring us "democracy" over here!At least we can debunk that global warming nonsense once and for all with all those sophisticated weather instruments onboard.Then we can burn all that liberated Iraqi oil and enjoy the many benefits of democracy!Four thousand commas ,and not a question mark in sight! peas in and out