Obama's War Machine for the 21st Century

[Neil]

Eliminating the Air Force would be a good first step.

[Razgovory]

Such as increasing the neutron flux within a uranium casing?

I'm trying to remember where I heard that phrase "neutron flux".  Is that what makes an A bomb an H bomb?

[Ideologue]

Such as increasing the neutron flux within a uranium casing?

I'm trying to remember where I heard that phrase "neutron flux".  Is that what makes an A bomb an H bomb?

More or less.  The tritium and deuterium is compressed to fusion temperatures and pressures by a primary device, and the fusion of tritium and deuterium generates neutrons, which increases the rate and efficiency of fission.  In regular Gadget-style A-bombs (e.g. the Hiroshima bomb), only a small percentage of the fissile material is actually fissioned, wasting a lot of the explosive potential.  Tellar-Ulam fission-fusion-fission designs waste a lot less.

[Razgovory]

Okay.  See, I try not to look these things up.

[jimmy olsen]

SO we cut down because we didn't need to fight the Soviets.

Then we had GF1, and we gutted that force because we would never have to fight a regional power like that again.

Then we had GF2, and Afghanistan, so we cut down to focus more on those kinds of counter-insurgency wars.

Now it seems that we are confident we won't ever have to fight a war like that again, so we can cut some more, because there is no way we would ever need the kinds of numbers on the ground necessary to fail at keeping the peace in Afghanistan.

But don't worry, we are still going to be the pre-eminent military power, capable of fighting and winning...well, some kind of war anyway. Just nothing large enough to require the massive numbers of combat troops deployed to Afghanistan.

He cautioned that  "it would be really a mistake for ... anyone to walk  away with the impression that we're going to niche ourselves to some  point on the spectrum of conflict and declare ourselves a global power."

I think that is exactly what we are going to do.

Which perhaps is fine - maybe the US can be done doing the worlds dirty work. But we can at least be honest about it.

The army will by the same size as it was in 2001. That's certainly a big enough force for small interventions, and big enough to serve as a base for a rapidly growing force if we get involved in a more serious conflict.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Don't listen to Brain.  He's got a fissile bias.

(Although fusion's got some serious issues.  Generating and maintaining sufficient temperatures and pressures is a huge problem; so is neutron flux from D-T and D-D fusion processes; He-3 is aneutronic but isn't plentiful enough on Earth--and yields less eV per reaction as well iirc.)

Fusion has a number of great applications. Power just isn't one of them.

It's the source of like 99% of all power on earth.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The campaign to crack down on Pentagon waste and inefficiency has been going on since the five walls first went up in the 40s.  It would be nice if big savings could be wrung of it.  Just like it would be nice to have peace between Israelis and Palestinians, or workable nuclear fusion.  I'm all for the effort but practical, real world planning does not permit assuming such conjectural savings.

Right, it's the same way we talk about Social Security reform or reforming the tax code. All of us agree it would be nice if it happened, but I don't think any of us are holding our breath. You get into a big part of the Federal government like the DoD and start trying to reform things, and it gets ugly. It costs a lot of political capital for very small amounts of gain, not to mention you make enemies of people in the defense industrial complex who sometimes have the means and the access to hurt you badly later on.