The Crumbling Foundation of America’s Military

[Timber Rattler]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/the-crumbling-foundation-of-america-s-military/ar-AA1w1O6h

Here, in the third decade of the 21st century, the most sought-after ammunition in the U.S. arsenal reaches the vital stage of its manufacture—the process tended by a young woman on a metal platform on the second story of an old factory in rural Iowa, leaning over a giant kettle where tan flakes of trinitrotoluene, better known as the explosive TNT, are stirred slowly into a brown slurry.

(snip)

The Iowa production line is at once essential and an exemplar of industrial atrophy. It illustrates why the richest military on Earth could not keep up with the demand for artillery ammunition after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. At that time, the U.S. was manufacturing about 14,000 shells a month. By 2023, the Ukrainians were firing as many as 8,000 shells a day. It has taken two years and billions of dollars for the U.S. to ramp up production to 40,000 shells a month—still well short of Ukraine’s needs. A big part of the reason is that we still make howitzer rounds the way our great-grandparents did. There are better, faster, safer ways. You can watch videos online of automated plants, for example, operating in Europe. Some new American facilities are starting up, but they are not yet at capacity.

The problem isn’t just howitzer shells. And it isn’t only that the U.S. can’t build drones, rockets, and missiles fast enough to meet the needs of Ukraine. America itself lacks stockpiles of the necessary components. A massive rebuilding effort is now under way, the largest in almost a century, but it will not—cannot—happen fast. And even the expanded capacity would not come close to meeting requests the size of Ukraine’s, much less restore our own depleted reserves. Take drones, for instance. In December 2023, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, called for the domestic production of 1 million annually to meet war needs—and Ukraine has met that goal. In the meantime, the supply of drones provided by the U.S. to Ukraine has numbered in the thousands, and many of those have not fared as well on the battlefield as Ukraine’s homemade, often jerry-rigged models and off-the-shelf Chinese drones. Other allies have stepped up with materiel of many kinds—artillery, armored vehicles, aircraft—but fighters in Ukraine are still coping with disabling shortages.

EXCERPT

[jafo2010]

So, our enemies know we are back to pre WWII ineffective, incompetent, paralyzed approaches to our national security.  Is this really a surprise to any one?

So, when is our next Pearl Harbor?  We have enough Chinese nationals in the lower 48 to readily seize this nation, and yet, no one raises it as an issue.  We have Chinese nationals who are students at our universities attempting to make incursions into our military bases, and no one does a thing to secure our nation.  Once again, the Roosevelt malaise of inviting our enemies to come and destroy us.

These are dangerous times, and our government leaders are asleep at the wheel.

[jafo2010]

And along with the crumbling of our military, how long before the next planned pandemic is released upon the global population?  HOW LONG?  COVID was just the 1st of many planned bio weapons released to reduce the human population.