Israel sends 3 missiles to intercept intruder drone from Syria… unsuccessfully – medi

Syria sent a drone into Israeli territory. Israel fires 2 patriot missiles and one of their fighters shoots another missile at it.
https://www.rt.com/news/351844-israel-drone-missiles-intercept/

All 3 missiles fail to destroy the drone and it turns around and flies back to Syria.


All of the previous economic/military empires were down due to the increasing cost of of projecting power. Technological innovation leads to military superiority leads to economic hegemony.

The spread of technology then leads to an increase in the cost of projecting power. The empire goes into huge debt trying to maintain its hegemony which results in the decline of the economic/military empire.

The Brits had the gatling gun. With one gunship they could take over an entire African nation fighting back with sticks and stones. Technology spreads. Decades later that African nation gets the gatling gun (think storming hills defended by machine gun turrets in WW2 )

Now instead of one gunship you have to send an entire armada and you will take serious casualties. This is expensive, the cost of projecting power increases with time.

Now think of pissant Iraq. A country that had been decimated by a war a decade earlier and was under an arms embargo ever since. This country was fighting back with outdated and dilapidated 1960's technology and it still broke the bank !

We spend 1 Trillion dollars/year (Total Military Spending) and get almost no return on this investment.

Modern missile technology (like the gatling gun) have rendered our conventional offensive military
equipment obsolete.

A floating city of metal ( Carrier Group) is a sitting duck against modern missile technology. It simply has no good defense.

If we can not shoot down a slow moving drone - despite numerous attempts, how on earth can a carrier group defend itself against a barrage of hyper sonic stealthy, smart anti ship cruise missiles ?

Like shooting fish in a barrel.

In 2000 Total Military Spending was roughly 300 Billion. After 8 years of Bush it had risen to 900 Billion and during 7 years of Obama was over 1 Trillion.

Had we maintained 2000 spending levels (including increase for inflation) we could have freed up 600 Billion/year = 9 Trillion dollars. This could have been spent on technology, infrastructure, education, ramping up our industry to compete in the 3rd millennium.

Instead we threw this money down the toilet based patriotic fantasy tales of military superiority/ military necessity spun by the military head of the multi headed Oligopoly-Bureaucracy Fusion Monster that runs this country.

What a waste.

 

Drones are gonna be scary, anyone can use them

 

Yeah such a waste, lets just hand over the keys to the Drunk teenager (Russia), or the Asian Driver(China)

 

Of course you could always shell the entire area of the drone operator,and level drone factories.

 

Tis the way of the future. The "Rise of the Machines" is upon us. The "smart missiles" I mentioned are part of that evolution. These missiles think and of course you can have missiles that can be piloted (drone missiles).

Read a comment the other day ... was on the "martin armstrong" webside. Was talking about how totalitarian Gov'ts in the past were often toppled by their own military/ security forces. These forces are made up of people and people sometimes turn on their master if they get too corrupt.

What happens when the security force are drones.

 

The drone was not really the point of the post. The point was the inability to project power without breaking the bank/the decreasing ROI.

The fact of the matter is that we can not realistically shell a major power. This is a historical first. For all of humanity if your economy went into the dumps you just raided your neighbor and took his stuff.

Nukes have made war as we knew it obsolete. We simply can not attack a major nuclear power such as Russia without destroying ourselves.

Continuing to live in the fantasy "we are number one and no one can touch us" is seriously endangering our long term economic and military security.

 

Meanwhile China is steadily building its military.

 

This is not a "black and white" picture. Nowhere in the post did I advocate getting rid of military spending all together.

Were we somehow "weak" in 2000 when spending was 300 Billion ? Has increasing that spending to over 1 Trillion done anything to improve things or prevent China and Russia from doing what they are doing ?

You are missing the historical reality = The cost of projecting power increases with time as technology spreads.

Roman Empire, British empire ... went down the tubes for the same reason. The spread of technology made the cost of projecting power too expensive.

The relative power of the pieces on the megapolitical chessboard have changed. The most valuable piece is no longer the Military. Economic is now the most valuable.

China gets it, Russia gets it and we are going to get crushed in the endgame unless we stop living in the "military is the most valuable piece" fantasy.

 

Britain went down the tubes because of WW2 with Germany, not because it over spent on its military...Rome went down after millenia, and then only because of major epidemics, and because of huge influxes of barbarian peoples....again nothing to do with military spending.

I do agree with you going into Iraq, and not taking everything not nailed down as spoils of war was idiotic. If we go invade some place, we should make it worth our while.

 

Of course they are and no amount of spending on our part will change this. They will spend until we are no longer a threat which is not much more.

The point you are not getting is that "We can not attack China or Russia conventionally".

1) Current missile technology will reduce our navy to rubble in short order. Building more aircraft carriers will not change this. The cost of attacking Iraq (who was decimated 10 years early- had an arms embargo ever since - had no desire to fight and was fighting back with 1960's technology) nearly broke the bank.

Small countries like Syria, Iran and others in the ME either have or soon will have Russian S-300/400 missile technology. Pakistan and India have this technology. They will be sinking our ships and/or blowing up our bases should we attack.

China ?? Even if our Navy somehow managed to survive the Chinese missile attack, if we were making any headway against there homeland they would launch tactical nukes against our Navy and the game ends there.

The Global Chessboard has changed. Military no longer the most valuable piece because we can not use it against some of the players and it is to expensive to use against others.

Economic is the most valuable piece. Pretending otherwise is seriously damaging our long term economic and military security.

 

Technological innovation leads to military superiority. Germany capitalized on that one.

Britain was already done by the time Hitler arrived. In the early 1900's Britain's economy was equal with the US. By the time Hitler showed up the US economy was 15 times the size of Britain's economy.

Projecting power becomes prohibitively expensive when the people you are fighting get technology. (see gatling gun example). ,

The same thing happened to Rome (I study this stuff btw - suggested reading "Blood in the Streets and The Great Reckoning" James Dale Davidson and Sir William Reec Moog.

Remember the first scene in "Gladiator" ... Roman's had superior technology and could roll over the Barbarians at will.

Time passed and the Barbarians got/learned that technology. Now Rome had armies spread across the empire and the enemy had become much tougher. It was trying to project power (maintain hegemony) against an increasingly technologically adept adversary that led to Rome's decline (and every other military empire ... Assyrian, Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian, Persian, Greek .....)

We are suffering exactly the same fate.

After the wall fell ( and part of the reason why the wall fell) was that Russia's economy was in the tank. they realized they could not keep up to the US - ship per ship, plane per plane.

What they did was focus on niche technologies such as missiles. In the 90's they came out with the "Sunburn" anti ship missile. Super sonic cruise missile that skim over the sea (At least a decade ahead of anything the US had at the time).

When this thing breaks the horizon the ship had 45-50 seconds to react. At the time we had no defense.

Now these missiles are hypersonic, stealthy, and smart ( conduct evasive maneuvers prior to impact). These are missiles that think. The increased speed reduces the reaction time to 25-30 seconds (best case).

We have developed better missiles to defend ourselves with as well but, this is not the point.

How many missiles can one build for the price of one plane or aircraft carrier group ? That is the point.

The Phalanx (the only real defense these ships have) if it manages to hit a few missiles (not guaranteed) is now out of ammo. The next barrage of 10 missiles results in sunken ships. The barrage after that ... and the barrage after that and the barrage after that.

You can build a whole lot of missiles for the price of one carrier group.

We never should have gone into Iraq. Saddam was no threat to the homeland and was completely contained. It was a multi Trillion dollar fckup for which we got nothing in return except for thousands of dead soldiers and tens of thousands injured which has caused our VA spending to go through the roof such that is already have a huge impact on defense spending.

We should be focusing on new technology (yes, some of it military) and not on building mass amounts of already obsolete technology and hundreds of bases all over the planet. What is it now ... 800 ? What do we need bases in France and Germany for ?

Economic and Technology is the strongest piece on the chessboard.

We are still the main economic power by far (others are catching up quick so time is limited). Now is the time rebuild our infrastructure and technology apparatus to compete in the 3rd millennium.

We do not need to spend 1 Trillion/year to keep a few **********s at bay.

 

When did we do that?

 

And Barack Obama wrote the law how they can be used.

And as the Obama administration rewrote the definition of who's a combatant, if your close enough to be killed or wounded by a Hellfire missile, you are a combatant and a legitimate target.

Obama had to do something to get his collateral damage numbers down.

 

Let them, it will do them about as much good as it does us

If they ever do try to invade us all it will get them is about a billion dead Chinese. Nukes kill a million as easily as one

 

Never forget 1/3 of America is armed as well.

 

1845, the Mexican American war- a belated response to the Panic of 1837

1941. WWII,- though we had to goad our victims into war with us.

 

Who will make no difference, as no overseas invader will ever even get here.

I really don't see how everyone is all hung up on America being impossible to invade entirely because we have an armed populace.. Lots of countries have/had that, such as Russia in WWII. Armies deal quite readily with armed people, that being, in fact, what they do.

 

Prolly already have anti-drone drones in the works.

- - - Updated - - -

Yep, only Mexico has invaded us.

 

If you call answering our clarion call for illegal immigrants and drugs an "invasion", I guess so. I was referring to armed hostilities.

 

Please .. do us all a favor and go back to the children's area. This topic is clearly out of your depth.

 

The reason countries do not invade nuclear superpowers is because they are nuclear superpowers.

 

They're not doing it to impress us rather to project their weak military in the South Pacific so as to thwart claims from smaller nations of ownership of shoals and islands. Point is, they know they can't project their power beyond a week's travel as they don't have the political assets to find a port in every second nation to repair, refuel, pick up food, water, allow shore leave for their men.

It's all for local use.

 

Of course it is for local use. They want to project power in their local region.

This has nothing to do with the point however (even cherry picked as it is).

 

Then why did you state that they were spending till we were no longer a treat to them the. As that is what I replied to.

 

Revealing that you couldn't string together a few words and identify the last time we "raided your neighbor and took his stuff", and as usual, you try to switch the topic to me instead.