What a difference a fortnight can make.
As this one began we had to decide: should we start working on the next newspaper, or just write a will?
Admittedly, when it comes to assessing threat levels in various situations, our worst-case scenarios may be particularly vivid. That can happen when your prefrontal cortex matures under circumstances in which continued existence is clearly a matter of chance. We would argue, though, that our sense of looming dread was hardly without foundation.
Thousands of Marines were already in the Gulf. More were on their way. The 82nd Airborne got orders to join them. What the future might hold for them was anyone’s guess; but at that stage, it’s safe to say they all still had their full complement of feet. Boots on the ground, anyone?
Armchair admirals and keyboard warriors have been spoiled for nearly 20 years. Their fantasies of American exceptionalism and military dominance have been enabled by a fleet of Reapers: remotely-controlled flying death machines.
For the low, low price of $30 million a pop, these gizmos empower our actual generals to order our low-ranking enlisted personnel to surveil foreign targets—foreign for now, anyway—become familiar with their habits, then send down a $175,000 Hellfire missile and scatter bits of their corpses all over their backyards.
It’s a curious form of combat. Prior to detonation, the defeated party may not be aware he’s engaged in a battle. He may not even be eligible for elimination. When foreign armies are in your country, there are few more effective means of resolving disputes than denouncing your neighbor as a [fill-in-the-blank].
The victor, meanwhile, is unscathed. Physically, at least. At command levels the question is, can the mission be accomplished, or has that soldier been rendered unfit by the proverbial paper cut? Nor is the overall well-being of our drone operators likely to be a matter of great concern among members of our enlisted infantry. Fair enough. Considering who’s at the upper end of their chain of command, they have more immediate concerns.
Eventually, though, barring intervention by World War Three or an Artificial Intelligence Armageddon, our hard-chargin’ operators and chairbound warriors seeking relief from the moral injuries will have plenty of time to compare notes as they wait in line to make appointments to wait in another line. Last year the Bone Spur Administration eliminated 35,000 health care positions at the already-understaffed VA.
For what it’s worth, the problem of what to do with morally-conflicted Reaper operators may have been partially solved for us—by our enemies. To better understand how, let’s look to history. During World War Two, German U-boat commanders had what they called a “Happy Time.” From January into August, 1942, they were able to range up and down our eastern seaboard virtually undetected. For every U-boat we sank, the Germans destroyed 27 of our ships.
Now our Reapers “Happy Time” seems to be over. Those tea-totalling Iranians sounded “Last Call” when they down more than a dozen of them. That represents an investment of $200 million, enough to have built four hospitals, if we’d heeded the advice given 73 years ago by the guy who took Normandy away from the Nazis:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. … This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
The Reapers are but a drop in the Department of Macho Posturing’s bottomless bucket. Recently three F-15E Strike Eagles were shot down over Kuwait—by our allies, no less—during Operation Epic Futility. The crews reportedly ejected safely, but that’s literally $100 million up in smoke. Not to worry, though. We have a couple hundred more where they came from.
AWACs are a whole ’nother matter. During the peak of the Cold War, Boeing built sixty-eight of these ungainly rigs. Looking like a 707 hanging from a pancake, the E-3 Sentry was built to tote an Airborne Warning and Control System. Due to the high cost of maintenance, our inventory of them has since been greatly reduced.
Until recently we had 16 of these birds. Only eight or nine AWACS can be kept mission-capable at a time, though. Six of them were at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia last Friday. Then, suddenly, there were five. An Iranian missile and drone attack took a massive bite out of one, right where the pancake used to be.
Naturally the Pentagon had a plan in the works to replace what seems in retrospect to have been a sitting duck. They have plans for everything except getting out of wars, and not getting into them in the first place.
A fleet of new and improved Boeing E-7 Wedgetails would have cost us roughly $1 billion each. For a moment it seemed we might be spared that expense. A certain top-ranking official decided to take another route towards a safer world—straight up. His grandiose proclivities, though, and the name of this new whizbang, suggest we’ll end up spending more, not less.
The Golden Dome option is Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars dream brought to fruition: thousands of space-based weapons in low-earth orbit. (Just add AI and shazam: SKYNET!) Due to atmospheric drag and orbital decay, these killer satellites will require frequent replacement, exemplifying planned obsolescence.
While it has largely abandoned its Constitutional duties, Congress has retained its ability to shovel currency into the coffers of campaign donors. So, last November it allocated another $400 million for the Wedgetail program. As the meme says, “Why not both?” So much profligate spending, so little space. We never even got to the USS Ford, the most expensive warship ever built, now sidelined by errant dryer lint.
Now our deadline fast approaches. It appears our optimistic hunch was right. Despite the lavish spread of big-boy toys before him, President Bombast, whose demeanor, as it cycles from soporific to agitated, screams frontotemporal dementia with a side order of pharmaceutical fog, has spared us to fret another fortnight. Hallelujah!