Challenges Most of us, if not all, face a lot of challenges in life. Sometimes they are life shattering, other times they have to do with employment opportunities or social connections to name a few. Some of the worst have to do with watching a loved one die and not being able to do anything to stop the process. You never get over that one and believe me I know since I experienced it a several times. If you live long enough, there is the challenge of old age, which can be trying to live alone outside of a facility. But none of these challenges is what I want to talk about today. What I would like to mention is how our military and intelligence organizations are going to pot. The challenge of restoring these agencies and trying to make up for terrible leadership of so many government agencies has affected our defense capabilities. If you want proof just look at all the drones in our skies going anywhere they want and swarming over our bases, towns and our important utilities. I am writing this article on 12 December 2024 and by the time it is posted I hope things are starting to change. When the FBI or Defense Department were asked about them, they said basically they knew nothing about where they came from, what they wanted, and yet had the nerve to say they didn’t seem to be dangerous when they knew nothing about them. They certainly could be dangerous and from everything I have heard they were big drones capable of carrying munitions or deadly gas. This is just systematic of how the government is operating. I would have thought President Biden would have liked to leave on a positive note like solving this problem or at the least, giving the order to shoot down the drones and find out where they are coming from. One thing is obvious to me and that is the fact a drone can be used in an assassination attempt. We have had enough of these already and it strains credibility that these drones are being allowed to go anywhere they want, much like the Chinese balloon did. Talk about challenges, our military is not in the best shape and some parts cannot get enough volunteers because of the current policies. We have let things slip. Take for example the hypersonic missiles Russia and China have and which technology might be given to North Korea due to the pact between North Korea and Russia. It seems we are still in the testing stage and to me it doesn’t look like we are in a rush to get any. It is important to note it is not only the fact we lack them, but we certainly don’t want our adversaries thinking they are far enough ahead of us they can now do anything they want to anybody or any country. Yes, there is that psychological component to this also. We have to examine every facet of our defense and in the parts we are lacking, we have to speed up the development of new and advanced weapons. One thing which is true about this country is if we fully unleash innovation, marvelous things will happen, and I am not just talking about weapons development, although right now that and security are the two most important things, because without them nothing else could safely be pursued. There has to be a list of priorities and I think the incoming president may have that, and it should list what has to be done in the order of importance, with things that protect America listed first. We certainly don’t want the United States to become the next Ukraine. Speaking of Ukraine I saw where a Ukrainian said they never should have given up their nuclear weapons. I thought to myself if they hadn’t there is a chance they never would have been invaded. It proved once again you can’t trust the Russian government who had said they would protect them. Everything is getting faster in most traveling weapons, except for some planes which have sacrificed speed for stealth. Is this a good tradeoff? It could be if stealth was perfect, but we keep hearing and reading that new methods are being developed to detect stealth aircraft. I have talked about an announcement which was made in Australia years ago which stated they figured out how to detect stealth planes at the time, but I imagine stealth is an evolving technology and keeps improving and so does detection. It is almost like the Jules Verne story, From the Earth to the Moon, written in 1865. It starts out two men were competing against each other. One developed munitions, the other armor. The munitions kept getting more powerful and then the armor would be improved. To shoot down drones we need to create a weapon which could take down a swarm of drones with one shot. We had an antiaircraft missile in the 1960s which was designed to take down a fleet of planes, but unfortunately it was nuclear. The idea was to explode a nuke in the center of a group of planes. Something which is non-nuclear is needed. Parts of the U.S. Navy have to be rethought. I don’t want to repeat what I have said before, but with all the advancements in torpedoes, submarines and surface ships, maybe it is time to think about increasing the number of frigates, which while smaller but still pack a punch with today’s weapons. A frigate is smaller than a destroyer. The smallest proper war ship is considered the corvette, which the navy has not built corvettes in a very long time. Maybe this should also be reconsidered. The torpedo problem should be reconsidered. We need torpedoes which can travel at hundreds of miles per hour, such as the Russian torpedoes, but they must be more accurate. We could easily increase the size of our submarine fleet by building the new silent conventual subs which are three times cheaper than one nuclear sub and now have the ability to remain under water for 3 weeks. All our attack craft have to become hypersonic; it is just the way things are headed and we certainly do not want to fall behind. If we had a very fast hypersonic fighter plane it might not need stealth because its speed would be its protection. This would mean it would have to be so fast it could outrun a hypersonic missile. It seems flying at altitude is no longer a protection against missiles which can now even reach low orbit in some cases. Yes, it is time to take inventory of what we have for defense and note where the improvements are needed.
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