I was over at the Investor’s Business Daily website for my Michael Ramirez fix when I saw this article. The dems and a pack of RINOs forced through the latest version of the START treaty. In that treaty, the preamble alludes to blocking further anti-ballistic missile deployments. The dems and RINOs either conveniently overlooked this or said it didn’t mean what it said.
Be that as it may, consider a possible halt in ABM development with this column.
China’s New Missile: A Game Changer?
China’s Challenge: As tensions elevate on the Korean peninsula, Pyongyang’s patron deploys a weapon designed to sink the very ships we are sending to protect an ally. This does not bode well.The prospects that the Korean War, which ended in only an interminable armistice, may resume has become an increasingly real possibility in recent months.That its patron, China, without which North Korea would collapse of its own rot, now has deployed a missile designed to target and sink U.S. carrier battle groups adds a new and disturbing element to any confrontation in the region.Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, told the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun last Sunday that China’s touted “carrier-killer,” an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) designated the Dong Feng-21D, had reached “initial operational capability.”This version of China’s land-based mobile medium-range missile is off the drawing boards and in the field.“Beijing has successfully developed, tested, and deployed the world’s first weapons system capable of targeting a moving carrier strike group from long-range, land-based, mobile launchers,” confirms Andrew Erickson, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College.Erickson says that at least one unit of China’s Second Artillery Corps is equipped with the DF-21D.Defense analysts have called the weapon a “game-changer,” as have we — one that could force U.S. carrier battle groups to keep their distance and stay away from areas of Chinese interest or territorial claims, such as Taiwan or Japan’s Shenkaku islands, both of which Beijing claims are Chinese territory.The land-based missile is designed to target and track aircraft carrier groups with the help of satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles and over-the-horizon radar. Launched into space, the DF-21D reenters the atmosphere, maneuvering at 10 times the speed of sound towards its target.Aircraft carriers and their accompanying ships would find it difficult if not impossible to defend themselves against such a threat.In September, Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted that such an operational weapon would change the way the U.S. deploys its carriers in a crisis.Our Aegis-equipped cruisers and destroyers offer some defense, but there are not enough of them. We have only 24 Burke- and Ticonderoga-class BMD (ballistic missile defense) warships, not all of which will be available at any given time. Today, these ships are committed to defending Europe from Iranian missiles, as well as other Persian Gulf states.“The Navy has long had to fear carrier-killing capabilities,” says Patrick Cronin, a senior director at the non-partisan Center for a New American Security. “The emerging Chinese anti-ship missile capability, and in particular the DF-21D, represents the first post-Cold War capability that is both potentially capable of stopping our naval projection and is deliberately designed for that purpose.”
I was over at the Investor’s Business Daily website for my Michael Ramirez fix when I saw this article. The dems and a pack of RINOs forced through the latest version of the START treaty. In that treaty, the preamble alludes to blocking further anti-ballistic missile deployments. The dems and RINOs either conveniently overlooked this or said it didn’t mean what it said.
Be that as it may, consider a possible halt in ABM development with this column.
China’s New Missile: A Game Changer?
China’s Challenge: As tensions elevate on the Korean peninsula, Pyongyang’s patron deploys a weapon designed to sink the very ships we are sending to protect an ally. This does not bode well.The prospects that the Korean War, which ended in only an interminable armistice, may resume has become an increasingly real possibility in recent months.That its patron, China, without which North Korea would collapse of its own rot, now has deployed a missile designed to target and sink U.S. carrier battle groups adds a new and disturbing element to any confrontation in the region.Admiral Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, told the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun last Sunday that China’s touted “carrier-killer,” an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) designated the Dong Feng-21D, had reached “initial operational capability.”This version of China’s land-based mobile medium-range missile is off the drawing boards and in the field.“Beijing has successfully developed, tested, and deployed the world’s first weapons system capable of targeting a moving carrier strike group from long-range, land-based, mobile launchers,” confirms Andrew Erickson, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College.Erickson says that at least one unit of China’s Second Artillery Corps is equipped with the DF-21D.Defense analysts have called the weapon a “game-changer,” as have we — one that could force U.S. carrier battle groups to keep their distance and stay away from areas of Chinese interest or territorial claims, such as Taiwan or Japan’s Shenkaku islands, both of which Beijing claims are Chinese territory.The land-based missile is designed to target and track aircraft carrier groups with the help of satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles and over-the-horizon radar. Launched into space, the DF-21D reenters the atmosphere, maneuvering at 10 times the speed of sound towards its target.Aircraft carriers and their accompanying ships would find it difficult if not impossible to defend themselves against such a threat.In September, Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted that such an operational weapon would change the way the U.S. deploys its carriers in a crisis.Our Aegis-equipped cruisers and destroyers offer some defense, but there are not enough of them. We have only 24 Burke- and Ticonderoga-class BMD (ballistic missile defense) warships, not all of which will be available at any given time. Today, these ships are committed to defending Europe from Iranian missiles, as well as other Persian Gulf states.“The Navy has long had to fear carrier-killing capabilities,” says Patrick Cronin, a senior director at the non-partisan Center for a New American Security. “The emerging Chinese anti-ship missile capability, and in particular the DF-21D, represents the first post-Cold War capability that is both potentially capable of stopping our naval projection and is deliberately designed for that purpose.”
My wife will be returning home from the church conference this afternoon. I haven’t messed the place up too badly while she’s been gone. When her bus gets close, she’ll text me and I’ll go pick her up.
In the mean time, I’ve been goofing off with my “new” eReader. I bought a Velocity Cruz tablet just after Thanksgiving and I’ve loaded a ton of e-books on it. I think I’ve about clean out the Gutenburg Project and Manybooks of SF, Mystery and other books that struck my fancy. In fact, I’ve a couple of years worth of reading stashed on it.
I installed a 16GB mini SD card in the reader and a 16GB flash drive to keep the books backed up. It’s cut into my blog writing time a bit.
When I received the Cruz tablet, purchased on-line from Borders, it included $55 worth of gift cards too. A nice Christmasy surprise. I just noticed than one of my favorite military writers, Douglas Reeman, AKA Alexander Kent, has had his books re-released in digital form earlier this week. Reeman, writing as Alexander Kent, has a series, Richard Bolitho, that competes competes well with C. S. Forester’s Hormblower series. I can hardly wait to start on them.
On the news front, I see that Obama continues, through government agencies and regulation, to give the people of this country the salute of the Upright Index Finger. I’ve always opposed charging politicians for acts they commit while in office unless those acts were illegal. Obama’s buds in the FCC have ignored Federal Court orders and instructions from congressional oversight committees when they seized control of the internet. I now see that the EPA will regulate “green house emissions” via regulation whent they couldn’t get them passed in congress via their “Cap ‘n Tax” legislation. Those regulations will come into force on January 2nd, 2011.
It’s time to abolish the EPA in addition to the FCC. They’ve run amuck and are out of control.
I think these and other acts like Holder’s killing charges against the “New Black Panthers” for voter intimidation and interference at the polls comes close to criminal acts. The question is whether this is malfeasance in office or merely misfeasance. The adage, “Stupid is as stupid does,” comes to mind. This democrat administration is certainly stupid. Whether it’s criminally stupid is still unanswered.
Oregon finds tax doesn’t raise the money
Attempting to close its budget gap without doing what it should have done — cut spending — Oregon raised its “piggy-back” state income tax on the richest 2 percent of its residents last year.As a result — Nevada legislators, please note — Oregon tax receipts are now … falling.
It seems that millionaires, regardless where they reside, aren’t stupid. Unless they inherited their money, millionaires are some pretty smart folks. They wouldn’t be millionaires if they weren’t. So what happens when the state decides to stick it to their millionaires? They leave—or move their money into areas with a lesser tax rate or perhaps not taxable. Some choose tax defeating alternatives like moving assets into trust funds or out of the state where income derived from those funds are taxed elsewhere. There are all sorts of options and millionaires and their financial advisers are finding them. The new question is, “What does the taxing authority consider ‘taxable income’? What if these assets were owned by a trust, or transferred in some different way … ?”
If BO had followed his party’s demands, I expect that off-shore accounts in the Bahamas and in Switzerland would have been growing about now.
(H/T to George in Las Vegas.)