About Me 0112: About Making Money

We had a good run, my friends.

Alternate headline: “All Pentagon budget cuts canceled.”

Decorated Navy fighter pilot Matthew “Whiz” Buckley, a Top Gun graduate of the Navy Fighter Weapons School who flew 44 combat missions over Iraq, says, “It’s probably leaps and bounds above where we are, and that’s terrifying.”

“As a former Navy fighter pilot, going up against something that’s stealthy, highly maneuverable and with electronic systems more capable than mine — that’ll keep me up at night,” said Buckley, now chief strategy officer at Fox3 Options LLC…

Richard Fisher, a senior fellow on Asian Military Affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a Washington-based security think tank, says Chinese officials have said that their program is aimed at competing with the F-22 Raptor.

“From what we can see, I conclude that this aircraft does have great potential to be superior in some respects to the American F-22, and could be decisively superior to the F-35,” said Fisher…

Experts say it’s hard to say exactly what the J-20’s capabilities are, especially in a fire fight — but offered a dire prediction: “With China having a fifth generation fighter, the U.S. will lose F-22s faster than previous estimates.”

Mitigating factors here? First, and most obviously, in an age of semi-austerity, defense specialists have a financial incentive to tout every threat as an existential one. With the GOP ready to slash budgets and Boehner insisting that Defense is on the table, a Chinese super-fighter is a sweet way to keep the money flowing. Second, even if this is a major advance, there are reasons to believe that it’s not — yet — a major issue for the Air Force. It’s one thing to design an advanced fighter, it’s another thing to equip it with the parts it needs and to get it ready for battle:

It’s not obvious from the grainy photos of the J-20 what engines the plane currently uses, but it’s probably safe to assume they’re Russian AL-31Fs—still the best engines China reliably has access to. However, the AL-31F is clearly inadequate for the apparently heavy J-20. Even the up-rated 117S version of the AL-31F ‘would likely not be sufficient to extract the full performance potential of this advanced airframe,’ Kopp and Goon wrote. To perform at its best, the J-20 will probably need purpose-designed motors. And developing those could take a long, long time.

Equally vexing to Beijing’s aerospace designers and military planners are the sophisticated electronic, conceptual and human systems required in and around a modern fighter aircraft in order for that aircraft to deliver a useful military effect.

Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the US Teal Group, told the Internet trade publication Defense Tech that a modern fighter requires at least 11 supporting systems to be effective, including but not limited to sound mission planning, a talented and disciplined pilot, good maintenance personnel on the ground, accurate weapons, an advanced radar and other electronic systems inside the aircraft plus ‘off-board’ radar detection provided by purpose-built command-and-control planes and the reliable ministration of an aerial tanker.

Of all the systems required by a modern fighter, Beijing has mastered just one, Aboulafia said—and that’s the airplane’s physical structure itself, minus the engines.

That’s from defense specialist David Axe, making the case for skepticism. Even so, some military analysts tell him that if/when China figures out how to build the right engine, look out: “Any notion that an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or F/A-18E/F Super Hornet (flown by the U.S. Navy and Australia) will be capable of competing against this Chengdu design in air combat, let alone penetrate airspace defended by this fighter, would be simply absurd.” Likewise, an LA Times survey of defense experts finds an “emerging consensus” that, at the very least, China has “closed the capabilities gap” enough to pose a threat to U.S. action in the Pacific. The silver lining here, if you can call it that, is that by the time the J-20 is ready to roll out for battle, it might be a minor weapon given the new realities of warfare. See this Danger Room piece from a few days ago about where the real action is: Cyberwarfare and space weapons and sharks with frickin’ laser beams on their heads.

Update: Needless to say, the “leaked” images of the fighter almost certainly weren’t leaked.

The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives has begun the process of repealing the Healthcare law. Some have argued that, because the Senate may not repeal it as well, and the President will likely veto it, the House’s repeal is purely “symbolic.”

Just as the reading of the Constitution on the floor of the House, on Wednesday, was symbolic of a “return to constitutionalism,” as Charles Krauthammer writes, the repeal of the Healthcare law in the House will be symbolic not just of the fact that Republicans have heard the will of the American people, but also that they fully understand that the new law is, only superficially, a jumbled and thoughtless mess of rules about how healthcare should be delivered and paid for in this country. In reality, the Healthcare law is a liberal power grab that is gradually permitting the federal government to control more of our lives, making more people dependent upon the government and continuing the culture of dependency among minority groups who, up until now, have mostly voted liberals into power. The symbolism of the repeal will ring loud and clear.

Liberal Democrats will be launching a big campaign over the next few days, doing what they always accuse Republicans and conservatives of doing- “fear-mongering.” They will be telling their constituents that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the repeal of the Healthcare law will increase debt, that Republicans don’t want people with pre-existing conditions to have access to health insurance, and that Republicans want to defund Medicare, new chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan, has set out why these claims are wrong.

However, one of the features of the new Healthcare law, already in effect, is the extension of healthcare coverage to adult children (up until 26 years old), a hallmark of the true intention of this law- to make more people dependent, while it raises premiums on private health insurers who need more money to meet this new requirement.

For those who do not have adult children in the 21 to 26 age range, would it surprise you to know that these adult “children,” who are now covered, are not required to even live with their parents to remain on their plans, and that they may even be married and still be covered under their parents’ health plans?

Through the new Healthcare law, liberal Democrats have gradually introduced the concept that adult children should remain dependent on their parents, and when their parents are not around, perhaps the government can take over in that parental role? Of course, this new rule comes at a time when the economic decline made it difficult for young adults to obtain jobs. This is how the gradual creep of dependency begins: introduce a law which creates dependency on the government at a time of crisis, so that uninformed Americans will see it as a caring and positive intervention to help them in their time of need. This is how every entitlement legislation begins, and why none has ever been totally eradicated thus far, mainly because people have come to expect these benefits.

One of the newly elected members of Congress who understands well the liberals’ drive to make more Americans dependent on the government is Colonel Allen West of Florida. Congressman West will be serving in the Congressional Black Caucus and hopes to represent conservative philosophical ideas such as the importance of individual responsibility, creativity, and entrepreneurship.

In addition, as a result of the left’s encouragement of this culture of dependency, those who are truly in need will no longer have to seek voluntary assistance from neighbors and communities. Conversely, neighbors and communities will not be encouraged to voluntarily reach out to others because the knowledge that the government will provide for their friends’ needs may cause them to think twice. As such, dependency on the government creates more distance, and less connectivity, among members of a community.

At this point in time, any resistance to repealing the Healthcare law, and replacing it with commonsense legislation that reflects free market principles, will be almost entirely about continuing the culture of dependency, a hallmark of liberalism, that has taken over this country. We can be sure that liberals from the previous Congress will try hard to keep this culture in place. Their ability to remain powerful depends on it.

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Monday, January 10, 2011

About Making Money

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