Zitat:US-Raketenabwehr
USA testen ihre umstrittene Raketenabwehr erstmals unter realistischen Bedingungen

Simulierte "Angreiferrakete" wurde über Alaska abgeschossen. Wegen des Präsidentenwechsels haben die Tests besondere Bedeutung.

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Zitat:IFT-8, on 5 March 2002, achieved an intercept in the most complex test to date, which included a single warhead and three decoys. This test was initially scheduled for mid-2001, and as of mid-2000 this test was the first test in which the operational Ground Based Interceptor booster could be used to launch the EKV, replacing the stand-in Payload Launch Vehicle (PLV) used in earlier tests. In fact, the surrogate PLV launcher was used, given continuing problems with the operational booster.

IFT-9, on 14 October 2002, was a successful intercept test of the ground-based system. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced it has successfully completed a flight test of the ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) development program, intercepting an intercontinental ballistic missile target. The test was first scheduled for late 2001, and then for for mid-August 2002. It was further delayed when concerns developed over the exhaust nozzles on the first and second rocket motors of the two-stage interceptor. Due to a helium leak in Raytheon's Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, there was a further delay in the test schedule. On 20 August 2002, DoD announced that the test would be postponed 30-45 days, to permit replacement of the rocket motors on the Minuteman booster. The test used a surrogate enemy missile warhead smaller than that used in previous tests, which was harder to detect and destroy. The test contained roughly the same number of decoy balloons as the previous one in March 2002, which added two small decoy balloons to the single large one used earlier.

Zitat:“The United States cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything. The Department of Defense must set priorities and consider inescapable tradeoffs and opportunity costs….”

That statement was reinforced at a recent press conference, where Aviation Week quoted him as saying that:

“While in operational terms, the services have become very joint, I think when it comes to budgets and programs, they are still very service-oriented,” Gates says. “Are you willing – and here is what could get really hard – do you offset risk by investing more in a future-oriented program of one service and less of that in another service?”

RE: shifting toward counterinsurgency:

“The kinds of capabilities needed to deal with [insurgencies and failed states] cannot be considered exotic distractions or temporary diversions. The United States does not have the luxury of opting out because these scenarios do not conform to preferred notions of the American way of war.”

....”Yet even with a better-funded State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, future military commanders will not be able to rid themselves of the tasks of maintaining security and stability. To truly achieve victory as Clausewitz defined it—to attain a political objective—the United States needs a military whose ability to kick down the door is matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward.”

....”When thinking about the range of threats, it is common to divide the “high end” from the “low end,” the conventional from the irregular, armored divisions on one side, guerrillas toting AK-47s on the other. In reality, as the political scientist Colin Gray has noted, the categories of warfare are blurring and no longer fit into neat, tidy boxes. One can expect to see more tools and tactics of destruction—from the sophisticated to the simple—being employed simultaneously in hybrid and more complex forms of warfare.”

....”The Department of Defense’s conventional modernization programs seek a 99 percent solution over a period of years. Stability and counterinsurgency missions require 75 percent solutions over a period of months. The challenge is whether these two different paradigms can be made to coexist in the U.S. military’s mindset and bureaucracy.”

....”In Iraq, an army that was basically a smaller version of the United States’ Cold War force over time became an effective instrument of counterinsurgency. But that transition came at a frightful human, financial, and political cost. For every heroic and resourceful innovation by troops and commanders on the battlefield, there was some institutional shortcoming at the Pentagon they had to overcome. There have to be institutional changes so that the next set of colonels, captains, and sergeants will not have to be quite so heroic or quite so resourceful.”

....”Apart from the Special Forces community and some dissident colonels, however, for decades there has been no strong, deeply rooted constituency inside the Pentagon or elsewhere for institutionalizing the capabilities necessary to wage asymmetric or irregular conflict—and to quickly meet the ever-changing needs of forces engaged in these conflicts.”

RE: conventional peer threats:

....”As someone who used to prepare estimates of Soviet military strength for several presidents, I can say that Russia’s conventional military, although vastly improved since its nadir in the late 1990s, remains a shadow of its Soviet predecessor. And adverse demographic trends in Russia will likely keep those conventional forces in check.”

...”In the case of China, Beijing’s investments in cyberwarfare, antisatellite warfare, antiaircraft and antiship weaponry, submarines, and ballistic missiles could threaten the United States’ primary means to project its power and help its allies in the Pacific: bases, air and sea assets, and the networks that support them. This will put a premium on the United States’ ability to strike from over the horizon and employ missile defenses and will require shifts from short-range to longer-range systems, such as the next-generation bomber.”

RE: Transformation and Net-Centric Warfare:

....”We should be modest about what military force can accomplish and what technology can accomplish. The advances in precision, sensor, information, and satellite technologies have led to extraordinary gains in what the U.S. military can do. The Taliban were dispatched within three months; Saddam’s regime was toppled in three weeks. A button can be pushed in Nevada, and seconds later a pickup truck will explode in Mosul. A bomb dropped from the sky can destroy a targeted house while leaving the one next to it intact.

But no one should ever neglect the psychological, cultural, political, and human dimensions of warfare. War is inevitably tragic, inefficient, and uncertain, and it is important to be skeptical of systems analyses, computer models, game theories, or doctrines that suggest otherwise. We should look askance at idealistic, triumphalist, or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to transcend the immutable principles and ugly realities of war, that imagine it is possible to cow, shock, or awe an enemy into submission, instead of tracking enemies down hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block. As General William Tecumseh Sherman said, “Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.” “

Zitat:Multiple Kill Vehicle Completes Hover Test

Zitat:Building a Military for the 21st Century

Zitat: Obama, Pentagon pull in different directions on no nukes goal

The new administration has signaled its intent to swiftly engage Russia in negotiations on deeper cuts in their respective arsenals, with the ultimate aim of reducing them to zero.

But US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been leading another kind of charge, arguing in the final months of the previous administration that deeper cuts must be underpinned by production of a new warhead to replace an ageing nuclear stockpile.

"To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program," he said in an October 28 speech.

[...]

Zitat: 15.02.2009

SOLDATENMANGEL
US-Militär will Immigranten rekrutieren

Das gab es seit dem Vietnamkrieg nicht mehr: Der Mangel an geeigneten Soldaten zwingt die US Army zu einem Traditionsbruch. Laut "New York Times" möchte sie künftig auch Einwanderer verpflichten, die erst seit zwei Jahren in den USA leben - Gegenleistung könnte eine beschleunigte Einbürgerung sein.
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Statistiken belegen, dass nur 82 Prozent von 80.000 Rekruten der US-Armee einen Schulabschluss haben. Erfahrene Rekrutenanwerber gehen davon aus, dass Einwanderer mehr Bildung, Fremdsprachenkenntnisse und fachliche Kompetenz mitbringen als so mancher gebürtiger Amerikaner, der zur Armee will.
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Nightwatch schrieb:Die Wirtschaftskrise schlägt auf die Rekrutierungszahlen des letzten Quartals doch noch überhaupt nicht nieder.

Zitat:In den USA sind von 2006 bis Juli 2008 über 260 Hypothekenfinanzierer Bankrott gegangen. Anfang Juli 2008 traf es die größte unabhängige Hypothekenbank IndyMac.
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General Motors - Symbol für die USA

Die desolate Situation des ganzen Landes spiegelt sich in der Verfassung eines Unternehmens wider, welches symbolhaft für Amerika steht: General Motors - einst das größte und mächtigste Industrieunternehmen weltweit.
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Ein Bankrott in der Autoindustrie ist unweigerlich der Todesstoß für die Banken. Ein System, das bereits jetzt nur noch durch künstliche Beatmung am Leben gehalten wird. Ein System, dass auch ohne zusätzliche Probleme bereits wankt. Die beiden größten Hypothekenbanken Freddie Mac und Fannie Mae taumeln an der Börse bereits jetzt der Wertlosigkeit entgegen.
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Erich schrieb:

Nightwatch schrieb:Die Wirtschaftskrise schlägt auf die Rekrutierungszahlen des letzten Quartals doch noch überhaupt nicht nieder.

@Nighwasch, die Wirtschaftskrise war schon längst absehbar.

Zitat:dass so etwas in Zeiten einer Wirtschaftskrise und rasant steigender Arbeitslosigkeit passiert und selbst bei den US-Bürgern ohne Schulabschluss nicht mehr genug ... Kanonenfutter? .... Bewerber gefunden werden, sollte zu denken geben. Anscheinend hat Bush jr. mit seinen Kriegsabenteuern die Bereitschaft der US-Amerikaner, sich fürs Öl zu opfern, überschätzt.

Erich schrieb:@Nighwasch, die Wirtschaftskrise war schon längst absehbar.

Nasenbaer schrieb:

Erich schrieb:

Nightwatch schrieb:Die Wirtschaftskrise schlägt auf die Rekrutierungszahlen des letzten Quartals doch noch überhaupt nicht nieder.

@Nighwasch, die Wirtschaftskrise war schon längst absehbar.

Absehbar war die Wirtschaftskrise seit mindestens 10 Jahren. Der genaue Termin und Umfang kam trotzdem für fast jeden überraschend[1]. .....

[1] Einge Leute haben auf den richtigen Termin gewettet und damit viel Geld verdient. Wirklich gewußt haben sie es auch nicht.

ThomasWach schrieb:Tja, aber inzwischen redet man an den internationalen Finanzmärkten ganz offen von den Risiken einer neuen riesigen Wirtschaftskrise, die durch die jetzige Sitaution ausgelöst werden könnte.
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daher ist die gnaze sache mit dem dollar schon eine sehr besorgniserregende sache.taun:

Erich schrieb:<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,607693,00.html">http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0 ... 93,00.html</a><!-- m -->

Zitat: 15.02.2009

SOLDATENMANGEL
US-Militär will Immigranten rekrutieren

Das gab es seit dem Vietnamkrieg nicht mehr: Der Mangel an geeigneten Soldaten zwingt die US Army ....
...

dass so etwas in Zeiten einer Wirtschaftskrise und rasant steigender Arbeitslosigkeit passiert .... sollte zu denken geben. ....

Zitat:Zeitungsbericht
US-Armee will Einwanderer rekrutieren

...Es wäre das erste Mal seit dem Vietnam Krieg, dass das US-Militär Immigranten mit befristeter Aufenthaltserlaubnis aufnehmen will....