Anonymously contributed:
A budget deal has been reached, does anyone know how NNSA did?
A budget deal has been reached, does anyone know how NNSA did?
Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
Comments
Kingston Reif - Aug 01, 2011
Word is that the deal reached between the White House and Congressional leadership to raise the debt limit includes significant cuts to defense (at least $350 billion over the next decade) - though how significant depends on which security programs will bear the brunt of the cuts and how much defense will be cut as part of the second stage of the deal.
How will this impact current plans to modernize and replace U.S. nuclear delivery systems (i.e. missiles, submarines, and bombers) and U.S. nuclear warheads and their supporting infrastructure?
Time will tell, but it seems highly unlikely that the huge budget increases we've seen the last two years as part of the so-called ten-year plan can be sustained - it seemed unlikely even before we started talking about major defense cuts. Apparently the GOP cares more about protecting tax cuts for the wealthy than the Pentagon budget.
Also of interest is that the Department of Energy's defense programs (i.e. the National Nuclear Security Administration) will be considered security spending. In FY 2012 and FY 2013, there would be separate caps ("firewalls") for security and non-security spending. Note that NNSA oversees U.S. nuclear warhead maintenance and modernization activities as well as vital nuclear terrorism prevention programs.
It's worth recapping what senior U.S. military leaders and a Republican U.S. Senator who did not vote for the New START treaty have said in recent months about the exploding costs of nuclear modernization and the impact of likely defense cuts:
"All elements of the triad need to be modernized. You may have to make some choices there."
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, April 21, 2011
"I would just repeat, in essence, what I said before on the budget issues. If the political leadership of this country decides that it must reduce the investment in defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, then I don't think we can afford to have anything that's off the table."
Robert Gates, May 18, 2011
"The challenge here is that we have to recapitalize all three legs and we don't have the money to do it."
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright, July 14, 2011
"Reduce Nuclear Weapons Force Structure ($79 billion)"
Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), July 18, 2011
"We're not going to be able to go forward with weapon systems that cost what weapon systems cost today…. Case in point is Long-Range Strike. Case in point is the Trident replacement. ... The list goes on."
STRATCOM Commander Gen. Robert Kehler, July 26, 2011
As Ben Loehrke of the Ploughshares Fund noted in his July 19 analysis, Coburn’s proposal “is already raising eyebrows around Washington.” Whereas many in the Republican Party are reticent to consider reductions in the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal below the ceilings established by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), Coburn is proposing significant cuts in the arsenal. His “Back in Black” deficit reduction plan calls for “reduc[ing] the size of the nuclear weapons stockpile to levels within the [New] START treaty limits” by making the following changes:
Reduce the size of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) force from 500 to 300.
Maintain a 1,100 nuclear weapon reserve.
Reduce the size of the ballistic nuclear submarine fleet from 14 to 11.
Maintain 40 strategic bombers and delay the purchase of new bombers until the mid-2020s.
Torquemada
We must instead fund the maniacal ideas of egotistical congressional wastrels.
Perhaps we can retarget out of work warfighters and solve two problems at once?
In such times as these, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Christianity emerged, Attila surveyed the Tiber, Muslim emerged, the Reich stag fell, the Czar was deposed, Louis XVI fell, Tojo rose, Napoleon arose, Churchill rose, Roosevelt rose, Lincoln emerged.
Money troubles and incompetent leadership are unstable bedfellows; leading to dangerous, unpredictable outcomes for which the subservient population pays the price.
Time to replace elected officials with competent elected ones before something more sinister occurs.
What "warfighters" do you know who are "out of work"??
The ones in your dreams, who are not trained to fight, but trained to feed poor people? Go live on a different planet - you are fouling mine with crap for brains.