A prior article was posted about seven years ago on two unrelated financial news items that I tried to connect. The downgrade of the Model S and the VW scandal created a condition for a potential merger. This would have accelerated the electrical vehicle/hybrid vehicle where the technology from Tesla could be used to augment VW to a hybrid vehicle manufacturer to help with shock from the phased drawdown of oil. I will still make the original argument but expanded with two companies.
An expanded Tesla with an additional three companies under the tutelage of Elon Musk who showed his ability to transform and innovate. The acquisition of Lockheed Martin will help transform the space and military contracting arena where new players are needed. Competition in this will propel and bring down the cost for startups and newer players trying to raise capital, develop new technology, and market new products. This will help young and new entrepreneurs who need just that one opportunity to begin because Space X will be able to lower the costs of entering the LEO space market.
For everyone who got the upgrade 1.5!!! If you know you know Choom!!!
Founding Purpose: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
The mechanism for achieving this goal is Capitalism and Democracy
A topic that has interested me is the deep state and its influence on foreign, defense, and domestic policy. Aside from the conspiracy theories and partisan battles is a chance to update the bureaucracy where we could modify the shadow government system of the U.K. We should always have a nonpartisan mindset to the staffing of the government and I’m not going to say that partisanship is going away. People are always going to put people who they trust and there is nothing wrong with that. It’s when you have highly qualified people who can’t serve their positions because of a political tiff. This blog post is calling for a Department of Intelligence where the 17 of America’s I.C. departments are merged into 3 or 4 major departments within a newly formed cabinet.
The stories of how we vet people for government positions need a major reform for the 21st century. I wanted to call for an ambitious reform of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Helping to consolidate, reform, and update the Intelligence community will reap benefits for the U.S. in terms of the U.S. Military and Law Enforcement but also tech clusters where new technologies can be developed. New jobs and services can eventually be transferred to the corporate/private sector which creates more prosperity. The I.C. has been the whipping boy for U.S. politicians’ incompetence and failures.
This is the proposed merging of the 17 agencies into four main sectors to help reduce the redundancy and burnout that could come from all the information that these sectors collect. The four major sectors that the Hamilton Institute calls for are Cyber, Financial, Geographic, and Military. This will help consolidate the massive amount of human capital and redirect it to a single cabinet that will help dissolve the burning out and redundant information problem in the I.C.
1. Cyber – The consolidation of the cyber sectors from many agencies into one sector (D.O.I – Department of Intelligence) will help policymakers come to decisions quickly and without the turf battles with currently haunts the I.C. The two prime examples are SolarWinds’ massive breach and the hacker who tried to poison the water supply of Oldsmar, Florida. The Cyber Section of the Department of Intelligence will provide all-around counter and defensive operations for government, commerce, military, and law enforcement.
The civil liberties issues are ever-present but could be managed by FISA courts and the Judiciary Branch of the US govt. (Congress and the Senate). Issues that can and must be addressed by those two areas will help the cyber sector from being turned into a weapon against U.S. citizens.
2. Financial – The Financial sector will help with terrorist financing, narco-terrorism, and all other aspects of the financial prospects of threats against the United States particularly with bonds and stocks manipulation.
3. Geographic – The Geographic sector will look at where the resources are and set up scenarios in this new age of great power competition where the U.S. and China will start drawing lines on the planet Earth on who these resources/client states belong to. This is almost a cheat guide on why current conflicts exist and where the future conflicts will start next because economies are very hungry and staved very easily. Civil and Social unrest from Covid-19 sparked unemployment, stress, and rage from quarantine which built up distrust towards institutions. Resources being denied or cut off shows what our future looks like when industries collapse from this scenario.
4. Military – Consolidation of the Military intelligence wings into a single sector will help reduce redundancy and support flows of information within the Department of Intelligence. Conflicting areas of responsibilities and battles between 17 agencies where everyone wants to hold on will degrade collection and collaboration between different sectors.
Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, Office of Naval Intelligence, Coast Guard Intelligence
Army Military Intelligence and Marine Corps Intelligence
The Heritage Foundation has a great proposal for a fix to the U.S. intelligence community and we recommend this with our plan. It helps update the bureaucracy to help adapt to all the changes that happen in this technology-based world.
Founding Purpose: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
The mechanism for achieving this goal is Capitalism and Democracy.
This is the third and final part of a three-part series to make the U.S. Military non-competitive in this globalized economy. The U.S. Armed Forces are still the number one military power in the world. No nation has the technology, arms, or ability needed to invade or challenge the U.S. Take a look at the first post and second post about merging the branches to protect the security and interests of the United States of America. With the consolidation of the U.S Military to meet the challenges of security threats. The Department of the U.S. Air force, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Coast Guard can focus on developing a consolidated space agency.
This new agency can help with the new threats from cyberspace, and space, and help the U.S. military begin to put a permanent foothold in space. The creation of the new military space agency will use the combined resources of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy into one consolidated force where the power of the world’s most powerfully military agency will help direct the interests of the U.S. in space. This agency can start the work and help the development of Space Elevators on Earth. We first need to define what is a space elevator:
“The space elevator is a system to transport satellites, computers, spaceship, etc. From Earth to Space in an easier and cheaper way than rockets.”
The advent of this agency will yield untold benefits for the U.S. Military, the U.S. and Multinational corporations, NewSpace companies, and overall humanity where since you’ll have the U.S. investing in all the upcoming technologies and commercializing disrupted tech on the horizon. NewSpace is the new industry where the U.S. should be pumping money for the restructuring of the U.S. economy to a future of a single global economy. NewSpace with other clusters will make the U.S. shake off this deflationary/recession period in the economy.
Each investment in NewSpace will produce more tech clusters which can be used to expand and develop the economy. If the U.S. Military takes the lead on this and moves with a swift fury on this the future of the U.S. will continue to look bright.
The Future of the Market (Spacelift: Suborbital, Earth to Orbit, and On-Orbit)
Founding Purpose: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
The mechanism for achieving this goal is Capitalism and Democracy.
This is the second in a three-part series to make the U.S. Military non-competitive in this globalized economy. The U.S. Armed Forces are still the number one military power in the world. No nation has the technology, arms, or ability needed to invade or challenge the U.S. This looks at the previous post about merging the branches to protect the security and interests of the United States of America. The U.S. is going to have to do massive upgrades to its sea and airlift capabilities. America’s force projection is going to get unreal and powerful.
The U.S. is heading into an unprecedented age of globalization, technological unemployment, and disruptive start-ups. The U.S. Military has a great role in advancing not only engineering, and computer science but medical science (which they are only now but at a greater role). This not only advances national security which is always viewed from the external angle but never from an internal angle. This helps because a prosperous and economically secured America can handle any threat thrown at it. When viewed from an internal view, it makes the U.S. almost invincible in terms of the resources it can yield.
“Looking forward, these changes have greatly increased the proportion of BVR [beyond visual range] engagements and likely reduced the utility of traditional fighter aircraft attributes, such as speed and maneuverability, in aerial combat,” he continues.
The most provocative observation is the following:
“The increased importance of electronic sensors, signature reduction, RF [radio frequency] and IR [infra-red] countermeasures and robust LOS networks in building dominant SA [situational awareness], and the potential reduced tactical utility of high speed and maneuverability could mean that, for the first time, the aerial combat lethality of large combat aircraft may be competitive or even superior to more traditional fighter aircraft designs emphasizing speed and maneuverability.”
(…)
“[I]t is possible that the desirable attributes of future air-to-air platforms may be converging with those of long-range ISR/strike platforms, or that at least large aircraft with good low observable (LO) characteristics may be able to give a good account of themselves in aerial combat. If this is true, then a sixth-generation “fighter” may have a platform that is similar to a future “bomber” and may even be a modified version of a bomber airframe or the same aircraft with its payload optimized for the air-to-air mission.”
“What are the implications of this? According to the author, the Pentagon needs “to cast a much wider net in the development of future air combat operational concepts, sensors, weapons, and platforms, which would include examining ‘radical’ departures from traditional fighter concepts that rely on enhanced sensor performance, signature control, networks to achieve superior SA, and very-long-range weapons to complete engagements before being detected or tracked by enemy aircraft.”
This means instead of the base foundation that was put together by the top Generals in the DOD (including General Colin Powell). It was the location of the base meant a significant role in U.S. Foreign Policy. Pomcus means bases are valuable but the whole world is within reach now with drones, missiles and new technology to be released. Basing rights will be for human crews to rest and it shifts into the pom-cus Foundation where massive amounts of material will be stored outside the U.S. for use in national security, humanitarian, and contagion events. The U.S. is going to have to do massive upgrades to its sea and airlift capabilities.
The blending of cultures of the USAF and the US Coast Guard will help retention in the U.S. Navy where people want to be in the Navy but the recruiters don’t take the time to find out what job these future sailors want. The promotion system will be upgraded as well to help people stay in the Navy longer and become more productive in the Naval Forces. The whole upgrade for the U.S. military will upgrade the defense industrial base which will help stimulate the economy, R&D, and the private sector all at once. Thus, creating a massive injection of jobs into the U.S. homeland and abroad.
U.S. Aircraft Carriers are going to get a lot bigger to handle and size, weight, armaments, and crew to maintain the upgraded fleet. The range for America’s Air and Naval forces become unlimited because of the interoperability of the fighter jets soon to be Bomber/Fighters – Bomber/Bombers that strengthens not only the U.S.’s defenses but it also helps the civilian air flight were military technology that is no longer needed or outdated can be given to the private sector. Bases and Carriers will become intertwined where U.S. Air Force pilots can use the carriers as the Naval Aviators had the advantage where they could use both (Bases and Carriers.)
This is something to look at and I would stay at least in terms of numbers!
“The insider could envision a future fleet of around 400 bomber-like multi-role aircraft constituting the core of America’s airpower in the 21st century: “What I find most compelling is the idea that we could develop a single, large, long-range, big payload, stealthy aircraft that would comprise the future United States Air Force’s combat arm.”
Founding Purpose: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
The mechanism for achieving this goal is Capitalism and Democracy.
This is the first in a three-part series to make the U.S. Military non-competitive in this globalized economy. The U.S. Armed Forces are still the number one military power in the world. No nation has the technology, arms, or ability needed to invade or challenge the U.S. Vice media did a great story on this where a military analysis from IHS Jane Dylan Lehrke says the ability to challenge the U.S. is not there. Dylan Lehrkegoes through the strengths and very few weaknesses of the American homeland. Dylan also points out the insanity of trying to invade the U.S. Dylan’s analysis completely counters everything about the decline of the U.S. in the foreseeable future.
Merging the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps into the Department of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps.
This issue is a very important emotional issue for Soldiers, Marines, and the Brass in the higher echelons of these two organizations. The organization that will come out of the merger will be a stronger and leaner department that will dominate on the ground war of any battle. I served in the Arizona Army National Guard and I’ve been in contact with both proud members of each branch. The members of each branch are proud of their sacrifice and brag about how hard they have it. However, the changing geopolitical dynamics in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe create a reset to conventional thinking. The creation of the Department of the Army and Marines will spur new tactics for the ground section of the U.S. military.
Let’s compare the difference in the services and this is stated well by CaptAndrew Cosgrove: look here to see the debate
Practically speaking…
– The Marine Corps 194, 000 Active Duty with 40,000 Reserve
– US Army 546,047 Active Duty with 559,244 in Reserve and National Guard
Budgets
– Army $244.9 Billion (31.8%)
– USMC $40 Billion (4% total is derived from the allotment taken from the Navy)
US Army mission
– Preserving the peace and security and providing for the defense of the United States, the Commonwealths and possessions and any areas occupied by the United States
– Supporting the national policies
– Implementing the national objectives
– Overcoming any nations responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the United States
USMC mission
– The seizure or defense of advanced naval bases and other land operations to support naval campaigns;
– The development of tactics, technique, and equipment used by amphibious landing forces in coordination with the Army and Air Force
– Such other duties as the President may direct.
A legendary soldier named Col. David Hackworth points out that the “Blackhawk Down” issue could have been avoided if the Army just called the Marines who had tanks four days away (here). The General requested tanks but was denied but they didn’t want to ask the Marines because “We are the Army and we don’t need the Marines.” This thinking needs to leave and a valid discussion on the compatibility of the Army and Marines must happen. The Marines can supplement the areas where the Army needs an act of congress to move by a simply Presidential Directive.
There is already an added benefit of using the joint force:
“The United States must choose to go to “war as a last resort and not a policy option of the first choice.” To this must be added another imperative. The United States Armed Forces must prioritize homeland defense as its primary mission and rethink the mistaken belief that the United States can somehow secure its interests through “lengthy military occupations of foreign lands.”
“Thus, this newly merged service must redirect its focus towards countering cyber warfare and CBRNe (Chemical, Biological, Radiation, Nuclear, and Explosives) attacks and should work towards bolstering its counterterrorism (CT) capabilities. This is because, due to the convergence of the global community, the United States may be vulnerable to attacks from within by homegrown terrorists and drug cartels—all of which may wreak havoc and may even cripple America’s domestic infrastructures.”
Merging the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Coast Guard into the Department of the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard.
The combination and creation of the Department of the Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard will help the Air and Sea section of the U.S. Military. Merging the Department will help the force adapt to the changing dynamics in the Arctic, Southeast Asia, South China Sea, and the Persian Gulf. National Disasters and bioterrorism/pandemics events where quarantine areas are needed to contain the spread of the disease. The U.S. Navy also needs reforms for the culture, schools, and retention to compete in the future. A combo of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard culture will change the mentality of the British Naval Culture into the American Naval Culture.
The interoperability of these forces will help any challenge in the future whether it’s the drug interdiction mission or Ebola, Tuberculosis, or any contagion. When you need to isolate certain person(s) and transport medical supplies into that area the Department will have the resource to react. The U.S. Coast Guard can be used not only for their traditional mission but for national disasters in other countries like how they responded in New Orleans and Galveston, Texas. The Eighth Coast District is in the American Heartland which would call for the updating of the Posse Comitatus Act since the Coast Guard will be put back into the Department of Defense and merged with the Air Force and Navy.
“In order to facilitate the most effective and efficient Department of Defense, we contend it is beneficial to first revise the National Military Strategy. This revision will more effectively support the president’s overall National Security Strategy. Reorienting the DoD into a set of forces that are actually joint in execution will strengthen the American military and thus enhance overall national security.”
Even the U.K. is debating about making a single force modeled on the U.S. Marine Corps which is something to think about?
“Combining the three armed forces could leave them resembling the US Marine Corps, which unites land, air and maritime forces under a single command.”
“The future of the three separate services was called into question after Britain’s senior military commander said combining them could become part of a future defence review.”
Founding Purpose: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
The mechanism for achieving this goal is Capitalism and Democracy.