A Guest Post by David Miller

Our country's ability to deter aggression by nuclear rogue nations and terrorist organizations is rapidly deteriorating. Every so often certain administrations aggressively cut back our national defense spending based on political issues and domestic posturing by the party in power. The Clinton administration cut back the active duty forces to a dangerously low level by the elimination of whole front-line combat forces, naval ship and submarine deactivations, and cancelling air force aircraft replacement and upgrades programs. This resulted in the current state of affairs where we need to use our reserves and guard forces in front line roles to the level they are now deployed in the current war on terror.

The state of our nuclear deterrent capability is indeed sad. In a world with ever increasing rogue nations and terrorists striving to create nuclear capabilities to confront and destroy us, our capabilities are falling apart. As much as many don’t like the idea of nuclear weapons, our capabilities and up-to-date weapons during the lengthy cold war, kept us safe. We won the cold war only because of our nuclear weapons and those forces that maintained and deployed them. Our world today is much more dangerous as we don’t face a singular standing military force. Our world today has many different fractions out there that want our way of life destroyed. Most are foreign, and I say a few are domestic.

Our B-52 bombers are over 45 years old, our submarine deterrent force has diminished, our nuclear weapons are mostly way over 30 years old; most are beyond their designed life expectancy, and the design criteria (task) of most weapons are no longer applicable. Many of our systems and weapons are so old that they are of the vacuum tube generation - that is truly a sad state of affairs.

The personnel with the expertise to develop, build, and maintain our nuclear weapons and their systems are no different than our once great industrial manufacturing base. It and the talented personnel are both gone. Most of us who were a part of the nuclear cold war force are in our 70’s and older today. The launch control of weapons is no longer in the hands of the military; it's now in the hands of politicians. Our forces are no longer allowed to launch if we are attacked without “specific authority of the President”. It was not like that prior to the Clinton administration. They took that away from our military leaders. The chain of events and steps to be taken by military personnel involved to launch was a mostly fool proof system. It served our nation well for many decades, but the politicians that came into power did not like not being in total control.

The current Obama administration has taken “no action” to replace or upgrade our capabilities even though they have been repeatedly briefed that we are falling behind and are losing or have lost our edge, which leaves us in a sorrowful and progressively weakening state. Our current administration has announced to the world that we want to eliminate nuclear weapons within a specific period of time and ask that other nations follow our lead. How naive and idiotic is that? It is like asking our military forces to throw away all their ammunition prior to attacking our enemy, because when they realize we have no way of harming them they will throw up their arms with joy and ask for everlasting peace. That mind set has only stimulated our enemies into pushing ahead to gain the upper hand by the accelerated development and deployment of their nuclear capabilities. Soon they will have the technological advantage over us of having weapons with newer systems and technically advanced components.

We are rapidly losing the ability to maintain our position in the world. We have lost our manufacturing base and are rapidly losing our technological advantage over other nations. We currently import most critical materials needed for manufacturing, including steel and electronics because of this. The quality of these materials is not up to the standards we would produce, if we could. Therefore, anything that we could make would be substandard to our needs. Our ability to manufacture in a time of great need and urgency has been lost to the greatest extent. We are at a critical state in our existence, we either get on the band wagon and bring America back to its feet or we will soon fall to the ground.

We live in a far more dangerous world today. We once faced a great bear. In our world today, we face many predators.

David Miller
Lexington TWP, ME