This Is What War Looks Like in 2029

[Onkel Neal]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-i...-2029?ref=home

The U.S. House of Representatives on Dec. 11 passed its version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, clearing the way for the U.S. Senate to approve the measure. If President Donald Trump signs the bill, it will channel a staggering $740 billion into the Pentagon’s accounts.

That’s by far the biggest military budget of any country. The United States lavishes on its armed forces more than twice as much as No. 2 spender China does, and more than 10 times what No. 6 Russia does.

But all that spending, and the huge quantities of high-tech weaponry it buys, are preparing the Pentagon to fight the wrong war, a panel of experts told The Daily Beast. America is entering the 2020s at a strategic disadvantage. And it could take something awful happening before American leaders change their thinking.

Four years after disguised Russian forces conquered Ukraine’s Crimea region from the inside out, 18 years after 9/11 kicked off two U.S.-led occupations and 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall heralded the end of the Cold War, the United States is still equipping itself to fight warplane-versus-warplane, ship-versus-ship and tank-versus-tank against an obliging rival power.

This, plus the US will soon discover it is bankrupting itself through military spending. We are squandering our resources. Our defense budget is ridiculous. We should cut it in half, rely on drones and ICBMs to reply to a direct attack. And the US should get out of Afghanistan, Europe and Korea.

The biggest threat to the US is the insidious domestic growth of ignorance and socialism, we're doing that to ourselves.

One thing is clear. America’s existing military power isn’t up to the job. “Our superior military didn’t deter Russia from going into Georgia, Ukraine or Syria,” McFate pointed out. “China is winning the South China Sea with zero carrier groups.”