Veteran Affairs
While I do agree that the combined Science budgets are ridiculously small and the Military spending is obscenely large, Veteran Affairs/Services should never be lumped in with the Military Budget. It directly benefits the civilian population mainly by providing health care to Veterans that have service related injuries. Those Veterans would otherwise represent a major, continuing drain on any purely civilian insurance and health care provider. That of course, is if the Veterans can even get coverage (which generally they can't) or will ever be able to afford that health care given the average drop in lifetime earning of 10% that is associated with Military Service.It also deceptively includes the GI Bill. The money moves through the VA's hands, but it didn't come from the government. The GI Bill is a financed primarily by Active Duty Service Members that pay/buy into the system. It is made sustainable by the fact that most Veterans never collect. The GI Bill held the distinction of being the only Government fund to continually have a surplus, regardless of the economy. The Post-9/11 GI Bill has sped up the payout, but it is still a mostly self-sustaining system.
Service Members Pay
An astute observer would point out (as does every military commander) that the service members are that single largest expense. This is only true up to a point. The Military does pay a very large number of people, that much is true, but they pay a very small wage and work them well beyond the wildest dreams of any civilian company or any other government post. For example, I often worked 18-24+ hours / day (12-16 hours/day is a bit closer to that average, my job required more), with no overtime or holiday pay. A current E-1 earns a little more $1500 per month, and can expect to work more than 300 hours for that money while deployed. McDonald's will pay $2 / hour more (but they can't work you as much our you'd get overtime, and with the Affordable Healthcare Act, benefits as well).The longest single time that I spent actively working was 96 hours, followed by 4 hours of sleep and 26 more hours working. 24 hour days don't mean much at that point. This kind of effort is normally only seen on deployed units and ships engaged in active combat operations or exercises, and is not that standard. The 12-16 hour work days (5-7 days a week) is more common. For-profit prisons are the only other institutions that achieve anything remotely close to the work to wage ratio of the military. They might exceed the military, but the Law prohibits working prisoners as hard as the military works service members.
General Military Spending
A vast a majority of the Military budget is paid to civilian contractors. There is a large amount which is spent on maintenance, but the largest (non-wage) line items are equipment and R&D. The Military has some of the most sophisticated research labs in the world, and almost all of their R&D does end up becoming civilian innovations (in the business sense of being marketed and sold) at some point.
The goal of military research often seems at odds with other scientific endeavors, but from a technological standpoint, the military R&D is targeted at solving many of the same issues that civilian researchers are working on. For instance, provided that you look at the total history of the organization, the Navy has done more to advance Astronomy, Meteorology, and Oceanography through the Naval Observatory (building proper databases of information, collecting world-wide field samples, development of new technologies and components, designing and building more accurate clocks, etc.) than any other organization. The Navy also has one of the most advanced hydrodynamics labs on the face of the planet, and the largest, most accurate ocean wave simulators ever built. The Air Force has the distinction of having one of the most advanced and adaptable AIs in the world, and their research continues to lead efforts in programming various types of "smart" robotics. 3D scanning technology was pioneered by the military and they remain on the forefront of that development. The world's most accurate maps and mapping packages are still funded and under continuing development by the a joint military command. Military aircraft are the Indy cars of air travel. I can go on and on about this. A majority of consumer products on the market today have some kind of component that began, at least in theory, in a military lab.
From my perspective and in my experience, the American public does all it can to ignore the technology the military operates and develops. I think it is linked to the whole nuclear scare, but it continues in that most people would find it morally reprehensible that we would fight stone-aged societies with space-aged technology.
Rail-guns and Standard Missiles
When I tell people about (and explain the implications of) the fully functional Naval rail-gun, or the Standard Missile 5's immaculate record shooting down ICBMs, which are both a decade old now, they usually don't want to hear anything more.
The SM5 has a nearly-perfect intercept record, but a 100% kill rate on all ICBM targets. The SM was developed and is still capable of all-range intercepts of everything from other missiles and fighter jets, and now up to satellites and ICBMs. It is carried on every missile-laden ship—thus the "standard" part of the name—and is being deployed all around the world. Together with the AEGIS combat system, which has advanced air traffic control technology well beyond what civilian projects were likely to do, it means we can stop any nuclear war anywhere in the world that we want. The question is which war do we want to stop.
The rail-gun is reaching toward the 1000-mile-gun goal that everyone has been working on for at least 100 years. It would allow even our smallest ships to bombard nearly any city with smart-bomb accuracy and advanced modern munitions—a rant in themselves—at a cost per round of less than ever thought possible. You'd spend more driving a HUMVEE a mile than it would cost to level every building along that road, and each round could be timed to hit at the exact same moment, or flow along as you drove past.
I've been watching the same video of the test fire for going on a decade now (first time I saw anything about the rail-gun was at a military tech-show in DC in 2003). It gets re-posted every now and then, but the main video that is available online is years out of date. When I was at SWM we got a the tech report about the gun, and it's scheduled to move out of prototyping into a field-capable design by 2014-5. The latest video I can find now from ONR (Feb 2012) shows a fully functional rail-gun that could be mounted, which was being hand-loaded. It wont take any time to change that aspect. What they have now is not ready for production, but it is ready or really close to ready for field testing.
(Techie stuff follows. To avoid it, skip down....)
It was originally meant to be a replacement for the Mark 45 5" deck gun, which, at best, has a muzzle velocity of 1806 mile/hour. The current released figures on the NRG shows it at a muzzle velocity of 5400-5600 m/h. It is shooting a 7-40 pound bullet, as compared to the M45's 70 lbs, but that isn't the point of it. It is very easy to impart more energy to a lighter round if you can increase the velocity. Energy = (weight in grains * velocity in feet/second^2) / 450450.
Mark 45 Mod 4 shoots a 490,000 grain round at 2648 feet per second. 7,632,166 ft/lbs of force.
NRG throws a 49,000 – 280,000 grain round at 7,920 – 8,213 feet per second. 6,823,384 – 41,929,056 ft/lbs of force.
For comparison, the old 16" guns on battleships shot an 18,900,000 grain round at 2,500 ft per second. 262,237,762 ft/lbs of force.
6.8 – 41 mil ft/lbs verse 7.6 mil ft/lbs. At the lightest round with the slowest speed, the rail-gun is within the same range as the M45. At a the heaviest, it so far out performs standard rounds that it is in a range between the standard deck gun and a battleship without needing a battleship, and the overall round weight is still significantly less at 40 total pounds, as compared to the 70 lbs bullet + 42 lbs of propellant.
(...to here.)
One advantage of this gun is that the M45 can only shoot 16-20 rounds per minute, and only for a short time before the barrel needs to cool. The rail-gun has the potential of shooting as fast as you can build a charge; the current goal is to be able to shoot 100s of rounds per minute. Given the capacity of Naval power plants, the slowest part of the gun is going to be the loading mechanism. Since they need extremely low friction to achieve the 5400-5600 m/h that they've already achieved, the barrel will not heat up as quickly as the M45.
The main advantage is that they will not need to store highly explosive chemical propellants. Each shot will only require the 7-40 lbs bullet, and not the combined 70 lbs bullet + (highly explosive) powder. The cost benefit of cutting out the propellant, the increased safety of not storing high explosives, and the increased (potential) firing speed of the rail-gun makes it so far out-preform any conventional gun that it would be foolish to not press this into the field as soon as possible. It will be to big guns what the machine gun was to small arms.
Apparently, the goal now is to have a field deployable gun in 2020.
The battleships used to use 660 lbs of powder to fire one shot. One fairly standard charge of modern deck guns is 42 lbs of propellant. If it was standard gunpowder (which it is not) it would cost somewhere near $30 per pound, or nearly $20,000 per battleship shot, and about $1300 per M45 shot. The actual per shot price is much higher than that, but I can't find the exact price of the NACO, EX-99, or the new Navy Insensitive Low Erosion (NILE) propellant used. So, the cost savings of going with a system that doesn't use any chemical propellant is huge.
One thing to consider is that it make the rail-gun the weapon of choice when engaging targets, precisely because of the low cost. The Stand Missile is more than $400,000 per missile (just found out that Raytheon is developing the SM6, which pushes the capacities that I mentioned above). The Tactical Tomahawk cruise missile costs $1.4 million each. That should give you pause when thinking about "Shock and Awe".
The rail-gun is already well past a 100-mile gun, costs a tiny fraction of a standard shot (with the common cost of the bullet only), and a statistically insignificant amount as compared to missiles. The downside to that is that commanders will be far more likely to use this weapon than any others, and they will use it more often. It is like the number of drone strikes as compared to those by piloted attack aircraft. The military will be more prepared and willing to fire on targets than they have been to date.
Seeing that they are also developing unmanned drone ships along side the drone aircraft, it is unlikely that operators inside the US will refuse to fire on any target the unmanned drones have identified. It is fighting a war by pushing buttons thousands of miles away, while viewing it through a straw. Any reasonable person should see that compared to the tech level of the terrorists that we're fighting, we should just stop, now. They aren't even mosquitoes to our legions. We only legitimize them by paying them any mind whatsoever.
I've been watching the same video of the test fire for going on a decade now (first time I saw anything about the rail-gun was at a military tech-show in DC in 2003). It gets re-posted every now and then, but the main video that is available online is years out of date. When I was at SWM we got a the tech report about the gun, and it's scheduled to move out of prototyping into a field-capable design by 2014-5. The latest video I can find now from ONR (Feb 2012) shows a fully functional rail-gun that could be mounted, which was being hand-loaded. It wont take any time to change that aspect. What they have now is not ready for production, but it is ready or really close to ready for field testing.
(Techie stuff follows. To avoid it, skip down....)
It was originally meant to be a replacement for the Mark 45 5" deck gun, which, at best, has a muzzle velocity of 1806 mile/hour. The current released figures on the NRG shows it at a muzzle velocity of 5400-5600 m/h. It is shooting a 7-40 pound bullet, as compared to the M45's 70 lbs, but that isn't the point of it. It is very easy to impart more energy to a lighter round if you can increase the velocity. Energy = (weight in grains * velocity in feet/second^2) / 450450.
Mark 45 Mod 4 shoots a 490,000 grain round at 2648 feet per second. 7,632,166 ft/lbs of force.
NRG throws a 49,000 – 280,000 grain round at 7,920 – 8,213 feet per second. 6,823,384 – 41,929,056 ft/lbs of force.
For comparison, the old 16" guns on battleships shot an 18,900,000 grain round at 2,500 ft per second. 262,237,762 ft/lbs of force.
6.8 – 41 mil ft/lbs verse 7.6 mil ft/lbs. At the lightest round with the slowest speed, the rail-gun is within the same range as the M45. At a the heaviest, it so far out performs standard rounds that it is in a range between the standard deck gun and a battleship without needing a battleship, and the overall round weight is still significantly less at 40 total pounds, as compared to the 70 lbs bullet + 42 lbs of propellant.
(...to here.)
One advantage of this gun is that the M45 can only shoot 16-20 rounds per minute, and only for a short time before the barrel needs to cool. The rail-gun has the potential of shooting as fast as you can build a charge; the current goal is to be able to shoot 100s of rounds per minute. Given the capacity of Naval power plants, the slowest part of the gun is going to be the loading mechanism. Since they need extremely low friction to achieve the 5400-5600 m/h that they've already achieved, the barrel will not heat up as quickly as the M45.
The main advantage is that they will not need to store highly explosive chemical propellants. Each shot will only require the 7-40 lbs bullet, and not the combined 70 lbs bullet + (highly explosive) powder. The cost benefit of cutting out the propellant, the increased safety of not storing high explosives, and the increased (potential) firing speed of the rail-gun makes it so far out-preform any conventional gun that it would be foolish to not press this into the field as soon as possible. It will be to big guns what the machine gun was to small arms.
Apparently, the goal now is to have a field deployable gun in 2020.
The battleships used to use 660 lbs of powder to fire one shot. One fairly standard charge of modern deck guns is 42 lbs of propellant. If it was standard gunpowder (which it is not) it would cost somewhere near $30 per pound, or nearly $20,000 per battleship shot, and about $1300 per M45 shot. The actual per shot price is much higher than that, but I can't find the exact price of the NACO, EX-99, or the new Navy Insensitive Low Erosion (NILE) propellant used. So, the cost savings of going with a system that doesn't use any chemical propellant is huge.
One thing to consider is that it make the rail-gun the weapon of choice when engaging targets, precisely because of the low cost. The Stand Missile is more than $400,000 per missile (just found out that Raytheon is developing the SM6, which pushes the capacities that I mentioned above). The Tactical Tomahawk cruise missile costs $1.4 million each. That should give you pause when thinking about "Shock and Awe".
The rail-gun is already well past a 100-mile gun, costs a tiny fraction of a standard shot (with the common cost of the bullet only), and a statistically insignificant amount as compared to missiles. The downside to that is that commanders will be far more likely to use this weapon than any others, and they will use it more often. It is like the number of drone strikes as compared to those by piloted attack aircraft. The military will be more prepared and willing to fire on targets than they have been to date.
Seeing that they are also developing unmanned drone ships along side the drone aircraft, it is unlikely that operators inside the US will refuse to fire on any target the unmanned drones have identified. It is fighting a war by pushing buttons thousands of miles away, while viewing it through a straw. Any reasonable person should see that compared to the tech level of the terrorists that we're fighting, we should just stop, now. They aren't even mosquitoes to our legions. We only legitimize them by paying them any mind whatsoever.
Government Marketing
Often times, it is not in the interest of the government to advertise these developments, and not for national security reasons. If the American people really understood that there is no nation on the face of this planet that could possible pose a real threat to us, including all other nuclear armed states combined, because of the technology that we already have, there is no way we would allow the massive R&D budget to continue. Funding is tied directly to fear.The military tends to be clandestine even in publishing scientific papers. When a new technology is determined to have a significant civilian use, the military has publish papers under false identities with fake, but valid credentials, or via a participating university under very real professors' names. Et al. can cover more than you might think.
One of the biggest gripes I heard while I was writing for Surface Warfare Magazine was that engineers working on something that would shape the future of their field couldn't get the recognition because they couldn't publish under their own name. The development would still make it out into the market to be innovated (in the business sense). The downside to working for the government is you get little to no credit.
Budget Cuts
It would seem that I think that there is a lot of good that comes from military R&D, and I do think that. Why would I say that it should be cut? If so many new technologies are produced either from direct military research, or university partnerships, it seems like the logical thing to let them keep funding it however they've been doing it. Don't fix what isn't broken.
That isn't the case. The programs I've mentioned are the common knowledge ones, the unclassified, the "here's a bone" kind of things. The really cutting edge is so completely hidden that it makes the NSA, with their PRISM, look like amateurs. The effect of allowing the military to research whatever it wants with no possibility of civilian oversight, and then having them (with or without permission) shunting the technology they think would be useful to civilians, is that the military is developing a society that is good for the military (even if that never was the goal at all).
Just look at video games. The Army invests serious money in making first-person-shooters and real-time-strategy games better, and more accurate. Why? Because it costs less to train soldiers when they've been training their whole lives. This is one very minor example. In Operation Desert Storm (1990-1), tank gunners described their experience along the Highway of Death as like a video game. In the 1930's the military proved that simulated experiences provide real training (the Link Trainer used by the Army Air Force), and they continue to lead in simulator design and usage. Many developments eventually make it to the game design field. I'm not saying that the latest games are all part of a government plot to train tomorrow's war-fighters, but there is as complex a dynamic and interaction between the military and game designers as there is between the military and nearly every other industry, especially universities.
It has been a very long time since the citizens have had a strong hand in directing the course of this nation. Just looking at the budgets is enough to realize that the military industrial complex is calling most of the shots. Follow the money.
That isn't the case. The programs I've mentioned are the common knowledge ones, the unclassified, the "here's a bone" kind of things. The really cutting edge is so completely hidden that it makes the NSA, with their PRISM, look like amateurs. The effect of allowing the military to research whatever it wants with no possibility of civilian oversight, and then having them (with or without permission) shunting the technology they think would be useful to civilians, is that the military is developing a society that is good for the military (even if that never was the goal at all).
Just look at video games. The Army invests serious money in making first-person-shooters and real-time-strategy games better, and more accurate. Why? Because it costs less to train soldiers when they've been training their whole lives. This is one very minor example. In Operation Desert Storm (1990-1), tank gunners described their experience along the Highway of Death as like a video game. In the 1930's the military proved that simulated experiences provide real training (the Link Trainer used by the Army Air Force), and they continue to lead in simulator design and usage. Many developments eventually make it to the game design field. I'm not saying that the latest games are all part of a government plot to train tomorrow's war-fighters, but there is as complex a dynamic and interaction between the military and game designers as there is between the military and nearly every other industry, especially universities.
It has been a very long time since the citizens have had a strong hand in directing the course of this nation. Just looking at the budgets is enough to realize that the military industrial complex is calling most of the shots. Follow the money.
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