Reparations for slavery was spent on The military industrial complex
- Thread starter Truth200
- Start date
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor
Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor
The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine, all weather stealth tacticalfighter aircraft developed for the United States Air Force (USAF). The result of the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter program, the aircraft was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities including ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence roles.[6] Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor and is responsible for the majority of the airframe, weapon systems, and final assembly of the F-22, while program partnerBoeing provides the wings, aft fuselage, avionics integration, and training systems.
The aircraft was variously designated F-22 and F/A-22 prior to formally entering service in December 2005 as the F-22A. Despite a protracted development as well as operational issues, the USAF considers the F-22 a critical component of its tactical air power, and states that the aircraft is unmatched by any known or projected fighter.[7] The Raptor's combination of stealth, aerodynamic performance, and situational awareness gives the aircraft unprecedented air-to-air capabilities.[8] Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, former Chief of theAustralian Defence Force, said in 2004 that the "F-22 will be the most outstanding fighter plane ever built."[9]
The high cost of the aircraft, a lack of clear air-to-air missions due to delays in Russian and Chinese fighter programs, a ban on exports, and development of the more versatile and lower cost F-35 led to the end of F-22 production.[N 1] A final procurement tally of 187 operational production aircraft was established in 2009 and the last F-22 was delivered to the USAF in 2012.
Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor
The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine, all weather stealth tacticalfighter aircraft developed for the United States Air Force (USAF). The result of the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter program, the aircraft was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities including ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence roles.[6] Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor and is responsible for the majority of the airframe, weapon systems, and final assembly of the F-22, while program partnerBoeing provides the wings, aft fuselage, avionics integration, and training systems.
The aircraft was variously designated F-22 and F/A-22 prior to formally entering service in December 2005 as the F-22A. Despite a protracted development as well as operational issues, the USAF considers the F-22 a critical component of its tactical air power, and states that the aircraft is unmatched by any known or projected fighter.[7] The Raptor's combination of stealth, aerodynamic performance, and situational awareness gives the aircraft unprecedented air-to-air capabilities.[8] Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, former Chief of theAustralian Defence Force, said in 2004 that the "F-22 will be the most outstanding fighter plane ever built."[9]
The high cost of the aircraft, a lack of clear air-to-air missions due to delays in Russian and Chinese fighter programs, a ban on exports, and development of the more versatile and lower cost F-35 led to the end of F-22 production.[N 1] A final procurement tally of 187 operational production aircraft was established in 2009 and the last F-22 was delivered to the USAF in 2012.
U.S.
U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGERSEPT. 21, 2014
Photo
President Obama and Dmitri A. Medvedev, then the Russian president, in 2009 at the Kremlin in Moscow, where they signed an agreement to cut strategic nuclear arms. Credit Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Continue reading the main story Share This Page
It is part of a nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars.
This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for “a nuclear-free world” and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy. The original idea was that modest rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling nuclear complex would speed arms refurbishment, raising confidence in the arsenal’s reliability and paving the way for new treaties that would significantly cut the number of warheads.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
Continue reading the main story
Modernizing a Nuclear Arsenal
The government is upgrading major nuclear weapon plants and laboratories, which employ more than 40,000 people.
Nevada National Security Site
EMPLOYEES: 2,500
UPGRADES:
1 proposed
The National Criticality Experiments Research Center was built for $150 million.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
EMPLOYEES: 7,430
UPGRADES:
7 approved, 6 proposed
A plutonium processing site was recently renovated.
Kansas City Plant
EMPLOYEES: 2,730
The National Security Campus, recently completed for $700 million.
Y-12 National Security Complex
EMPLOYEES: 4,720
UPGRADES:
5 approved, 4 proposed
The complex’s Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility was built for $550 million.
NEV.
CALIF.
MO.
TENN.
S.C.
N.M.
TEX.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
EMPLOYEES: 5,250
UPGRADES:
2 approved, 6 more proposed
Sandia National Laboratories
EMPLOYEES: 9,880
UPGRADES:
3 approved,
9 proposed
A complex for testing weapons was recently rebuilt for $100 million.
Pantex Plant
EMPLOYEES: 3,180
UPGRADES:
3 approved, 10 proposed
The plant’s high-explosives pressing facility is being built for $145 million.
Savannah River Site
EMPLOYEES: 5,670
UPGRADES:
1 approved
The new Tritium Engineering Building was recently completed.
Sources: National Nuclear Security Administration, Government Accountability Office
Supporters of arms control, as well as some of President Obama’s closest advisers, say their hopes for the president’s vision have turned to baffled disappointment as the modernization of nuclear capabilities has become an end unto itself.
“A lot of it is hard to explain,” said Sam Nunn, the former senator whose writings on nuclear disarmament deeply influenced Mr. Obama. “The president’s vision was a significant change in direction. But the process has preserved the status quo.”
With Russia on the warpath, China pressing its own territorial claims and Pakistan expanding its arsenal, the overall chances for Mr. Obama’s legacy of disarmament look increasingly dim, analysts say. Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.
“The most fundamental game changer is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top nuclear adviser in his first term and now a scholar at Harvard. “That has made any measure to reduce the stockpile unilaterally politically impossible.”
That suits hawks just fine. They see the investments as putting the United States in a stronger position if a new arms race breaks out. In fact, the renovated plants that Mr. Obama has approved for a smaller force of more precise, reliable weapons could, under a different president, let the arsenal expand rapidly.
Arms controllers say the White House has made some progress toward Mr. Obama’s broader agenda. Mr. Nunn credits the president with improving nuclear security around the globe, persuading other leaders to sweep up loose nuclear materials that terrorists could seize.
In the end, however, budget realities may do more than nuclear philosophies to curb the atomic upgrades. “There isn’t enough money,” said Jeffrey Lewis, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, an expert on the modernization effort. “You’re going to get a train wreck.”
While the Kansas City plant is considered a success — it opened ahead of schedule and under budget — other planned renovations are mired in delays and cost overruns. Even so, Congress can fight hard for projects that represent big-ticket items in important districts.
Skeptics say that the arsenal is already dependable and that the costly overhauls are aimed less at arms control than at seeking votes and attracting top talent, people who might otherwise gravitate to other fields.
But the Obama administration insists that the improvements to the nuclear arsenal are vital to making it smaller, more flexible and better able to fulfill Mr. Obama’s original vision.
Daniel B. Poneman, the departing deputy secretary of energy, whose department runs the complex, said, “The whole design of the modernization enables us to make reductions.”
A Farewell to Arms
Photo
The new National Security Campus in Kansas City, Mo. Credit The Kansas City Star
In the fall of 2008, as Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency, a coalition of peace groups sued to halt work on a replacement bomb plant in Kansas City. They cited the prospect of a new administration that might, as one litigant put it, kill the project in “a few months.”
The Kansas City plant, an initiative of the Bush years, seemed like a good target, since Mr. Obama had declared his support for nuclear disarmament.
The $700 million weapons plant survived. But in April 2009, the new president and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev, vowed to rapidly complete an arms treaty called New Start, and committed their nations “to achieving a nuclear-free world.”
Five days later, Mr. Obama spoke in Prague to a cheering throng, saying the United States had a moral responsibility to seek the “security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
“I’m not naïve,” he added. “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence.”
That October, the Nobel committee, citing his disarmament efforts, announced it would award Mr. Obama the Peace Prize.
The accord with Moscow was hammered out quickly. The countries agreed to cut strategic arms by roughly 30 percent — from 2,200 to 1,550 deployed weapons apiece — over seven years. It was a modest step. The Russian arsenal was already declining, and today has dropped below the agreed number, military experts say.
Even so, to win Senate approval of the treaty, Mr. Obama struck a deal with Republicans in 2010 that would set the country’s nuclear agenda for decades to come.
Republicans objected to the treaty unless the president agreed to an aggressive rehabilitation of American nuclear forces and manufacturing sites. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, led the opposition. He likened the bomb complex to a rundown garage — a description some in the administration considered accurate.
Under fire, the administration promised to add $14 billion over a decade for atomic renovations. Then Senator Kyl refused to conclude a deal.
Facing the possible defeat of his first major treaty, Mr. Obama and the floor manager for the effort, Senator John Kerry, now the secretary of state, set up a war room and made deals to widen Republican support. In late December, the five-week campaign paid off, although the 71-to-26 vote represented the smallest margin ever for the ratification of a nuclear pact between Washington and Moscow.
The Democrats were unanimous in favor, their ranks including six senators with atomic plants in their states. Among the Republicans joining the Democrats were Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, both of Tennessee and both strong backers of modernization. (“We’re glad to have the thousands of jobs,” Mr. Alexander said recently in announcing financing for a new plant.)
Continue reading the main story
Nuclear Spending
Annual spending by the Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear weapons research, development, testing and production.
$10 billion (in 2014 dollars)
8
6
4
2
1950
’60
’70
’80
’90
’00
2010
Source: Monterey Institute of International Studies
THE NEW YORK TIMES
In open and classified reports to Congress, Mr. Obama laid out his atomic refurbishment plans, which the Congressional Budget Office now estimates will cost $355 billion dollars over the next decade. But that is just the start. The price tag will soar after 10 years as missiles, bombers and submarines made in the last century reach the end of their useful lives and replacements are built.
“That’s where all the big money is,” Ashton B. Carter, the former deputy secretary of defense, said last year. “By comparison, everything that we’re doing now is cheap.
U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGERSEPT. 21, 2014
Photo
President Obama and Dmitri A. Medvedev, then the Russian president, in 2009 at the Kremlin in Moscow, where they signed an agreement to cut strategic nuclear arms. Credit Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Continue reading the main story Share This Page
- Share
- Tweet
- Save
- more
It is part of a nationwide wave of atomic revitalization that includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers. A recent federal study put the collective price tag, over the next three decades, at up to a trillion dollars.
This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for “a nuclear-free world” and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy. The original idea was that modest rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling nuclear complex would speed arms refurbishment, raising confidence in the arsenal’s reliability and paving the way for new treaties that would significantly cut the number of warheads.
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage
Obama Asks Russia to Join in Reducing Nuclear ArmsJUNE 19, 2013
Obama to Renew Drive for Cuts in Nuclear ArmsFEB. 10, 2013
Obama’s Youth Shaped His Nuclear-Free VisionJULY 4, 2009
Continue reading the main story
Modernizing a Nuclear Arsenal
The government is upgrading major nuclear weapon plants and laboratories, which employ more than 40,000 people.
Nevada National Security Site
EMPLOYEES: 2,500
UPGRADES:
1 proposed
The National Criticality Experiments Research Center was built for $150 million.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
EMPLOYEES: 7,430
UPGRADES:
7 approved, 6 proposed
A plutonium processing site was recently renovated.
Kansas City Plant
EMPLOYEES: 2,730
The National Security Campus, recently completed for $700 million.
Y-12 National Security Complex
EMPLOYEES: 4,720
UPGRADES:
5 approved, 4 proposed
The complex’s Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility was built for $550 million.
NEV.
CALIF.
MO.
TENN.
S.C.
N.M.
TEX.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
EMPLOYEES: 5,250
UPGRADES:
2 approved, 6 more proposed
Sandia National Laboratories
EMPLOYEES: 9,880
UPGRADES:
3 approved,
9 proposed
A complex for testing weapons was recently rebuilt for $100 million.
Pantex Plant
EMPLOYEES: 3,180
UPGRADES:
3 approved, 10 proposed
The plant’s high-explosives pressing facility is being built for $145 million.
Savannah River Site
EMPLOYEES: 5,670
UPGRADES:
1 approved
The new Tritium Engineering Building was recently completed.
Sources: National Nuclear Security Administration, Government Accountability Office
Supporters of arms control, as well as some of President Obama’s closest advisers, say their hopes for the president’s vision have turned to baffled disappointment as the modernization of nuclear capabilities has become an end unto itself.
“A lot of it is hard to explain,” said Sam Nunn, the former senator whose writings on nuclear disarmament deeply influenced Mr. Obama. “The president’s vision was a significant change in direction. But the process has preserved the status quo.”
With Russia on the warpath, China pressing its own territorial claims and Pakistan expanding its arsenal, the overall chances for Mr. Obama’s legacy of disarmament look increasingly dim, analysts say. Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.
“The most fundamental game changer is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” said Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top nuclear adviser in his first term and now a scholar at Harvard. “That has made any measure to reduce the stockpile unilaterally politically impossible.”
That suits hawks just fine. They see the investments as putting the United States in a stronger position if a new arms race breaks out. In fact, the renovated plants that Mr. Obama has approved for a smaller force of more precise, reliable weapons could, under a different president, let the arsenal expand rapidly.
Arms controllers say the White House has made some progress toward Mr. Obama’s broader agenda. Mr. Nunn credits the president with improving nuclear security around the globe, persuading other leaders to sweep up loose nuclear materials that terrorists could seize.
In the end, however, budget realities may do more than nuclear philosophies to curb the atomic upgrades. “There isn’t enough money,” said Jeffrey Lewis, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, an expert on the modernization effort. “You’re going to get a train wreck.”
While the Kansas City plant is considered a success — it opened ahead of schedule and under budget — other planned renovations are mired in delays and cost overruns. Even so, Congress can fight hard for projects that represent big-ticket items in important districts.
Skeptics say that the arsenal is already dependable and that the costly overhauls are aimed less at arms control than at seeking votes and attracting top talent, people who might otherwise gravitate to other fields.
But the Obama administration insists that the improvements to the nuclear arsenal are vital to making it smaller, more flexible and better able to fulfill Mr. Obama’s original vision.
Daniel B. Poneman, the departing deputy secretary of energy, whose department runs the complex, said, “The whole design of the modernization enables us to make reductions.”
A Farewell to Arms
Photo
The new National Security Campus in Kansas City, Mo. Credit The Kansas City Star
In the fall of 2008, as Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency, a coalition of peace groups sued to halt work on a replacement bomb plant in Kansas City. They cited the prospect of a new administration that might, as one litigant put it, kill the project in “a few months.”
The Kansas City plant, an initiative of the Bush years, seemed like a good target, since Mr. Obama had declared his support for nuclear disarmament.
The $700 million weapons plant survived. But in April 2009, the new president and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev, vowed to rapidly complete an arms treaty called New Start, and committed their nations “to achieving a nuclear-free world.”
Five days later, Mr. Obama spoke in Prague to a cheering throng, saying the United States had a moral responsibility to seek the “security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
“I’m not naïve,” he added. “This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence.”
That October, the Nobel committee, citing his disarmament efforts, announced it would award Mr. Obama the Peace Prize.
The accord with Moscow was hammered out quickly. The countries agreed to cut strategic arms by roughly 30 percent — from 2,200 to 1,550 deployed weapons apiece — over seven years. It was a modest step. The Russian arsenal was already declining, and today has dropped below the agreed number, military experts say.
Even so, to win Senate approval of the treaty, Mr. Obama struck a deal with Republicans in 2010 that would set the country’s nuclear agenda for decades to come.
Republicans objected to the treaty unless the president agreed to an aggressive rehabilitation of American nuclear forces and manufacturing sites. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, led the opposition. He likened the bomb complex to a rundown garage — a description some in the administration considered accurate.
Under fire, the administration promised to add $14 billion over a decade for atomic renovations. Then Senator Kyl refused to conclude a deal.
Facing the possible defeat of his first major treaty, Mr. Obama and the floor manager for the effort, Senator John Kerry, now the secretary of state, set up a war room and made deals to widen Republican support. In late December, the five-week campaign paid off, although the 71-to-26 vote represented the smallest margin ever for the ratification of a nuclear pact between Washington and Moscow.
The Democrats were unanimous in favor, their ranks including six senators with atomic plants in their states. Among the Republicans joining the Democrats were Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, both of Tennessee and both strong backers of modernization. (“We’re glad to have the thousands of jobs,” Mr. Alexander said recently in announcing financing for a new plant.)
Continue reading the main story
Nuclear Spending
Annual spending by the Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear weapons research, development, testing and production.
$10 billion (in 2014 dollars)
8
6
4
2
1950
’60
’70
’80
’90
’00
2010
Source: Monterey Institute of International Studies
THE NEW YORK TIMES
In open and classified reports to Congress, Mr. Obama laid out his atomic refurbishment plans, which the Congressional Budget Office now estimates will cost $355 billion dollars over the next decade. But that is just the start. The price tag will soar after 10 years as missiles, bombers and submarines made in the last century reach the end of their useful lives and replacements are built.
“That’s where all the big money is,” Ashton B. Carter, the former deputy secretary of defense, said last year. “By comparison, everything that we’re doing now is cheap.
A Wave of Modernization
The money is flowing into a sprawling complex for making warheads that includes eight major plants and laboratories employing more than 40,000 people. Its oldest elements, some dating to 1943, have long struggled with fires, explosions and workplace injuries. This March, a concrete roof collapsed in Tennessee. More recently, chunks of ceiling clattered down a stairwell there, and employees were told to wear hard hats.
“It’s deplorable,” Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, said at an April hearing. Equipment, he added, “breaks down on a daily basis.”
In some ways, the challenge is similar to what Detroit’s auto industry faces: Does it make sense to pour money into old structures or build new ones that are more secure, are fully computerized and adhere to modern environmental standards?
And if the government chooses the latter course, how does it justify that investment if the president’s avowed policy is to wean the world off nuclear arms?
The old bomb plant in Kansas City embodies the dilemma. It was built in World War II to produce aircraft engines and went nuclear in 1949, making the mechanical and electrical parts for warheads.
But a river flooded it repeatedly, and in the past year it was gradually shut down. Today, visitors see tacky furniture, old machinery and floors caked with mud.
Its replacement, eight miles south, sits on higher ground. Its five buildings hold 2,700 employees — just like the old plant — but officials say it uses half the energy, saving about $150 million annually. Everything is bright and modern, from the sleek lobby and cafeteria to the fitness center. Clean rooms for delicate manufacturing have tighter dust standards than hospital operating rooms.
It is called the National Security Campus, evoking a college rather than a factory for weapons that can pound cities into radioactive dust.
Rick L. Lavelock, a senior plant manager, said during a tour in July that employees had a “very great sense of mission” in keeping the arsenal safe and reliable.
Photo
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Credit Albuquerque Journal, via Associated Press
Their main job now is extending the life of a nearly 40-year-old submarine warhead called the W-76. Drawing on thousands of parts, they seek to make it last 60 years — three times as long as originally planned.
The warhead’s new guts, a colorful assortment of electronic and mechanical parts, lay alongside a shiny nose cone on a metal table outside an assembly hall.
The last stop on the tour was a giant storage room. Mr. Lavelock said it covered 60,000 square feet — bigger than a football field. Laughing, he likened it to the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” scene showing a vast federal warehouse that seemed to go on forever.
If the Kansas City plant is the crown jewel of the modernization effort, other projects are reminders of how many billions have yet to be spent, and how even facilities completed successfully can go awry.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb, plans for a new complex to shape plutonium fuel emerged a decade ago with a $660 million price tag. But antinuclear groups kept publicizing embarrassing details, like the discovery of a geologic fault under the site. The estimated cost soared to $5.8 billion, and in 2012, the Obama administration suspended the project.
“In the current fiscal crisis,” Charles F. McMillan, the director of Los Alamos, told a nuclear conference last year, building large facilities “may no longer be practical.”
A different problem hit the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. A $550 million fortress was erected there to safeguard the nation’s main supplies of highly enriched uranium, a bomb fuel considered relatively easy for terrorists to make into deadly weapons.
In 2012, an 82-year-old Roman Catholic nun, Megan Rice, and two accomplices cut through fences, splashed blood on the stronghold and sprayed its walls with peace slogans. The security breach set off major investigations, and the nun was sentenced to almost three years in prison.
Now, the site’s woes have deepened. As Oak Ridge prepared for an even bigger upgrade — replacing buildings that process uranium — the price tag soared from $6.5 billion to $19 billion. This year, the Obama administration scuttled the current plan, and the lab is struggling to revise the blueprint.
Robert Alvarez, a policy adviser to the energy secretary during the Clinton administration, recently wrote in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Oak Ridge was the “poster child” of a dysfunctional nuclear complex.
Across the nation, 21 major upgrades have been approved and 36 more proposed, according to the Government Accountability Office. In nearly two dozen reports over five years, the congressional investigators have described the modernization push as poorly managed and financially unaccountable.
They recently warned — in typically understated language — that the managers of the atomic complex had repeatedly omitted and underestimated billions of dollars in costs, leaving the plan with “less funding than will be needed.”
Photo
The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Credit National Nuclear Security Administration, via Reuters
The Military Deployments
The Obama administration says it sees no contradiction between rebuilding the nation’s atomic complex and the president’s vow to make the world less dependent on nuclear arms.
“While we still have weapons, the most important thing is to make sure they are safe, secure and reliable,” said Mr. Poneman, the deputy energy secretary. The improvements, he said, have reassured allies. “It’s important to our extended deterrent,” he said, referring to the American nuclear umbrella over nations in Asia and the Middle East, which has instilled a sense of military security and kept many from building their own arsenals.
The administration has told the Pentagon to plan for 12 new missile submarines, up to 100 new bombers and 400 land-based missiles, either new or refurbished. Manufacturing costs for these forces, if approved, will peak between 2024 and 2029, according to a recent study by Dr. Lewis and colleagues at the Monterey Institute.
It estimated the total cost of the nuclear enterprise over the next three decades at roughly $900 billion to $1.1 trillion. Policy makers, the report said, “are only now beginning to appreciate the full scope of these procurement costs.”
Nonetheless, lobbying for the new forces is heating up, with military officials often eager to show off dilapidated gear. In April, a “60 Minutes” segment featured a tour of aging missile silos. Officials pointed out antiquated phones, broken doors, a missile damaged from water leaks and an old computer that relied on enormous diskettes.
The looming crackup between trillion-dollar plans and tight budgets is starting to get Washington’s attention. Modernization delays are multiplying and cost estimates are rising. Panels of experts are bluntly describing the current path as unacceptable.
A new generation of missiles, bombers and submarines “is unaffordable,” a bipartisan, independent panel commissioned by Congress and the Defense Department declared in July. Its 10 experts, including former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, echoed other estimates in putting the cost at up to $1 trillion.
The overall investment, the panel said, “would likely come at the expense of needed improvements in conventional forces.”
In August, the White House announced it was reviewing the atomic spending plans in preparation for next year’s budget request to Congress, which will set federal spending for 2016.
“This is Obama’s legacy budget,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s political delicacy. “It’s his last chance to make the hard choices and prioritize.”
Already, the administration has delayed plans for the Navy’s new submarines, the atomic certification of new bombers and a new generation of warheads meant to fit more than one delivery system. And debate is rising on whether to ax production of the air-launched cruise missile, a new nuclear weapon for bombers, its cost estimated at some $30 billion.
One of the most dramatic calls for reductions came from Chuck Hagel shortly before he became defense secretary last year. He signed a study, headed by retired Gen. James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that proposed cutting the nuclear arsenal to 900 warheads and eliminating most of the 3,500 weapons in storage. The nation’s military plan, the study concluded, “artificially sustains nuclear stockpiles that are much larger than required for deterrence today.”
In a speech in Berlin last year, the president said he would cut the arsenal to roughly 1,000 weapons — but only as part of a broader deal requiring Russian reductions. So far, the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has shown no interest, and Mr. Obama has made clear he will not cut weapons unilaterally. Unless either man changes his approach, the president’s legacy will be one of modest nuclear cuts and a significantly modernized atomic complex.
“I could imagine Putin might well decide it’s in his interest to seek more cuts,” said Rose Gottemoeller, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and the country’s top arms negotiator. “I don’t discard the notion we could do it again.”
Few of her colleagues are so optimistic. They predict that if Mr. Obama is to achieve the kind of vision he entered office with, he will have to act alone.
William J. Broad reported from Kansas City, Mo., and David E. Sanger from Washington
The money is flowing into a sprawling complex for making warheads that includes eight major plants and laboratories employing more than 40,000 people. Its oldest elements, some dating to 1943, have long struggled with fires, explosions and workplace injuries. This March, a concrete roof collapsed in Tennessee. More recently, chunks of ceiling clattered down a stairwell there, and employees were told to wear hard hats.
“It’s deplorable,” Representative Chuck Fleischmann, Republican of Tennessee, said at an April hearing. Equipment, he added, “breaks down on a daily basis.”
In some ways, the challenge is similar to what Detroit’s auto industry faces: Does it make sense to pour money into old structures or build new ones that are more secure, are fully computerized and adhere to modern environmental standards?
And if the government chooses the latter course, how does it justify that investment if the president’s avowed policy is to wean the world off nuclear arms?
The old bomb plant in Kansas City embodies the dilemma. It was built in World War II to produce aircraft engines and went nuclear in 1949, making the mechanical and electrical parts for warheads.
But a river flooded it repeatedly, and in the past year it was gradually shut down. Today, visitors see tacky furniture, old machinery and floors caked with mud.
Its replacement, eight miles south, sits on higher ground. Its five buildings hold 2,700 employees — just like the old plant — but officials say it uses half the energy, saving about $150 million annually. Everything is bright and modern, from the sleek lobby and cafeteria to the fitness center. Clean rooms for delicate manufacturing have tighter dust standards than hospital operating rooms.
It is called the National Security Campus, evoking a college rather than a factory for weapons that can pound cities into radioactive dust.
Rick L. Lavelock, a senior plant manager, said during a tour in July that employees had a “very great sense of mission” in keeping the arsenal safe and reliable.
Photo
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Credit Albuquerque Journal, via Associated Press
Their main job now is extending the life of a nearly 40-year-old submarine warhead called the W-76. Drawing on thousands of parts, they seek to make it last 60 years — three times as long as originally planned.
The warhead’s new guts, a colorful assortment of electronic and mechanical parts, lay alongside a shiny nose cone on a metal table outside an assembly hall.
The last stop on the tour was a giant storage room. Mr. Lavelock said it covered 60,000 square feet — bigger than a football field. Laughing, he likened it to the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” scene showing a vast federal warehouse that seemed to go on forever.
If the Kansas City plant is the crown jewel of the modernization effort, other projects are reminders of how many billions have yet to be spent, and how even facilities completed successfully can go awry.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb, plans for a new complex to shape plutonium fuel emerged a decade ago with a $660 million price tag. But antinuclear groups kept publicizing embarrassing details, like the discovery of a geologic fault under the site. The estimated cost soared to $5.8 billion, and in 2012, the Obama administration suspended the project.
“In the current fiscal crisis,” Charles F. McMillan, the director of Los Alamos, told a nuclear conference last year, building large facilities “may no longer be practical.”
A different problem hit the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. A $550 million fortress was erected there to safeguard the nation’s main supplies of highly enriched uranium, a bomb fuel considered relatively easy for terrorists to make into deadly weapons.
In 2012, an 82-year-old Roman Catholic nun, Megan Rice, and two accomplices cut through fences, splashed blood on the stronghold and sprayed its walls with peace slogans. The security breach set off major investigations, and the nun was sentenced to almost three years in prison.
Now, the site’s woes have deepened. As Oak Ridge prepared for an even bigger upgrade — replacing buildings that process uranium — the price tag soared from $6.5 billion to $19 billion. This year, the Obama administration scuttled the current plan, and the lab is struggling to revise the blueprint.
Robert Alvarez, a policy adviser to the energy secretary during the Clinton administration, recently wrote in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that Oak Ridge was the “poster child” of a dysfunctional nuclear complex.
Across the nation, 21 major upgrades have been approved and 36 more proposed, according to the Government Accountability Office. In nearly two dozen reports over five years, the congressional investigators have described the modernization push as poorly managed and financially unaccountable.
They recently warned — in typically understated language — that the managers of the atomic complex had repeatedly omitted and underestimated billions of dollars in costs, leaving the plan with “less funding than will be needed.”
Photo
The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Credit National Nuclear Security Administration, via Reuters
The Military Deployments
The Obama administration says it sees no contradiction between rebuilding the nation’s atomic complex and the president’s vow to make the world less dependent on nuclear arms.
“While we still have weapons, the most important thing is to make sure they are safe, secure and reliable,” said Mr. Poneman, the deputy energy secretary. The improvements, he said, have reassured allies. “It’s important to our extended deterrent,” he said, referring to the American nuclear umbrella over nations in Asia and the Middle East, which has instilled a sense of military security and kept many from building their own arsenals.
The administration has told the Pentagon to plan for 12 new missile submarines, up to 100 new bombers and 400 land-based missiles, either new or refurbished. Manufacturing costs for these forces, if approved, will peak between 2024 and 2029, according to a recent study by Dr. Lewis and colleagues at the Monterey Institute.
It estimated the total cost of the nuclear enterprise over the next three decades at roughly $900 billion to $1.1 trillion. Policy makers, the report said, “are only now beginning to appreciate the full scope of these procurement costs.”
Nonetheless, lobbying for the new forces is heating up, with military officials often eager to show off dilapidated gear. In April, a “60 Minutes” segment featured a tour of aging missile silos. Officials pointed out antiquated phones, broken doors, a missile damaged from water leaks and an old computer that relied on enormous diskettes.
The looming crackup between trillion-dollar plans and tight budgets is starting to get Washington’s attention. Modernization delays are multiplying and cost estimates are rising. Panels of experts are bluntly describing the current path as unacceptable.
A new generation of missiles, bombers and submarines “is unaffordable,” a bipartisan, independent panel commissioned by Congress and the Defense Department declared in July. Its 10 experts, including former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, echoed other estimates in putting the cost at up to $1 trillion.
The overall investment, the panel said, “would likely come at the expense of needed improvements in conventional forces.”
In August, the White House announced it was reviewing the atomic spending plans in preparation for next year’s budget request to Congress, which will set federal spending for 2016.
“This is Obama’s legacy budget,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the topic’s political delicacy. “It’s his last chance to make the hard choices and prioritize.”
Already, the administration has delayed plans for the Navy’s new submarines, the atomic certification of new bombers and a new generation of warheads meant to fit more than one delivery system. And debate is rising on whether to ax production of the air-launched cruise missile, a new nuclear weapon for bombers, its cost estimated at some $30 billion.
One of the most dramatic calls for reductions came from Chuck Hagel shortly before he became defense secretary last year. He signed a study, headed by retired Gen. James Cartwright, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that proposed cutting the nuclear arsenal to 900 warheads and eliminating most of the 3,500 weapons in storage. The nation’s military plan, the study concluded, “artificially sustains nuclear stockpiles that are much larger than required for deterrence today.”
In a speech in Berlin last year, the president said he would cut the arsenal to roughly 1,000 weapons — but only as part of a broader deal requiring Russian reductions. So far, the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, has shown no interest, and Mr. Obama has made clear he will not cut weapons unilaterally. Unless either man changes his approach, the president’s legacy will be one of modest nuclear cuts and a significantly modernized atomic complex.
“I could imagine Putin might well decide it’s in his interest to seek more cuts,” said Rose Gottemoeller, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and the country’s top arms negotiator. “I don’t discard the notion we could do it again.”
Few of her colleagues are so optimistic. They predict that if Mr. Obama is to achieve the kind of vision he entered office with, he will have to act alone.
William J. Broad reported from Kansas City, Mo., and David E. Sanger from Washington
MrFirst2doit
All Star
This post and beliefs is dumb, naive, short-sighted and utopian like someone else said... since the beginning of recorded history, humans and civilizations have been at a race for power and dominance....sorry..sucks i Know but that's reality..... the weapons just get more dangerous and expensive..you can go hold hands, sing john lennon songs and wish for world peace all day in your little bubble...me? im grateful for our military 
here you go naive f**ks...learn about the real world..... most of these dominant militaries are examples of having advanced weapon and technology for their time..find me this utopian world peace world before the "Military industrial complex"..... go ahead...I'll wait for when the world was this Utopia you think it will be some day...
Antiquity
Egypt 1274 B.C. The rise of Egypt as a world power was steadyover two thousand years.Egypt was basically a set of villages that defended the fertile Nile River Valley on both sides from foreigners trying to settle there.The invasion of Egypt by the Hyskos (Syria) in 17th Century B.C. led to the formation of a standing army and the beginning of the New Empire.The major advance in weapons technology and warfare began around 1600 BC when the Egyptians fought and finally defeated the Hyksos people. It was during this period the horse and chariot were introduced into Egypt.They fought wars against powerful Near Eastern kingdoms like Mitanni, the Hittites, the Assyrians and Babylonians.The Battle of Kadesh (1274) took place between the forces of Ramesses II (The same guy that killed all the Jewish Babies)and the Hittites of Muwatalli II at the city of Kadesh, in modern Syria.Egypt was ambushed crossing the Orontes River and routed.Egypt lost control of the Middle East and allowed the rise of Assyrians.
Assyrians 612 B.C. Assyria is considered to be the worlds first Empire.They competed with Babylonia and Egypt for dominance in the Middle East for centuries.They took control of Babylonia in 703 B.C.They destroyed all of Israel and enslaved the population.The tiny Kingdom of Judea was surrounded and just when it seemed that Jerusalem would fall, the Assyrian Army was infected with the plague and retreated.In 701 B.C. they faced a coalition of Egyptian, Phoenician, Philistine, and Jewish armies and crushed them all.They went on to conquer Egypt in 671 B.C.Upon King Ashurbanipal’s death in 627 BC, the empire began to disintegrate rapidly. The Assyrian Capital city of Nineveh was sacked by Babylonians in 612 B.C. and all Assyrian territory was over run by the Persian Empire by 609 B.C.
Persia 480 B.C.The Persians conquered all of southern Asia (the “stan” countries) up to the boarders of China and India.They held all of the middle east including, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Holy Land.They invaded Europe, and conquered Thrace up to the Danube River.The Greek War devastated the vast numbers of Persian troops. Even though they defeated Sparta and Athens, the loss in the naval battle of Salamis to the combined Greek Fleet led to the withdrawal of Persia from Europe.If the Persians held the Greek cities, western civilization would have been very different.
Macedonia 323 BC:Alexander never lost a battle in 12 years of constant war.Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, including Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Judea, Gaza, Egypt, Bactria, and Mesopotamia, and extended the boundaries of his own empire as far as Punjab, India.Alexander’s victory over vastly superior Persia forces at the battle of Gaugamela is one of the most important and innovative battles in history.Persian chariots, which were unstoppable up to this point, were considered obsolete after Alexander’s tactics obliterated Persian Chariots.Prior to his death at age 33, Alexander had already made plans for military and mercantile expansions into the Arabian peninsula, after which he was to turn his armies to the west (Carthage, Rome, and Spain).Alexander’s battle strategies and system of governing were closely studied and implemented into the Roman Republic.
Roman Republic 49 B.C. By the first century B.C. Rome controlled every inch of shore touching the Mediterranean as well as Britain and Gaul (modern France). Julius Caesar defeated a combined Gallic Army and held the Governorship of Gaul at the same time as being consul of Rome.The senate thought he had too much power, and they ordered him to disband his army and return to Rome to stand trial for violations of the constitution.He entered Rome with his army and Civil War led to the eventual downfall of the Roman Republic.
Roman Empire 117:Rome was a world power for so long that it is tough to come up with the peak of power.The largest territory was in 117 under Emperor Trajan when Armenia, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia were conquered from the Parthian Empire.Trajan’s successor Hadrian abandoned the middle east because he did not believe they could defend the cities so far from Rome.They defeated Germania in several wars, but were never able to maintain a hold north of the Rhine River.They were smart enough to avoid land wars in Asia because they understood supply lines and communication.Rome was founded in 1000 B.C. and the eternal city officially fell in 476 but the empire continued in Constantinople until 1453, when the Ottoman Turks captured the city.
Middle Ages
Huns 453:Attila united central Asian nomads into an elite mobile fighting force that raided cities and left them in ashes.Three Norse sagas depict Attila as a hero and his tactics may have influenced the Vikings.The Huns territory stretched from China (The Great Wall) to Germany, and from the Baltic to the Danube River in Eastern Europe.They pushed the Goths, Vandals, and many other Germanic tribes into Roman territory .Rome had to defend the entire border of the empire, so they were stretched too thin.Rome had to ally with the Germanic tribes and provide them with weapons, food, land, etc to guard against Hunnic plundering. Eventually, Rome granted Attila land to settle on, modern day Hungary, and paid him a tribute in Gold.When the Emperor Valentinian’s sister Honoria proposed to Attila, he invaded Italy to claim half of the Roman Empire as dowry.Attila was defeated at Chalons, France by a combined Roman, Gothic Army.He returned the next year and invaded Italy.Northern Roman provinces left their homes to live in on the many small islands in the Venetian lagoon which became the city of Venice.In 452, Pope Leo I pleaded with Attila to spare Rome, and he agreed leaving Italy.He died in 453 before he could capture Constantinople.Although the Roman Empire officially fell in 476, the Fall of Rome was Attila the Hun’s doing.
Arab Empire 743:The Umayyad dynasty under caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik marked the greatest extent of the Muslim empire.Their rule stretched from Spain to India.They controlled Spain, North Africa, The Middle east, Persia and western India (Pakistan).The Muslims were defeated at the battle of Tours in Spain by Frankish King Charles Martel.This was the end of Islamic expansion into Western Europe.Hisham continued fighting the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor and the Near East.They forced religious conversions of Pagans.Surprisingly, they allowed Christians and Jews to practice their faith, although they were placed into a higher tax bracket.Before the Crusades, the Muslims respected Christians and Jews rights to worship because they believe in the same God.
Holy Roman Empire 814:Charles I, King of the Franks or Charlemagne was crowned the first holy roman emperor on December 25, 800.He conquered most of Europe and converted all lands to Roman Catholicism through force if necessary.The conquest of Spain eventually pushed the Islamic Moors out of Europe.The Roman Catholics dominated Europe for the next 700 years until the protestant reformation caused several nations to split with the Holy Roman Empire.The empire formed by Charlemagne lasted until 1806 when the last emperor Francis II was defeated by Napoleon.
Byzantine Empire 1054:The Re-conquest of Crete and Cyprus and the expansion into Syria and Northern Iraq extended the Byzantine power throughout the Eastern Mediterranean again.The empire stretched from Armenia to Southern Italy.They defeated the Bulgarian empire and controlled all of the Balkans up to the borders with Hungary.The split of the Catholic and Orthodox Church in 1054 caused weakening relations with Rome.New enemies emerged as Normans invaded southern Italy, and the Turks conquered Armenia and Asia Minor.The Empire lasted until 1453 when the Turks captured the capital city of Constantinople.
The Vikings may have been the most fearsome group in the 9th-11th centuries, but they were not united under one ruler, and can not really be considered one military group.They did however control land from the Arctic to Baghdad, and North America (500 years before Columbus) to The Black Sea and everywhere in between.They conquered parts of France, Spain, Italy, and all of England in 1066 (the last successful invasion of England).The Russian Czars all the way up to present day Russians are Viking decedents.Nationalism in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, as well as Christianization of settlements led to the end of the Viking Age.
Mongols 1279:Genghis Kahn’s grandson Kublai Kahn ruled the largest contiguous empire in world history.China (The Great wall did not work again), Russia, most of the Middle East, and Eastern Europe fell to the Mongols.They were fighting the the German Teutonic Knights, and the Japanese Samurai at the same time!How would things be different today if the Mongols did not turn back at Vienna and instead rode through Western Europe?The enlightenment may not have happened for a few hundred more years.After they left Europe, they conquered Korea from the Japanese Shogun, then tried unsuccessfully to invade Japan in 1281.Japan was saved from the Mongol fleet by a sudden violent storm that destroyed many of the invading ships.The Japanese called the storm Kamikaze, (the divine wind).Unity of the Mongol tribes was never as strong following the defeat. In 1368 China revolted and pushed out the Mongols (Yuan) to form the Ming dynasty.
Ottoman Empire:1566:Suleiman the magnificent conquered Belgrade and the Kingdom of Hungary as well as most of central Europe.He laid siege to Vienna but failed to take the city.In the East, they captured Baghdad from the Persians and controlled all of the Middle East from Mesopotamia to Egypt.With access to the Persian Gulf, they developed the worlds best Navy.The empire expanded by defeating Spain and conquering Algeria and Tunisia.The Turks actually evacuated Jews from Christian Lands during the inquisition and returned them to safety in the Ottoman controlled Holy Land.Continued wars with Austria, Persia, and the newly emerging European powers weakened the empire.The Ottomans lasted until 1919 when British helped unite the Arabs and Iraq to fight against Turkish rule during WWI.The British and French then took control of all former Ottoman regions.Ottoman remnants settled in Asia Minor, which eventually became the nation of Turkey.The Balkan provinces were given their independence, but Britain governed Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Iraq, and Iran until stable governments could be put in place. Sound familiar?
here you go naive f**ks...learn about the real world..... most of these dominant militaries are examples of having advanced weapon and technology for their time..find me this utopian world peace world before the "Military industrial complex"..... go ahead...I'll wait for when the world was this Utopia you think it will be some day...
Antiquity
Egypt 1274 B.C. The rise of Egypt as a world power was steadyover two thousand years.Egypt was basically a set of villages that defended the fertile Nile River Valley on both sides from foreigners trying to settle there.The invasion of Egypt by the Hyskos (Syria) in 17th Century B.C. led to the formation of a standing army and the beginning of the New Empire.The major advance in weapons technology and warfare began around 1600 BC when the Egyptians fought and finally defeated the Hyksos people. It was during this period the horse and chariot were introduced into Egypt.They fought wars against powerful Near Eastern kingdoms like Mitanni, the Hittites, the Assyrians and Babylonians.The Battle of Kadesh (1274) took place between the forces of Ramesses II (The same guy that killed all the Jewish Babies)and the Hittites of Muwatalli II at the city of Kadesh, in modern Syria.Egypt was ambushed crossing the Orontes River and routed.Egypt lost control of the Middle East and allowed the rise of Assyrians.
Assyrians 612 B.C. Assyria is considered to be the worlds first Empire.They competed with Babylonia and Egypt for dominance in the Middle East for centuries.They took control of Babylonia in 703 B.C.They destroyed all of Israel and enslaved the population.The tiny Kingdom of Judea was surrounded and just when it seemed that Jerusalem would fall, the Assyrian Army was infected with the plague and retreated.In 701 B.C. they faced a coalition of Egyptian, Phoenician, Philistine, and Jewish armies and crushed them all.They went on to conquer Egypt in 671 B.C.Upon King Ashurbanipal’s death in 627 BC, the empire began to disintegrate rapidly. The Assyrian Capital city of Nineveh was sacked by Babylonians in 612 B.C. and all Assyrian territory was over run by the Persian Empire by 609 B.C.
Persia 480 B.C.The Persians conquered all of southern Asia (the “stan” countries) up to the boarders of China and India.They held all of the middle east including, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Holy Land.They invaded Europe, and conquered Thrace up to the Danube River.The Greek War devastated the vast numbers of Persian troops. Even though they defeated Sparta and Athens, the loss in the naval battle of Salamis to the combined Greek Fleet led to the withdrawal of Persia from Europe.If the Persians held the Greek cities, western civilization would have been very different.
Macedonia 323 BC:Alexander never lost a battle in 12 years of constant war.Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, including Anatolia, Syria, Phoenicia, Judea, Gaza, Egypt, Bactria, and Mesopotamia, and extended the boundaries of his own empire as far as Punjab, India.Alexander’s victory over vastly superior Persia forces at the battle of Gaugamela is one of the most important and innovative battles in history.Persian chariots, which were unstoppable up to this point, were considered obsolete after Alexander’s tactics obliterated Persian Chariots.Prior to his death at age 33, Alexander had already made plans for military and mercantile expansions into the Arabian peninsula, after which he was to turn his armies to the west (Carthage, Rome, and Spain).Alexander’s battle strategies and system of governing were closely studied and implemented into the Roman Republic.
Roman Republic 49 B.C. By the first century B.C. Rome controlled every inch of shore touching the Mediterranean as well as Britain and Gaul (modern France). Julius Caesar defeated a combined Gallic Army and held the Governorship of Gaul at the same time as being consul of Rome.The senate thought he had too much power, and they ordered him to disband his army and return to Rome to stand trial for violations of the constitution.He entered Rome with his army and Civil War led to the eventual downfall of the Roman Republic.
Roman Empire 117:Rome was a world power for so long that it is tough to come up with the peak of power.The largest territory was in 117 under Emperor Trajan when Armenia, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia were conquered from the Parthian Empire.Trajan’s successor Hadrian abandoned the middle east because he did not believe they could defend the cities so far from Rome.They defeated Germania in several wars, but were never able to maintain a hold north of the Rhine River.They were smart enough to avoid land wars in Asia because they understood supply lines and communication.Rome was founded in 1000 B.C. and the eternal city officially fell in 476 but the empire continued in Constantinople until 1453, when the Ottoman Turks captured the city.
Middle Ages
Huns 453:Attila united central Asian nomads into an elite mobile fighting force that raided cities and left them in ashes.Three Norse sagas depict Attila as a hero and his tactics may have influenced the Vikings.The Huns territory stretched from China (The Great Wall) to Germany, and from the Baltic to the Danube River in Eastern Europe.They pushed the Goths, Vandals, and many other Germanic tribes into Roman territory .Rome had to defend the entire border of the empire, so they were stretched too thin.Rome had to ally with the Germanic tribes and provide them with weapons, food, land, etc to guard against Hunnic plundering. Eventually, Rome granted Attila land to settle on, modern day Hungary, and paid him a tribute in Gold.When the Emperor Valentinian’s sister Honoria proposed to Attila, he invaded Italy to claim half of the Roman Empire as dowry.Attila was defeated at Chalons, France by a combined Roman, Gothic Army.He returned the next year and invaded Italy.Northern Roman provinces left their homes to live in on the many small islands in the Venetian lagoon which became the city of Venice.In 452, Pope Leo I pleaded with Attila to spare Rome, and he agreed leaving Italy.He died in 453 before he could capture Constantinople.Although the Roman Empire officially fell in 476, the Fall of Rome was Attila the Hun’s doing.
Arab Empire 743:The Umayyad dynasty under caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik marked the greatest extent of the Muslim empire.Their rule stretched from Spain to India.They controlled Spain, North Africa, The Middle east, Persia and western India (Pakistan).The Muslims were defeated at the battle of Tours in Spain by Frankish King Charles Martel.This was the end of Islamic expansion into Western Europe.Hisham continued fighting the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor and the Near East.They forced religious conversions of Pagans.Surprisingly, they allowed Christians and Jews to practice their faith, although they were placed into a higher tax bracket.Before the Crusades, the Muslims respected Christians and Jews rights to worship because they believe in the same God.
Holy Roman Empire 814:Charles I, King of the Franks or Charlemagne was crowned the first holy roman emperor on December 25, 800.He conquered most of Europe and converted all lands to Roman Catholicism through force if necessary.The conquest of Spain eventually pushed the Islamic Moors out of Europe.The Roman Catholics dominated Europe for the next 700 years until the protestant reformation caused several nations to split with the Holy Roman Empire.The empire formed by Charlemagne lasted until 1806 when the last emperor Francis II was defeated by Napoleon.
Byzantine Empire 1054:The Re-conquest of Crete and Cyprus and the expansion into Syria and Northern Iraq extended the Byzantine power throughout the Eastern Mediterranean again.The empire stretched from Armenia to Southern Italy.They defeated the Bulgarian empire and controlled all of the Balkans up to the borders with Hungary.The split of the Catholic and Orthodox Church in 1054 caused weakening relations with Rome.New enemies emerged as Normans invaded southern Italy, and the Turks conquered Armenia and Asia Minor.The Empire lasted until 1453 when the Turks captured the capital city of Constantinople.
The Vikings may have been the most fearsome group in the 9th-11th centuries, but they were not united under one ruler, and can not really be considered one military group.They did however control land from the Arctic to Baghdad, and North America (500 years before Columbus) to The Black Sea and everywhere in between.They conquered parts of France, Spain, Italy, and all of England in 1066 (the last successful invasion of England).The Russian Czars all the way up to present day Russians are Viking decedents.Nationalism in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, as well as Christianization of settlements led to the end of the Viking Age.
Mongols 1279:Genghis Kahn’s grandson Kublai Kahn ruled the largest contiguous empire in world history.China (The Great wall did not work again), Russia, most of the Middle East, and Eastern Europe fell to the Mongols.They were fighting the the German Teutonic Knights, and the Japanese Samurai at the same time!How would things be different today if the Mongols did not turn back at Vienna and instead rode through Western Europe?The enlightenment may not have happened for a few hundred more years.After they left Europe, they conquered Korea from the Japanese Shogun, then tried unsuccessfully to invade Japan in 1281.Japan was saved from the Mongol fleet by a sudden violent storm that destroyed many of the invading ships.The Japanese called the storm Kamikaze, (the divine wind).Unity of the Mongol tribes was never as strong following the defeat. In 1368 China revolted and pushed out the Mongols (Yuan) to form the Ming dynasty.
Ottoman Empire:1566:Suleiman the magnificent conquered Belgrade and the Kingdom of Hungary as well as most of central Europe.He laid siege to Vienna but failed to take the city.In the East, they captured Baghdad from the Persians and controlled all of the Middle East from Mesopotamia to Egypt.With access to the Persian Gulf, they developed the worlds best Navy.The empire expanded by defeating Spain and conquering Algeria and Tunisia.The Turks actually evacuated Jews from Christian Lands during the inquisition and returned them to safety in the Ottoman controlled Holy Land.Continued wars with Austria, Persia, and the newly emerging European powers weakened the empire.The Ottomans lasted until 1919 when British helped unite the Arabs and Iraq to fight against Turkish rule during WWI.The British and French then took control of all former Ottoman regions.Ottoman remnants settled in Asia Minor, which eventually became the nation of Turkey.The Balkan provinces were given their independence, but Britain governed Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Iraq, and Iran until stable governments could be put in place. Sound familiar?
MrFirst2doit
All Star
British Empire 1783:British had control of the all of the world’s oceans.Australia, India, Southeast Asia, Africa, North and South America and everywhere in between were controlled by the British.They were mainly a naval power, but still, the American Revolution was histories greatest upset.The British fought wars on six continents and four Oceans simultaneously.The loss of America in 1783 did little to hurt British interests world wide.India and Burma were granted independence.Britain granted parliamentary control of South Africa, Australia, and Canada to the local people who agreed to maintain loyal to the British Monarchy.The influences of British colonialism formed the modern world as we know it.
Modern Era
Russian Empire 1856:After the defeat of Napoleon in 1812, Russia was considered militarily invincible.They controlled the territory from The Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea, and the Arctic Ocean in the North to the Caucus Mountains in the South.The empire spanned over 6000 miles and 11 time zones.The advance south into Ukraine and dominance of the Black Sea led to the Crimean war.The first modern war was fought by a joint force of France, Britain, Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire against Russia.Even though Russia dominated the war, Russian Czar Nicholas I agreed to a peace treaty that severely weakened Russian influence in Europe.The peace settlement of the Crimean war actually led to WWI.
Third Reich 1942:I am breaking my rule about a long lasting empire here, but the Germans became so powerful so fast that they deserve mention.It took Russia, Britain, France, and the United States to break the German military machine.They conquered France in 40 days, along with most of Europe.The two front war and loss of Air and Sea supremacy weakened the Germans.The key to the turnaround was the Greek resistance.They held out fighting man to man in the streets for 10 months. That allowed the allies to regroup and the Russian Red Army was formed.If not for the Greek resistance, Hitler would have certainly captured western Russia.Then he could have turned west and taken Britain before America was entrenched there.It would have been a very different war after that!
USSR 1989:This great military machine never went to war, but instead fought and lost the cold war with the U.S.A.If China and Russia could have avoided a split in ideology in the 1950’s, communism could have spread throughout the world forcing an eventual war with the NATO allies along the Eastern Bloc lines.Nuclear war was far from likely although it was the great deterrent.
Modern Era
Russian Empire 1856:After the defeat of Napoleon in 1812, Russia was considered militarily invincible.They controlled the territory from The Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea, and the Arctic Ocean in the North to the Caucus Mountains in the South.The empire spanned over 6000 miles and 11 time zones.The advance south into Ukraine and dominance of the Black Sea led to the Crimean war.The first modern war was fought by a joint force of France, Britain, Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire against Russia.Even though Russia dominated the war, Russian Czar Nicholas I agreed to a peace treaty that severely weakened Russian influence in Europe.The peace settlement of the Crimean war actually led to WWI.
Third Reich 1942:I am breaking my rule about a long lasting empire here, but the Germans became so powerful so fast that they deserve mention.It took Russia, Britain, France, and the United States to break the German military machine.They conquered France in 40 days, along with most of Europe.The two front war and loss of Air and Sea supremacy weakened the Germans.The key to the turnaround was the Greek resistance.They held out fighting man to man in the streets for 10 months. That allowed the allies to regroup and the Russian Red Army was formed.If not for the Greek resistance, Hitler would have certainly captured western Russia.Then he could have turned west and taken Britain before America was entrenched there.It would have been a very different war after that!
USSR 1989:This great military machine never went to war, but instead fought and lost the cold war with the U.S.A.If China and Russia could have avoided a split in ideology in the 1950’s, communism could have spread throughout the world forcing an eventual war with the NATO allies along the Eastern Bloc lines.Nuclear war was far from likely although it was the great deterrent.
MrFirst2doit
All Star
yet here you are openly free to share your opinion and being protected by the same military you speak out against...
i swear people are retarded...