Tag: Infrastructure

America Is Updating Its Nuclear Weapons. The Price: $1.7 Trillion.

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

To understand how America is preparing for its nuclear future, follow Melissa Durkee’s fifth-grade students as they shuffle into Room 38 at Preston Veterans’ Memorial School in Preston, Conn. One by one, the children settle in for a six-week course taught by an atypical educator, the defense contractor General Dynamics.

“Does anyone know why we’re here?” a company representative asks. Adalie, 10, shoots her hand into the air. “Um, because you’re building submarines and you, like, need people, and you’re teaching us about it in case we’re interested in working there when we get older,” she ventures.

Adalie is correct. The U.S. Navy has put in an order for General Dynamics to produce 12 nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2042 — a job that’s projected to cost $130 billion. The industry is struggling to find the tens of thousands of new workers it needs. For the past 18 months, the company has traveled to elementary schools across New England to educate children in the basics of submarine manufacturing and perhaps inspire a student or two to consider one day joining its shipyards.

…

Though the new Columbia-class subs are primarily being built in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Virginia, the Navy is going to tremendous lengths to recruit talent across the country. Over the past year, a blitz of ads has appeared at various sports events — including major league baseball games, WNBA games and even atop a NASCAR hood — steering fans to buildsubmarines.com. The website connects job seekers with hiring defense contractors as part of a nearly $1 billion campaign. Some of that money will go toward helping restore the network of companies that can supply the more than three million parts that go into a Columbia sub. Like so much of the nation’s nuclear infrastructure, those supplier numbers have plummeted since the 1990s.

America Is Updating Its Nuclear Weapons. The Price: $1.7 Trillion.

Now this is grooming!

Recommended Reading:

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

Army races to widen the bottlenecks of artillery shell production

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Army races to widen the bottlenecks of artillery shell production

The U.S. Army has started diversifying its supplier base for 155mm artillery shells, moving away from the bottleneck of a single source that has endangered the flow of fresh ammo, according to a top service official.

The service is racing toward a goal of shoring up all major single sources that provide parts or materials for 155mm munitions by the end of 2025.

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The Pentagon is investing billions of dollars to increase the capacity of 155mm munition production as it races to replenish stock sent to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion, which began in early 2022, and to ensure the U.S. has what it might need should conflict erupt across multiple theaters at once. The Army planned to spend $3.1 billion in FY24 supplemental funding alone to ramp up production.

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Prior to the war in Ukraine, the U.S. could build about 14,400 of the artillery shells per month. But as Ukrainian forces burn through the ammunition for howitzers sent to the country, the U.S. recognized quickly that replenishment could not be done with the current infrastructure.

The service has set a target of producing 100,000 artillery shells per month, but Army officials have shared it has fallen slightly behind schedule. Even so, the Army is now producing 40,000 shells a month, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at the Defense News Conference last month, adding that the plan is to reach 55,000 shells a month by the end of the year.

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The Army had been making 155mm shells at a single plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a privately operated facility nearby. All of the shells were transported to one place – Iowa Army Ammunition Plant – where they are packed with explosives.

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The Army is planning to design and construct a domestic TNT production facility, which will likely be at Radford, Bush has said in the past. Once a contract is awarded, the plan is to build it in 48 months. Currently, the U.S. relies entirely on TNT from allies.

The only place that made combustible cartridge cases – Armtec Defense Technologies – was in Coachella, California, well-known for its music festival, but also for being located along the San Andreas Fault with a high risk of large earthquakes. Day & Zimmerman will produce the cases at another location in Texarkana, Texas.

…

“There [is] still the occasional single point, if you go down far enough, I’m not sure we can ever eliminate them entirely,” Bush said. “But we can build in more redundancy than we had before, which was, frankly, a very fragile setup where I could give you grid coordinates for like, four buildings in America, and if one of those, something happened tomorrow, we weren’t making anything … it definitely isn’t acceptable now, and we’re trying to get away from it.”

*SMH*

Western Media Urges Public: Believe Our Lies, Not Your Own Eyes

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
YouTube / Rumble
  • The West has spent years accusing China of “genocide” in its western region of Xinjiang despite producing no evidence to substantiate such claims;
  • China has since opened up Xinjiang to international tourism where people from around the globe including the West can see for themselves there is no “genocide;”
  • The collective West now seeks to reassert control over the narrative by questioning travel vloggers reporting back from China regarding their experiences;

Western Media Urges Public: Believe Our Lies, Not Your Own Eyes (archived)

Sources:

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U.S. proxies target Chinese Convoy near Karachi International airport days before the SCO meeting in Pak

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
YouTube

China says two citizens killed, one injured in Pakistan ‘terrorist attack’

In August, the BLA launched coordinated attacks in the province, in which more than 70 people were killed. It has claimed attacks in Balochistan, including the killing of seven barbers in Gwadar in May and the April killings of several people abducted from a highway.

The BLA specifically targets Chinese interests – in particular the strategic port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea – accusing Beijing of helping Islamabad to exploit the province.

In March this year, five Chinese engineers and a Pakistani national were killed in an attack near the China-backed Dasu hydropower project. Nine Chinese engineers were killed in a similar attack near Dasu in 2021.

The BLA has also attacked Beijing’s consulate in Karachi.

The Port Qasim project involves the construction of two power plants near Karachi and is funded by China.

…

Pakistan is due to host the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in two weeks.

Related:

Balochistan Liberation Army

US Seeks “Super Weapons” to Reign as Sole Superpower

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

YouTube / Rumble

– The US realizes its window of opportunity following the Cold War to assert itself as sole global superpower is closing (if it hasn’t closed already);

– It seeks to find a way to match or exceed the military capabilities and industrial capacity of both Russia and China through “innovation;”

– The US refuses to recognize the fundamental flaws in its own system as well as the premise upon which it seeks primacy in the first place;

– Start-up companies seeking to out-innovate and/or out-produce China propose unrealistic measures that either won’t work or that China is already employing itself on a much larger scale;

References:

US Seeks “Super Weapons” to Reign as Sole Superpower

Previously:

US Seeks “Super Weapons” to Reign as Sole Superpower