Climate Change? Attack!

Our armed forces have one simple underlying mission - to destroy our nation's enemies.

At its most basic, that involves destroying things and killing people.

A more nuanced way to say it is that the military projects America's power to further our national interests.

According to barack obama, that includes fighting global warming climate change.

Last week, the Obama administration gave the military a new assignment.

“The Pentagon is ordering the top brass to incorporate climate change into virtually everything they do, from testing weapons to training troops to war planning to joint exercises with allies,” the Washington Times reported... The U.S. Armed Forces must show ‘resilience’ and beat back the threat based on ‘actionable science.’”

As the Times explained, “The directive, ‘Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience,’ is in line with President Obama’s view that global warming is the country’s foremost national security threat...

Remember that line. We'll come back to it a little further down.

Dakota Wood, a retired Marine Corps officer who now serves with the Heritage Foundation, said the idea is a bad one.

“I understand the motivation behind and intent for such guidance,” he said. “The problem is that it includes such a wide variety of issues with no explication or context that enables the offices mentioned to differentiate and prioritize activities and efforts across time or intensity.”

Let's set aside for now the debate over whether or not global warming climate change is really occurring. There is a more important question.

Should we distract the U.S. military with a politicized agenda of addressing climate change, when there are people in the world still shooting at us? (emphasis added)

I'd like to think that most reasonable people would answer that question not only "No," but "Hell no!" Sadly, however, the obama administration is letting environmental concerns prevent attacks on ISIS-controlled oil wells, pipelines, and even trucks.

A former CIA director says concerns about environmental impact have prevented the White House from bombing oil wells that finance the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

“We didn’t go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn’t want to do environmental damage..."

Our military’s proper role isn’t to attack global warming climate change. It is to destroy our enemies. Let's give it the direction and resources that it needs to accomplish this mission, and stop shackling it with politically correct nonsense.

Here's an example - just one of many - of where we need to provide direction and resources to deal with an emerging and serious threat to our national security.

U.S. aircraft carriers’ ‘unchallenged primacy may be coming to a close’

The United States’ aircraft carriers have always been an almost untouchable deterrent, steel behemoths capable of projecting the full weight of the U.S. military wherever they deploy. Yet while many militaries could never hope to match the U.S. carrier fleet in size and strength, countries such as China, Iran and Russia have spent recent years adjusting their forces and fielding equipment designed to counter one of the United States’ greatest military strengths.

A report published Monday by the Center for a New American Security, a D.C.-based think tank that focuses on national security, claims that the Navy’s carrier operations are at an inflection point. Faced with growing threats abroad, the United States can either “operate its carriers at ever-increasing ranges … or assume high levels of risk in both blood and treasure.”

The report, titled “Red Alert: The Growing Threat to U.S. Aircraft Carriers,” focuses on China’s burgeoning military posture in the Pacific and on a term that is starting to appear with increasing urgency in defense circles: anti-access/area denial, or A2/AD. The term A2/AD refers to a concept that has long existed in warfare: denying the enemy the ability to move around the battlefield. Currently A2/AD strategy is much the same as it was when moats were dug around castles, except that today’s moats are an integrated system of surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, submarines, surface ships and aircraft — all designed to push enemy forces as far away as possible from strategically important areas.

The report highlights China’s capabilities because of its “emphasis on long-range anti-ship missile procurement.” This, coupled with its growing tech base, qualifies China as the “pacing threat” to the U.S. military. China, however, is not the sole architect of an A2/AD strategy designed to deter U.S. operations. In the Baltic, Russia’s naval base in Kaliningrad is known to house a sophisticated air defense network and anti-ship missiles. NATO commanders also have warned of Russian A2/AD buildup around Syria, as Russia has moved advanced surface-to-air missiles into its airbase there as well as a flotilla of ships with robust anti-air capabilities.

As other countries focus on creating sophisticated A2/AD bubbles by using new technology such as drones, advanced missiles and newer aircraft, the United States — by operating as it always has — is putting itself more at risk. According to the report, this is particularly relevant as carrier groups have reduced their long-range strike ability in favor of being able to fly more air missions but at shorter ranges.

“Operating the carrier in the face of increasingly lethal and precise munitions will thus require the United States to expose a multi-billion dollar asset to high levels of risk in the event of a conflict,” the report says. “An adversary with A2/AD capabilities would likely launch a saturation attack against the carrier from a variety of platforms and directions. Such an attack would be difficult — if not impossible — to defend against.”

There are counter-measures to the growing A2/AD threat, and the Navy is currently exploring them. But I fear that, under obama, the primary focus will be on the environmental impact of those counter-measures, not their effectiveness against anti-ship missiles, drones, and other such things.

Oh, and while we're at it, the Navy is short of submarines and missiles.

China’s recent actions to militarize the South China Sea have changed the operational landscape, and the U.S. Pacific Command needs more attack submarines and long-range surface missiles to keep up with the evolving threat, PACOM commander Adm. Harry Harris told the Senate Armed Services Committee today.

The Air Force is running out of bombs and missiles.

The U.S. Air Force has fired off more than 20,000 missiles and bombs since the U.S. bombing campaign against ISIS began 15 months ago, according to the Air Force, leading to depleted munitions stockpiles and calls to ramp up funding and weapons production.

As the U.S. ramps up its campaign against the Islamist terror group in Iraq and Syria, the Air Force is now "expending munitions faster than we can replenish them," Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh said in a statement.

The Army is being stressed by multiple deployments.

President Barack Obama this fall announced that about 10,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan through most of 2016 — with a smaller group staying even longer. For many of those troops, it won't be their first deployment, or even their second.

America's war in Afghanistan has seen multiple deployments become routine for military families.

The Marines would have trouble mobilizing for a large-scale war.

The internal military report leads with a warning, typed in bold: If called to war tonight, the Marine Corps could only meet operational demands by deploying nearly every heavy-lift transport helicopter remaining in its inventory.

That would mean activating all aircraft that are down for long-term maintenance...

After more than a decade of relentless combat – a period marked by repeated deployments to the Middle East, ballooning procurement costs and cuts to defense spending – the Marine Corps’ workhorse helicopter, the CH-53E Super Stallion, is worn out and in need of serious attention.

Those are just a few examples of problems that need immediate attention. And yet barry and his gang think the greatest threat facing our military is global warming climate change?!?

GMAFB.