US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

US Losing Its Advantage in Race for Hypersonic Technology: Selva
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contains this interesting sentence:
"The Defense Department has instead taken an approach that incorporates a "family of hypersonic systems that work without necessarily trying to close all the technology pieces on the front end," Selva said."
Did the U.S. military miss its window of opportunity to beat out adversaries in hypersonics development?

That depends on what the U.S.
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even as Russia and China are rapidly advancing the technology, according to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"We have lost our technical advantage in hypersonics; we haven't lost the hypersonics fight,"
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Gen. Paul Selva told reporters Tuesday during a roundtable discussion in Washington, D.C.

"China has made it a national program, so China's willing to spend tens to up to hundreds of billions to solve the problem of hypersonic flight, hypersonic target designation, and then ultimately engagement," he said.

The Defense Department has instead taken an approach that incorporates a "family of hypersonic systems that work without necessarily trying to close all the technology pieces on the front end," Selva said.

Hypersonic technology offers highly supersonic speeds of Mach 5 or above. But it presents two big problems: channeling the excess energy generated by the weapon and maintaining control at those speeds. Researchers are working to develop a hypersonic vehicle or weapon that is survivable and maneuverable.

How and when it strikes also matters.

"Closing the kill chain is something that will happen later in the development of the technology: It's either going to go after fixed targets, which is a relatively easy kill chain to close, [or] if it's going after moving targets, you're going to have to continue to maneuver it until it accomplishes an intercept, and that is a really tough kill-chain problem," Selva said.

The DoD is also weighing whether to involve human pilots in the equation.

"... A manned hypersonic capability out in the future is still something that is a question of, 'Can you scale hypersonics [to be] small, highly maneuverable, high G [force], sturdy machines to something you'd put a human in?' And I'm just not sure that one would invest the money to make that transition," Selva said.

Selva said three offices are pushing hypersonics research at the Pentagon.

"DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] is working on extremely advanced hypersonics research, and the
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has a hypersonics program," he said. "The third one I won't reveal."
 

TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
the double ejections are a magazine issue, springs, weak recoil spring, or bent or misaligned magazine feed lips are the likely cause. Magazines are very likely made by an "outside contractor", almost certainly not by Sig,,, that's what happens when the "bean counter's" force you to use the cheapest parts? rather than the best,,, and you can quote me on all the above, Brat.
Because of the new status of the Pistol I don't think anyone else snagged the contract for the magazines yet, so this does go back to the OEM and not a subcontractor. I think SIG when they nabbed the MHS contract, got just about the total deal to supply everything except optic ( Leupold Deltapoint Pro was specified by the Army, Sig now makes their own optics), AN/PEQ14 (Integrated Laser White Light Pointer) ILWLP and holsters ( The Safariland Group) one for conventional carry the other with laser pointer. This differs from the M9 pistol and M4 Carbine which falls into that category of DOD Sustainment for small arms. Demand the best quality from the lowest bidder and test like a Ferrari when new, Then buy replacement parts from the bargain bin at Sams club...

The USAF has already started testing the M17 in Ejector seats, which should produce far more G forces then the 3 foot 30* drop or hammer tap or pistol whip. So the USAF I think is pretty confident.
 

timepass

Brigadier
"DARPA has completed its part in the development of Sea Hunter, a submarine-hunting drone ship that can cross the open seas without a human crew for months at a time. It has officially handed over the ship's development to its project partner, the Office of Naval Research, which has already begun fine-tuning the drone's autonomous features. The Navy has also renamed the drone to Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV)... which really isn't any better than its old name, Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel or ACTUV. We've got a feeling people will stick to calling it Sea Hunter, unless the Navy can come up with a snappier nickname."

1dbed6160f4b9187c1768586b1ee7d17


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Point and counterpoint. Hope wiser and cooler heads prevail.

OK since I read it I post US National Defense Strategy focused on Russia, China, and ‘great power competition’

... the rest is behind paywall at Jane's:
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Which country is the real threat to world stability, it's not China
SourceChina DailyEditorHuang PanyueTime2018-02-02

The State of the Union address delivered by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday and the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy unveiled by his administration in the past month have all painted China as a rival or threat.

But few have bothered to reverse the question and ask, "Is the United States a threat to China?"

The answer to that is a resounding "Yes!"

When I raised such a question last week at a discussion on ChinaFile, an online publication run by the New York-based Asia Society, I did not expect Rebecca Karl, a historian and China scholar, to respond by saying the US has not only been a threat to China, but also the whole world, for decades.

She explained why: It is true that China is a threat to the US, but only in the sense that fast-rising China has made it increasingly impossible for the US to threaten China, whether economically, militarily, or diplomatically. And that will be more so in the coming decades if China continues its ascent.

That is indeed a challenge and threat to the US which has become accustomed to living in and policing its unipolar world.

The kinds of threats posed by China to the US as described by US politicians, pundits and news media are many and often paranoid. They cover everything from China's growing economic and military might to the development of manmade islands in the South China Sea, from Chinese investment in Africa, Latin America and the US, to the Confucius Institutes, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Belt and Road Initiative, and even Chinese news media operating in the US and globally and the 300,000 Chinese students studying in US colleges and universities.

Sooner or later, Chinese restaurants, estimated at more than 40,000 across the US, might be deemed a national security threat because their dishes are too oily and might contain monosodium glutamate as a flavor enhancer.

But if China does pose a threat to the US in these areas, then the US poses a much greater threat to China. It's not just that American fast food chains serve far more oily food and Americans' favorite snack-chips-contains too much MSG, the more than 800 US military bases in the world, including many surrounding China, pose a much greater threat to China and other countries. US military spending is more than that of the next 10 countries combined and still expanding.

The powerful US military-industrial complex, whose influence former US president Dwight Eisenhower warned against in his farewell speech in January 1961, has been behind this hyping up of supposed threats from China and Russia, because the defense companies will be the primary beneficiary if Trump's request for $716 billion for the Pentagon in 2019 is approved. This is a significant increase on previous years.

People should be reminded that China has never done anything nearly as threatening to world peace and stability as the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and forcing regime change in Libya, not to mention the reckless US drone attacks in sovereign nations that have killed many civilians. And China has never been nearly as disruptive as the US has been in just this past year when Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord and from UNESCO, cut funding to the United Nations and recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.

It's quite clear which country poses the bigger threat to the world and is a bigger disrupter of global stability.

The author is deputy editor of China Daily USA.
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
Because of the new status of the Pistol I don't think anyone else snagged the contract for the magazines yet, so this does go back to the OEM and not a subcontractor. I think SIG when they nabbed the MHS contract, got just about the total deal to supply everything except optic ( Leupold Deltapoint Pro was specified by the Army, Sig now makes their own optics), AN/PEQ14 (Integrated Laser White Light Pointer) ILWLP and holsters ( The Safariland Group) one for conventional carry the other with laser pointer. This differs from the M9 pistol and M4 Carbine which falls into that category of DOD Sustainment for small arms. Demand the best quality from the lowest bidder and test like a Ferrari when new, Then buy replacement parts from the bargain bin at Sams club...

The USAF has already started testing the M17 in Ejector seats, which should produce far more G forces then the 3 foot 30* drop or hammer tap or pistol whip. So the USAF I think is pretty confident.

Honestly Bub, somebody else is likely making "SIG" magazines, I'm thinking Mecgar, who are excellent, or some other company who specialize in manufacturing magazines for the big boys, and the scale of the total contract will require a lot of magazines, (see if you can find out who provides most Sig mags,, I'm not saying I know, but I have a hunch??

as well on the "drop test" its NOT the Gs sustained its the "sudden stop at the end of your fall", but the issue with the hammer overriding the sear is the sudden stoppage and associated vibration that allow any mechanical slop to present itself all at once... not many weapons will discharge, only the ones which are at the opposite ends of the spectrum, the ones with maximum allowable tolerances on each part, then you will find the "rotten apple".
 
The test did occurred but there was no confirm "failed" and I doubt the military will ever tell either.o_O


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now inside
Reality check: Failures happen, even in missile defense testing
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:

"But despite the failure, experts say that in the long run the SM-3 IIA has no choice but to succeed."

what else are "experts" expected to say huh?
The Navy and Missile Defense Agency is investigating what caused
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over Hawaii. But despite the failure, experts say that in the long run the SM-3 IIA has no choice but to succeed.

The January 31 test involved both the AEGIS Ashore system,
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, and the Army’s AN/TPY-2 radar providing target data for the missile, meaning that any number of factors including the missile could have led to the failure.

The test involved a hand-off to AEGIS from TPY-2, adding layers of complexity to the already daunting prospect of hitting a hypersonic target in space with another missile.

In a press conference Feb. 1, Dana White, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson, offered limited details on the launch.

“We can confirm [the test] and it did not meet our objectives,” White said. “But we learn something all the time from these tests and we learned something from this one. And we’ll continue to improve our capabilities.”

When it comes to the Navy’s options for shooting down short and intermediate range missiles, SM-3 IIA is the only show in town. With the rising threat of North Korean missiles, there is no choice but to learn from the test and move on, experts say.

“Missed intercepts are part of whats going to happen in missile defense testing,” said Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who specializes in missile defense issues. “We’ve gotten so afraid to fail and when you are afraid to fail in these missile defense tests, it can really impact the whole program.”

The whole lens through which people view these tests should move away from success and failure rates and focus more on continued improvement, she said.

“Every time we miss and adapt we have a more capable system across the board,” Heinrichs said.


The SM-3 IIA is being jointly developed with Japan and is destined to be a mainstay of both the U.S. AEGIS Ashore stations in Romania and Poland, and the future AEGIS Ashore stations in Japan. News broke in December that Japan’s lawmakers had voted to purchase the system from the U.S.

The failed test was the third flight test against an intermediate range ballistic missile. The first test was successful. A test in June became a wash
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the missile’s self-destruct feature by misidentifying it as a friendly target. The third test appears to be a failure.

If all goes according to plan, the missile is slated to start being fielded this year.

Failures
The Wednesday launch was a so-called “engage on remote,” which is a complicated shot that requires Army’s TPY-2 to hand off highly accurate data to the Navy’s AEGIS Ashore system so it can kill the incoming missile. That technology has been years in the making and will forge ahead despite occasional setbacks, set Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The IIA represents block development of a long-running effort to be fielded for the defense of multiple nations,” Karako said. “The requirement for a faster Aegis interceptor isn’t going anywhere, nor is the demand for cooperative engagement capability underlying launch- and engage-on-remote.”

Just what impact the failed test has on the Navy’s BMD efforts will depend on exactly what caused the failure. But it’s probably not an insurmountable issue, said retired Rear Adm. Archer Macy, the former head of the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization.

“It’s unlikely that there is there is some fundamental problem of physics involved here,” Macy said.

Hiccups in the testing program are to be expected, Macy said, adding that people shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that hitting a missile with a missile in space is complicated.

“Does it look good? No,” Macy said. “Two out of the three launches of IIA have not gone as planned. But you do this stuff to find out and learn what you can. In the end this is rocket science.”

“Nobody believes the challenges from potential antagonists are going away any time soon, and it’s not just North Korea,” he added.

Missile Defense Agency head Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves
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, saying that he doesn’t mind failures but wants to move fast to make the systems better.

“Missile Defense Agency and industry partners are not afraid to fail,” Greaves said. “When we fail, it will be because of a good reason, not because we weren’t prepared for a test or capability.”

Urgency
The test failure comes at a particularly cruddy time for Hawaii, which in January suffered through a horrifying 38 minutes after an alert was sent to residents saying that a ballistic missile was inbound and it was “not a drill.”

The false alarm triggered discussion of how best to defend America’s islands in the Pacific and has created fresh urgency to move out as quickly as possible on bolstering missile defenses.

Former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Sandy Winnefeld wrote in a January 18
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that the SM-3 IIA, combined with the TPY-2, could play a vital role in Hawaii’s defense in the future.

Winnefeld argued that the military should move the TPY-2 to the Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai where SM-3 launchers already reside.

“To enhance the defense of Hawaii, it is only necessary to move a radar back to PMRF and load the launchers with SM-3 interceptors,” Winnefeld wrote. “This would take weeks, not years, and would cost very little. And as the North Korean threat increases, as it will, it will be a simple matter to upgrade this site with already-planned improvements to the TPY-2 radar and by installing the new SM-3-IIA missile.”
 
the acronym "RKV" should've been introduced in the article, but wasn't; I figured it's "redesigned kill vehicle"
anyway,
Boeing wins $6.6 billion deal to support missile defense system, build more interceptors
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Boeing has won a sole-source $6.6 billion deal to
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and to sustain the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) System from the Missile Defense Agency, according to a Jan. 31 Pentagon contract announcement.

The award is an undefinitized modification of a previous contract for development and sustainment of the GMD system — the primary homeland defense system against possible Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) attacks from North Korea and Iran.

If all options are exercised, the total contract could total $12.6 billion, which includes the previous contract amount of $6.1 billion.

Under the contract modification, the MDA “executes missile defeat and defense enhancements to complete the accelerated delivery of a new missile field with 20 additional silos and two additional silos in a previously constructed missiled field at Fort Greely, Alaska, and the procurement and deployment of 20 additional [GBIs],” the announcement states.

There are currently 44 GBIs in the ground in the United States, 40 at Fort Greely and four at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The
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— under the previous requirement — was put in place at Greely Nov. 2.

As fear of missiles from North Korea and Iran reaching U.S. soil increase, the Pentagon, the White House and Congress have majorly boosted funding to build an increasingly robust system to defend the homeland against ICBM threats.

The Pentagon and the MDA had indicated in the fall of 2017 that it intended to build up the GMD system
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. In September, the Pentagon proposed reprogramming $136 million in fiscal year 2017 to start raising the number of ground-based interceptors from 44 to 64 in a new Missile Field 4 at Fort Greely. The boost was part of a $416 million reprogramming request targeting missile defense needs.

And the White House submitted a supplemental budget request for FY18 in November 2017 that asked for further funding to increase the number of GBIs by 20 and to build an additional missile field at the Alaska base.

The conference report of the FY18 defense policy bill authorized the defense secretary — subject to what is appropriated — to increase the number of GBIs by up to 28. The conference report also required the defense secretary to develop a plan to increase the capacity, noting the currently available space in the missile fields could fit 104 GBIs.

The scope of work for Boeing’s new contract modification includes providing technical capabilities to “expand and improve” the missile defense system “to ensure defensive capabilities remain both relevant and current,” according to the contract announcement.

That would include boost vehicle development and integrating a redesigned kill vehicle with the boost vehicle.

MDA is investing in an RKV for the GMD system that will increase the performance of the current Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), which has struggled in testing. The EKV is a component of the GMD system interceptors designed to destroy targets in high-speed collisions after separating from the booster rocket. The RKV is expected to deploy in the 2020 time frame.

The issues with the EKV have been resolved and the system has performed well in tests in recent years including a challenging test in May 2017 where the system went up against an ICBM-class target and obliterated the threat.

Boeing must also provide GBI assets for labs and test events and develop, integrate, test and deploy ground systems software builds to “address emerging threats,” acquire and emplace launch support equipment, expanded systems testing, cybersecurity and performance-based logistics, according to the DoD announcement.

The period of performance for the contract is January 2018 through December 2023.

The announcement also notes that while Boeing will be the lead, the contract modification will be “performed by an industry team” including Orbital ATK, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon.

The sole-source contract is justified because Boeing is already the prime contractor for the GMD system and no other company has the capabilities to “satisfactorily” perform the services and deliveries without delays, according to the notice.

The Pentagon was able to obligate $213 million at the time of the contract award using FY17 and 2018 research, development, test and evaluation funds.
 
Monday at 9:39 PM
now noticed inside
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"White House wants $716 billion budget for Pentagon in 2019,
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the Washington Post, quoting unnamed U.S. officials. That figure would seem to include the base budget, the OCO fund formerly known as the “emergency supplemental,” and Department of Energy spending on nuclear weapons, as the Post writes that it “would cover the Pentagon’s annual budget as well as spending on ongoing wars and the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal,” and calculates that it would represent a 7 percent bump over the 2018 budget request.
Caveat #1: Congress has (famously)
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.
Caveat #2:
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, the (reported) 2019 figure is many billions of dollars over the legal caps installed in 2011.
The actual budget request is expected to go to Congress next month. In the meantime, here’s from the Post: “Pentagon officials said the 2019 budget would focus on modernizing the military’s aging weapons systems and preparing it for a potential conflict with major world powers after a long emphasis on counterterrorism and insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Defense Secretary James] Mattis faced some resistance from White House officials, such as [Office of Management and the Budget leader Mike] Mulvaney, who worried that the deficit would explode with a large increase in military spending, combined with Republican tax cuts.” Read on,
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."

let's wait and see
an update:
GOP leaders don't expect another government shutdown, even without a full budget plan
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Republican congressional leaders on Thursday said they are confident
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next week, even though a full-year budget deal won’t be completed by Feb. 8.

In a press conference from the annual Republican planning retreat being held in West Virginia, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said his team is making progress with Democratic leadership on that full fiscal 2018 budget, and is optimistic that
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.

“But even if we get everything figured out by Tuesday, we still will have to have a (continuing resolution), if only for the fact that we have to give the appropriators time to write an omnibus appropriations bill,” he added.

“So there will have to be another CR … We’re still negotiating the contents and duration of that.”

The current short-term spending bill — passed last month to end the three-day government shutdown — expires on Feb. 8. If a new spending plan isn’t adopted by then, lawmakers will trigger
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.

The next continuing resolution will be the fifth of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. Military leaders have decried the practice of passing short-term spending legislation in lieu of a full-year budget, saying it severely hurts efforts to start new programs and maintain multi-year equipment purchase plans.

As a result, a growing number of Republicans and Democrats on key defense committees have publicly said they will not support future budget continuing resolutions.

But on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he didn’t believe that lawmakers on either side would allow a shutdown to occur again, calling it “one tool we won’t use.”

Since last summer, leaders from both parties have been locked in a political stalemate over the federal budget, and how to lift mandatory spending caps on both defense and non-defense programs. Republicans have argued that caps on military spending alone should be lifted, while Democrats have pushed for equal funding raises for a host of non-military departments.

In addition, Senate Democrats last month refused to go along with a short-term spending bill to avoid a shutdown because of McConnell’s refusal to bring up immigration reform measures. Since then, a bipartisan coalition has been working on possible legislation to address the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy.

On Thursday, Ryan again laid blame on the Democrats for the funding impasse.

“The reason we’re having these (continuing resolutions) in the first place is because Democrats holding cap agreements hostage, the military funding hostage for an unrelated issue,” he said. “So if we would have had the cap agreement in place by now, we would not be having to do these CRs.”

On Tuesday, the House voted largely along party lines to advance a stand-alone defense appropriations bill that would allot about $584 billion in base budget funding and another $75 billion in overseas war funds. But Senate Democrats are expected to block any effort to bring up the measure in their chamber for a similar vote.
 

Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
now inside
Reality check: Failures happen, even in missile defense testing
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:

"But despite the failure, experts say that in the long run the SM-3 IIA has no choice but to succeed."

what else are "experts" expected to say huh?

If they were Russian or Chinese or North Korean Jura, would you be linking any of this to SDF,,,, No Sir!,,, so I know its fun to nit-pick the US, but honestly Bro, shouldn't we expect you to "spread the love around??",,, now today you have a very detailed and honest report and apparent open "introspection", yes we are the USA, and yes we citizens demand and expect accountability and success, because we ARE the USA!

so, in retrospect, I hope you will redouble your efforts to find pertinent information on Russian, Chinese, and who ever else's missiles, aircraft and ships, and just try to "balance" your reportage??

if you would like to be perceived as an honest "student", lets see both sides of the story,,, who else is having the success we have already had?? anybody??,, yeah its kool komrad,, and I'm kool, but how bout a little balance, actually? , how bout a lot more balance??? and yes everyone, and I do mean everyone on this forum DOES IN FACT compare every little thing, we measure our own success or failure, against everone elses success or failure...

you know I really don't mind honest criticism?? (especially when it's not directed personally at me),, but, a sound reflection of real capability must take into account where everyone else is???

when we play the SuperBowl Sunday, there will be a clear winner, and a clear loser! I promise, so how bout doing a little more research on opposition? and tell us a little about how we stack up???

and you know, we are pretty damnably honest, even when its NOT in our best interest, but that's just who we are?? that's how you get better at what you're doing, instead of hoping for the best, we do test our Kool Junk, and we like blowing XXXX-UP!

speaking of honesty, how'd you like our little memo, shows what the opposition was up to in an attempt to "screw the boss over",, but it didn't work, so NO nice guys don't always finish last!

anyway, opposition research isn't really helpful if its only based on what you want it to say??

oh, and you are invited to my "Super Bowl Party",,,, just bring some of those "pinwheels",,, please??? and that other stuff looked good too

one of our nurses had a kind of goulash or something base on cabbage and maybe tortellini type pasta,, the nurse where good cooks, LOL
 
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Air Force Brat

Brigadier
Super Moderator
Monday at 9:39 PM
an update:
GOP leaders don't expect another government shutdown, even without a full budget plan
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Trump is trying to keep his promises and his word to the US military, and the Republican congress is trying to help him,,, but the "opposition" party is just that,,,, watch our state of the Union! it should entertain you, but you see why democrat policy is what it is, so I think George W Bush said this would be easier if this was a "Dictatorship, as long as I'm the Dictator!"

yeah, I know what he means, but the American people who care about this Nation are actually becoming more informed by the day, and the stuff in that little memo,, well, its obvious who the real traitors are???

Have a great week-end, I'm rooting for Tom Brady and the PATRIOTS, but then I love the FLAG, and I AM a PATRIOT! LOL
 
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