How Should The U.S. Military Be Organized?

Background

The U.S. military is primarily divided into five services: the Army, the Air Force (which was split off from the Army after World War II), the Space Force (which was split off from the Air Force during Trump's first term), the Navy, and the Marines (which are a separate military service within the Department of the Navy). 

Each of these services has (or will have once it is set up, in the case of the Space Force) a reserve component that consists mostly of recently retired active duty service members who train on a part-time basis and can be called up to serve if there is a shortage of active duty personnel.

In addition to the federally operated reserves for each service, each U.S. state has an Army National Guard and an Air Force National Guard, staffed mostly by part-time citizen soldiers (the normal obligation is one weekend a month and one week a year, when not called up for an emergency). Normally, these forces report to the state governor and are called up for disaster relief and to deal with potential "insurrections" and civil unrest, for example, to enforce court orders that local civilian law enforcement is disregarding in an organized resistance. The national guard can also be called up to serve by the President as basically temporary active duty military service members when needed.

In addition, a sixth service, the Coast Guard, which used to be part of the Department of Transportation and is now part of the Department of Homeland Security, is a civilian law enforcement and first responder organization in peace time, can be placed under the command of the Navy in wartime and is organized in a paramilitary fashion.

There are also several independent agencies, some within the Department of Defense, and some outside it, that have national security duties. These include the NSA (which handles electronic surveillance and code breaking), the NRO (which handles spy satellites), the CIA (which gathers and analyzes covert and open source intelligence for both foreign policy and military purposes and also conducts covert military-style operations), DARPA (which does bleeding edge research and development for the military that isn't immediately actionable in a specific procurement project), the Selective Service system (which keeps the infrastructure in place to conscript new soldiers if Congress decides to do so), and more.

Observations

One of the problems with the status quo is that coordination between military services has to be arranged at a very high level of the Department of Defense bureaucracy, which creates bureaucratic friction in arranging joint exercises that use the resources of multiple services acting together in the same military operation, and discourages individual services from prioritizing the support that they provide to other military services in their resource allocation and procurement and military equipment systems development.

For example, the Air Force is supposed to be in charge of providing air support and logistics support to the Army, but it tends to deprioritize these missions in favor of air to air fighters designed to secure air superiority and long range bombers. The Army meanwhile, since it is allowed to have helicopters, pushes helicopters into transport and close air support missions even when fixed wing aircraft would have been better suited to those missions, because it wants to control the air power upon which its units rely.

Similarly, the Navy is responsible for delivering Army soldiers to war on transport ships and for providing fire support for Army and Marine soldiers from sea. But it has tended to neglect these missions (and more generally littoral operations) in favor of building up its blue sea surface and submarine fleet. Unlike the Army, however, the Navy and Marine Corps have been allowed to have fixed wing aircraft under their own command and control, and have, as a result, keep their use of helicopters mostly restricted to missions where they are actually preferable to fixed wing aircraft.

The U.S. military has tended to treat the national guard is just a second layer of reserve military force rather than seeing it as its own division of the military with its own distinct purpose that calls for different kinds of training, military equipment, and tactics.

The current structure also creates an incentive for each of the military services to focus its force design on engaging with the most capable "peer" and "near peer" military adversaries that require the most advanced and powerful military weapons and vehicles without regard to cost-effectiveness, because these kinds of conflicts amount of existential threats in which money is no object.

As a result, the U.S. military is ill designed to engage military adversaries less capable than "near peers" in a way that isn't expensive overkill. It can win this engagements, but at a price that makes fighting them so unsustainable that it puts pressure on leaders to abandon them. 

Among the sub-near peer adversaries and missions that the U.S. military is ill suited to engage in a cost effectively are counter-insurgency missions where the insurgents have limited access to military grade weapons other than small arms, anti-piracy missions, interdiction and anti-smuggling missions, peace keeping, intercepting a handful of rogue aircraft (short of an invasion with large numbers of military aircraft) in U.S. airspace, and humanitarian relief missions following disasters. Yet, a significant share of the missions that the U.S. military has historically been called upon to perform fit in these categories.

Proposal

* The Army National Guard, Air Force National Guard, and Coast Guard should be recognized as a separate military service that is focused upon homeland defense and emergency response, and should be called up into active duty service abroad only when the capabilities developed for those roles are needed.

Thus, the Army National Guard should be weighted more heavily towards air defense and drone defense, should have specialized equipment tailored to emergency response in low to moderate threat environments, and should largely divest itself of tanks and artillery. The Air Force National Guard shouldn't have bomber aircraft that have no appropriate mission within the U.S., should have cost effective non-stealth, fast but sub-sonic, lightly armed fighters to intercept rogue aircraft, and should increase its investment in search and rescue and transport and fire fighting aircraft. The Coast Guard should have resources for defending the U.S. from a coastal invasion (including diesel-electric coastal submarines), and the Army and Air Force National Guards in border states should have resources calibrated to land invasions from Canada and Mexico.

The final tier of the missile defense "golden dome" system that has been proposed designed to intercept income missiles and drones once they have gotten close to U.S. territory should also be a national guard function.

The Army Corps of Engineers might also be fruitfully relocated to this service.

* The U.S. nuclear weapons force intended as a deterrent force, made up of U.S. ballistic missile submarines, U.S. nuclear weapon carrying aircraft, and ground based nuclear weapons, should be part of a separate "strategic defense service", which is also responsible for intercepting incoming long range missile attacks near the point of launch and in mid-flight.

The remainder of the U.S. military should be divided into two services. 

* One military service would be devoted to addressing military confrontations with "peer" and "near peer" countries like China and Russia and Iran and North Korea with advanced, expensive, military grade weapons, including surface combatant ships, attack submarines, advanced fighter and bomber aircraft, and heavy army weapons. 

This would allow better coordination of resources that is discouraged by inter-service rivalries and lack of communication, such as balancing anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare missions between fixed wing aircraft historically in the Air Force (which are currently under utilized for that mission), surface combatants, submarines, and intermediate and long range missiles deployed by ground forces in the Army and Marines. It would also elevate the importance of missions to transport troops and their supplies. 

* The other military service would be devoted to proportionately and efficiently addressing sub-near peer military conflicts like counterinsurgency missions, peace keeping, anti-piracy missions, anti-smuggling operations abroad interdicting merchant grade ships trying to bust embargoes and international sanctions, embassy defense, evacuations of U.S. nationals and allies from areas were warfare has broken out in which the U.S. is not a party, and wars with countries that lack advanced military capabilities (like many countries in Latin America and Africa). This force would have a very different set of aircraft, ships, military ground vehicles, force design, and training.

* There would also be a paramilitary service, perhaps officially housed in the Department of State rather than the Department of Defense, that would be in charge of international relief missions that might have units specialized in disaster response, search and rescue, oil spill response, providing relief aid, setting up emergency shelters, deploying mobile field hospitals, and so on.

Sanctioning And Preventing Federal Government Corruption

Emoluments And Other Standing Problems

The law is very clear. And, it is the highest possible law - a part of the United States Constitution. But, enforcing it, particularly in the case of a President who violates it, by any means short of an impeachment, which can be circumvented by 34 Senators of the President's political party, is another thing.

The U.S. Supreme Court's rules on standing to sue takes the position that you can't have standing to sue as a taxpayer, as a U.S. citizen, or as a voter, on a wrong that affects everyone in the same way.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently held that the President is immune from criminal liability for his official acts, no matter how egregious (in a stark deviation from the widespread understanding at the time it ruled this way), in addition to being immune from lawsuits seeking money damages for his official acts.

Justice Department policy, and the structure of the Executive Branch also prevent federal prosecutors from prosecuting a sitting President, and the President's authority over the Justice Department, together with his pardon power, allows the President to shield anyone he favors from federal criminal prosecutions.

The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't directly ruled on the issue, but at least one lower court (in the criminal case against Trump involving his refusal to turn over documents with government nuclear secrets which he kept in his residence after he left office and refused to return upon demand) has held that special prosecutor statutes are unconstitutional, in an extension of the (until recently fringe) "unitary executive theory."

The same problem does not arise to nearly the same extent in state government. Almost every U.S. state has an independently elected state attorney general who can prosecute misconduct in other parts of the state government, and the federal government can also step in to prosecute state and local government corruption and violations of civil rights as a federal offense. The subject-matter jurisdiction of state courts is also not subject to the same level of strict limitations as the federal courts are by Article III of the U.S. Constitution.

This problem isn't unique to the Emoluments clause either. It comes up frequently in Establishment clause violations of the First Amendment. It can come up when one part of the federal government illegally shares confidential information with another part of the federal government. It comes up when the executive branch spends federal government money without a Congressional appropriation to support it. It comes up when a President orders a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and then pardons anyone who was involved in it. And, there are many other contexts where serious violations of the law within the executive branch have no viable remedy.

In some cases, an entire house of Congress can, by majority vote, authorize a lawsuit against the Executive Branch in federal court, but this is cumbersome and rendered frequently ineffectual by partisan politics. In some cases, a federal government chartered corporation, like the Public Broadcasting Corporation, can have independent standing to sue and by sued under a statutory grant of federal authority.

But, there is no systemic solution to this problem in existing federal law. Mostly, we just have to trust the President to do the right thing, but not all Presidents have earned this trust, and certainly, our current President has not. This is a glaring flaw in American Public Law.

Solutions

There are plausible solutions which could be imagined that would set aside the usual rules of standing on the grounds of necessity. We could grant the federal courts the authority to deputize a special prosecutor to pursue these issues. We could grant standing to pursue these issues to state attorneys-general. We could allow Congress to create an independent agency (perhaps one located in the judicial or the legislative branch with no Presidentially appointed directors or board members from an organizational chart and constitutional perspective) to pursue these claims. We could vest this authority in former U.S. Presidents who are still living, or the candidate that was the runner up in the last Presidential election.

Possible Constitutional Amendments

Perhaps we need an "anti-corruption" constitutional amendment, although conceptually, maybe this could be broken into several components. Consider this package to six constitutional amendments (and to be clear, some of those could also be accomplished without constitutional amendments):

Anti-Corruption And Standing Amendment

* Create an agency that has standing to take criminal, and civil legal action with national effect), to enforce federal law, to render advisory ethics opinions, and to protect the rule of law within the federal government (perhaps with a director appointed by a governing board made up of federal judges chosen at random),

* Prohibit federal elected officials from having a role in, or knowledge of, the management of private businesses or investments while in office,

* Prohibit self-dealing and conflicts of interest by federal officials including the President,

* Prohibit felons from serving as President unless that disability is removed by the same means as an insurrection disability is removed,

* Prohibit members of Congress from serving while serving a sentence for a felony,

* Authorize removal of members of Congress without being formally expelled from office by the House where someone is a member by the courts for various grounds established by law constituting good cause,

* Expressly authorize the appointment of special prosecutors by a three U.S. District Court judge panel, where the Justice Department is conflicted, or where the federal government fails to prosecute a crime when a preponderance of evidence, beyond mere probable cause, shows that it was committed by the proposed defendant,

* Authorize facial challenges to the constitutionality of legislation and regulations by the anti-corruption agency and by state attorneys-general, even in the absence of a case or controversy or other proof of standing,

* Create standing to enforce the establishment clause by any person who resides in, or is detained by, the territory of a government that is alleged to have violated it,

* Expand the scope of grounds for impeachment to include a willful and persistent failure to faithfully execute the laws in violation of one's oath of office, or a willful defiance of a court order.

* Try impeachments before a panel of judges rather than by the U.S. Senate,

* Prohibit judges appointed by a President from serving as a judge in any court proceeding in which the appointing President is a party in a non-official capacity (including any criminal prosecution),

* Mandate that Congress pass appropriate legislation to thwart judge shopping,

* Create binding ethics rules for the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts that can be enforced without utilizing the impeachment power by state attorneys-general, but some minority percentage of Senators, or by an anti-corruption agency, and

* Provide additional remedies for courts when federal government officials disobey court orders (including the permanent removal of an official from office, and the appointment of a special master to carry out the duties of the defiant official).

Immunity Amendment

* Overrule the U.S. Supreme Court's recent Presidential immunity ruling creating blanket immunity from criminal prosecution for a President's official acts,

* Forfeit immunity from civil lawsuits for money damages for acts that an official has been legally adjudicated to have committed in a criminal case or civil proceeding,

* Allow immunity from civil or criminal liability for federal government officials exclusively when Congress authorizes it by law, including, but not limited to Presidential immunity and qualified immunity for law enforcement,

* Prohibit stripping all courts of the authority to consider any matter,

* Narrow the political questions doctrine, and

* Make clear that there is no immunity from contempt of court liability.

Anti-Tyranny Amendment

* Impose limitations on the prosecution of state and local government officials by federal officials while they are performing their official duties (perhaps limiting such prosecutions to the anti-corruption agency),

* Make the Posse Comitatus Act a matter of self-executing constitutional law and to allow its enforcement in civil actions as well as by criminal prosecutions,

* Provide a self-executing, federal, private cause of action for compensatory, economic and non-economic damages including litigation costs and attorneys fees and/or injunctive relief, for any deprivation of federal rights constitutional or statutory, under color of state or federal law, against the government under whose authority or actions or inactions the deprivation was made, on a strict liability basis without regard to the intent of the government or governmental agents or employees doing so, and with no form of immunity (in a matter akin to the takings clause),

* Provide an absolute right to have criminal convictions vacated upon a showing of actual innocence by a preponderance of the evidence,

* Create a right to counsel in deportation actions and to bring habeas corpus petitions,

* Remove the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" (which applies only to a handful of children of diplomats anyway) and "Indians not taxed" provision (which was legislatively mooted in 1924) from the grant of birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment,

* Prohibit criminal defamation laws,

* Prohibit laws barring travel from one state to another in order for the person doing so to avail themselves of another state's law,

* Prohibit laws barring interstate communications about a matter that is legal to communicate about in either state,

* Prohibit revocation of immigration status based upon speech which would be protected by the First Amendment for a U.S. citizen,

* Prohibit involuntary denaturalization under any circumstances (even in the naturalization was secured by fraud which could be prosecuted but could not result in loss of U.S. citizenship), and

* Expressly include the limitation on the suspension of habeas corpus to places where the federal courts are not open established by Ex Parte Milligan and to clarify that the writ of habeas corpus is available to person detained outside the territory of the United States by the federal government or its agents or contractors.

Election Law Amendment

* Make Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (the insurrection clause) self-executing in any local, state, or federal tribunal with jurisdiction over qualifications to hold public offices or elections for those offices,

* Create eligible voter standing to enforce election laws including campaign finance laws, and constitutional provisions related to elections in jurisdictions where the voter has a right to vote,

* Remove the authority of Congress to resolve disputes over the election or qualifications of their members or the validity of duly certified state elections for federal offices, vesting that authority, instead, in the courts,

* Invalidate all statutory confidentiality rights other than attorney-client privilege and religious confession privilege for anyone running for, or holding, a federal elective office,

* Remove the authority of state legislatures to appoint electors for the President by any means other than a vote of the people,

* Require federal elections be administered at the state and local level by officials who are not partisan elected officials or appointees of partisan elected officials,

* Authorize non-criminal remedies for false statements of presently existing facts, or false statements related to voting, made with actual malice, in connection with political speech, and

* Constitutionally overrule Citizens United which constitutionally prohibits any rigorous campaign finance regulation.

Pardon Power Amendment

* Expressly prohibit the President from pardoning himself, or members of his family, or a President who appointed the current President to the office that put him in the line of succession to be President,

* Prohibit pardons from contempt of court sanctions whether civil or criminal, 

* Invalidate pardons for criminal conduct taken in reliance on a promise from the President that it would be pardoned, or issued in exchange for any consideration,

* Require notice of all pardons and commutation (other than a stay of execution) to be transmitted to Congress to be effective, and to subject them to a legislative veto in the same way as a veto override that must be acted upon with a certain period of time (perhaps 35 days) after it is transmitted to Congress.

Congressional Supremacy Amendment

* Clarify that Congress has plenary authority over the operations and organization of the Executive branch, and over how the President exercises his discretion in any matter whatsoever of which the constitution or statutes grants him authority, which the President has no authority to contradict,

* Require all Executive Orders purporting to impact anyone outside of the Executive branch of the federal government to be transmitted to Congress and paused until ratified by both houses of Congress, or until three weeks have elapsed, before taking effect, and to allow either house of Congress alone, by majority vote, to repeal any Executive Order,

* Legalize legislative veto legislation (retroactively),

* Confirm the authority of Congress to pass anti-impoundment legislation,

* Confirm the validity of civil service protections for public servants,

* Confirm the validity of government contracting rules established by Congress,

* Constitutionally disavow the "unitary executive" theory by expressly allowing Congress to create independent agencies whose directors, boards, and staff cannot be dismissed or directed by the President,

* Validate the constitutionality of laws such as the Administrative Procedures Act which governs how executive branch discretion may be exercised,

* Provide that Congress has the authority to waive any claim of executive privilege made by the President, and

* Constitutionally ratify the authority of Congress to pass legislation like the War Powers Act.

The Old Guard Army Leader Perspective On Tanks

 “Bring out the Super heavy giant xl mega big tank!!!”

From here.

Quick Observations On Taxes And The Social Welfare System

Some important provisions of the U.S. tax code that are substantively trying to do the right thing are just way too complex. Some examples:

* The taxation of tip income.

* The Earned Income Tax credit.

* The Obamacare tax credit for people who don't have employer provided health insurance, and the closely related taxation of health insurance for self-employed people

* Medicaid eligibility.

* Eligibility for other means tested programs like TANF, SNAP, and WIC.

* Public housing subsidies.

* The unemployment insurance system.

* The Social Security disability and SSI programs.

* The way that deductibles and co-pays and maximum coverage limits are handled with private health insurance.

Simple is better, for example:

* The standard deduction.

* The per child tax credit.

* Social Security retirement and survivors insurance programs.

* Medicare.

* HMO structures for most out-of-pocket health insurance expenses.

* India's right to show up to work and receive guaranteed paid employment.

* New Zealand's comprehensive no fault national insurance for all accidental injuries.

Accepting a certain amount of rough justice by making the bureaucracy of daily life for low income people simpler is well worth it, because this group of people is least capable of dealing effectively with paperwork and bureaucracy and complex rules. Reduced barriers to access and administrative costs can fund somewhat more generous benefits.

If you are going to have complex rules and bureaucratic systems they should be reserved for sophisticated, affluent individuals and entities.

Fleeting Thoughts From The Brink

So far, the worst case scenario in Trump 2.0 is being held at bay by federal judges, state attorneys' general, attorneys for civic groups like the ACLU, attorneys for unions, the main stream media, a smattering of private lawyers, and the financial markets. Harvard University, the Atlantic magazine, anonymous leakers in the federal government, a handful of members of Congress, consumer boycotters, street protesters, social media social justice warriors, rebellious federal workers and former federal workers, foreign diplomats, foreign heads of state, and Tesla vandals are making good showings in supporting roles. 

Most of the relief that courts have granted so far is preliminary, and has come only after significant harm has been done from wrongful conduct by the Trump Administration. Conservative intermediate federal appellate courts and the ultraconservative U.S. Supreme Court have the potential to undo many of these temporary wins. 

Some of the damage that is being done can't be remedied. Our reputation as a reliable and predictable trade partner is irrevocably damaged. Some U.S. exporters have been permanently replaced with non-U.S. exporters. The credit rating of the U.S. and the strength of the dollar has been damaged in the long run. Our credibility as an ally on national security matters will suffer for decades. Our credibility as a provider of high quality higher education to international students will suffer for many years past this administration. Our desirability as a tourist destination is damaged in the long term. Our status on the democracy and corruption indexes will be downgraded for a long time. Many long running scientific and medical research projects have been derailed beyond repair. The extent to which businesses, foreign and domestic, and private citizens, can expert the predictable application of the rule of law and stability in the legal environment has been shattered for decades to come. U.S. soft power abroad has been destroyed and we no longer have a reputation as a guardian of human rights. The objectives of all of our foreign aid programs have been undermined permanently. Our political system is now a model for what to avoid and not one to be emulated. The reputations of Americans abroad has been undermined. We will not, for the foreseeable future, have a country where it is safe for everyone to travel and live in every U.S. state destroying sixty years or so when that was the case. A consensus that anti-racism and anti-sexism is good is gone. A consensus that Nazis and the KKK are bad is gone. A consensus that empathy is a good thing is gone. We have lost scientists and other great minds and consciences to expatriation, many for good. We are no longer a nation with any significant core of shared values on either matters of substance or the political process.

The U.S. is weaker in foreign policy and military affairs than at any time since before World War II, if not further back. This puts Taiwan and the Philippines at risk. This puts Ukraine at risk. This puts Poland and Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia at risk. Greenland (and by association Denmark and NATO) are in Trump's crosshairs undermining that alliance. Panama is now a target and all goodwill there has been lost. Our long standing relations with Canada and Mexico have been shattered. The risk of a stronger China-Russia alliance has been heightened. We don't have the united front necessary to have leverage over Iran.

Israel isn't really at risk, but we are doing nothing to improve the deteriorating situation in Gaza which genocide or not, could lead to a lot of deaths because Gaza doesn't have the means to support the people who are currently residing there and they have no way to leave.

The one foreign policy/military agenda item upon which the U.S. has held firm from Biden to Trump is that the Houthis and their Red Sea vicinity piracy are receiving a firm U.S. military response.

Trump is literally pulling out of Africa entirely, closing embassies, ending aid programs, and in general, just walking away. And, while this was never a focus of U.S. foreign policy, this turns the continent over to China and ISIS.

Tesla, and Elon Musk's reputation and business empire, have suffered immense, quite possibly irrevocable blows from the combination of his political actions at DOGE destroying their reputation at home and abroad, and from the gross defects in the design and manufacturing of the Cybertruck including systemic odometer fraud. Major clients of Starlink have cancelled their contract for political reasons too. And spectacular SpaceX failures haven't helped either. There may also be securities fraud and suspicious transactions like its Canadian tax credit fraud, its related party transaction with X and xAI, and questions about a huge amount of missing money on Tesla's balance sheet. Musk's distracted attention from his multiple businesses hasn't helped them either.

Lockheed is going to lose F-35 contracts. Boeing has lost sales to China. U.S. farmers who export their products are losing. U.S. oil and gas producers are losing. Private retirement accounts are losing. The U.S. dollar is dramatically weaker. U.S. manufacturing companies are laying people off and being crippled from Apple to Johnny Walker.

The interest rate on the national debt has gone up with costs taxpayers money without providing anything in return. Food safety has been interrupted. Weather reporting has been impaired. Disease control is crippled and multiple epidemics are surging due to the quack leading the Health and Human Services Department. The military academies have been irrevocably impaired.

The Republicans in Congress have caved to almost all of even the worst excesses of Trump 2.0. They even approved insane and grossly under-qualified RFK, Jr. to Health and Human Services, as well as a host of other grossly unqualified candidates to positions where their mission it to undermine everything their agencies are charged with doing rather than faithfully executing the law. They have not stopped tariffs which were probably not authorized by law in the first place and violated the WTO treaties and the NAFTA 2.0 treaty. There have been a few attempted rebellions by small numbers of Republicans who have considerable power if they want it because the GOP majority in both the House and Senate are thin, but basically every time, they have backed down.

The end game remains uncertain. Where Trump's wrong has been acting by executive order, Congress could ratify or adopt his policies properly and by law, although he hasn't done that, in part, because he doesn't think that he can get clean support from the entire Republican caucus for his extreme measures. SCOTUS could undermine the judges who have stepped in to stop him. There is still a constitutional crisis pending over Trump's disregard of court orders related to his illegal Alien Enemies Act deportations among others. Trump could get bolder and could continue to ignore court orders without consequences. For now, Trump won't invoke the Insurrection Act, but we could have martial law and cancelled elections before it is over and he's claiming he may unconstitutionally seek a third term.

If we make it to a reasonably free and fair midterm election in 2026, it is possible that Republicans will be dramatically swept out of power as the consequences of Trump's damaging and unpopular policies becomes apparent, and that could save us. But, the core MAGA base of 35-40% of voters is largely holding fast, even as independents start to slide towards the Democrats, and there is no guarantee that the 2026 elections will be free and fair. Worst case scenario for the GOP, it could go into the wilderness for 60 years like it did after Herbert Hoover's failed tariffs.

Some of the most frightening parts of Trump's early moves have been his ability to gain GOP support to appoint utterly incompetent people to destroy the federal government, Trump's anti-DEI campaign that is evolving into straight up state supported racism and sexism and discrimination applied not just to the federal government but also to state and local schools, private colleges and universities, and private businesses, as well as esteemed and irreplaceable federal cultural institutions. His acts of retaliation against law firms, individuals, and others (even countries). His seeming ability to circumvent the Administrative Procedure Act, civil service protections, union collective bargaining agreements, Congressionally enacted protections for independent agencies, inspector generals, NEPA, duly enacted Congressional appropriations, the Office of Legal Counsel, JAG Corps, and fair minded constitution protecting senior military officers. He's compromised the limited independence of immigration judges. Many more decent people are just washing their hands and resigning rather than being a part of Trump's illegal agenda. 

Trump could order invasions of Greenland or the Panama Canal without Congressional support and get away with it, possibly even triggering a war with NATO. 

SCOTUS has done us no favors in overruling *Roe* with *Dobbs*, with over ruling *Chevron* deference to federal regulations, with deciding that Trump has broad immunity from criminal prosecution, with deciding contrary to clear constitutional language and precedent that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment isn't self-executing, with mealy mouthed responses to Trump's defiance of the law even when it has taken action, with its pro-gun nut jurisprudence on the Second Amendment, and in this time of tyranny, perhaps more than anything, its "unitary executive" jurisprudence.

If democracy does survive, the long standing two party structure of Republicans and Democrats seems likely to fall apart. The minority of reasonable conservatives in the GOP are leaving the party in favor of being independents or flooding the Democratic party tent with principled conservatives and libertarians. The Democratic party tent is getting spread to thin to be cohesive but for its current common enemy. If Trump alienates enough big business and establishment Republicans, the GOP could find it has no money to back it up. Progressives are falling for nihilism, convinced that Democrats are against them and not just lacking the power to secure what they want. The Republican Party of 2025 is a populist, far-right, basically neo-Nazi party. Its major screw ups in Trump 2.0 and violent swing to the right could leave it as a permanent minority party with a mish mash of everyone else trying to form coalitions to keep it out of power (which our current single member district plurality system makes challenging).

Looking at the big picture: What is the solution? Is the problem that we need better institutions? Is the problem that we need a one time reset to purge or undermine bad SCOTUS judges? Does the political culture need to change? Do we just need better politicians to run for the good causes seeing that they are needed and for Trump to die? Is the U.S. constitution resilient enough to weather this crisis? Would it be better if the U.S. constitution failed forcing a new regime from scratch since the corrections that are necessary can't be made through the ordinary means? Do we need more street politics?

What if we make it through this crisis but badly damaged in a way that sets us on a path to inevitable long term decline and degradation even though we avoid the worst case scenarios this time around? We are already a flawed democracy. Maybe will fall further down that scale, become a mere semi-democracy and more corrupt than we have become, experiencing nationwide the kind of decline that the rust belt and coal belt have seen so far.

Should the U.S. split up? Do red states realize how dependent they are on money from blue states? I sense that if red states went it alone that they wouldn't replace much of what the federal government provided and would instead just treat its poor and sick and weak worse, and would become more hateful. The blue states would be weaker for smaller scale, but would allow their prosperity to overcome it and would adopt new and better policies unrestrained by red state backwardness.

How far will women's rights, gay rights, trans rights, non-Christian rights retreat? How far will our isolation from the globe grow? How many immigrants will be purged? How will our national character wither?

One of the deep institutional flaws of the U.S. government that doesn't get talked about enough is that we have an inferior system of public law (the law regulating government) and also have government institutions that aren't good at basic functions like making major military purchases, carrying out major public works programs, and managing large numbers of public servants. This is one major reason for the bias against having government rather than the private sector carry out tasks in U.S. politics compared to many other countries, even when government is really better suited to the tasks in question, and it is a major reason that the U.S. has started to increasing lag relative to its developed world counterparts.

When I first learned that many countries put the prosecutor's office in the judicial branch rather than the executive branch, I was skeptical, thinking that this would make judges biased in favor of prosecutors. And, in countries like South Korea and Japan, that does happen. But, seeing Trump try to use the criminal justice system to persecute his political opponents, I can see the potential benefits to insulating prosecutors from partisan elected officials outside the executive branch (something that almost largely removes the need to have an awkward and flawed special prosecutor system to address criminal acts within the executive branch).

Neither The Space Force Nor The Air Force Should Exist

Military space resources are necessary. A separate Space Force bureaucracy is just a very expensive and wasteful PR stunt. The Space Force shouldn't exist, and honestly, we'd be better off if the Air Force were merged back into the Army again as well.

If the Air Force weren't separate from the Army, the Army wouldn't be trying to build helicopters to do jobs that fixed wing aircraft jobs would do better, and the Air Force fighter mafia wouldn't be neglecting CAS and logistics, and joint air-land cooperation would be handled in the same lower level command and control unit in the same way that this is done in the U.S. Marine Corps. 

The Space Force just adds insult to injury and makes coordination between troops on the ground and space resources, and supporting Air Force resources, even more poor. And, it also creates stupid unnecessary bureaucratic empires that cost money and don't add value.

Trump's DOD Budget

Trump has ordered the DOD leadership to come up with 8% budget cuts, for each of the next five years (about $68 billion per year) from the DOD budget while preserving 17 priorities. Those priorities are:

• Southwest Border Activities
• Combating Transnational Criminal Organizations in the Western Hemisphere
• Audit
• Nuclear Modernization (including NC3)
• Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs)
• Virginia-class Submarines
• Executable Surface Ships
• Homeland Missile Defense
• One-Way Attack/Autonomous Systems
• Counter-small UAS Initiatives
• Priority Critical Cybersecurity
• Munitions
• Core Readiness, including full DRT funding
• Munitions and Energetics Organic Industrial Bases
• Executable INDOPACOM MILCON
• Combatant Command support agency funding for INDOPACOM, NORTHCOM, SPACECOM, STRATCOM, CYBERCOM, and TRANSCOM
• Medical Private-Sector Care

It will be interesting to see what cuts will be proposed. To recap some cuts that I have suggested:

• The Selective Service System.
• Most tanks in the U.S. Army (transfer them to allies who want them like Ukraine and Taiwan).
• New destroyers (of existing designs) for the U.S. Navy.
• The U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay.
• Bomber aircraft in the Air National Guard.
• Canon artillery in the Army National Guard.
• The Space Force (which should be merged into the Air Force).
• The Air Force (which should be merged into the Army).
• Stealth fighters in the Air National Guard.
• The Next-Generation Intratheater Airlift (NGIA) program in the Air Force (it duplicates a more advanced Army Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program).
• The amphibious assault mission of the U.S. Marine Corps.
• The U.S. Navy's nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) program.
• Most U.S. military VIP transport aircraft.
• The Armored Multipurpose Vehicle (AMPV) procurement of 522 M1283 General Purpose Vehicles, 993 M1286 Mission Command Vehicles, and 386 M1287 Mortar Carrier Vehicles. This would leave the AMPV program with 790 M1284 Medical Evacuation Vehicles and 216 M1285 Medical Treatment Vehicles.
• The M10 Booker Mobile Protected Firepower program.
• Retire the B1-B bomber (or transfer it to the U.S. Navy as a patrol aircraft).
• The U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC), which is a high school pre-ROTC program.

Some other programs which could be cut include:

• The Constellation class frigate program (which is three years behind schedule and over budget, and remains vulnerable to various anti-surface combatant threats).
• The next generation destroyer R&D program.
• The next generation main battle tank R&D program.
• Phase out canon artillery in the Army in favor of canon artillery substitute missiles deployed from C-130 transportable, wheeled vehicles.
• Delay the "Next Generation Air Dominance" warplane.
• Phase out the remaining 13 Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers (a class which entered service in 1983) ahead of schedule (which is September 30, 2027).

This And That

1. King Soopers workers in Colorado are on the verge of going on strike, shortly after the King Soopers-Safeway merge fell apart in the face of obvious anti-trust concerns.

2. An interesting linguistics question I've never seen addressed is why some peoples, like the Italians, gesture a lot while they speak, while other do not.

3. In England, a major road is washed out by a landslide, leading to a fourteen mile detour. A private individual contracts with a farmer owning nearby land and in two weeks builds a substitute road and charges a toll. Thousands of cars a day willingly pay the toll and the man recovers his $150,000 equivalent investment and makes a modest profit in the three additional months it takes to fix the road. The government could have cited him for not seeking regulatory approval, but instead, lets it slide and has its own emergency vehicles use the road. The government could have done the same thing, but it didn't. One of the positive aspects of capitalism is that it allows individuals to act without a comparatively complex and bureaucratic process. The alternative is to find ways for government to be more nimble, something that Japan, for example, is quite good at in these situations.

4. Microsoft bans someone from its online service for truthfully putting his location data as "Fort Gay" in West Virginia, despite the fact that this was the name of his town, on the theory that it is offensive, even after he demonstrates that it is real place. It refuses to relent until the Mayor goes to the press to complain. Moral of the story: Corporate bureaucracies can be just as stupid as governmental bureaucracies.

5. The Colorado Department of Transportation is warning people that any texts asking individuals to “Pay your FastTrak Lane tolls” are scams, because Colorado does not collect fines or tolls by text. I've received some of these scam texts myself. But it still astounds me that prompt investigation and prosecution of these scammers using an electronic paper trail and following the places where they want you to send money isn't more effective. This seems like a problem that could be solved much more effectively given sufficient political will to do so, with a combination of specialized enforcement teams and possibly technological upgrades to the cell phone network.

6. A roughly 9.0 magnitude earthquake, of a type called a megathrust earthquake, struck in the year 1700, resulting in a tsunami to the Pacific Coast of North America from Vancouver to California. Its effects were also noted in Japan. Earthquakes like this happen every 300-600 years or so, and we're about due for another one.

7. New imaging of the geology under Yellowstone in the U.S. reveal that this mega-caldera is not currently anywhere near erupting in a mega explosion like the last time it occurred. Such an eruption would be a catastrophe affecting a large swath of North America and would have global climate implications.  

8. Pollen issues in U.S. cities are, to a significant extent, a product of city planning policies to plan only male trees to replace those lost to Dutch Elm disease on the advice of a 1949 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

What To Abolish?

Republicans want to abolish the Department of Education and the IRS. Both are horrible ideas. 

What should be abolished?

1. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

2. The Office of National Drug Control Policy.

3. The Alcohol And Tobacco Tax And Trade Bureau.

4. The Alcohol and Tobacco parts of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

5. The Article I Immigration Court system (transfer this duty to Article III courts).

6. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (as opposed to the separate border control agency).

7. The Employment and Training Administration in the Labor Department.

8. The Export-Import Bank of the U.S.

9. The National Indian Gaming Commission.

10. Criminal and civil forfeiture enforcement of copyright and trademark violations (a similar statutory stand alone crimes).

11. Federal pornography possession enforcement.

12. Diversity jurisdiction in the federal courts.

13. Federal question jurisdiction in the federal courts in most cases involving private parties. 

14. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (merge into the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit)

15. The Federal Arbitration Act.

16. Federal grand juries (would require a constitutional amendment).

17. Criminal punishment of illegal entry into the United States.

18. Federal enforcement of bank robbery laws.

19. Federal enforcement of intrastate controlled substance violations.

20.  Most federal agency law enforcement agencies.

21.  Merge the Commodity Futures Trading Commission into the SEC.

22. Slow speed, long haul passenger rail lines at AMTRAK.

23. Door to door rural mail delivery (replace it with P.O. boxes).

24. The Jones Act.

25. Grants to for profit colleges and universities.

26. Federal civil forfeitures.

27. For profit federal prisons and detention centers.

28. The Medicaid Estate Recovery program.

29.  FEMA grants to people suffering disaster losses after rebuilding in stupid zones.

30. The Office of the Director Of National Intelligence.

31. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (enforce the laws in regular Article III courts).

32. The Selective Service System.

33. Most tanks in the U.S. Army (transfer them to allies who want them like Ukraine and Taiwan).

34. New destroyers (of existing designs) for the U.S. Navy.

35. The U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay.

36. Bomber aircraft in the Air National Guard.

37. Canon artillery in the Army National Guard.

38. The Space Force (which should be merged into the Air Force).

39. The Air Force (which should be merged into the Army).

40. Stealth fighters in the Air National Guard.

41. The Next-Generation Intratheater Airlift (NGIA) program in the Air Force (it duplicates a more advanced Army Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program).

42. Foreign aid to Saudi Arabia.

43. The amphibious assault mission of the U.S. Marine Corps.

44. The U.S. Navy's nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) program.

45. Most U.S. military VIP transport aircraft.

46. The Armored Multipurpose Vehicle (AMPV) procurement of 522 M1283 General Purpose Vehicles, 993 M1286 Mission Command Vehicles, and 386 M1287 Mortar Carrier Vehicles. This would leave the AMPV program with 790 M1284 Medical Evacuation Vehicles and 216 M1285 Medical Treatment Vehicles.

47. The M10 Booker Mobile Protected Firepower program.

48. Retire the B1-B bomber (or transfer it to the U.S. Navy as a patrol aircraft).

49. The ban on travel by Americans to Cuba.

50. The U.S. Army Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC), which is a high school pre-ROTC program.

Selected Lesser Grievances

There are lots of big issues facing the United States, the biggest of which is the existential threat to its continued functioning as a democracy posed by Donald Trump's candidacy in this year's Presidential election. And, this blog spends plenty of time thinking about those big issues.

But, the world is also full of things that aren't "big issues" but are minor annoyances and lesser grievances that it would be nice to see remedied, even if they aren't really make or break issues. This post recounts some of them.

Computer System Treatment Of Hyphenated Names And Similar Issues

* There ought to be a law that mandates that government and big business computer systems accommodate people who have hyphens, apostrophes, spaces, and just one or two characters in their names. This may have been an issue at the start of the computer age, but we have reached a point where it is no longer that hard to do.

Fraud

* We do a poor job of dealing with fraud perpetrated by phone, text message, email, social media, the Internet more generally, and the financial system. It should be possible to click a 9-1-1 style universal fraud reporting code and send reports of fraudulent activity instantly to the appropriate law enforcement agency and telecommunications providers, with no further effort from the person reporting it required. This should shut down the fraudster's phone number, and email accounts, social media accounts, and freeze any associated financial accounts almost instantly, and launch investigations as a matter of course into the perpetrators and into the institutions used by them to perpetrate the frauds. The cost of an individual fraudulent communication is small and the fraudsters count on that to shield them from investigations, which when they do happen aren't nimble enough to address it because the perpetrators are long gone. Yet, we have a system that is much better a dealing with the much less serious problem of copyright infringement than it is at dealing with fraud. 

* We should do a better job of dealing with deceptive business practices by credit reporting agencies that try to trick you into paying for services that they are required to provide for free.

* We should do a better job at shutting down businesses that dupe people into paying to get government services that are available cheaper or for free from the actual government.

* Credit cards should have PIN numbers the way that ATM cards do. This would dramatically reduce credit card fraud and reduce the incentive to steal credit cards.

* Food labeling should be more tightly regulated to discourage spurious and misleading health claims like "antibiotic free" in foods where antibiotics aren't allowed anyway, or claims that a food that ordinarily would have sugar but not fat anyway is "fat free".

Regulated Occupations

* We should have a central database of people who are sanctioned or "disbarred" from particular professions in a particular state or local jurisdictions, so that these people are prevented from going to some other state or local jurisdiction, or some other licensed occupation where the same conduct would also be disqualifying.

* The construction trades should be regulated at the state level, not the local level. This prevents an unreasonable barrier to entry for legitimate reputable construction contractors, which causes construction trade licensing to be ignored or overlooked, while also making it too easy for someone who has had their construction trade license rightfully revoked to just go to another locality that hasn't caught up with them yet.

Arrest Records

* We should also have a way of purging the official arrest records of people who are arrested or charged, but are ultimately not convicted of anything, from public records and databases (that do not at least disclose the exoneration with the arrest record report). Similarly, there should be a better process to purge or annotate criminal convictions that are vacated.

Mail, Package Delivery, And Porch Piracy

* The U.S. Postal System and all other package delivery firms should be liable for damages when it delivers a package to the wrong address (or doesn't deliver it at all), preventing the intended recipient from receiving it, even without requiring the sender to procure insurance, at least up to a certain dollar amount. 

* A parallel and similar system for dealing with fraud via mail to the one suggested above for telecommunications fraud should also be put in place. Violators (both firms and their managers and principals) should have their right to send mass mailings suspended for some period of time in addition to any other relief.

* A certain percentage of packages should have tracking chips that can be used to locate the packages if they are taken by porch pirates, allowing the perpetrators to be found, and creating too high of a risk for people contemplating porch piracy to consider doing so.

* Mutual funds should be required to make information about their funds publicly available, but mailing prospectus-like disclosure documents to their investors on a regular basis just kills trees without providing meaningful improvements in investor knowledge.

* The same is true of privacy policies. Require them to be made available in some standardized place, but don't mail them out to everyone connected to a business.

* Low advertiser postal rates for "junk mail" that don't reflect reduced costs for the postal system due to, e.g., pre-sorting, should be abolished and instead, all mail should have to pay first class mail rates. If it isn't worth sending a first class mail rates, it isn't worth bothering people with the unsolicited junk mail.

* Congressional franking privileges should be abolished and replaced with a budget for postage for each U.S. House and U.S. Senate office, based upon the population of the state in question for U.S. Senate offices. This privilege is widely abused by office holders and undermines the economic viability of the U.S. Postal Service.

* Mail-In Ballots should have business return postage type treatment so that the voters doesn't have to attack any postage to return their ballot through the mail, paid for by the governmental body conducting the election.

* Registered voters should indicate (in a database that is not public record at an individual level, just at a statistical level), their preferred language for election related information and communications. Thus, election related disclosures and ballots would go to voters only in their preferred language rather than in both English and Spanish with other language versions available upon request. This would make ballots more readable, and cut in half the amount of paper wasted in pre-election disclosures. It would also significantly reduce the burden on voters who need to receive translations into languages other than English or Spanish.

Long Ballots 

Ballots are too long, in part, because we have voters do too much. But long ballots discourage voting generally and lead to uninformed decision making.

* We should not elect, at any level coroners, surveyors, engineers, dog catchers, assessors, treasurers, clerks, or secretaries of state, who are supposed to be carrying out technocratic tasks with only limited discretion.

* Elections should not be administered by partisan elected officials, or by partisan political appointees.

* Judicial retention elections like the ones held in Colorado make ballots much longer (just short of half the questions on my ballot this year are judicial retention elections) and demand a great deal of effort from voters who try to make those decisions in an informed manner, but provide very little benefit. Typically only one or two judges in the entire state are not retained in any election cycle, and sometimes, none are. Only about 1% of judges are ever removed this way, which inadequate purges inadequate judges. And, a significant share of judges who are removed are removed for decisions that are legally required but unpopular. Simply put, the general voting public is ill-equipped to make this decision even with state supplied information pamphlets, and it is a great burden on voters that makes ballots too long. There might be a place for retention elections, but only in cases which are singled out as "high risk" in some reasonable manner, for the voting public to focus upon.

* In Colorado, the Taxpayer's Bill Of Rights, requires voters to approve tax increases and to authorize retention of revenues from existing taxes if those revenues grow fasters than a formula in the state constitution. I don't have a problem with the first kind of voting requirement for new taxes. But, votes on retention of revenues from existing taxes (called "debrucing" ballot issues, after Doug Bruce, the author of TABOR in Colorado) should not be required and make our ballots unnecessarily long.

* Similarly, while voters should have to authorize increased debt limits for local governments, they should not have to authorize incurring debt at levels previously authorized by voters and paid for with existing taxes, after the original debt is paid down, at least in part.

* The CU Board of Regents and the state school board, should not be chosen by the general public in elections, let alone, in partisan elections.

* Perhaps in addition to petitions to establish a minimum threshold of support for a ballot measure before putting it on the ballot for the general public to consider, citizen's initiatives should face a public opinion poll test and only be granted ballot access if it can garner at least, say, 35% support, in a public opinion poll conducted by a reputable and certified firm.

Notarization

* The requirement that statements made under penalty of perjury be presented in a notarized affidavit made under oath should be replaced with a rule allowing unnotarized declarations made under penalty of perjury in court documents, something that is already the case in the federal court system, and the court systems of Colorado and Utah, at least.

* Notarized but not otherwise witnessed wills are valid in Colorado. This should be the norm nationally.

Copyrights, Rights Of Publicity, And Privacy

Copyright laws are too strong for a digital age. Some examples:

* There should be more legally binding safe harbors for fair use. Far too many cases are in gray areas decided on a case by case basis by a particular judge and jury.

* Some version of a fair use defense or dramatic remedy limitation should be available in the cases where someone is sharing content made available by a copyright holder or a licensee for free on the Internet or via freely available broadcast television or radio.

* There should be a mechanism for mandatory licensing of orphan works and for translations of works that are not available in a particular language.

* There are overly expansive protections for derivative works in areas such a fan fiction that should be dialed back.

* Statutory damages in lieu of actual economic damages, and the availability of attorneys' fees in actions for copyright infringement, should also be greatly curtailed. In general, copyright remedies and rights should be closer to an unjust enrichment tort remedy and less like a property right. 

* Rights of publicity should be governed by a single, preclusive, federal law, not by a mishmash of state laws.

* Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is far too expansive and far too protective of privacy rights to the detriment of other legitimate interests.

* The scope of the applicability of the GDPR to people who are not in Europe, but can have dealings with Europeans over the Internet is far too unclear.

Traffic Laws

* Speed limits should reflect the speed that an ordinary reasonable driver would travel on a road as it is designed. Local governments should not be allowed to set lower speed limits than the road conditions reflect in response to local community pressure. If a local government wants traffic to move more slowly than the legally authorized speed limit given the road conditions, it needs to redesign the road, rather than just creating a speed trap.

* When push comes to shove, bicycles should be regulated as pedestrians not as motor vehicles. They should go on sidewalks and designated bike paths in most cases, rather than being expected to share designated highways and arterial streets with automobiles. A bicycle crashing into a pedestrian is much less serious than a car crashing into a bicycle.

Debt Collection

* It should be a serious offense to try to collect zombie debts that are barred by the statute of limitations or have been discharged in bankruptcy.

* It should be a serious offense to try to collect debts from the next of kin of debtors who have not guaranteed the debt in writing, rather than the decedent's probate estate.

Medical Billing

* Until the day when we have universal health care, health care providers to patients with health insurance should be forbidden from trying to collect their bills directly from the patient beyond a health insurance policy authorized co-pay to be paid at the time of service. Any provider that accepts any payment from that patient's health insurance should be required to honor the health insurance company's disallowance of their charges. And, health insurers should have to pay the full allowed charge to the health care provider and then collect the patient's share of that charge under the insurance policy from the patient. Patients shouldn't be put in the middle and as a guarantor in the face of disputes between health care providers and health insurers. A patient should be able to know exactly what he or she will owe simply by reading their health insurance policy.

* Emergency rooms shouldn't be allowed to charge more to someone who errantly went to an ER instead of an urgent care facility for the same services. The task of getting someone to the right level of care takes medical knowledge and should be the responsibility of the health care provider.

* Health care providers shouldn't be allowed to charge different rates for the same work done at a hospital affiliated facility (which is often billed at a higher rate) than at another facility.

* When there are contingent fee lawsuits for personal injuries, health care providers with health care liens on the recovery should have to share the risk in a way that afford the injured person some benefit of the lawsuit according to a standard formula that doesn't have to be negotiated on a case by case basis.

Court E-Filing Discrepancies

* Court E-Filing systems should have much less authority to just reject filings. Instead, if there is problem with the way that the filling was put into the e-filing system, that correction should just be made by the system, and if there is a problem with the document filed itself, it should issue an order to show cause directing the filer to correct it in a clearly described manner before a reasonable deadline to prevent it from being stricken with a loss of the original filing date.

Municipal Ordinances

* Municipalities and local governments should not be permitted to punish ordinance violations with incarceration or arrest. Incarceration should be limited to violations of state laws.

* Colorado should abolish municipal courts and require municipal ordinance violations to be enforced in civil actions brought by city attorneys in county courts that are part of the state court system.

Air Force Decides To Reinvent Helicopters

A new type of military airlifter is rising to the top of the U.S. Air Force’s list of modernization priorities: small, autonomous, electric-powered aircraft capable of short takeoffs and landings—and numbering in the hundreds.

Air Force Material Command (AFMC) is in the market research phase for the Next-Generation Intratheater Airlift (NGIA) concept. A five-year prototyping program could begin as early as fiscal 2026, leading to the start in the early 2030s of an engineering and manufacturing development phase for the first newly designed U.S. military air transport since the early 1990s debut of the Boeing C-17

“The Department of the Air Force’s goal is to enhance existing airlift capability and capacity with an intratheater platform that can fight through damaged infrastructure on responsive timelines,” the AFMC said in a request for information released on Sept. 24. Responses from the industry are due Nov. 1.

Although unclassified, the NGIA proposal is early enough in the acquisition process that Air Force officials are reluctant to elaborate on the concept. An AFMC spokesperson referred questions to the Air Force Futures organization on the headquarters staff. A spokesperson for Air Force Futures declined to answer questions, saying the NGIA concept is still in its infancy. . . . 

The Last Tactical Leg proposal envisions an autonomous, hybrid-electric short- or vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft. This proposed airlifter would deliver small, urgently needed supplies from logistics hubs to forward bases, even with battle-damaged runways on both ends.

The market survey for the NGIA calls for industry “to achieve extremely short- or vertical-takeoff-and-landing capability with smaller payload weight.” . . .

Manassas, Virginia-based Electra.aero, for example, is developing a nine-passenger or 2,500-lb. cargo transport for the commercial market but also is working with the Air Force to incorporate military requirements.

From here.

Funny how this sounds almost exactly like an aircraft with the capabilities of the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter (apart from the hybrid-electric and autonomous flight parts - and the Army is well under way in making the UH-60 autonomous) that entered service in the Army in 1979. And, the Army is also, by the way, developing an autonomous successor to its CH-53K heavy lift helicopter, as well as smaller drone cargo helicopters, and the "U.S. Marine Corps, which has been completely restructuring itself around new expeditionary and distributed concepts operations in recent years, is pushing to acquire three different tiers of VTOL cargo drones." 

The Army invented and invested in this capability, of course, because as the article notes in more generous language, the Air Force abandoned its obligation to provide this service to the Army, and rid itself of its ample fleet of small, short takeoff and landing fixed wing C-7 and C-47 transport planes when the Vietnam War ended.

This same Air Force is also discontinuing the A-10 close air support attack fighter without a replacement, as fast as Congress will let it, because it doesn't trust the idea of having fixed wing aircraft within range of anti-aircraft weapons, even though the Army is carrying out essentially the same close air support mission with much more vulnerable AH-64 Apache attack helicopters. The Air Force does still have the AC-130 (a C-130 cargo plane outfitted with a howitzer that it shoots out a side door) to assist ground troops, but, only at night. Officially, the A-10 replacement is the F-35A, a supersonic stealth fighter that drops bombs and missiles from altitudes too high to be within range of anti-aircraft weapons. But this fig leaf of an argument isn't credible. (U.S. Special Forces are also buying a small fleet of light, lightly armed "armed overwatch" OA-1K aircraft for counterterrorism operations in "permissive environments.")

Apparently, however, a small, basically unarmed and unarmored military transport plane isn't nearly as vulnerable as the highly robust, armored, and heavily armed A-10.

Presumably, in a reflection of the odd dividing line between Army Aviation and Air Force Aviation, the NGIA will be primarily a fixed wing aircraft, rather than a true helicopter. But if it is to have vertical takeoff and landing capabilities, and a fixed wing, there are basically only two options: either some variant on the MV-22 Osprey with a tilt rotor, or some variant on the F-35B which can shift its thrust downward for vertical landings. And, no one has ever even prototyped an F-35B type vertical landing design for a transport aircraft.

The NGIA also seems to have a lot in common with an Army program that is just about ready for prime time and seems to fill almost exactly the same niche, right down to the fixed wing with a tilt rotor design.

Textron’s Bell has won the U.S. Army’s competition to build the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, the service’s largest helicopter procurement decision in 40 years.

The deal for the next-generation helicopter is worth up to $1.3 billion and is set to replace roughly 2,000 Black Hawk utility helicopters. FLRAA will not serve as a one-for-one replacement for existing aircraft, but around 2030 it will take over the roles of the Black Hawk, long the workhorse of the Army for getting troops to and around the battlefield.

Ultimately, the Army’s Future Vertical Lift pursuits will also replace around 1,200 Apache attack helicopters among other legacy aircraft through the pursuit of FLRAA, the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft and Air-Launched Effects working in advanced teaming formations.

The service wants FLRAA to be capable of traveling roughly 2,440 nautical miles (or 2,810 miles) without refueling, but also to be agile enough to maneuver troops into dangerous hot spots.

The engineering and manufacturing development and low-rate production phase could be worth roughly $7 billion. If the “full complement” of aircraft are purchased across the entire life of the fleet, the program could be worth in the range of $70 billion to include potential foreign military sales, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, Maj. Gen. Rob Barrie, said during a Dec. 5 media roundtable.

Complicating the Army’s vertical lift modernization efforts, the Army is planning to develop and field FARA nearly along the same timeline to perform the scout mission. That duty was left vacant when the Army decided to retire its Kiowa Warrior helicopters in 2013. Since then, the Army has filled that gap with teams of Apache helicopters and Shadow unmanned aircraft systems.

The contract represents a milestone for the service as the Army hasn’t procured two major helicopters since the 1980s and multiple efforts to buy other helicopters over the last several decades ended in failure. . . . 

The FLRAA competition pitted two aircraft head to head: Bell’s V-280 Valor, a tiltrotor aircraft, and Sikorsky and Boeing’s Defiant X, which features coaxial rotor blades. Both aircraft were designed to fit into the same footprint as a Black Hawk. . . . 

In a Dec. 5 statement, Scott Donnelly, Textron’s chief executive, said the company is “honored that the U.S. Army has selected the Bell V-280 Valor as its next-generation assault aircraft. We intend to honor that trust by building a truly remarkable and transformational weapon system to meet the Army’s mission requirements.” . . . 

Before Bell retired its Valor flight demonstrator in June 2021, the V-280 flew more than 214 hours and showed off low-speed agility and long-range cruise capabilities, and reached a maximum 305-knot cruising speed. . . . 

FLRAA prototypes from Bell are due to the service by 2025. The initial contract obligation is $232 million, with a ceiling of $1.3 billion if options beyond the initial contract are exercised.

The initial phase allows the Army to continue preliminary design and then get to the design, development and delivery of virtual prototypes, according to Barrie.

FLRAA is expected to enter the fleet in 2030, around the same time as the Army’s Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft is planned for fielding. . . . 

The service plans to field . . . FLRAA around 2030. The two teams building prototypes are aiming to fly them by the end of 2023. Each team’s aircraft are almost entirely complete, and they are waiting for the Army’s new engine to be delivered under the Improved Turbine Engine Program. The ITEP engines went into the testing process ahead of delivering earlier this year after a delay due to the pandemic.

From here. (The FARA program, meanwhile, has been canceled, and the Army is meanwhile upgrading the bid winning FLRAA design.)

The FLRAA meanwhile, looks a lot like a smaller and sleeker MV-22 Osprey.

Once again, the U.S. Department of Defense is vividly demonstrating why breaking up the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force in the way that it did was a bad idea.

DARPA on the other hand, is working on a very different kind of C-130 successor:

Aurora Flight Sciences on Oct. 8 unveiled new details of a notional operational variant of the fan-in-wing concept it is proposing for a high-speed, vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) X-Plane.

The operational version of the Boeing-owned company’s candidate for a DARPA demonstrator program would boast nearly the same wingspan and payload weight of a Lockheed Martin C-130J, yet fly up to 90 kt. faster and be able to take off and land vertically like a helicopter.

The Aurora concept includes two turbofan engines for horizontal thrust and four fans embedded into the blended wing body airframe for vertical lift. This “vision” aircraft concept also features cranked outboard wing sections and no vertical tails.

The concept depends on a successful Aurora bid to develop the demonstrator for DARPA’s Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (Sprint). Bell is working on a competing proposal based on a tiltrotor aircraft featuring stop-fold rotor technology. . . . The agency will . . . decide whether to move forward with building an X-plane and launching a flight test campaign in 2027.

Aurora’s one-third-scaled prototype calls for a tailed, blended wing body design, with the trailing edge of the wing positioned forward of the fuselage tail. The 45-ft. wingspan includes three lift fans. The top of the fuselage includes two auxiliary inlet doors for airflow in vertical mode. A pair of caret-shaped inlets on either side of the forward fuselage ingests air for a single turbofan engine to provide horizontal thrust. The prototype is being designed to carry a 1,000-lb. payload.

DARPA’s goal is to achieve a new standard in high-speed flight for a transport aircraft with VTOL capabilities.

The U.S. Army’s Future Long Range Assault Aircraft plans to field a Bell tiltrotor in 2031 with a forward speed of at least 300 kt. The Sprint program aims to increase that top speed by as much as 50%, to 450 kt. By using that speed and vertical lift capability, the operational version of the Sprint prototype could present an attractive option for replacing the Bell Boeing CV-22 and Sikorsky HH-60W fleets. . . .

But the concept must first overcome the obstacles that have plagued development of high-speed, vertical-lift designs, including previous efforts to develop fan-in-wing aircraft, including the Ryan XV-5.

DARPA and program supporters believe that a combination of modern advances in lightweight structures and fly-by-wire flight controls could make such high-speed, runway-independent aircraft viable again. A fan-in-wing design still faces the complexity of achieving a stable hover with a heavy aircraft over unprepared landing sites using multiple lift fans. Aurora’s operational concept calls for a design with a 130-ft. wingspan and a 30,000-lb. payload.

From Aviation Week.