Say Anything Blog

Undoubtedly Earl Pomeroy’s motivation is to keep the North Dakota B-52 base.

That being said if the question was closing the Louisiana B-52 base and mothballing all of their planes I’d be against it.

I want a strong military first.  After that I think we can make the case that North Dakota is a GREAT place to station Air Force assets.   

National defense???  Here you have a 50 year old plane that is used primarily as an offensive weapon for bombing strategic enemy positions.

Ever since we changed the War Department to the Department of Defense we’ve had a problem with the language.  Let’s just say that a good defense is a good offense.

I guess you can consider the B-52 to be a defense weapon if you have areas in North Dakota that you want to carpet bombed. 

B-52’s fly pretty far, especially with the tanker support at the Minot AFB.  In fact they could fly all of the way to the Russian Steppes if we ever needed that. 

Considering the planes age, I wonder how much it costs to maintain the fleet.

Less than it’d  cost to replace the bombers. 

B-52s were part of the old MAD policy instituted by Rober McNamera, appointed by JFK in 1960.  At the time, they were considered part of our defense policy.  They probably are useful, but I would rather the defense department make this decision.  We also thought that  A-10s were obsolete after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.  Fortunately, we kept a few squadrons on hand, and they were used this century.

You can thank my senators in part for this (Martinez (Rino) and Nelson (Mid left D).  My representative, Ander Crenshaw, (Normally a phenominal rep_) also supported this.  Why?   Jacksonville is a Navy town.  They want to support the carriers here at Mayport.  They can only do that if there are enough carriers to service. 

I have supported the retirment of non-necessary equipment, and everything I have seen, indicates that we don’t need all of the carriers. 

Jacksonville is a Navy town.

Memories… Spent the better part of my young youth listening to the sound of F-18’s and other assorted Marine Corps air craft flying overhead. When I hear a military style jet go overhead now it always brings back memories.

Fun fact: Cecil Field used to have a designation as a backup emergency landing pad for the space shuttle in the 1980’s. I don’t know if it still has the designation.

I still think the B-52 is a valid and effective weapon.  It might be just the ticket for Iran, and North Korea if they don’t get the message.

I still think the B-52 is a valid and effective weapon.

I think we have 97 B-1’s left.  After that we’re relying on the BUFF’s as our heavy bombers.  In my opinion heavy bombers are something nobody wants to mess with.

 
They want to support the carriers here at Mayport.  They can only do that if there are enough carriers to service.

I like carriers too (even though we don’t have a base in North Dakota for them yet)  Carriers are vital for our projection of power worldwide. 

With the carriers we are able to establish Air Superiority anywhere in the world.  We can do that in 3, 7 maybe 10 days.  In order to do this depending on the situation we may need 2 or 3 or 5 carriers on station.  The carriers show up with everything they need to complete their mission for a pretty long time.

A certain number of carriers are in drydock, some of them on major refits.  Others are steaming to and from their worldwide stations.

The world’s a big place.  It seems to me that it’s going to take quite a few carriers to be able to project our power.