If you don't have a base of heavy industry, you're out of the game of balls-out, total war.
Our future wars will be conducted more and more by robotics, some of which will have a reasonable degree of autonomy. We don't need soldiers walking around and before long, we won't need B52s anymore.
The escalation of robotics within the military is ramping up and will continue to do so, though at a much faster pace than they have to date. There is, quite simply, little need to put human soldiers at risk anymore. The SWORDS robot can carry the M249 Automatic, M240 machine gun, a 50-calibur rifle and will have other options. It isn't autonomous but that is coming. These, along with robotics of the class of the Talon, already in heavy use, have great potential as unmanned ground vehicles and are constantly being improved and their numbers increased.
Still, you raise a good point (for once). There is a legitimate question as to whether it makes military sense to hand over Hummer to the Chinese.
But why can the Chinese build Hummers profitably while we cannot?
a) Insane government regulation, and
b) Insane union contracts.
Ten years from now it probably won't matter. But today, one has to have some misgivings about forking over the very industries that enabled us to do what no other country could during WWII. |
