The arms race, what is the point? It seems there is only one reason for an arms race since we all know no one will ever achieve complete superiority. That reason seems to be nations do not want to be left behind while other nations get superior weapons. If the world could agree to stop the development of advanced weapons the status quo would be maintained anyway. If you think of things this way you realize the only thing that is accomplished by advanced weapons development is the enrichment of the weapons companies and aerospace companies. Developing advanced weapons is nothing new, for some reason humans have been doing this since the dawn of time. Every tribe wanted to have better weapons than the next one. When one tribe was throwing stones another had developed clubs then another developed spears and before you know it we had that super advanced weapon for its time, the bow and arrow. This was the first accurate long range weapon.

Why are our brains wired to think this way? It is not just a couple of us that feel this way, but almost the entire human race. President Reagan was right when he said if a threat came from outer space we would all band together. Would it last if we won and the threat was over? I would hope so, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The world is a lot smaller place today than it used to be. I am not talking about his physical size, what I am talking about is all the countries on the planet are connected. Some of them have managed to not fall into the trap of a weapons race and there are countries where people seem to be pretty happy because of this. The problem is our weapons are so devastating we could destroy the entire world including those countries, because of that they probably should be taking part in trying to find ways to stop the arms race.

One has to wonder how many civilizations on our planet and possibly on other planets throughout the universe have been destroyed, because they participated in arms races. One of the dangers of an arms race is one of the parties may think they have a temporary lead and decide to attack the other before he is able to even up the playing field. This is one of the few times when we can say it is a good thing to have nuclear weapons, because no matter how advanced the conventional ones get having nuclear ones will probably stop us from being attacked. Some people believe the reason North Korea is on such a tear to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems is they believe this will prevent them from being attacked. Others of course believe they just want to bully everybody and their leader is very dangerous and not in his right mind. We know he is dangerous, the question is will he risk nuclear annihilation?

One of the hot areas of weapons development today is in delivery systems. With our current technology is almost impossible to shoot down a missile which is traveling faster than five times the speed of sound. To make matters even worse these missiles are able to change course in mid-flight making them even harder to down. It seems that the United States, Russia and China all expect to have these types of missiles within one year of each other. Some say there will be a year delay for the United States after China gets it, others will tell you we are ahead of everyone. Without knowing what is being kept secret there is no way to know who is ahead and even if these missiles will work as planned. If the development of aircraft is any indication of what we might be in for then I would have to say there would be many problems for these missiles as they enter the defense force. We can only hope that all countries concerned will have the same problems or at least similar ones which will delay the use of these missiles.

The United States has been struggling to develop an aircraft which will be superior in every aspect and that just hasn’t happened. While all the countries which are developing aircraft are trying to make them as stealthy as possible, the same countries are also building new types of radar equipment to detect the stealthy aircraft. It could turn out that stealth has become a complete waste of money and the United States has probably put more money into stealth than the rest of the world combined. As I’ve said in the past I believe we knew stealth was on the way out several years ago after the Australians announced they had developed a radar system which could detect stealth planes.

Several years ago the United States got a scare. Sweden had developed an undetectable submarine of the Gotland-class. It was diesel electric and far cheaper than one of our nuclear subs. It was the first submarine to have a Stirling engine and air independent propulsion. This meant that even though the submarine was not nuclear powered it could stay underwater for weeks. In truth while this submarine had some shortcomings compared to a nuclear sub such as speed, it was far superior in other areas and the most important area for a submarine is detection and this submarine was extremely hard to detect, far harder than our nuclear subs. This submarine has been around since 2008 and you would think if the United States was serious about a weapons race and submarine design we would have a lot of these submarines ourselves by now, but as far as I know I don’t think we have any. The question is why not if we are in a serious arms race? Could it be they are not expensive enough so the arms dealers have convinced the U.S. Navy Department of Defense to keep building nuclear submarines which get ever more expensive?

Maybe the arms race is a fallacy and the only reason it’s taking place is corruption and enrichment of the arms companies. One of the reasons which seems to prove this is the fact European arms makers are supplying billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to China. This reminds me of the banks which finance both sides of the war so no matter who wins they come out way ahead, because they get the spoils of the loser and the money from the winner. Maybe we have should no longer call it an arms race, but call it a race to riches. It could turn out what we think of as an arms race was just prodding made up by weapons companies who knew whose palms to grease to keep the weapons flowing. The following is a list of the top 100 arms dealers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pPk2Rk4TWc6_u0IFvfts5kLo0Ad-zy_NsBMIsSDW2N0/edit#gid=1
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