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| Spengler: Michael Griffin for Secretary of Defense |
| 2018-12-25 |
| h/t Instapundit President Trump should promote Michael Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, to the top job at the Pentagon. Outgoing SecDef James Mattis is a deservedly honored soldier and an American patriot, but he was not necessarily the best man for the job. Mattis is a light infantry commander, and there are very few opportunities today for light infantry to solve America's strategic problems. The overriding strategic risk to the United States is the loss of our technological edge, and the Defense Department needs a leader with the vision and expertise to restore it. Michael Griffin would be an excellent choice. A first-rate physicist, Dr. Griffin headed NASA under the Bush 41 administration. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #7 ...and a tunnel under China. |
| Posted by: Grunter 2018-12-25 20:37 |
| #6 At least with Musk we'll have submarines that can go 420 knots. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2018-12-25 18:38 |
| #5 Since Griffith has been SecDef, I don't think each year's version of the Big Expendable has flown _once_ despite getting some tens of billions worth of funding. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2018-12-25 18:38 |
| #4 Rand Simberg's take (Transterrestial Musing): OK, if Mike Griffin were SecDef, just what would he do, going on past performance? Would he propose a giant expendable combat aircraft, based on parts from F-15s and F-16s, that would fly once a year, and each service could take a turn? |
| Posted by: magpie 2018-12-25 14:20 |
| #3 Oh! And we'd have a new .420 caliber sniper rifle! |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2018-12-25 10:18 |
| #2 Elon Musk has triumphed by building an RLV in the dumbest way possible, and just as in the country of the blind, the one eyed man is king, in the country of the American Mandarin Class, the microdosing high-functioning bipolar con-artist is the only guy able to get things done. Maybe we should make _HIM_ Secretary of Defense, because the American public wants to push the two con jobs that we're still a powerful country and we care about freedom... |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2018-12-25 09:55 |
| #1 This is the sort of suggestion that makes me want to examine my beliefs and disavow anything that accidentally coincides with what Spengler has preached in the past. Griffin was just another do-nothing bureaucrat who sacrificed the space program's future on the altar of gigantic expensive expendable rockets with massive segmented solid rockets as the first stage to make sure they'll have massive costs and massive unreliability. We needed a real RLV program and not a Shuttle Stack Part Deux. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2018-12-25 09:51 |