George Rebane

We are heading back to the barn after spending the better part of this week in San Diego.  My old Army unit – 2nd Battalion 5th Artillery – had its latest reunion there.  These affairs involve our wives who all know each other from the days in Germany when we were young with new babies in strollers and more on the way.  In the early 1960s our unit was the 175mm gun battalion in Europe capable of firing long range nuclear rounds in the attempt to stop the Soviet tank divisions poised to enter the west European plain through the Fulda Gap. 

In reality, all of us front line combat units knew we would serve only as a speed-bump for the tens of thousands of Soviet main battle tanks on their way to Frankfurt, the Ruhr, and then Paris.  We were the expendable elements to buy time until the main force would arrive from America to push the Soviets back.  At least that’s what the plans said which took up the better part of three file cabinet safes that were in my charge as the battalion S-2.  In those days the proverbial ‘balloon’, whose going ‘up’ would signal the start of WW3, was on a very thin and frazzled tether.

So, looking much older and perhaps a bit wiser, we recounted the road from there to here over dinners and visits to the local military monuments on Point Loma and the USS Midway (CVA-41).  It had been some years since I tromped through a modern carrier, and the Midway was modern enough to bring to mind the role of these behemoths over the decades in maintaining our freedoms, and the ability to spend time comfortably debating the esoteria of spotted owls, snail darters, and the histrionics of global warming.

In going through the labyrinth of the Midway’s innards I was reminded of the enormous complexity that operating such a ship as the tip of a mighty spear which stretches from some hostile shore 12,000 miles from home, all the way back to the main streets of our towns and cities.  To do its job in projecting power, the modern carrier and its complement of about one hundred combat aircraft requires a protective cordon of ships and submarines, and a logistic train that reaches back to the plants and factories in the very heart of our homeland.

We currently have twelve such carrier task forces, the rest of the world has zero.  But our impetus is to now start reducing this kind of capability to project power.  True to form, we are in the process of reconfiguring our force structure to more effectively fight the last war – the so-called asymmetric conflict of chasing Muslim terrorists through the dusty twisting alleys of the mid-east.  Meanwhile China is going gangbusters to build and deploy carrier task forces as the main thrust of its emerging role as the new world power to challenge the United States.

For those interested in the details of China’s efforts, beyond noting that their ships routinely now survey our fleet exercises and challenge our naval units in international waters they consider within their perimeter of power, please take the time to read ‘Overview on China’s Aircraft Carrier Program’ by Richard Fisher, Jr (for the more impatient, please read the first and last parts, skipping all the data on the weapon systems).  And to see how this fits into the geo-politics of the world we will live in, I direct your attention to George Friedman’s The Next Hundred Years which I covered here.

And while this is going on, we are also busy fashioning and installing all manner of hobbles for our industries and entrepreneurs, so that with overdue humility and compensation for past wrongs, we can welcome our new rulers from whichever direction they may arrive.

Other than that, it was a swell reunion.