How I learned to stop worrying about Fox News hokum

Hi Orf, you look worried.

I am worried about our status as a world power and protector of freedom.

Why?

Senator Lindsay Graham, of South Carolina, said “The biggest winner of the Biden defense budget is China.”

Wonder what he meant by that.

Everyone knows China has the biggest navy in the world, and they are preparing to invade Taiwan.

How do you know that?

I hear it on Fox News all the time.

Interesting. I wonder if there is any truth to what Senator Graham says. The World Population Review does report that China has the largest navy in the world with over 700 ships and we rank fourth with fewer than 500.

See, I knew Senator Graham speaks truthly.

It might be worth probing a little. Ships are no more alike than scooters are like an 18-wheeler. Another measure would be what are called capital ships. Today these are aircraft carriers. The United States has 11 nuclear powered super carriers and China has none.

But I have been told China has several aircraft carriers.

That’s true but they are conventional carriers that carry helicopters and possibly 30 fighter jets. This type of carrier is like our helicopter carriers of which we have about nine.

So, you are saying we have a navy that is already much more powerful than anything the Chinese are likely to have anytime soon.

Yep.

I wonder how much it costs to maintain one of our carrier strike groups?

The Navy Post reports that it costs about $6.5 million per day or $2.4 billion per year. Sadly, they cannot enter the Black Sea and are extremely vulnerable in the Persian Gulf and Baltic.

But maybe Senator Graham was talking about the air force.

Not likely. Today the United States has over 13,000 military aircraft compared to China and Russia combined with fewer than 8,000.

How old are some of these 13,000 planes?

The B-52 took its first flight in 1952, and the last one was built in 1962. Today the Air Force has 76 of these planes in active service at an annual cost of about $25 million per plane. Newer bombers like the B-1B costs nearly as much at $24 million per plane. The variety and complexity of our military aircraft make them extremely expensive to maintain.

Surely the Chinese army is much bigger than ours.

They probably have a larger army. The People’s Liberation Army is about twice the size of ours, but numbers are a small part of the picture, as the Russians have learned in the Ukraine.

Bottom line, you are telling me that I should not take Senator Graham and Fox News too seriously.

That is about it. Fox News has admitted they are primarily about entertainment, not news. As for Senator Graham, his hyperbole sometimes gets in the way of his politics.

The real issue is developing a thoughtful strategy for military development, rather than allowing it to be dictated by the Military Industrial Complex and their enablers.

Published in the Galveston Daily News. August 16, 2023