Hi, Navy Nuke veteran here. You might be interested to learn the following:
In 1961, the army was allowed to operate a small test reactor in Idaho at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. They committed the cardinal sin of taking the core prompt critical and destroying the facility, killing 3 plant operators.
On January 3, 1961, at 9:01 pm MST, an operator fully pulled out the reactor's central control rod, causing the reactor to go from fully shut down to prompt critical. THIS IS SOMETHING YOU NEVER DO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 has a good writeup of the event.
The US Navy's Nuclear Training program has the most rigorous curriculum and safety protocols in the entire US military. Unless the Army were to adopt this program, they are not qualified, nor have the capacity to operate such vessels.
While you may think that our military is too large, understand that it is our military presence around the world that prevents many conflagrations from starting in the first place. Sea lanes are protected for commercial shipping, borders of small countries are protected from larger aggressor nations and the threat of invasion is mitigated by the fact that we can bring the fight to anywhere in the world on a moment's notice. Attack the US and you will be destroyed. It is a harsh truth, but a truth nonetheless. This was the lesson learned from Pearl Harbor: peace is achieved through strength and it is that strength that has precluded the possibility of any hostile military action on the continent for the past 80 years. Don't be fooled into thinking it could never happen again. If you dismantle the very means of protection you enjoy, it will happen.
That said, I agree there is a ton of wasteful spending associated with the military that must be eliminated. In fact, eliminating the wasteful spending would actually improve conditions by focusing resources where they are truly needed.
jkrfox2011 wrote:
