Then they are also talking about having smaller, town-centric forces to be more like the local police that we used to have, to deal with very localised crimes that don't need a regional agency to deal with.

I don't know if it will ultimately work but I understand what they are going for.

The idea seems to be to get rid of all the county level stuff, unify it into larger regional agencies to deal with major crimes within the region and save on duplication of roles, then have an overarching organisation akin to the FBI (Which should be the NCA) to deal with national level crime.

Yep, time for European Nations to start dumping US bonds and start cancelling military procurement orders, The US for all intents and purposes is now an Adversarial power and should be treated as such. No more Civility, call his shit.

Agreed, Make it clear that if the regime falls and they find a way to get out of the mess without ending up with terror groups running the show, that sanctions will be withdrawn and any support they need to help stabilise and rebuild is on the table.

Literally the upper half of the section that you've so graciously linked and highlighted for us Mark.

Also worth noting that those numbers are also heavily skewed by elective options, when you get into the finer detail, actual emergency situations get to see a specialist on a fast-track, and non-emergency but also non-electives are only in the 2 month window.

Lead ship of the class ought to be USS Bone Spurs.

Agreed, we no longer have the economic dominance we did at the time to fund such a navy, we also haven't been in wars with the other 2 powers like back then so that their fleet is far smaller that ours to maintain 2power. and then just simply, the fact that in the modern era that would be ~800 ships

The collective IQ of everyone in the White House.

Honestly, just made a joke about giving his portraits the 40k treatment, remove and destroy the portraits, just leave an empty spot for where his portraits should have been

At these production rates you can just send a good handful at a refinery and hopefully one will hit the important bits, others will just level everything else around it.

But ultimately yeah, more accuracy should be the goal.

I have a recollection from my history course that someone did something like that 80 odd years ago...
That place was called the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.
Chamberlain came back with signed documents promising not to invade elsewhere if Hitler was allowed it.

We all know where that ended.

I'd bet you could even work on some kind of counter-disinfo projects with those funds and use it to prevent disinformation and election interference campaigns from any outside influence. Be it Russia, China or the US at this point.

TBH, given how the actual breakdown of expected spending really is, 3.5% on military is more than reasonable, and the other 1.5% can be covered by infrastructure spending as long as you can viably palm it off as defence related.

Got to agree, As much as I can understand where Kraut is coming from, I can only but see the difference in expectations there being used as a cudgel by the Russians and other bad faith actors to sow divisions with some BS about it being uneven, even if they normal moan about women serving.

That is unless it happens very publicly, climbing down the steps of AF1 or something.

That's what the military band is supposed to help with but uh... instead there were covers of modern songs from speakers.

Having also watched Trooping the colour in the UK today it was far better a parade, without having to pull tanks out and look full dictatorship.

Yeah, I get that in one sense it's cheating at the target, but in the other, It *Kinda* is a fair point that it's being spent on defence, just not on kit for ourselves but on kit to help Ukraine win, because if they win then Russia is less of a threat to the rest of us.

Also in times of peace as a replacement for parts for the foreign development budget that got cut, send them to willing nations to help build infrastructure for them.

That way our lot gets practice in their selected profession, other countries get development and it's all under one budget.