Fortunately, the United States also maintains a nuclear triad that can strike all of Russia, providing a strong deterrent to a Russian attack.

The difference is that while Russia has modernized its nuclear forces about 90% of the way through, the U.S. still relies on platforms built during the Cold War. For instance, the U.S. is still squeezing life out of the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile that was designed in 1960.

Programs to replace these outdated capabilities with modern systems are just getting underway, and each year must overcome opposition from far-left members of Congress. //

Bottom line: As much as U.S. policymakers might like to wish away nuclear weapons from existence, unfortunately, the enemy gets a vote. Putin’s recent inflammatory rhetoric, nuclear saber-rattling, and military actions in Ukraine are proof of the need for a strong, modern U.S. nuclear force.

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark gives his insights on the West’s response to Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine and what the US should do now.

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Even if you are the most committed Putin fluffer getting paid by the hour to plague political blogs and post nonsensical statements about Russia’s awesomeness, you have to admit that nearly 2,100 casualties over seven days of a “cakewalk” (to coin a phrase) operation are a lot. That is 300 troops per day (the equivalent of a Russian infantry battalion). When you consider that most of the casualties will come from the front-line troops, and that is especially true in this war as Ukraine has demonstrated an inability to hit Russian rear echelons with anything other than a handful of drones, the loss of a few hundred soldiers can take on immense importance.

Let me take a moment to explain. I commanded an infantry company in a Light Infantry Division (read the history of how we came to be here). The division had a personnel limit of 10,000 soldiers. //

When a Light Infantry Division deployed, it had 3,375 men on the front line and 6,625 troops supporting, supplying, and commanding them. At the level of wastage the Russians are experiencing in Ukraine, an American Light Infantry division would cease to be combat effective in less than a week. By the way, two days ago, I estimated the Russians would lose at least 100-200 men per day, and I was poked fun at by the pro-Russian trolls that have started infesting our comments list. Right now, I feel pretty good about my estimate. //

The US invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, and the “official” war closed with the fall of Baghdad (population 7 million versus 3 million in Kiev) //

This is a total of 20 days. While I can’t find a source to do a day-by-day count of casualties (the graph on page 11 of the link indicates about 30 dead and 130 wounded in March and April combined), the US military suffered from March 2003 through December 2003 468 killed and 2,416 wounded //

It is doubtful that an army with 498 dead has only had 1,600 wounded. That number should be around 2,500 and probably over. UNLESS Russian medical care is so inept that many men who should have survived died.

I would submit that if the Russian casualty list is high enough to admit to over 2,000, the actual number is higher.

Appearing before a House Science Committee hearing on NASA's Artemis program, Martin revealed the operational costs of the big rocket and spacecraft for the first time. Moreover, he took aim at NASA and particularly its large aerospace contractors for their "very poor" performance in developing these vehicles.

Martin said that the operational costs alone for a single Artemis launch—for just the rocket, Orion spacecraft, and ground systems—will total $4.1 billion. This is, he said, "a price tag that strikes us as unsustainable." With this comment, Martin essentially threw down his gauntlet and said NASA cannot have a meaningful exploration program based around SLS and Orion at this cost.

Later in the hearing, Martin broke down the costs per flight, which will apply to at least the first four launches of the Artemis program: $2.2 billion to build a single SLS rocket, $568 million for ground systems, $1 billion for an Orion spacecraft, and $300 million to the European Space Agency for Orion's Service Module. NASA, Martin said, had checked and confirmed these figures.

What is striking about these costs is that they do not include the tens of billions of dollars that NASA has already spent developing the Orion spacecraft since 2005 and the Space Launch System rocket since 2011. If one were to amortize development costs over 10 flights of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, the $4.1 billion figure cited by Martin would easily double. //

Later during the hearing, US Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), asked whether the incremental costs of flying more than one Artemis mission a year would bring the cost down. Martin said he did not know for sure. Moreover, NASA is not planning to fly more than one Artemis mission a year, so the question is somewhat moot.

Martin, however, appeared to doubt that there would be significant cost savings due to the inefficiency of the program and its large aerospace contractors.

"Part of it goes to the efficiencies of the underlying contractors, like Boeing," Martin said. "One of the problems we saw in development of the SLS and Orion—it's a challenging development of course—but we did notice very poor contractor performance on Boeing's part, poor planning, and poor execution."

Then, unprompted, Martin continued to criticize the programs set up by Congress to fund the rocket and spacecraft. House and Senate members told NASA to use "cost-plus" contracts, which ensure that companies involved in the development and operation of these systems receive all of their costs, plus a fee. This tends to disincentivize timely work completed within a set budget. (Remarkably, NASA was told to continue using cost-plus contracts even after the development program.)

"We saw that the cost-plus contracts that NASA had been using to develop that combined SLS-Orion system worked to the contractors' rather than NASA's advantage," Martin said. //

In reality, no one should expect Congress to care about the high cost of the SLS and Orion program. The legislature created the programs this way. //

In fact, key members of Congress have been critical of NASA every time the agency has tried to break free of cost-plus contracting and use a more commercial approach through fixed-price contracts. That congressional skepticism has persisted even as the commercial approach has borne fruit. As tensions with Russia rise, for instance, NASA only has independent access to space because of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Lest anyone doubt this, House Science Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) took aim at NASA's commercial space efforts in her opening statement at the hearing. The context of her statement concerns NASA's desire to purchase commercial services for spaceflight in the future rather than oversee their development in-house like it did with SLS and Orion.

"I find the sum of these actions to be very troubling," Johnson said. "And it raises the question of whether NASA will even retain the capabilities and workforce within the agency that will be needed to get US astronauts to Mars if all of these privatization plans are realized."

At least it answers the question of where congressional priorities lie.