8% DoD Budget Increase in compromise Spending Bill

[KevinB]

Military COVID-19 vaccine mandate repealed in defense bill compromise

The $858 billion measure also includes a 4.6% pay raise for troops next year and plans to backfill munition stockpiles depleted by the war in Ukraine.

www.militarytimes.com

4.6% Troop Pay Increase
COVID Vaccine requirements removed

For the Army, it also authorizes funding increases for the CH-47 heavy lift helicopter, the UH-60 Blackhawk medium lift helicopter and the MQ-1 Gray Eagle drone.

 

[CBH99]

8% isn’t anything to sneeze at, considering thats 8% of almost a trillion dollars. Nice.


I heard an interesting piece on London Real the other day by an alleged former CIA intelligence officer (ignore the SuperSpy in the title) about the predicament the US is finding itself in.

By providing so many munitions to Ukraine as it has, it’s found itself short on its own stockpiles. But many modern day weapons rely on rare earth metals, and guess who pretty much has a monopoly on those these days?

So replacing those stockpiles I think will be a primary goal of any administration, but more challenging than some may think.

The war between Russia & Ukraine perhaps brought into sharp focus a vulnerability the US hadn’t realized was so serious, which is good because it’s better to find a solution now than when the US is directly involved in a peer conflict.

I’ll post a link later this morning. But if in YouTube just type in London Real & it’ll come up

 

[KevinB]

Canada has a lot of those materials too…
Much better to get from Canada than China or Russia, or other less stable areas like Afghanistan or parts of Africa.

Rare Earth Supply Chains Are In Chaos | OilPrice.com

Countries across the globe are moving to block Chinese rare earths investments in order to diversify supply chains

oilprice.com

 

[Quirky]

Canada has a lot of those materials too…
Much better to get from Canada than China or Russia, or other less stable areas like Afghanistan or parts of Africa.

Rare Earth Supply Chains Are In Chaos | OilPrice.com

Countries across the globe are moving to block Chinese rare earths investments in order to diversify supply chains

oilprice.com

Could we interest you in a hypothetical hydrogen plant instead built on this empty field?

 

[Spencer100]

Could we interest you in a hypothetical hydrogen plant instead built on this empty field?

LOL

True Liberal are not for mining of rare earth metals here.

Plus I want a blue check mark.......

 

[Navy_Pete]

LOL

True Liberal are not for mining of rare earth metals here.

Plus I want a blue check mark.......

Depends how it's marketed/planned; there are a bunch of diamond mines up north that are big pits that run underground, with the local indigenous groups heavily involved. Probably a lot easier though as there aren't the same kind of overlapping claims, multiple groups etc to consult with though compared to something like the pipelines.

Here's a NWT government link on it, but if you google the mine names there are some aerial shots of it; hardly pretty but functional and gives people high paying jobs in a really isolated area.

From Mine to Market | Industry, Tourism and Investment

I think the rare earth mining has a fair bit of refining required, which is usually fairly nasty stuff. Doesn't make in undoable, just expensive if you actually do it as green as possible. May make it commercially non-viable, but probably something that would make sense to consider some kind of subsidy program to secure a strategic resource (maybe some kind of NORAD type agreement?). We already do it for ammo, so why not for something like electronics? Controlling that supply chain is really the only way to ensure the cyber security side of things, but difficult to do with most components sourced overseas and something like 97% of the rare earth metals coming from China.