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12 May, 5 tweets, 2 min read
LIVE NOW: Senate Budget Committee hearing on "Waste, Fraud, Cost Overruns, and Auditing at the Pentagon." Ranking Member Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) is using his opening statement to claim that threats are increasing so military spending must increase. budget.senate.gov/hearings/waste…
So far, only Graham and chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) are present. Here are the witnesses:
During witness statements, Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) arrived. Still, for a 22-member committee, this is a very low rate of attendance, especially for a hearing to discuss wasteful and fraudulent spending by the government's largest department.
And we're adjourned after an hour of speechifying, testimony, and a handful of questions. Disappointing.
Lastly, in his opening remarks @LindseyGrahamSC used this deeply misleading chart to call for more military spending. Military spending is not driven by GDP, and GDP has soared since WWII, pushing the percentage lower even as defense budgets have grown—$217B in '48 to $731B now.

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More from @AtomicAnalyst

Stephen Schwartz Profile picture
12 May
LIVE NOW: Senate Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing on "Department of Defense Budget Posture for Nuclear Forces in Review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2022 and the Future Years Defense Program." armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/depar… Image
Here are the witnesses (Andrew Walter is a hardline holdover from the Trump administration who somehow still has a job): Image
Chairman Angus King (I-ME) opens by describing a recent trip he and ranking member Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) took to inspect Minuteman ICBMs and B-52 bombers at Minot AFB, North Dakota.
Read 24 tweets
Stephen Schwartz Profile picture
14 Apr
Where do (defueled) US submarine nuclear reactors go to die? Trench 94 in the 218-E-12B burial ground at the Hanford Reservation in Washington State. Once full (>100 reactor compartments), it will be filled with clay and maintained and monitored for decades if not centuries. Image
Here's a more recent unannotated photograph showing several dozen additional reactor compartments in the trench. Image
And here's a photograph by Robert Del Tredici taken from inside the trench in 1998 which shows the scale of these massive structures: Image
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Schwartz Profile picture
12 Apr
Starting today in 1982 in "Doonesbury," Mark, B.D., Bernie, Zonker, Mike, and Boopsie gather in Walden College's computer lab for a computer-generated nuclear war game, reflecting real-world concerns about the Reagan admin's arms buildup and plans to fight and win a nuclear war: Image
April 13, 1982: Bernie explains the rules for the nuclear war game, which begins with a false alarm, surprising Mark. Image
April 14, 1982: The nuclear war game continues. With Soviet/Warsaw Pact troops massing on the border between East and West Germany, Mike makes a fateful decision. Image
Read 7 tweets
Stephen Schwartz Profile picture
13 Feb
Today in 1950, the crew of a B-36 bomber on a 24-hour nonstop simulated nuclear strike combat mission from Eielson AFB, Alaska, to Carswell AFB, Texas, suffered engine trouble off western British Columbia and jettisoned an unarmed Mk-4 atomic bomb before abandoning the aircraft.
The bomb, which contained 5,000 pounds of conventional high explosives but not its plutonium capsule, was set to detonate at 1,400 meters. The crew later reported they saw it explode above the ocean, about 50 miles north of the town of Bella Bella on Hunter Island.
At five minutes past midnight (Feb. 14), as the aircraft flew over Princess Royal Island, the 16 crewmembers and one passenger bailed out. Despite three of six engines being shut down, the plane flew on autopilot another 350 kilometers before crashing inland into Mount Kologet.
Read 5 tweets
Stephen Schwartz Profile picture
10 Feb
The fifth person through the door behind Vice President Pence in this video is his military aide carrying his duplicate nuclear "Football," which—just like the briefcase that follows the president 24/7—follows the vice president everywhere s/he goes.
Earlier that afternoon, a C-SPAN camera captured a glimpse of a different military aide carrying Pence's "Football" through Statuary Hall after the Joint Session of Congress adjourned to consider Republican objections to counting Arizona's electoral votes:
This article has the clearest video yet of Vice President Pence's military aide carrying his duplicate nuclear "Football" while hurriedly evacuating the Senate chamber ahead of the rapidly advancing insurrectionist mob on January 6: washingtonpost.com/investigations…
Read 4 tweets
Stephen Schwartz Profile picture
24 Jan
OTD 60 years ago—less than four days after President John F. Kennedy's inauguration—a B-52G bomber on airborne alert over North Carolina suffered a massive fuel leak, caught fire, and exploded approaching Seymour Johnson AFB. As it broke up, two 3.8-Mt B39 Mod 2 H-bombs fell out.
As the weapons broke free, three of four arming safety devices in one of the bombs were activated, causing it to run through all but one step of the arming sequence as it plunged to earth.
Only a single "simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch" kept it from detonating.
Read 12 tweets

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