The Future of SDI as Political Issue

Trump’s rambling campaign announcement included a few lines about missile defense:

“As events overseas have show to protect from the unthinkable threat of nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles, the United States must also build a state-of-the-art next-generation missile defense shield, we need it. The power of these missiles and the power of a word I refuse to say, “nuclear.” We have to have it. We need a defense shield. And we have to do it. And we actually have the technology and we are going to build it, just as I rebuilt our military, I will get this done.”

Over at 1945 I have a few thoughts about this, mostly regarding how technology and the institutional configuration of space power in the United States have changed over the last few decades. Here though I want to concentrate on another bit of the speech (sorry for the all caps, but given the “drunk old guy at the end of the bar of the VFW nature of the rant I feel like it’s appropriate):

I REBUILT OUR ENTIRE MILITARY, WHICH NOBODY TALKS ABOUT. WHEN I GOT THERE WE HAD JET FIGHTERS THAT WERE 48 YEARS OLD, WE HAD BOMBERS THAT WERE 60 YEARS OLD, WE HAD BOMBERS WHERE THE GRANDFATHERS FLEW them when they were new. And NOW THE GRANDCHILD IS FLYING THE BOMBER BUT NOT ANYMORE, but AS I’VE SAID BEFORE THE GRAVEST THREATS TO OUR CIVILIZATION ARE NOT FROM ABROAD BUT FROM WITHIN. 

As Paul has said on many occasions there’s no reason at this point to “fact check” anything that Trumps says, because his rhetoric is basically orthogonal to the concept of “truth” as other humans understand it. It is fair to say, however, that the above claim is so far from the truth that it essentially amounts to abstract art. It’s also briefly worth noting that the newest of the 73 B-52H bombers still in service rolled off the line in October 1962, making it… 60 years old.