Category: Defense, National Security
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Strategic Insanity Off the Coast of Virginia
by James C. Sherlock As I warned in three columns in late December, the Pentagon has now objected to Department of the Interior plans to develop offshore wind farms along the central U.S. coast. It has warned that almost all of the areas planned for development of the huge turbines conflict with current military operations.…
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Naming Commission is Stripping History
by Donald Smith The week of January 16, 2023, was a big one for Virginia heritage issues in the Richmond area. Connor Williams, the chief historian for the Congressional Naming Commission (CNC) came to the American Civil War Museum to explain and defend the commission’s sweeping recommendations toward, and its disparagement of, Confederate memories on…
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The Naming Commission’s Diktats
by Donald Smith The Congressional Naming Commission (CNC) was authorized as part of the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act. Its eight commissioners included two retired Army generals, a retired Navy admiral and a retired Marine Corps general. It also had academics with imposing credentials. One commissioner is a professor emeritus at United States Military Academy…
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Offshore Wind Turbines in International Waters Raise Big Defense Issues
By James C. Sherlock The Department of the Interior (DOI) is unlikely to be expert in the diplomatic issues and defense vulnerabilities inherent in building wind turbine farms in international waters. The DOI is, however, greatly concerned with “viewscape” – whether the turbine blades can be seen from shore. By the wealthy who live there…
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Dominion’s Planned Offshore Wind Farm Need Not – and Must Not – Be Built Where Planned
by James C. Sherlock I am referring in the title, of course, to Dominion Power’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project to be located in the hatched area below. It is planned for one of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DI) Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) offshore wind farm lease areas. Lease areas…
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Offshore Wind Turbines and Submarine Warfare
by James C. Sherlock Upon investigation of open source literature, I find that offshore wind turbines are less noisy than I imagined. But they present obstacles nonetheless, both physically and acoustically. United States submarine and anti-submarine efforts, operationally, in Navy labs, and in industry are led by some of our best and brightest. That is…
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Junior ROTC – Important to Students, High Schools, Society and the National Defense
by James C. Sherlock Richmond Senior High School (RSHS) is a 1,200-student grades-10-to-12 school in the Sandhills Region of North Carolina. Its mission, vision and belief statements genuflect at none of the shrines of progressive dogma. Not a single one. Minority enrollment is 57% of the student body (majority Black), which is higher than the…
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Virginia Needs Better Information Sharing to Provide Mandated Public Services to Illegals Efficiently and Effectively
by James C. Sherlock I am on record as a persistent advocate of improving the quality of both schools and medical services for poor and minority citizens. It has been the main focus of my work for years. In a directly related matter, we read, with different reactions depending upon our politics, of the struggles…
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Virginia Republican Congressmen Do It Again
Virginia’s Republican representatives in Congress have again embarrassed the Commonwealth. The House of Representatives recently approved a resolution supporting the applications of Sweden and Finland to join NATO. The vote was 394-18. Three of those 18 “no” votes were from Virginia Republicans: Morgan Griffith (9th District), Ben Cline (6th District); and Bob Good (5th District). …
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America’s Petroleum Refining Capacity in the News – What is Going On?
By James C. Sherlock This is a note about perhaps the highest profile national inflation issue, the price of gasoline and diesel. The President is demanding more supply from U.S. refineries. Headlines like this one blare at us today: Biden threatens oil companies with ’emergency powers’ if they don’t boost supply amid inflation spike. The…
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The Defense Production Act as a Political Tool to Boost Solar Farms
by James C. Sherlock We have had multiple discussions, good ones, on the issues surrounding solar farms in Virginia. Jim Bacon wrote an excellent column about it in February of 2021 titled “The Political Economy of Solar Farms.” It was good then and prescient as of yesterday. He wrote another one two days earlier. From that…
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Virginia Snags Another Fortune 500 H.Q.
by James A. Bacon Waltham, Mass.-based Raytheon Technologies has announced that it will establish its global headquarters in Arlington. Following the recent decision of The Boeing Company to relocate its headquarters from Chicago to Arlington, the move cements Northern Virginia’s standing as the leading defense/aerospace cluster in the United States. “The location increases agility in…
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The Boeing Announcement Is a Vote of Confidence in Virginia
by James A. Bacon The Boeing Company’s decision to transfer its official headquarters location from Chicago, Ill., to Arlington gives Virginia significant bragging rights. The move will have little detectable short-term economic impact. The more consequential news is a promise to “develop a research & technology hub” in the area “to harness and attract engineering…
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National Security, West Virginia Natural Gas and Hampton Roads – A Proposed Federal Law
by James C. Sherlock This is the fourth in a series of columns recommending bringing West Virginia natural gas to Virginia and from there to our allies. The only way to do get that done with any assurance and speed under the energy emergency in which we find ourselves and the world is for…
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Virginia’s Greens Need an Epiphany
by James C. Sherlock Headlines from the war in Ukraine have raised exponentially the interest in natural gas and the extreme price volatility caused by supply constraints. It is perhaps useful to understand the uses of natural gas, the prices Virginians pay relative to West Virginians, the decline of production in Virginia, and the costs…