Hiatus

I'll be taking a brief hiatus until at least December 8, for a 30th anniversary trip somewhere off the grid. 

Solutions To Red America's Malaise Aren't Easy

The rise of MAGA and Trump is a frustrated reaction to the failure to status quo Republican and Democratic parties to better the core based of this movement's wants and desires. Trump has presented himself as an agent of change who will tear down the system and force it to start over, which sounds good to someone disgusted with the failure to the status quo to address his complaints.

The problem is that while Trump has empathized with them and their frustrations, the policies that he does have, while they amount to trying to do "something" about their woes, are awful as genuine policies and do nothing meaningful to solve their problems. Indeed, often, Trump's policies actively make things worse. They will lead to rampant inflation, a recession driven by fundamentals, and will undermine the clout and credibility of the United States on the world stage. He echoes their grievances but has no meaningful solutions to them.

The trouble is that the Democrats and Republicans have failed to crack the nuts that cause the discontents and circumstances that are driving the MAGA base, because the MAGA based misunderstands what is driving the circumstances they are unhappy about, and because there aren't easy solutions out there.

Going back isn't an option, because the circumstances that drove what made the "good old days" of the Baby Boom era a positive nostalgic memory can't be reproduced. To do that we'd have to destroy the rest of the developed world's industrial based in a war that spares our own manufacturing infrastructure, kill off or injure proportionately as many people as World War II did, disavow the technologies that made manufacturing more efficient, convince many tens of millions of women to throw away their degrees and their careers, and impose new, unconstitutional, South African or Jim Crow style apartheid  laws (or simply legalizing private racial discrimination). These aren't viable options.

Ending legal abortion, banning hormonal contraceptives, legalizing marital rape, legalizing sex discrimination, making it harder to get divorced, deporting ten million plus immigrants, cutting taxes for the rich and big corporations (both of whom were extremely heavily taxed in the "good old days"), imposing high tariffs, repealing health and safety regulations, and even empowering the unions that were a defining element of the economy in that era still won't have the desired effect, even if they are attempted.

Democrats have been trying for quite a long time, in the absence of any other clear solution, to take the path of trying to establish general, good government policies. And, this has helped. Democratic administrations have created vastly more jobs than Republicans, have experienced much more economic growth, have been more fiscally responsible in controlling deficits, have imposed taxes that have raised revenue without damaging the economy, has promoted free trade and relatively open immigration that has strengthened economic growth, has regulated serious externalities that were being generated by amoral big businesses, and have promoted the predictable, accountable rule of law. They have build international allies that positioned it as a world leader. They have held back backsliding from past productive accomplishments. They have curbed some of the worst excesses of intellectual property protections. They have nurtured new technologies that are necessary for our economy and our military to become stronger. They secured majority popular vote support for their agenda in all but a couple of elections since the 1990s.

Democrats would have liked to advance that agenda further, but the outdated U.S. political system and fierce opposition to their agenda from Republicans prevented them from making more dramatic changes.

And, Democrats aren't perfect either. The handled the issue of affirmative action in higher education poorly. They overstated what unions could do. They were slow to warm to reforming land use regulation and occupational licensing. They allowed unscientific fear to get in the way to a sensible nuclear power policy. They failed to address legitimate grievances from business about the incentives created by U.S. income tax laws. They caved to far to the oil and gas lobby. They were too slow to adopt sensible, fair criminal justice reforms and bought into the "war on drugs" for too long.

The Democrats didn't govern perfectly, but they did govern in good faith and generally speaking advanced the cause of good and just government. And, it isn't as if the Republicans did any better. Indeed, they were far worse at governing and that left everyone, including the MAGA base, worse off.

It also isn't as if the Democrats or Republicans are unique on the international stage in their fairly to address the true causes of the MAGA base's frustrations. Far right movements have surged across Europe, taking power in Hungary, making gains in Poland, and increasing their clout in France and Germany, for example. South Korea's gender divides make the U.S. split over gender issues look like a polite couple's therapy session.

The Europeans have built a much stronger social safety net, but this is just duct tape holding retraining the same underlying pressures from the economy prior to their wealth redistribution efforts. These Social Democratic measures still can't force companies in a market economy to use the labor of the large percentage of workers who don't have the knowledge and attitudes to fit their needs.

Ultimately, the most effective solution has been not affirmative policies, but something akin to Social Darwinism in a modern capitalist economy.

People are moving with their feet to leave rural and Rust Belt red counties, depopulating them in search of an eventual stable bottom. Men may not be doing so quite as quickly as women, but a lot fewer people are dropping out of high school and a lot more people are graduating from college, because compensation and unemployment data are clearly rewarding that. College students are choosing majors that the economy is rewarding. Poor and working class people and teen mothers are finally having far fewer kids. As people move to cities, fewer people find it useful to own guns. More and more people are leaving religion, especially younger generations, while older people who are ill adapted to modern economic circumstances are gradually leaving the work force and then, eventually dying.

Women are being more vigilant about using effective contraception and screening potential romantic partners, taking mail order abortion drugs when they get pregnant, and crossing state lines to get abortions to overcome red state abortion bans. MAGA men are finding themselves rejected on the dating and marriage scene.

Millennials and Generation Z are less religious, less racist, less xenophobic, less homophobic, less transphobic, less misogynistic, more committed to protecting the environment, and better educated, than the generations that came before them. We are still taking a hard line towards domestic violence offenders. They are also, of course, less white and more prone to enter into interracial relationships.

In other words, we a gradually purging a MAGA old guard which is briefly ascendant with a minimal majority coalition, and replacing it with a new, more moral younger generation. Just as scientific revolutions don't triumph until all of the pre-revolutionary scientists die, the backward ideas of the MAGA movement, however, understandable, may fade away, one obituary at a time, until it is small enough to be politically irrelevant again.

Trump and MAGA may be a step backwards, but slowly but surely, if they aren't too successful at pressing their agenda and ending democracy, this could be a last gasp rather than a long term trend and permanent reversal of progress.

Red County And Blue County Realities

The realities of life in conservative leaning (red) parts of the United States are different than in liberal leaning (blue) parts of the United States. Roughly speaking, these distinctions play out not so much at the state level as at the county level. This post explores some of the differences in lived realities for people in blue counties compared to red counties that helps to explain their stark political differences in the U.S. as part of a more cohesive narrative that can help build understanding about their true causes. Of course, even this rather lengthy list is far from comprehensive.

Economic Productivity and Population Density

Per capita GDP in blue countries is roughly twice what it is in red counties. This is huge!

The population density in the inhabited parts of blue counties is much higher than the population density of red counties and "purple counties" which are evenly balanced between liberal and conservative leanings, tend to have intermediate population densities which are often suburban.

Ski resort towns and other counties with tourism based economies (e.g. greater Las Vegas) often have low population densities when crudely comparing permanent residents to the land area of the county, but have large swaths of land where no one lives with small dense resort style housing areas which house many seasonal residents in addition to permanent residents.

The link between economic productivity per capita and population density isn't accidental. One of the most consistent empirical laws of economics is that higher population density leads to greater productivity which makes it possible to pay higher wages and necessary to do so in a competitive employment marketplace. It holds true across cultures, across geographical regions, and across thousands of years. It has been true all of the way back to Jericho and Sumer and the Nile River Valley and the Indus River Valley to the present. It was true in the pre-Columbian Americas in North America, in Mesoamerica, and in South America.

Transit and Electric Vehicles

Public transportation is more cost effective and provides better service in higher population density blue counties than in lower population density red counties.

Red counties also have longer average motor vehicle trips than blue counties, because people are spread out further from each other, and longer average trip lengths (and longer peak monthly and annual trip lengths) disfavor all but the very latest electric vehicles relative to gasoline and diesel vehicles.

Housing, the Cost of Living, and Wages

The cost of living is much lower in red counties than in blue counties. This is mostly driven by lower housing costs in red counties (both renting and owning) than in blue counties relative to median wages, and by lower business real estate costs in red counties relative to blue countries that indirectly impact retail prices.

Lower housing prices in red counties mean that homelessness is much less of a crisis in red counties than in blue counties.

The pressure to increase the minimum wage is greater in blue counties where the cost of living is higher than it is in red counties where the cost of living is lower. A "living wage" in a blue county is higher than the "living wage" needed to maintain the same standard of living in a red county. 

Slower home price appreciation in red counties than in blue counties also means slower property tax increases over time.

Lower home prices in red counties also mean that red county homeowners who have owned their homes for many years have much less wealth in the form of home equity than blue county homeowners who have owned their homes for comparable periods of time.

A lower cost of living also places less pressure on red county residents to set aside savings that build wealth, than blue state residents who know that they need to save money to be able to afford a security deposit or down payment for a home, to afford education for their children which is critical for a blue county child's future income, and to afford other major purchases. Of course, lower incomes also make it harder to save money.

But with little home equity if they sell their homes, and less savings, and a higher cost of living in blue counties relative to incomes for less educated and less skilled worker wage premiums in blue counties, many residents of red counties are basically trapped there. They can't afford to move to a blue county even if they'd like to do so. The jaws of the trap are even tighter for red county residents with no blue county residents who are no longer working and are on fixed incomes.

Blue counties have higher housing costs because their populations tend to grow faster than the housing supply as people move their for their larger number of jobs that pay better than in red counties. 

About half of red counties, if not more, are losing population while their housing stock remains more or less the same, and even those red counties that have growing populations are growing slower than blue counties, so it is easier for the construction industry to increase the supply of housing enough to keep up with the slowly growing population. Moreover, in many red counties, populations have been declining, stagnant, or at least below the national average, relentlessly, for decade after decade pretty much starting in 1960s and almost every decade since in the last sixty years. Indeed, the percentage of the population engaged in farming has declined for almost every single decade from the 1790s until into the 2000s. These long slow declines undermine even hope for an eventual recovery or stabilization.

Since housing prices in red counties seem likely to fall, or at least only keep up with inflation, this also makes investing in maintaining and improving homes in red counties a bad investment. In contrast, in blue counties with every soaring real estate prices, keeping a home well-maintained and up to date with renovations and improvements can yield disproportionate returns, causing the existing housing stock in blue counties to be in better shape and more up to date.

More educated and skilled workers make much more income in blue counties than in red counties, which more than makes up for the higher cost of living there. Less educated and skilled workers also make more income in blue counties than in red counties, but not enough to make up for the higher cost of living there.

Tighter economic circumstances and economic stagnation in a community, also fosters zero sum game thinking, and eats away at empathy as taking care of your own becomes your priority. All potential forms of competition, from international trade, immigration, female workers competing with male workers, and non-white workers competing with white workers, all starts to look like a threat in this mindset, whether or not this is true. And, older white men without college educations, in particular, who are the core of the MAGA movement have seen their demographic's economic prosperity decline in relative terms to lots of other groups (even if it has not actually meaningfully declined even after adjusting for inflation and their own costs of living are low), through events taking place mostly in their own lifetimes.

Fertility

It is more expensive to raise children in a blue county with its higher cost of living, than in a red county. So, families in blue counties are smaller, with fewer children in response to those realities. Blue county children are also more likely to need and benefit from expensive higher education (which red county voters don't want to support funding for since higher education confers a much smaller benefit to them than it does to the children of their blue county peers).

The expansion of economic opportunities for women also greatly increase the opportunity costs for all women, in blue counties and red counties alike, of having more children. This opportunity cost has caused the number of children per woman per lifetime to fall particularly fast for less educated women who previously weren't qualified to be teachers or nurses, and had few options other than being house wives, but can now work in a variety of less skilled jobs previously held predominantly by men.

This has made the "trad wife" ideal unattainable for most families, but especially those consisting of non-college educated couples with lower incomes who need two incomes just to support themselves and one or two kids. But when women are less economically dependent upon their husbands and often have steadier and better paying work than their husbands, then families are less tight economic glue holding them together, and a provider man's position as "head of the household" is undermined.

Nostalgia

In a red county that has been stagnant or in decline for half a century or more, nostalgia for the "good old days" can be intense. High school educated people used to have incomes proportionately much closer to those of college educated workers and managers, even if the absolute buying power of those workers hasn't actually fallen, and this has gotten steadily worse since the early 1970s. In contrast, blue county college educated men have seen uninterrupted prosperity (and a lot more men have college educations now than in the 1970s). Women have seen their access to higher education and to more remunerative employment in non-traditional professions soar. Minority members are much less shut out of the top levels of the career ladder than they were in the 1960s even if they haven't reached parity, improving in relative terms. High school educated men have stagnated, in part, because of the structure of the economy (it is important to recognize that the two and a half decades after World War II were a remarkable one time only exception that can't be reproduced for the most part, and not the norm), and in part, because the average was being pulled up by smart, socially functional men who had no access to college educations then and now have gained college educations leaving their less bright and more difficult peers behind in a new economy. 

Civil rights aren't a zero sum game, but it is easy for a high school educated man prone to feeling aggrieved for economic reasons to see it that way, and women and minorities have secured a lot of civil rights that they once lacked. 

Smaller and less stable families for all but billionaires or near billionaires, it seems, has also undermined and narrowed the role of men as fathers of many children, something was was commonplace for middle class men in the Baby Boom era (although people forget that this time period was also one with much higher poverty rates than those of today until the "War on Poverty" rebalanced the status quo a bit).

The patriarchy has weakened, and they are the heirs of the patriarchy. So, of course, they yearn for the good old days, even though that was facilitated by key factors that can't be recreated with new policies.

Unions

The union narrative of the left is that unions brought us the weekend, the 40 hour work week, overtime, workplace safety, employer provided health care, and more. And, this isn't wrong. But it is incomplete.

Unions facilitate turning the economic power of workers into concrete economic gains for them in an efficient manner. But this facilitation and negotiation and political action related role only works at times when the demand for the labor of the unionized workers is great and the supply is smaller.

When there is a glut of less skilled, less educated workers, because the economy has been transformed to be less labor intensive, through automation, for example, and because other countries long ago restored the manufacturing capacity that was destroyed in World War II and no longer need to import manufactured goods to the same extent, unions don't provide workers with much in the way of concrete benefits because they don't have much to negotiate with. 

Likewise, part of the shortage of workers during the Baby Boom was because women left the work force en masse to have kids (a desire deferred during the Great Depression and World War II which were times of great scarcity), reducing the supply of workers and leaving the men who  re-entered the work force after World War II in greater demand with more economic power. This also won't recur. The many men who died or were seriously injured in World War II also shrunk the supply of able bodied adult male workers in the U.S., which is certainly not something we would like to repeat.

This, in a nutshell, is why private sector labor unions have declined steadily until just a few years ago (when worker economic power and demand was near a prolonged record high also accompanied by prolonged record low unemployment). For decades they couldn't deliver. And, since the labor market is weaker in the less productive red county economies, unions are even less effective in red counties than they are in blue counties.

Employers never like unions, but in red states, there isn't an intense worker desire to protect unions because they provide minimal benefits there, so the legal balance has tipped against unions in red states with things like "right to work laws", while in blue states, where the strong economy gives workers more power and unions more to bargain with, the balance between unions and management legally and politically has been more stable, because unions in blue states can deliver more to workers who therefore have a more intense desire to support them politically against employer attacks.

Religion

Being religious provides few economic and educational benefits to college educated upper middle class people, and can be a hinderance. And, it provides only modest economic and educational benefits to working class girls. But it provides great economic and educational benefits to working class boys (both black and white).

Religiosity is also strongly associated with uncertainty in life, especially economic uncertainty. Less educated people, on average, are at much higher risk of unemployment and prolonged unemployment during their working years. Farmers and fishermen are also subject to great uncertainty in their economic prospects due to factors like weather and the availability of fish from year to year than even "middle skilled" workers in blue counties and "urban farmers" (who work in truck gardens or indoor marijuana grows).  So, people in red counties are more likely to see religion as more important in their lives even controlling for whether they are religiously affiliated or not.

Red counties (especially in the South, in Utah, and in other Mormon dominated counties) have a far greater percentage of Christians with far less denominational variation than blue counties. Red counties are far fewer religious non-Christians (e.g., Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists) than blue counties do. So, religious diversity is not part of the everyday experience of residents of red counties.

Family Stability

The same economic instability and uncertainty, and lack of economic prosperity that makes red county residents more religious also dramatically influences their family stability.

The biggest predictor of whether a cohabiting couple will not marry, or whether a married couple will divorce, in basically every culture, is whether the woman in the couple earns more in the cash economy than the man. And, men without college educations, who make up a disproportionate share of men in red counties, are much more likely to have sustained periods of unemployment and to have mediocre earnings that have been stagnant, adjusting for inflation, for decades, than men with college educations (or even "mid-skilled jobs" and some college) in blue counties.

Also, high school educated women who leave the work force to have kids for a while receive few, if any, economic penalties to their earning capacity when they return to the work force, while college educated women who do that see their earning capacity when they return to the work force plummet. And women in red counties are much more likely to obtain some level of post-high school education than men. Indeed, programs to help women improve their education and skills often succeed in improving the economic well being of women, while programs to help men do the same rarely attract interest from men or have much of an impact.

As a result, couples with high school educations are failing to marry (the average high school educated couple has a child two years before getting married while the average college educated couple has a child two years after getting married and does so at an older age), and getting divorced when they do marry, at unprecedented high rates (in white couples echoing trends that started to appear with black couples without college educations in the late 1960s, as discussed for example, in the Moyihan report at the time).

In these breakups and divorces, where the inability of the man in the couple to be the stronger economic provider in the relationship is a key cause of the breakup, the man also has little if any ability to pay child support and alimony, or to provide a significant property division settlement (i.e. the legal rights a woman gains from being married).

The economic struggle that high school or less educated couples have to stay employed and earn a decent income after decades of wage stagnation for high school educated workers, also makes these families much more vulnerable to situations where they neglect or abuse their children, often resulting in a termination of parental rights or just child protective service intervention.

Both unstable couples, and neglect/abuse situations, means that many red county children often grow up without their father as part of the household for prolonged periods of time (echoing the experience of African-American children half a century earlier).

These trends are also exacerbated by the trend towards assortative marriage. There are fewer marriages in which one member of a couple is college educated and higher earning and the other is not college educated and has lower earning capacity. In part, this is because people have long tended to marry people of similar IQ, but now higher IQ women obtain college educations, while historically, this was much less common.

So, red county families are vastly more fragile than blue county families. This has led to a perennial state of moral panic in red counties about masculine identity and "family values" which when viewed as a moral problem prompts an attack on perceived sources of immorality and lost of masculine identity, which has led red county men to try to express their insecurity about their masculinity by trying to display that in ways other than being an economic providers, and by scapegoating LGBT people.

In contrast, college educated couples, who are much more common in blue counties, are much more likely to marry before having children, and have divorce rates that are falling to levels not seen since the 1960s.

Higher Education

In blue counties, higher education programs at all levels from certificates to associate's degrees to four year college degrees greatly increase your earning potential and pay for themselves in as little as a year or two, and usually in less eight years for all but the least qualified students in the least technical programs.

In red counties, higher education programs other than four year college degrees are a net money loser even at low community college tuitions when living at home, and even a four year degree can take as much as twenty-four years to pay for itself with higher earnings.

This is fundamentally because urban areas with healthy economies have productive ways to utilize the skilled and abilities developed in college, while rural and small town economies don't have jobs that productively utilize what someone learns from a college education.

See here and here.

Immigration

Blue counties have greatly disproportionate shares of immigrants and, in particular, disproportionate shares of immigrants who are settled residents of their communities rather than migrant workers living semi-nomadic lives. Due to their familiarity with immigrants in their daily lives, residents of blue counties are much less afraid of immigrants, who they know from experience to be good community members (at least to the same extent or more than native born members of the community) and who they know from experience are not disproportionately likely to commit crimes.

Red countries have a disproportionately smaller share of immigrants, who are often limited primarily to medical professionals and migrant farm workers. Due to their lack of familiarity with immigrants and the lack of a healthy economy, red county residents are much more likely to fear immigrants. Attitudes towards immigrants and globalization is also influenced by the reduced likelihood of red county residents to have had any higher education (as discussed above), or to have travelled abroad or to have lived in very different places within the United States (as discussed below).

Travel and Migration

Residents of red counties are much less likely to have a passport or to have traveled abroad than residents of blue counties. They are also less likely to have spent significant amounts of time living in places in the United States other than the vicinity of the place that they grew up, and even when they have lived elsewhere are likely to have lived somewhere else quite similar to the place that they grew up.

Studies of cousin marriage have shown that people in cousin marriages are less economically successful on average, primarily as a consequence of being less likely to leave the community where they grew up to move to larger cities.

Race

Some counties are overwhelmingly white, and those counties tend to be red counties that are rural or small town settings, especially in Appalachia, the rural Midwest, and much of the mountain states. The main exceptions are in New England (e.g. rural and small town areas in Vermont and Maine and Western Massachusetts) and counties defined by college towns.

Counties that are majority non-white tend to be blue counties even if they are similar to red counties in other respects, these include most of New Mexico and parts of Southern Colorado, counties with Indian Reservations (from Oklahoma to Arizona to North Dakota), and much of rural Hawaii and Alaska.

Quite a few red counties, however, are biracial. They have a white majority, and a non-white minority, usually black in the South and the Rust Belt, usually Hispanic in the Southwest, and sometimes Native American in countries near Indian Reservations and in Alaska (in the case of Alaska Natives) that don't actually have Indian Reservations or Alaskan Native communities. Few red countries, in contrast, and many blue counties, are genuinely multiracial, with significant numbers of people from more than two races or ethnicities.

Age, Health Care, Disabilities, and Credit

Residents of red counties tend to be older than residents of blue counties (except that Mormon dominated red counties tend to have younger residents).

Blue counties have more specialized and higher quality medical care available, and more medical professionals per capita than red countries which have a greater need for medical care due to their older populations. Blue states also tend to have fewer people who are uninsured since unlike some red states, they don't intentionally turn away free federal funds for Medicaid expansion and mostly don't provide state funding for health care beyond the federal minimum contribution. 

Red county residents have less interaction with medical professionals, especially medical doctors, than blue county residents, and a greater proportion of medical doctors in red counties are foreign born than in blue counties, which can impair the quality of doctor-patient interactions and communication.

Red county residents are less likely to have good health care outcomes following trauma incidents and strokes than blue county residents since they are less likely to reach a trauma center or top quality hospital during the "golden hour." More generally, red county residents have less first hand experience with what top quality modern health care can accomplish, on average, than blue county residents.

Red county men in the work force are much more likely to be employed in jobs with highly elevated rates of occupational injuries (like farming, fishing, timber work, mining, and construction) than blue county men in the work force.

A greater proportion of workers in red counties have physically demanding jobs that make it far more common for these workers to become disabled or forced to retire at younger ages than in blue counties.

Higher percentages of the population that are uninsured, and general lower levels of economic security among high school educated people who are more common in red counties also mean that average credit ratings are much lower in red counties than in blue counties, and that a very substantial proportion of the population in red counties have money judgments outstanding that can cause their wages and bank accounts to be garnished and their property seized, which can build animosity towards the legal system, and distrust of law enforcement officers who enforce judgments and of financial institutions in red counties. In blue counties where economic prosperity is more often uninterrupted and adequate health insurance is more common, in contrast, credit ratings are higher, money judgments are much more rare, and trust in the civil courts and financial institutions is much greater. Lack of health insurance also breeds justifiable fear of interactions with the medical establishment which can lead to financial ruin for many red county residents, while it rarely has that effect for blue county residents.

Self-Respect and Fragile Self-Esteem

The non-college educated white men at the core of the MAGA movement have taken immense blows to their self-esteem in many cases, and if they haven't have seen friends and neighbors who have.

The fact that they didn't go to college or went and didn't graduate brands them as a failure. They have failed to be reliable and prosperous economic providers. They have often failed to hold together intimate relationships and marriages. They have often failed to fulfill the expectations of society for fathers. They are often reliant on government payments, perhaps disability payments or SSI or Social Security, even if they earned them, rather than earning money from meaningful work.

In the MAGA heartland of West Virginia, 20% of the state's entire GDP consists of federal spending in the state less federal taxes paid from the state, and this is true of basically every county. Even if some of this is subtle, like Medicare and Medicaid provided health coverage, or a Social Security disability pension that was someone's only option to survive, a disabled man of working age who worked in physical labor all of his life, still sees receiving this support as a blow to his sense of self-respect which leaves his self-esteem as something fragile to prop up by means other than being an economic provider. Receiving government aid can feel bad even when you need it and it makes you better off because it is a constant reminder of your own failures.

Cursing the federal government and claiming you can be independent of it, reality be damned, can help compensate for the blow to one's self-esteem and self-respect that flows from being dependent upon it, even though it is counterproductive (at least in the short term) to do so.

Veterans, Hunters, Dangerous Animals, Law Enforcement Response Times, Firearms, And Crime News

Men in red countries are much more likely to be military veterans, than men in blue counties.

Men in red counties are much more likely to have engaged in recreational hunting than men in blue counties.

The higher proportion of men in red counties who are military veterans and/or have engaged in recreational hunting, means that men in red countries are much more likely to be gun owners than men in blue counties, and in particular, are much more likely to own firearms other than handguns.

Due to lower population densities in rural America, where the vast majority of counties are red counties, the average red county resident is a much greater distance from the average law enforcement responder than the average blue county resident, and as a result law enforcement response times to 9-1-1 calls are longer in red counties than in blue counties. Encounters with dangerous wildlife are also much more common in red counties than in blue counties. These circumstances creates a greater perceived need to own firearms for self-defense and the defense of others in red counties than in blue counties.

Also, while blue county news reporting typically covers a whole metropolitan area, resulting in a constant stream of news about violent crime, red county news reporting is typically hyperlocal, covering only a portion of the county around a small town, resulting in fewer reports of violent crimes near the people reading it, even though their crime rates per capita are actually higher. So, red counties tend to be perceived as less crime ridden than they are, while blue counties tend to be perceived as more crime ridden than they actually are. This interferes with the ability of people in red counties to see the connection between their high rates of firearm ownership and lax gun control enforcement and the rates of suicide and homicide and police use of firearms that they experience. In contrast, the connection seems stronger than it is in blue counties, because there is so much crime to cover in a populous metro area that only the most serious violent crimes which often involve firearms, receive news coverage, creating the perception that this is the most typical kind of crime in blue counties even though this isn't the case.

Building A Clear Vision For A Movement

One of the things that people seeking political change when they are completely out of power do is focus on "movement politics", i.e. long-term, grass roots efforts to chance the views of elites and of the general public.

A key piece of a political movement is to articulate a clear vision for the future. Right now, a key part of that is to articulate a clear vision of it looks like to be masculine.

The MAGA movement is heavily reliant upon white men, especially middle aged Christian white men, and to a lesser extent Hispanic men, especially men without college degrees.

These men feel aggrieved by economic losses in relative status compared to non-white men, to women, and to college educated men. Their incomes have been stagnant relative to inflation since the early 1970s, while everyone else has improved in relative terms to them over the last half-century. They have high rates of unemployment relative to more educated people, which also destroys their credit when they can't pay rent or a mortgage or other bills for a while until they find a new job. They are finding it harder to find someone willing to marry them, and if they do marry face divorce at record rates. They are at great risk of losing contact with their children, either in custody fights, or at the hands of child protective services for abuse or neglect. 

Often, they've worked jobs involving manual labor that they can no longer perform by late middle age, but they lack pensions or large retirement savings or private disability insurance to allow them to stop. So, they are reliant on government disability payments, when they've been taught that it is shameful to receive handouts and this requires bureaucratic efforts that are not their strong point.

They weren't particularly successful in school, academically or (often) disciplinarily. They get tripped up over what they see as "woke" and feminized expectations for their behavior in public. Even if they are married with kids, they are no longer the kings of their own households that they were when patriarchal norms were strong. The establishment has seriously condemned them for using corporal punishment with their children, for using physical force with their romantic partners, and for settling disputes with fists, in ways that half a century ago were at least tolerated, if not expected. Ignoring those changes finds them reported to child protective services for abuse and neglect, to the police for domestic violence or even marital rape, and arrested for assaults that would once have been seen as justified.

The MAGA movement, in its very wording, "Make America Great Again", offers them a vision of a return to this dysfunctional, toxic, vision of masculinity, where they don't have to worry about "woke" etiquette that he has not internalized, where their homophobia and transphobia were mainstream norms, where a man was the unquestioned head of the household and physical force was an acceptable way to protect that prerogative, and where a man was expected to respond to besmirched honor or anti-social behavior or threats to himself, his friends, his family, or is property with physical force and firearms. He sees the economy as a zero sum game where any competition from immigrants, imported goods made by foreign workers, women in the workplace, or minorities in the workplace harms him and welcomes anything that reduces that competition. He feels cheated by the college educated elite that has appropriated all of the increased productivity in the economy for themselves, and doesn't trust them as a result, even about matters where they know what is best better than he does.

The left needs to develop a vision of manhood that is better than this, that is functional in modern society, and that is nonetheless attainable even for men who aren't academic hotshots or particularly good at learning new social scripts.

This is a project that has been successfully managed in the past. The same era known for cowboys in the American West, a beacon of manliness, which was roughly the Victorian era, was also an era in which the notion of the "gentleman" was popularized. 

The ideal of the gentleman was less crass than the vision of masculinity that came before it. A gentleman respects women. A gentleman takes pride in a dignified and civilized appearance. A gentleman is trustworthy and plays fair (at least until adversaries don't). A gentleman refrains from profanity and speaks in a dignified speech register, even if he may not be erudite enough to speak like a highly educated person. A gentleman behaves in a civilized manner in public. A gentleman's behavior earns the respect of his family and acquaintances rather than merely insisting upon it without earning it. A gentleman may be capable of winning a fight, but he avoids fighting when possible.

Many iconic fictional characters exemplified this vision of masculinity, at least to some extent.

A twenty-first century vision of a gentleman that the left can foster won't be the same as the vision of a gentleman a century and a half ago. But if the left doesn't develop a clear, widely understood, and attainable life script and ideal to strive for, for men, then it won't be able to compete with the MAGA right for the hearts and minds of men because it does have a vision for them.

The meme at the start of this post tries to cast the vision of masculinity that Donald Trump exemplifies as weak, insecure, and little. And, there is little reason to doubt that a man like Donald Trump, had he not inherited a real estate fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars early in life, would have been extremely unsuccessful in modern society and its economy. Indeed, even as things are, he has not exactly been a business genius and would have been much wealthier if he'd simply invested his wealth in the stock market rather than frequently failing or underperforming in his own business investments even when he tries to lie and cheat to attain them.

It evokes as one element of masculinity, security in your own identity and self-worth flowing from personal inner strength, that allows a man to brush off slights to his honor and refrain from habitually putting other people down. It evokes someone who looks beyond himself to the greater good who has concern for the well-being of other people.

Other elements of that vision might include humility and a willingness to learn from others who know more than you do about something, valuing knowledge instead of ridiculing it, a capacity to cooperate with others and be a team player, "servant leadership", and the magnanimity to have empathy and compassion for others as a demonstration of your strength and security. The vision should shed machismo without simply being "anti-macho."

Likewise, the left needs to embrace and support attractive and worthwhile life scripts for people, especially men, for whom the path of going to a four year college, earning a degree, and entering into a white-collar managerial or professional career, isn't a realistic one.

Public schools need to offer better alternatives for students for whom a curriculum designed to prepare them for a liberal arts based college education is not the right one. The paths to careers that take skill and training beyond a high school diploma, but without a four year college degree need to be more widely known. And, we need an economy where those careers are a viable path that can allow people who take it to secure the American Dream.

The "maker" movement has done a lot to rehabilitate the idea that skilled, hands on, physical craftsmanship is honorable and enviable, rather than being just a badge of failure to succeed in more cerebral pursuits.

More needs to be done to prevent men from fleeing well-paying occupations that our economy urgently needs, that have long been seen as, or are becoming, "pink collar" jobs, like nursing, social work, and being a school teacher. And a lot of that takes efforts that are more cultural, cosmetic, and social than it does actual changes to the jobs or what it takes to secure those jobs.

The Fit Between A Military Force And Its Missions In Israel

Analysis

Accomplishments

Israel has a world class military that has had an immense amount of combat experience, and an advanced domestic defense industry that arose due to international sanctions. It has had many stunning military victories and few defeats. Only North Korea has mobilized a comparably large share of its population including many female soldiers, into military service. Israel also has a national system of air raid shelters. It has faced and defeated multiple developing nation military forces in the region over the years and mostly Iranian backed paramilitary forces and insurgents with similar grade weapons.

It's air/anti-missile defense system (the "Iron Dome") and armored vehicle active defenses (the "Trophy" system) are the most advanced in the world and have been proven repeatedly. 

Israel's 63 ton tracked Namer armored personnel carrier (with combat engineering variants) has very heavy armor and advanced active defenses, making it the most heavily armored and protected armored vehicle in the world. It also has well-regarded 65 ton Merkava main battle tanks of its own design.

Its modern Air Force has carried out more air to air kills and produced more fighter aces than pretty much any other Air Force in the world. It carries out air strikes, pretty much with impunity, in the region from Syria, to Iran, to Yemen. Its small navy has advanced offensive capabilities but has seen little action.

Israel's intelligence agency and special forces have conducted some stunning operations, although they suffered a major defeat on October 7, 2023 when it failed to prevent a Hamas attack from Gaza that killed more than a thousand Israelis despite having some intelligence hints that it was coming. The quality of its commercial air travel security is also unparalleled and is far more than "security theater".

Caveats

On the other hand, Israel's forces are tailored to its needs. 

Aside from some regional airstrikes and rare commando and assassination missions all involving small numbers of personnel at the "tip of the arrow", almost all of its operations have taken place in or near Israeli territory, and predominantly in one of several anticipated hot spots within it (the northern border with Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza and regions adjacent to it). So, Israel's ground forces haven't had to worry about logistic supply chains, rapid deployment over great distances, or speed. Even at the slow speed of tracked vehicles (ca. 40-45 mph on roads), Israel's heavy armored forces are rarely more than an hour or two away from where they are needed. 

Similarly, because of Israel's geography, the IDF doesn't have to worry about steep mountains with narrow passes, cliffs, thinner air at high altitudes, landslides, bridges that can't carry heavy vehicles, jungles, thick forests of stout trees, sustained seasonal endless rain and oceans of mud, major swamps near battlefields, major river crossings, moving forces between islands, major roads too narrow for its military vehicles to use, tornados, hurricanes, deep sustained fog, or ice, snow, and cold.

Because it has been constantly at war, Israel has been able to design its infrastructure and regulate land use to accommodate its heavy armored forces, facilitate military logistics, and provide safe spaces for its people. Palestinian insurgent forces have lacked access to most regions not subject to Palestinian control since the West Bank and Gaza were walled, making it difficult or impossible to place land mines that could impair the travel of Israeli military supplies and military vehicles, or make those areas treacherous for soldiers and civilians alike. This has facilitated easy and safe logistics for IDF troops for all but the last few miles, and has allowed the IDF to pick its battles.

Its counterinsurgency (mostly from the Palestine Liberation Organization and then Hamas) and Hezbollah adversaries have had small arms, tanks, lighter anti-tank weapons (like rocket propelled grenades and IEDs), artillery rockets and shells, and suicide bombs. But the IDF's opponents in greater Israel, have not had advanced guided anti-tank weapons, air to ground missiles, opposition naval ships and submarines, or until very recently, armed drones. The Palestinian insurgents also haven't been able to train openly in large formations and at large bases, and has had to resort to building tunnel systems to hide its movements and provide bunker-like safe havens for them.

As highlighted in the fighting in Gaza since October 7, 2023, Israel has nearly total control over the Palestinians' access to water, food, medicine, fuel, and any other form of international trade, and has had a highly effective, although not perfect, capacity to limit the Palestinians' access to military grade arms and ammunition.

Even Hezbollah, in Lebanon, which is organized and outfitted more like a traditional national army, has had very limited access to the advanced guided missiles, and no access to armed manned aircraft.

Palestinian insurgents have not had tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, howitzers (mobile or towed), armored personnel carriers, fixed wing aircraft, helicopters, advanced radar systems, or anti-aircraft weapons more sophisticated than man-carried anti-aircraft missiles (MANPADS) and small arms. The Palestinian insurgents have little or no ability to conduct signals or electronic intelligence or obtain satellite or high altitude aerial surveillance. The insurgent's most advanced military vehicles have been "technicals" (i.e. pickup trucks mounted with small arms) and motorcycles. The insurgent's most potent weapons have mostly been rocket propelled grenade launchers, recoilless rifles, unguided Katusha rockets, and a small number of more powerful surface to surface missiles and suicide drones. Almost all of their arms and ammunition have had to be smuggled in through tightly controlled borders.

Unlike the armies contending in the Ukraine War, the IDF has conducted its ground operations with air superiority and air support. Its troops haven't had to worry about being attacked by enemy aircraft, and have been able to call in close air support when needed. The last time it faced a serious attack by manned fighter aircraft, or a strike on its navy, was half a century ago, although it has faced attacked from outside its borders from missiles, rockets, drones, and shells on a regular basis with a particularly intense bout in the last year.

The U.S. Compared

In contrast, the U.S. military has very different missions that demand very different resources. 

Almost all modern U.S. military operations have been expeditionary and conducted far from its territory. Logistics supply lines are a critical concern for U.S. forces on expeditionary missions and forward operating bases have to be established from scratch while armed opponents are nearby. It can take the U.S. weeks to deploy heavy armored military equipment in large quantities which must be done by ship, train, and road convoy, if this equipment has not been pre-placed at foreign military bases or supply caches. The U.S. has more foreign military bases on a larger scale than any other country and a considerable capacity for sea basing of forces as well, but these resources are more abundant in some areas than other.

Once they arrive in theater, their area of operations is usually larger than that of the Israel Defense Force and thus requires more maneuver for longer distances making speed more critical.

To gain air superiority, the U.S. often has to create it, in an preliminary air campaign, like the ones seen in the Gulf War and Iraq War, that can take weeks, before other forces can move in knowing that the air is secure.

In a near peer conflict, the U.S. has to count on its opponents having access to sophisticated air defense missiles, guided anti-tank missiles with ranges greater than a tank's main gun that are pretty much one-shot, one-kill in the absence of active defenses, heavy artillery, and modern medium range anti-ship missiles (possibly hypersonic), naval mines, and torpedo equipped submarines.

In many or most conflicts to which U.S. forces deploy they also lack the "home field advantage", even if they are supporting allies in territory that those allies control. Only a tiny share of their troops speak the local language or can read local road signs. They aren't familiar with the territory. They aren't familiar with local hazards from wildlife to poisonous plants, which are threats to which locals have adapted. They have a hard time distinguishing friends from foes, or just different groups of friends with different sensibilities, among the local populations. R&R time is infrequent and requires epic travel. Even in guarded bases, they are never far from the front lines and are never really in secure safe havens. U.S. military forces need to have everything necessary to sustain the day-to-day physical needs of their troops in addition to maintain and supporting their military equipment.

The U.S. has more money to spend on military systems than any other country in the world, and does so, so its can afford to spend more to have systems better suited to expeditionary warfare. And, with 45 times more people who likely to side with it rather than opponents to its forces, the U.S. military has about seven times as many active duty forces despite being far less mobilized than Israel, although perhaps only a couple times as many reserve forces, in addition to its much large budget, than Israel does. So, the U.S. can effectively have multiple separate military sub-forces designed to carry out radically different missions from each other, instead of having to focus on one or two main missions.

The bottom line of all of this analysis is to recognize Israel's military successes, while also cautioning against over learning from the IDF's experience because that IDF has very different missions, very different opponents, and very different constraints and circumstances under which its missions must be carried out, than U.S. forces. 

So, the IDF can make wise choices that are tailored to its particular specific favorable circumstances and set of opponent capabilities, which would not be wise for U.S. forces. Nowhere is this more the case, than the IDF's utilization of heavily armored ground forces, where the IDF does not face constraints and concerns that loom heavy for U.S. forces.

Geography

Israel is not a particularly big country. 

It is about 60 miles across at its widest, and about 240 miles from north to south. The total area under Israeli control, including the Golan Heights and West Bank, is 10,733 square miles. There are six small islands in shallow waters less than a half a mile off Israelis far northern Mediterranean coast which are a nature preserve.

About 8.5% of its land is forest and the rest of desert and shrub desert, although it is fertile enough to grow crops on the coast and in the Jordan River Valley. Its highest point, Mount Meron is 3,963 feet, and its highlands, which are described as hills rather than mountains, average about 2,000 feet. It rarely gets below freezing, although short lived snow can fall in the highlands, and even the parts of the country that get rain get it in thunderstorm bursts in the winter and are dry most of the year. 

Its primary water features are the Mediterranean coast, the freshwater sea of Galilee, the salt water Dead Sea, and the Jordan River that flows through both of them for 199 miles and makes up most of the eastern border with the Kingdom of Jordan (which isn't actively hostile to it). The northern tributaries to the Jordan River are the Dan, Banias, and Hasbani. Only the Dan is within undisputed Israel; the Hasbani flows from Lebanon and the Banias from territory captured from Syria in the Six-Day War (in 1967). The Sea of Galilee a.k.a. the Kinneret) is about 14 miles (north to south) by 8 miles (east to west) for a total of about 64 square miles that is 679 feet below sea level and 151 feet deep. It has an area known as the Hula marshes to the north. The salt water Dead Sea (which is also part of the Israel-Jordan border) is 42 miles from north to south and 10 miles wide and is 1,371 feet below sea level (the lowest water surface on Earth). It has a maximum depth of 978 feet, an average depth of 618 feet, and  south of the peninsula that juts into it from the eastern shore, it is less than 20 feet deep. Israel also has about ten other small lakes. The Great Rift Valley, with the mostly uninhabited Negev desert to the west and Jordan's arid highlands to the east, continues another 110 miles or so from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Eilat where Israel has about half a mile of a coast.

Israel has a major earthquake roughly every 400 years (with four in known history, in 31 BCE, 363 CE, 749 CE, and 1033 CE), and is overdue for another of magnitude 7.4 or so. An earthquake of a magnitude sufficient to cause loss of life every 80 years or so. Not quite half of its buildings are built to modern building code standards that could survive a major earthquake, while the rest,  including 50,000 residences are expected to collapse in the event of a 400 year earthquake.

Gaza and the West Bank (outside the seam zone) are walled off.

The Seam Zone is in blue-green and separated from the rest of the West Bank with a wall.

Israel is home to about 11.7 million people, of whom about 7.5 million are Israelis and 4.2 million are Palestinians.

The area west of the "Green Line" that was Israel's 1948 boundary (controlled for 76 years), has about 6,674,000 Israelis and 110,000 Palestinians. 

Israel has controlled the rest of its territory, which is home to 742,000 Israelis and 4.1 million Palestinians since 1967 (controlled for 57 years). There are about 42,000 Israelis in the Golan Heights. East Jerusalem and an area known as the the seam zone are east of a West Bank barrier wall, but west of the "Green Line": East Jerusalem has about 455,000 Israelis and 225,000 Palestinians, while the remainder of the seam zone has about 188,000 Israelis, and 35,000 Palestinians who live in walled off village enclaves. Israeli settlements and military zones in the West Bank beyond the barrier have about 57,000 Israelis and 115,000 Palestinians. The Palestinian controlled part of the West Bank has about 2,085,000 million Palestinians. Gaza has about 1,510,000 Palestinians. 

The Israeli Defense Force

History and Overview

The main mission of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), which has had an exceptionally great number of actual military engagements since 1948 (about 76 years ago) when the country was founded, it to protect Israel from attacks from outside its borders and from predominantly Palestinian insurgents within it. In the 1967 Six-Day War (57 years ago), Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Golan Heights from the surrounding Arab states. It was preceded by paramilitary organizations of Jews in Palestine.

The IDF has fought ten international wars, as I count them, against other nation-states or foreign Iranian proxy forces: (1) the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, which saw neighbouring Arab states attack; (2) the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the IDF captured the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, which was later returned; (3) the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Golan Heights from the surrounding Arab states, (4) the Yom Kippur War, (5) the War of Attrition against Egypt in the Sinai, (6) a border war against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Jordan culminating in the Battle of Karameh, (7) the Lebanese Civil War, initiating Operation Litani and later the 1982 Lebanon War, where the IDF ousted Palestinian guerrilla organizations from Lebanon, (8)  Hezbollah has also been a growing threat, against which the IDF fought an asymmetric conflict wiht Hezbollah in Lebanon between 1982 and 2000, (9) a full-scale war with Hezbollah in 2006, and (10) a multi-front war with Hezbollah, Iran, Hamas in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen starting with the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The IDF has fought an almost uninterrupted Palestinian insurgency against Israel from 1948 onward, which has included relatively hot and relatively cool periods. The hot periods have included two Intifadas (i.e. uprisings) in both the West Bank and Gaza (1987-1993 and 2000-2005), and five periods of more intense conflict in Gaza since then in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, 2021, and 2023-2024.

The IDF has also been engaged in a small number of isolated military actions involving small numbers of personnel outside its territories and the immediate vicinity of its borders (especially a security zone in South Lebanon), including the 1976 Operation Entebbe commando raid to free hijacked airline passengers being held captive in Uganda, air strikes and missile attacks in Syria, in Iraq (to destroy its nuclear reactor), in Iran, and in Southern Yemen, and some assassinations in places including Lebanon and Iran.

The IDF has 169,500 active duty military personnel and 465,000 reservists, and the lion's share of adult Israelis (men and women alike) are military veterans who served for a significant period of time. Israelis with military experience in the IDF, armed with assault rifles, are ubiquitous in every town, village, and urban neighborhood. The quality of Israeli military training, despite Israel's high level of mobilization, rivals that of any other country in the world. A common ethnicity, adopted language, and a lifetime of constant threats, also unites Israelis as a community.

Ground Forces

Israel's ground forces, apart from a few missions with small numbers of commandos and assassins, rarely venture further than into the southern tip of Lebanon or a few miles beyond its border with Egypt, and very rarely goes to the east of the Great Rift Valley through which the Jordan River flows. Israeli ground forces have 126,000 active duty soldiers and 400,000 reservists, organized into six infantry brigades (including one brigade of paratroopers), four armored brigades, an artillery corps, a combat engineering corps, and a military intelligence corps.

Air Force

The Israeli Air Force has 34,000 active duty airmen, 55,000 reservists, and 613 aircraft spread over at least ten major air force bases in the small country. It has 280 modern capable fighter jets (39 with stealth), 48 modern helicopter gunships, 25 surveillance, intelligence and control planes and many surveillance drones, 14 tanker aircraft (7 long range and 7 smaller and short range), 4 VIP transports, 10 C-130 transports (3 of which have SAR features), 53 utility helicopters, 22 heavy lift helicopters, 4 SAR helicopters, and 159 trainer aircraft. 

No Air Force has shot down more planes and produced more fighter aces since WWII than Israel. 

Israel has no long range or heavy bombers, and no long range transport or reconnaissance aircraft, although its 7 long range tanker aircraft that can extend the range of its fighters and C-130 transports. It has no carrier based fixed wing aircraft and no VTOL fixed wing aircraft.

Armed Combat Aircraft

• 66 F-15E
• 175 F-16C
• 39 F-35I (an Israeli variant of the F-35A)
• 48 Apache AH-64A/D attack helicopters

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Control

• 2 Boeing 707 based early warning and control aircraft
• 2 Gulfstream G550 based early warning and control aircraft
• 18 Super King general aviation aircraft signals and electronic intelligence aircraft
• 3 Gulfstream G550 based signals and surveillance aircraft
• An unspecified number of at least five kinds of surveillance drones

Tankers

• 7 Boeing 707 based tankers
• 7 KC-130J based tankers (for fixed wing aircraft, helicopters, and ground vehicles)

Transport/Utility

• 4 Super King general aviation transports (2 of which are also used for training)
• 3 C-130E/H transport and search and rescue
• 7 C-130J tactical airlift
• 4 Bell 206 utility helicopters
• 49 UH-60 utility helicopters
• 22 CH-53 heavy lift helicopters
• 4 Eurocopters AS565 search and rescue

Trainers

• 30 M-346 Lavi
• 20 F-15B/D
• 49 F-16D
• 20 T-6 Texan II
• 16 Grob G-120
• 18 Bell OH-58 helicopter trainers

Navy

The IDF Navy has 9,500 active duty sailors and 10,000 reservists who operate 69 vessels out of four main naval bases on its Mediterranean coast, and some other shipyards, a training school, and some headquarters facilities. They primarily guard Israel's coast. 

Its most significant engagements were in the 1973 Yom Kippur War where it sunk 5 Syrian naval ships (the first naval battle between naval ships with surface to surface missiles) which kept the Syrian navy in port for the rest of the war, and 3 Egyptian missile boats without suffering casualties. In 2006, a IDF Navy corvette was struck in a surprise missile attack by Hezbollah from Lebanon that killed four Israeli sailors. It appears that the IDF Navy has never left the Mediterranean sea (some of its ships have a range of up to about 4,000 nautical miles) or even "shown the flag" far from Israeli waters. Given its narrow area of operations, along roughly 120 miles of coastal plain with several naval bases along the way, a sustained high cruising speed for its ships and boats is not a priority for Israel's Navy.

They operate:

• 7 corvettes: Sa'ar 5 class (1275 tons), Sa'ar 6 class (1900 tons) with missiles
• 8 missile boats: Sa'ar 4.5 class (498 tons) with missiles
• 5 submarines: Dolphin class (1900 - 2050 tons) armed with torpedos
• 45 patrol boats (8.5 - 85 tons) armed with cannons up to 30mm, machine guns and on 13 of them 4 Hellfire missiles
• 4 support ships (2 are 500 ton supply ships and 2 are 4,199 ton transport ships with 816 tons of cargo capacity)

Israel hasn't had to content with hostile naval forces for fifty years, despite one minor stray attack from land on one of its ships. But the Mediterranean sea is full of nations with modern naval forces and air forces that could attack naval ships. And, Ukraine's very successful campaign against the Russian Black Sea fleet in the Ukraine war without having a real navy of its own, has also demonstrated the potential threat to its navy from land based attacks like the 2006 attack from Hezbollah.

Israel's navy is very powerful for a small navy without even a true frigate class ship, and its submarine force is also impressive for this small country. It could probably resist a significant sea based attack on Israel and its navy. But it also isn't an expeditionary force designed to serve for extended periods of time far from its navy's home ports.

The Next Generation Hellfire Missile And Better Explosives

A Much Improved Successor To The Hellfire Missile

A Hellfire missile has a similar size (a little over 100 pounds), explosive capacity (20-24 pounds), and range to a 155mm Howitzer round. The guided missile is more accurate, hitting targets within a 10 foot radius about 50% of time, but has a 7 mile range, while the unguided artillery round has a 12 mile range but is much less accurate, hitting targets within a 180-900 foot radius about 50% of the time (which is about 324-8100 times more area than the Hellfire strike zone). 

Both pack more punch than the 70 pound shell launched from a 5" naval gun (the largest naval gun in service on any U.S. warship), a 120mm tank shell, a 120mm mortar round, a 105mm tank shell, a 105mm artillery round, a GUB-44/B Viper Strike guided bomb, or any kind of anti-tank missile, rocket, or recoilless rifle round in wide use.

But it is less powerful than a torpedo, a U.S. Army Standard MLRS artillery missile, a Naval Strike missile, and ATACMS missile, a missile launch from a naval vertical launch system (VLS), or any fixed wing aircraft dropped bombs bigger than a Viper Strike.

The Hellfire missile needs only minimal launching apparatus (which allows it to be used from helicopters, light aircraft, drones, and even a slightly modified Humvee), while a howitzer requires a heavy and slow artillery system, about four tons towed, or almost 28 tons for an armored tracked Paladin mobile artillery system (with a peak speed of only about 35 mph, slowing down the force, whose poor fuel efficiency adds to the logistics trail of the force). 

The Hellfire missile is much more expensive (around $150,000) than an artillery round (around $2000 with inflation), however. But, the missile's greater accuracy means that far fewer rounds are necessary to reliably destroy the same target, and that it produces far less collateral damage. 

As noted in a previous post (emphasis added):

155mm M795 U.S. high explosive howitzer shell (103 pounds) The 155mm (about 6") M777 howitzer, used by the U.S. Marines, has a 90 pound shell, weighs four tons, and has a range of 12 miles with conventional shells and 24 miles with guided shells (Excalibur) which are more accurate as well. Existing Paladin M109 mobile howitzers used by the U.S. Army has a range of about 30 kilometers (18 miles); the design requirement for the existing systems was a target zone of 180 feet radius to about 900 feet depending upon range and other factor; it weighs 27.5 tons (and thus can't be carried in a C-130) and has a maximum speed of 35 mph. The Crusader mobile howitzer, which was cancelled, was going to cost on the order of $24 million or more per one howitzer vehicle. A standard 155mm howitzer shell costs about $1,500 per round.

A proposed next generation successor to the Hellfire missile is similar in size and weight to the existing Hellfire missile, but has twice the amount of explosives (40 pounds) and an 138 mile range with undiminished accuracy, which would hit a tank sized target in Cheyenne, Wyoming (101 miles), Vail (97 miles), or Pueblo (113 miles) from Civic Center Park in Denver. 

The main difference between the successor and the existing Hellfire missile is that instead of using a solid fuel rocket, it uses a disposable jet engine. It may actually end up being cheaper than the Hellfire missile when produced in quantity.

California-based Anduril Industries has been scooping up defense contracts left and right in recent years. And now the firm, which is primarily known for its advanced and highly autonomous drone systems, is looking to apply that expertise to precision-guided munitions in a new line of air-breathing cruise missiles they call the Barracuda M.

The Barracuda M line is made up of three different weapons: the M-100, M-250, and M-500 cruise missiles. . . . the M-100 significantly outclasses the weapons it could feasibly replace. The M-100 was designed to be carried by rotorcraft like the AH-64 Apache gunship or the AH-1 Cobra, in very much the same way these platforms carry Hellfire missiles today. (Although it could feasibly be launched by any of the long list of other platforms that carry Hellfires.)

Indeed, the M-100 is very close in size to the long-serving AGM-114 Hellfire, and even closer in size to the AGM-179 Joint Air to Ground Missile (JAGM) that’s meant to replace the Hellfire.

The M-100 is about 70 inches long with a six-inch diameter and weighs roughly 110 pounds. In comparison, the AGM-114 is 64 inches long, with a seven-inch diameter and a total weight of around 104 to 108 pounds; and the new AGM-179, which is 70 inches long with a seven-inch diameter and an undisclosed total weight. 

 

(Graphic by Alex Hollings)

But while the M-100 is about the same size as the Hellfire or the JAGM, it packs a much bigger punch.

The Hellfire missile carries a roughly 20-pound high explosive warhead and the JAGM is expected to carry about the same. In our original story, Anduril initially told Sandboxx News that their M-100 would carry a 35-pound warhead, but that has since been increased to 40 pounds – twice the size of the Hellfire’s and JAGM’s warhead.

The Hellfire missile usually has a maximum range of between four and 6.8 miles, depending on launch conditions – though some variants, like the AGM-114R-4 long-range Hellfire missile that saw testing in 2022, can reach as far as 21 miles. The AGM-179 JAGM, meanwhile, started its journey to service with a stated range of roughly five miles, but has since doubled that figure to 10. 

 

Comparing the maximum ranges of the AGM-114 Hellfire (yellow), the AGM-179 JAGM (green), and the Barracuda M-100 (red). (Graphic by Alex Hollings)

The M-100, on the other hand, can carry its 40-pound warhead to targets 138 miles away – or 20 times the Hellfire’s range. This is possible because the weapon carries a completely different type of propulsion system than you’ll find in weapons like the Hellfire which are powered by a solid propellant rocket motor. The M-100 is powered by a very small, air-breathing turbojet engine, the same sort of propulsion system you’d find powering a tactical aircraft or other long-range cruise missiles.

The only place the M-100 would fall short of the Hellfire is in maximum speed, as the Hellfire is known to top out at around Mach 1.3, while the M-100 is limited to high subsonic speeds, according to Anduril.

Depending on the iteration, Hellfire missiles have a per-unit price of around $150,000, while the newer JAGM costs about $320,000. Although we don’t know how much the M100 will ultimately cost, Anduril focuses on streamlined and simple production. The company says that the entire weapon can be assembled using fewer than 10 simple hand tools, which will make it very easy to train personnel in assembling it. Because of that simplicity, the company claims it can double its production capacity anytime the U.S. needs a surge of precision-guided munitions.

This weapon . . . has already seen testing in-house at Anduril and now the company is shopping these weapons to the Department of Defense in hopes of securing a production contract.

In a war like the currently pending Ukraine War, where Russian troops feel secure stationing weapons systems and bases outside artillery range from Ukraine's front lines, widespread availability of these missiles could push back the front lines by 130 miles into Russian territory. 

Similarly, this makes it possible to strike at another country (e.g. Israel), or into international waters, from deep inside sovereign territory of the person making the shot.

The larger version of this new missile (the M-250 and M-500) are more comparable to full sized HIMARs, M270, and navy cruise missiles, and to other intermediate range, larger missiles which the Marines, Army, and Air Force are all actively developing.

The greater range also makes real time forward reconnaissance much more important. 

A forward observer with a device about the size of a satellite phone, a small reconnaissance drone (ideally with a long range), spy planes, high altitude airships or balloons, or spy satellites, could all provide real time imagery that could direct missiles from distant launch sites to a target.

The Case For A Canon Artillery Substitute Missile

Another possibility would be to develop a missile similar in concept to the M-100, but smaller, with a warhead size similar to a Hellfire missile or 155mm artillery round (20-24 pounds), and perhaps only a fifth as much fuel for a 28 mile range, that is significantly lighter (perhaps 60-75 pounds) than the 90-103 pounds of a 155mm artillery round or the 104-110 pounds of a Hellfire missile or an M-100, as a canon artillery substitute missile. 

This canon artillery substitute missile could be fired from a variety of platforms, e.g., a pickup truck mount, a JTLV, a Stryker, an ATV sized ground based drone, an air based drone, a helicopter, a light plane, an AC-130, an A-10, an F-35, a patrol boat, a corvette, or a frigate. Faster, lighter platforms, operating at a greater distance from opposition forces, would be better suited to the modern scoot and shoot tactics of modern artillery forces. Its lighter weight would allow more to be carried on any given platform.

Advanced Energetic Materials

Another way to reduce the weight, without sacrificing explosive power, would be to introduce a new generation (paywalled WSJ article) of "advanced energetic materials - chemicals that propel or explode" which have advanced little since the RDX and Torpex used as TNT replacements which were about 50% more powerful per weight than TNT towards the end of WWII.

For example, an explosive material called CL-20, first identified in 1993 which is currently the subject of research by China and Russia's defense scientists, has been basically stalled in the R&D phase for the last thirty-years, during which it wasn't a priority because counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were the priority. It is supposed to be 10 times more powerful than TNT (video) making it the most powerful non-nuclear explosive known to man.