Deaths of Despair

A March 23, 2017 post about the surging rate of death among non-Hispanic white men with no college education, goes a long way towards explaining what drove the political shift towards Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 in this voting block.

Another source from a 2020 paper notes that:

From 1992–94 to 2016–18, age-adjusted mortality for whites in the least educated 10% has risen by 69–112% for women and 47–67% for men (2.2–3.2% and 1.6–2.2% per year, respectively).

A published version of what seems to be the same article in 2022 states in its abstract that:

Measurements of mortality change among less educated Americans can be biased because the least educated groups (e.g., dropouts) become smaller and more negatively selected over time. We show that mortality changes at constant education percentiles can be bounded with minimal assumptions. Middle-age mortality increases among non-Hispanic Whites from 1992 to 2018 are driven almost entirely by the bottom 10 percent of the education distribution. Drivers of mortality change differ substantially across groups. Deaths of despair explain most of the mortality change among young non-Hispanic Whites, but less among older Whites and non-Hispanic Blacks. Our bounds are applicable in many other contexts. 

A 2022 NBER report looking at COVID deaths comes to basically the same conclusion. 

A 2024 NBER report expanded on this conclusion noting the importance of different smoking and obesity rates in less educated and more educated areas:

Equally educated people are healthier if they live in more educated places. Every 10 percent point increase in an area’s share of adults with a college degree is associated with a decline in all-cause mortality by 7%, controlling for individual education, demographics, and area characteristics. Area human capital is also associated with lower disease prevalence and improvements in self-reported health. The association between area education and health increased greatly between 1990 and 2010. Spatial sorting does not drive these externalities; there is little evidence that sicker people move disproportionately into less educated areas. Differences in health-related amenities, ranging from hospital quality to pollution, explain no more than 17% of the area human capital spillovers on health. 

Over half of the correlation between area human capital and health is a result of the correlation between area human capital and smoking and obesity. More educated areas have stricter regulations regarding smoking and more negative beliefs about smoking. These have translated over time into a population that smokes noticeably less and that is less obese, leading to increasing divergence in health outcomes by area education.

An October 14, 2024 report notes that:

We find mortality improvement has slowed across the population, with substantial heterogeneity across socio-demographic groups. Notably, working age mortality among high-school graduates rose by around 16% from 1996 to 2019 while working age White mortality had almost no net improvement over the period and rose by a little under 10% from 2010 to 2019. Meanwhile, working age Black and Hispanic mortality fell by nearly 25% and 20%, respectively, from 1996 to 2010, before stagnating.

We estimate that the COVID-19 pandemic increased overall mortality by around 20 percent in 2020 and 2021, with around a 40% increase in mortality among Hispanics adults and an over 25% increase in mortality among working age adults without any college education.

The reductions in black and Hispanic deaths coincide with falling crime rates, which disproportionately impacted black and Hispanic communities.

Ironically, reduced crime rates may have hurt the economic well-being of white men with no college education in relative terms now that they faced more competition from black and Hispanic men without college educations who were no longer in prison or gangs, and were instead part of the less skilled work force (even if they weren't worse off in absolute real income and unemployment rate terms).

Opioid overdose deaths finally leveled off during the Biden Administration (see also here) But this is still a demographic in crisis and Trump is responding to what they believe (mostly wrongly) is the source of their woes.

Life After Death

Belief in life after death is an interesting choice to compare religiosity. 

It is a belief shared by all of the widely adhered to religions in the region without being strictly tied to any one of them, and also captures residual metaphysical beliefs in contrast to metaphysical naturalism among people who are nominally non-religious and may have a problem with particular denominational or institutional religious structures but not with a somewhat religious worldview at a broad level.

The percentage of people believe in life after death considerably exceeds the percentage of people who regularly attend religious services or pray regularly. But it is below 50% in most of the historically predominantly Christian countries  of Europe, and just barely above 50% in several of the remaining ones in the face of a long term trend towards declining belief in an afterlife. Most of Europe is majority secular, or very nearly so. In the homelands of most of my ancestors, belief in an afterlife is less than 40%.

Related from a May 12, 2016 post:

* For the first time in Norwegian history, there are more atheists and agnostics than believers in God. 

* For the first time in British history, there are now more atheists and agnostics than believers in God. And church attendance rates in the UK are at an all-time low, with less than 2% of British men and women attending church on any given Sunday. 

* A recent survey found that 0% of Icelanders believe that God created the Earth. That’s correct: 0%. And whereas 20 years ago, 90% of Icelanders claimed to be religious, today less than 50% claim to be.

* Nearly 70% of the Dutch are not affiliated with any religion, and approximately 700 Protestant churches and over 1,000 Catholic churches are expected to close within the next few years throughout the Netherlands, due to low attendance.

* According to a recent Eurobarometer Poll, 19% of Spaniards, 24% of Danes, 26% of Slovenians, 27% of Germans and Belgians, 34% of Swedes, and 40% of the French, claim to not believe in “any sort of spirit, God, or life-force.” 

The Data

Belgium, Moldova, Ireland and Kosovo are omitted, presumably for a lack of statistically significant amounts of data. Vatican City is almost omitted but one presumes that this belief is near 100% among its couple thousand permanent residents.

Poland, Bosnia, and Turkey are the only countries on the map over 60%. 

The lowest rates are in Bulgaria (25%) and Albania (22.7%), presumably as legacies of communism in places where religious institutions didn't play a large role in their emergence as non-communist states, and where the juxtaposition of these states against their Muslim neighbors, made an emphasis on state imposed atheism more salient.

In Turkey this is due to an overwhelmingly Muslim population. In Bosnia, the 51% of the population that is Muslim brings up the average. Predominantly Muslim Kosovo is probably higher than the 65.9% of Bosnia, but due to its long membership of nominally secular communist Yugoslavia and a somewhat larger non-Muslim minority, is probably less than teh 91.8% of Turkey. 

Poland is predominantly Catholic and the only predominantly Christian country on the map over 60%. This makes sense as Catholicism played an important and recent role in its departure from its former Communist regime, less than half a century ago.

Below Poland, but above 50% are Iceland, Lithuania, Romania, Croatia, Switzerland, Austria, and Macedonia, with a mix of Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox adherents and a range of economic development and historical ties to the Western and Eastern economic blocks of the Cold War. And, more generally, there doesn't seem to be a strong Protestant, Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox skew to the likelihood of believing in life after death among Europeans in predominantly Christian countries. 

Belgium probably splits the difference between France (41.2%) and the Netherlands (34%) and is probably under 40%. 

Moldova probably splits the difference between Romania and Ukraine, which are also former Eastern block countries that were historically Eastern Orthodox, and is probably close to Romania than Ukraine and may be a bit over 50%.

I don't have a great intuition regarding where Ireland falls. It is probably under 60%, but probably higher than the U.K. (41.7%), as it is one of the more religious observant Christian countries in Europe, and Catholicism played a major role in sustaining Irish culture in the face of centuries of English rule in 1921 (now more than a century ago). It is probably in the high 40s or low 50s, percentage-wise.

Muslim v. Christian Approaches To Heresy

The very high rates in belief in life after death among Muslims is notable in light of a big difference in how Christianity and Islam have historically approached heresy at the individual level.

Christianity conceptualized heresy as an internal and subjective matter - not believing in the doctrinal truths of the established church.

Islam, in contrast, has focused on insisting that people outwardly comply with religious edicts concerning prayer, fasting, etc., without trying to punish or even really condemn people who are outwardly compliant with its demands even though subjectively, deep down, they have doubts or even outright don't believe in Islamic doctrines.

Yet, modern Islam has much higher rates of belief in the afterlife than modern European Christianity does, where the median rate of belief in the afterlife is probably half what it is among Muslims, if not a little lower.

Paces On The Path To Secular Humanism

Another possibility is that predominantly Islamic countries are simply on the same path towards secular humanism induced by modern scientific thinking and modern societal conditions as predominantly Christian countries, but are just less far along that path.

Many of the Islam driven doctrines and practices that are striking to us today in historically Christian countries, were once present in Christianity.

Witchcraft

Saudi Arabia is executing people for witchcraft now. Christians in Europe and North America were doing this into the 18th century. 

The last known execution for witchcraft in Europe was that of Anna Göldi in 1782 in Glarus, Switzerland, while in the British Isles, Janet Horne was the last person executed for witchcraft in 1727. The last known witchcraft trial in North America was held in Virginia in 1730, where a woman named Mary was convicted of using witchcraft to find lost items and sentenced to be whipped 39 times. There are still witchcraft persecutions (and lots of focus on fighting demons and exorcisms) among African Christians and animists.

Witchcraft prosecutions died, in part, because nobody believed that witchcraft was real any more.

Charging Interest

Islam prohibits the charging of interest now (although work around doctrines exist in Islamic finance to allow the equivalent of simple interest but not compound interest).

Interest was condemned not only in the Hebrew Bible, but also in the New Testament, in writings of the fathers of the Roman Catholic church during the Roman Empire, and by Luther and Calvin at least as late as the 16th century, although usury came to be redefined in Western Christianity as a bar only unfairly high interest rates and not charging interest at all, and became a minor issue for Christian clergy, with the established or formerly established Christian churches now relying on interest on their endowments to operate.

The gap in the focus on barring the charging of interest in the period between the Roman era and the Reformation, moreover, was as much due to the lack of banking activity entirely during the Middle Ages in Christendom, where feudalism prevailed, as it was due to a change in Christian religious doctrine in that time period, per se. 

Modesty

The Islamic world is known today for its greater expectations of modesty in how women dress, and its less equal treatment of women than in the modern Western world. But this too was recently a part of the Christian world, often with religious justification.

Certainly, there is a range of how this manifests within the Islamic world. Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan under the Taliban impose absurdly strict modestly standards. American Muslims and Muslims in Southeast Asia, in contrast, are still more strict than modern Americans and Western Europeans, but are far less extreme than Saudi Arabians.

European and American styles of dress for women were common in Afghanistan and Iran in the 1970s, but this shift was rolled back in Islamic revolutions.

Still, Victorian England, and most predominantly Christian countries in that era, were similar in standards of female modesty to many Islamic countries today. In the early 19th century, women were still wearing swim wear that looked suspiciously similar to "burkinis" in Europe and the U.S. Women were still getting arrested and held in contempt of court for wearing pants in the United States, in the early 1900s. 

Not wearing a skirt or dress to school, even at the collegiate level, was something that women got in trouble for doing up to the early 1960s in the U.S., and skirts are still part of mandatory school uniforms for girls in Japan, much of Asia, and some places in the British Commonwealth.

Marriage

Polygamy and cousin marriage ended much sooner in countries that became Christian than it did in the Islamic world where it is still common in much of the Middle East, West Asia, South Asia, and Africa, although polygamy is banned in both Turkey and Tunisia as a matter of secular law and is quite rare in most Islamic countries. And, cousin marriage is not common in much of the Islamic world.

Polygamy has been very rare, outside the early Mormons in the 19th century and some small splinter Mormon sects after that, in places that have been predominantly Christian at the time, although tolerance for mistresses and concubines who are not Christian wives, instead of, or in addition to, Christian wives, has varied in European and Latin American history, and to a lesser extent until the early 19th century especially in places where slavery was permitted in North America and the Caribbean. Polygamy was at least as common as it is in modern polygamist countries in the Mediterranean world and Europe in the pagan era, and remains common today among animists in Africa.

In one exception to the trend, divorce has been allowed in Islam from the outset, while it was banned entirely until the 16th century, and was virtually non-existent in most Christian countries until the 19th century (with divorces generally only available from the legislature). Complete divorce bans for Christians existed in Ireland and Italy until a quite late date, and this is still the case in the Philippines.

Women's Rights

Mary Wollstonecraft was famously battling for women's rights in the U.K. and Europe in the 18th century. The Married Women's Property Acts that formally gave married women many private law rights and ended coverture law that absorbed women's private law personalities into their husbands were mostly passed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

This is close to where women's rights in private law are today in many Islamic countries. Shi'ite Islamic communities have tended to be afford women greater rights than Sunni Islamic countries, although this may be more a matter of coincidence and local cultures and conditions than it is a matter of the doctrines of the religious sects, both of which vastly predate widespread democratic government.

Political Rights

The United States, at its independence in 1776, was one of the earliest and largest Republics since the fall of the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire (although the Swiss, Iceland, and some city states had it earlier). 

Constitutional monarchies afforded considerable democratic rights to a fairly narrow franchise of middle aged property owning white men in the U.K., but the British monarch had real power into the 19th century as the franchise was expanded by fits and starts there.

The French Revolution in 1789 was another early experiment in democratic government without a monarch, but this revolution was not stable with some form on monarchy persisting intermittently until 1870.

Most European and Latin American constitutional monarchies and republics arose in the late 19th century. The modal year at which European colonies with mostly non-European residents gained their independence in Africa and Asia was 1960, in most cases with Western style Republican government followed not many years after by military coups and dictatorships and multiple false starts before stable democratic government was established.

Much of the Islamic world was subject to European colonial rule for a long time. But outright strong monarchies now persist predominantly in the oil rich states of the Islamic world, mostly in the Middle East and North Africa. Morocco and Jordan are fairly close to where the British constitutional monarchy was at the time of the American Revolution. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey, and Indonesia have shed their monarchs for a while, but still struggle to make those republics stable multi-party democracies. The Middle East, generally, is still playing out the final acts of the fall of the Ottoman Empire which was formally dissolved with country lines redrawn after World War I, at a time when most of Europe and Latin America has republics. But World War II hit the reset button on democratic government in almost all of continental Europe, leading to the organization of new democratic regimes with the demise of most of them under fascism during World War II.

Eastern Europe and much of Africa and some of Latin America has Soviet style communist regimes until the fall end of the Cold War around 1989, and in some cases beyond, with holdouts like Cuba and Venezuela, and the post-communist era in these countries have only sometimes yielded multi-party democratic republics, and those that did persist still often have a political culture marked by authoritarian tendencies.

Women's Right To Vote

In the U.S. women's right to vote came late. The 19th Amendment, guaranteeing women's right to vote at the national level was adopted only in 1920. Unmarried women who owned property in New Jersey could and did cast ballots between 1776 and 1807. Beginning in 1869, women in Western territories won the right to vote. And in the decade leading up to the 19th Amendment’s passage, 23 states granted women full or partial voting rights through a series of successful campaigns.

The U.S. was neither first nor last in the women's right to vote. New Zealand was the first country to allow a wide cross-section of women to vote in national elections in 1893, followed by Australia in 1902, Finland in 1906, Norway in 1913, and Denmark (including Iceland) in 1915. Many European countries followed in 1917 and 1918. But women in Switzerland obtained the right to vote at federal level in 1971, and at local cantonal level between 1959 and 1972, except for Appenzell in 1989/1990.

Women has the right to vote in national elections in Afghanistan's constitutional monarchy, a predominantly Islamic country then and now, from 1919 to 1929.

Relative to the time that Islamic countries have become democratic republics, in the places where they have, women have gained the right to vote, if anything, sooner than they did in predominantly Christian countries, often from the outset.

Some Favorite Aphorisms

Salad kills!

Saudi Arabia is not our friend.

People who think that demons are real are dangerous.

Dogs are for soup.

Christianity is what Christians believe and do.

Behind every great fortune is a great crime.

The best is the enemy of the good.

There is always sky above the sky.

Light a candle, don't curse the darkness.

We have the Microsoft of constitutions.

Religion thrives when it is tied to a threatened culture.

The smaller the government, the more incompetent it is.

Men in suits are more dangerous than muggers.

The March 2025 Threat Assessment

The U.S. intelligence community has come out with its Trump 2.0 threat assessment:

The 2025 Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) is the Intelligence Community’s (IC) official, coordinated evaluation of an array of threats to U.S. citizens, the Homeland, and U.S. interests in the world. A diverse set of foreign actors are targeting U.S. health and safety, critical infrastructure, industries, wealth, and government. State adversaries and their proxies are also trying to weaken and displace U.S. economic and military power in their regions and across the globe.

Both state and nonstate actors pose multiple immediate threats to the Homeland and U.S. national interests. Terrorist and transnational criminal organizations are directly threatening our citizens. Cartels are largely responsible for the more than 52,000 U.S. deaths from synthetic opioids in the 12 months ending in October 2024 and helped facilitate the nearly three million illegal migrant arrivals in 2024, straining resources and putting U.S. communities at risk. A range of cyber and intelligence actors are targeting our wealth, critical infrastructure, telecom, and media. 

Nonstate groups are often enabled, both directly and indirectly, by state actors, such as China and India as sources of precursors and equipment for drug traffickers. State adversaries have weapons that can strike U.S. territory, or disable vital U.S. systems in space, for coercive aims or actual war. These threats reinforce each other, creating a vastly more complex and dangerous security environment.

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea—individually and collectively—are challenging U.S. interests in the world by attacking or threatening others in their regions, with both asymmetric and conventional hard power tactics, and promoting alternative systems to compete with the United States, primarily in trade, finance, and security. They seek to challenge the United States and other countries through deliberate campaigns to gain an advantage, while also trying to avoid direct war. Growing cooperation between and among these adversaries is increasing their fortitude against the United States, the potential for hostilities with any one of them to draw in another, and pressure on other global actors to choose sides.

Naturally, it omits the biggest threat of all, which is the threat posed by the Trump Administration from within. Surprisingly, it manages to still keep Russia and North Korea on the threat list, despite Trump's inclination to join their side. The mention of cyber is notable given that the administration has tried to stand down U.S. defenses on that front. The inclusion of India on the threat list is concerning and probably unwarranted.

Global Islamic Revival

When I was in college, more than thirty years ago, a leading theory was that the rise of literacy made Islamic texts directly accessible to ordinary people, while it had previously only been mediated through Islamic scholars and clergy who wrapped it in doctrines and interpretations that smoothed out its rough edges and more harsh readings, and allowed less intelligent people to lead Islamic religious movements. This review seems to borrow at least threads of these ideas.

When I've read the 21 page paper (followed by 11 pages of references) at greater length, I'll summarize its conclusions, if I have time to do so. The abstract, FWIW, is useless because it doesn't convey the trust of the paper's conclusions.

The Global Islamic Revival represents one of the most significant religious-political movements of the past half-century, transforming societies across multiple continents. What were its causes?

Existing scholarship tends to focus on local idiosyncrasies – Egypt’s economic stagnation, Iran’s religious authoritarianism, state weakness in the Sahel, Pakistani return migration from the Gulf, repression in Uzbekistan, resistance to secular schooling in Indonesia, and Saudi-funded Wahhabism.

While these country-level analyses are hugely valuable, they fail to explain why the revival occurred worldwide, even in prosperous countries like Qatar, Malaysia, and Britain. This review synthesizes the global literature on the Islamic Revival and its profound impacts on gender relations, presenting a novel theoretical framework to explain why modernization has strengthened rather than weakened religious authority and homogenisation across the Muslim world.

Alice Evans, "Global Islamic Revival" (2025).

The conclusion states:

The Global Islamic Revival represents one of the most significant religious-political transformations of the past half-century. Previous explanations have tended to focus on country-specific idiosyncrasies: economic frustration in Egypt, political legitimacy in Bangladesh, religious backlash in Central Asia, or Saudi funding in Indonesia. These are all valuable, but fail to explain global homogenisation. 

Once we recognise that the Islamic Revival occurred worldwide, we move to consider interactions with transnational factors - including the cultural evolution of Islamic theology, secular modernisation, rising prosperity, mass schooling, technological advances, Saudi funding and prestige. 

Contributing to this literature, my ‘Prestige-Piety Feedback Loop’ helps explain how modernization paradoxically amplified religious authority across diverse Muslim societies. 

Important questions remain unresolved. While Saudi Arabia successfully exported Salafism, will its recent shift towards secularisation cause similar emulation, or are religious movements now independently entrenched by the Prestige-Piety feedback loop? Further, why did printing press catalyse the Protestant Reformation, but online connectivity has not created similar effects in the Muslim world? Quite simply, why are conservatives winning?

From the body:

A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: THE PRESTIGE-PIETY FEEDBACK LOOP

Contributing to the rich literature on the Islamic Revival, I propose a complementary mechanism that resolves a central paradox: why modernization has strengthened rather than weakened religious authority across the Muslim world.

Any analysis of the Islamic revival must begin with Muslims' foundational belief that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger. The Quran is the word of God, while the Sunnah records the teachings and practices of Muhammad, whom all Muslim men should emulate. Any person who seeks status and social inclusion within the Islamic community thus becomes vulnerable to charges of ‘takfir’, justified by scripture. Modernization (rising prosperity, state capacity, mass education, technological advances, and increased freedom to practice religion) then enabled Muslims to deeply engage with the most prestigious knowledge: fiqh (jurisprudence) and akhlaq (ethics of conduct).

These structural changes enabled a self-reinforcing process I call the ‘Prestige-Piety Feedback Loop’.

Mass education and communication technologies facilitated unprecedented connectivity, radically improving understanding of jurisprudential Islam. Islamic preachers and believers embraced their religious duty to ‘command right and forbid wrong. Piety and gender segregation became primary markers of prestige, also rewarded in the afterlife. Politicians then sought legitimacy by expanding state funding for religious organizations, religious instruction, and sharia implementation, further institutionalizing religious authority.

Backpack Missiles?

This video (from "The Expanse") depicting a space marine whose backpack emits small guided missiles that destroy nearby targets, is actually a plausible future military technology.

These micro-missiles bear some similarity to the NAVAIR Spike missiles in the real world. This shoulder fired missile, which cost $5,000 each, weighs a little over 5 pounds (with the launcher plus missile at 10 pounds), is 25" long, is a little more than 2" in diameter, and has a range of about 2 miles. Its warhead has 1 pound of explosives. It is designed for use in urban warfare with less collateral damage and against unarmored vehicles, launched by infantry or smaller UAVs. It appears to have completed testing, but it isn't clear that it has been used in combat yet.

What Do I Want AI To Do For Me?

AI does many things I don't want it to do, and doesn't do other things that I'd like it to do for me.

What do I want AI to do for me?

1. Figure out how to presumptively tag incoming emails and put them in the right folders.
2. Establish a style guide for me on this blog, and in my word processor, that reflects that why that I end up formatting things as a default.
3. Automatically create citations in my standard format when a cite to articles on this blog.
4. Remove stories about things that I don't care about, like sports other than the Olympics and my home team making it to a championship, from my news feeds.
5. Combine all of the news stories from multiple sources about an event or topic into one story that eliminates duplication and highlights any conflicts in the accounts.
6. Sort new physics articles that I'm unlikely to be interested in from ones that I'm likely to want to review, based upon the articles that I bookmark each day.
7. Make a highly accurate initial guess about which bookmark folder I am going to put a page that I am bookmarking in.
8. Retroactively sort undifferentiated old bookmarks in my bookmarks folders into more specific folders that I create later.
9. Retroactively tag old blog posts based upon my current blog post tagging practices.
10. Automatically create tables of contents, tables of authorities, signature blocks, generic headings, certificates of compliance, and certificates of service in legal briefs.
11. Look on the Internet to see if a word being flagged as misspelled by a spell checker is actually a properly spelled word that simply isn't in my spelling dictionary.
12. Configure my word processor so that fonts and formatting options and other features that I don't actually use are suppressed from the relevant menus.
13. Scrape data I want from tables in multiple different kinds of file formats to give me the data I want, while omitting the data that I don't want.
14. Scour my client files, emails, and the Internet to find contact information for everyone I need to contact in connection with a case into a nice, need, contact list which is kept up to date.
15. Prepare rough drafts of time entries based upon files I've worked upon in word processing, legal research, e-filing systems, text messages, and my phone.
16. A healthcare provider website that does a more accurate job of figuring out what care I've received, when prescriptions are obsolete, and otherwise is less glitch prone.
17. Something that pulls all potential tax deductible expenses from my credit card records, merchant apps, and banking records.
18. Something that automatically populates my calendar with bill payment deadlines, trash and recycling and large item pickup days, medical and dental appointments, court deadlines, dates that I've promised to do things in emails, reminders of birthdays and anniversaries and other holidays with adequate warnings to prepare for them, the day that new episodes of TV shows and comics are released, family reunions, when packages are expected to arrive, and so on.
19. Something that takes my financial records and uses them to prepare draft budgets based upon my actual spending with suggestions for any necessary adjustments.
20. Collect data from my scale and health records and compile it into long term weight records.

Civilian Gun Ownership Rates

The state by state breakdown may be using a different methodology than the international one.

Seemingly, five U.S. states have lower gun ownership rates than England and Wales, which I am skeptical of, although the relative rates of gun ownership should be solid. Utah, an ultra conservative red state in the "cowboy west", remarkably, has the third lowest gun ownership rate.

 (Source)

Civilian gun ownership rates are surprisingly low in Switzerland, which is used when looking at gun control measures internationally as a country with widespread gun ownership, yet low crime.

Canada has gun ownership rates less than 30% of those of the U.S. 

Russia has gun ownership rates just barely more than 10% of those of the U.S.

 (Source)

In Europe, civilian gun ownership rates are highest in Scandinavia, especially rural Scandinavia, although it is below U.S. rates everywhere.

(Found on Facebook without a citation for its source, probably E.U. statistics prior to Brexit)

The Theoretical Foundations Of Republican Politics

People who understand the theoretical foundation of Republican policy positions tend to see it as too obvious (and obviously flawed) to mention. But this post is devoted to setting forth the core points of that theoretical foundation in the hope that a better understanding of it can point us towards better political tactics.

1. The Zero Sum Theory Of Employment Economics

Stylized Consensus Facts

The left and the right agree that the economic well-being of U.S. born white men without college educations relative to other workers in the U.S. economy has declined greatly, in relative terms, since at least 1970. They have captured almost none of the benefit of U.S. economic growth in the last 55 years, while women, non-white men, and college educated men, have all seen significant economic gains, relative to white men without college educations, over the last 55 years.

It is also widely agreed that the percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign born was at an all time low in 1970 and is now at or near an all time high, 55 years later. It is widely agreed there are a signifiant share of people in America (about 10 million in round numbers) who are not U.S. citizens and do not have legal immigration status, and that the undocumented immigrants who are in the labor force are predominantly less educated, less skilled workers. A significant number of U.S. born citizens, moreover, are children of undocumented immigrants.

And, it is widely agreed that a large share of good consumed in the United States are produced outside the United States with non-U.S. labor and imported to the U.S. There is also a significant off shored employees who provide services to people in the U.S., most notably, people who answer customer service telephone numbers for big U.S. businesses. The share of goods and services consumed in the U.S. that is produced with non-U.S. labor is much lower now than it was in the time period from roughly 1945 to 1970.

Zero Sum Thinking

Where Republicans (and right wing political movements generally) and Democrats (and centrists and left wing political movements generally) differ, is that the right believes that the labor market is well approximated by a zero sum model, in which the number of jobs in the economy is largely fixed.

If the labor market is a zero sum game, then all growth in non-white employee employment and pay comes at the expense of white employee employment and pay. Likewise, this theory implies that every improvement in female employment and pay comes at the expense of male employment and pay, that every job filled by someone who is not a U.S. citizen comes at the expense of a job that would otherwise be filled by a U.S. citizen, and that every off shored job that provides goods or services to the U.S. economy comes at the expense of a U.S. person's job.

In this theory, the Civil Rights movement, disparaged as "DEI", caused women and minorities to get jobs that white men would have gotten without government intervention, which they see as discrimination against white men. Therefore, it is imperative to right the horrible wrong that the Civil Rights movement has done to white men, who they feel that the pre-Civil Rights law economy demonstrated were actually more qualified than women and minorities.

In this theory, immigration laws that allow more immigration and illegal immigration have taken many millions of jobs away from native born Americans, as have the children of illegal immigrants whom they do not see as legitimate U.S. citizens since their citizenship was made possible by the illegal conduct of illegal immigrants. And, since most of these jobs are less skilled, this has come at the expense of non-college educated native born Americans. So, mass deportation of immigrants (legal and illegal), discouraging new immigration, and ending birthright citizenship all increase the supply of jobs available to native born Americans, especially those without college educations.

In this theory, free trade has made it economically feasible to off shore work that contributed to the U.S. economy and all of the off shored jobs would have otherwise filled by people in the U.S., so large tariffs are desirable in order to force firms to replace off shore workers with U.S. workers. And, again, off shored jobs tend to be disproportionately jobs that don't require college educations.

2. Moral collapse theory, and the belief that homosexuality and transgender identities are perverse and immoral choices.

Stylized Consensus Facts

Relative to the 1945-1970 time period, divorce rates have soared, marriage rates have fallen, couples are getting married later, a larger share of children are born out of wedlock, more children are being raised in single parent families, and people are having fewer children. Divorces are disproportionately sought by women. These trends have been particular stark for non-college educated men who are also experiencing economic stagnation.  This economic stagnation has led to economic pressures which, together with inferior social skills due to being less smart and educated, makes it more likely that they will be accused of child neglect and/or child abuse.

Non-college educated men, who have seen lower relative incomes and growing unemployment rates, also tend to end up having weaker relationships with their children when they are born out of wedlock or following a divorce, to have greater difficulty and willingness to pay child support and/or alimony, and to increasingly see marital assets reliably split 50-50 even though those marital assets were purchased disproportionately from their incomes.

The time period since 1970 has also been marked by the widespread increased availability of birth control pills and IUDs, by the legalization of abortion, by the rise of gay rights, and by a stark decline in the percentage of people in the U.S. who identify as Christian (in favor of both "nones" and non-Christian religions) as well as the percentage of people who attend church and otherwise actually make Christianity a part of their lives. It has also been accompanied by the near universal availability of unilateral "no fault" divorce, and laws that have given women with lower earnings more reliably larger child support and alimony awards, larger property division awards, and a greater ability to enforce those court orders. And, furthermore, women's rights outside the workforce have improved, making it easier for women to borrow money independently and receive higher education in fields previously reserved almost entirely for men like law and being medical doctors.

This is also a time period in which "war on poverty" and "Great Society" social programs have provided economic support to poor families, and especially, poor single mothers, first mostly black mothers, but increasingly non-college educated white mothers.

And, in the later part of this time period, access over the Internet to free hard core pornography of all kinds has become ubiquitous, when the First Amendment establishment clause has been enforced to make public schools and government more secular (such as removing prayer and the Ten Commandments from schools), when public schools have been more comfortable teaching scientific and historical discoveries at odds with Christian doctrine, and when school and public libraries have been more willing to shelve books that are arguably obscene or contrary to more restrictive conservative Christian belief systems.

Moral collapse theory

The right attributes most of these changes to moral collapse, and to feminism motivated changes in the law that have helped facilitate this moral collapse by undermining traditional values.

In this view, the law is making it too easy for women to have children out of wedlock, and making it too easy for women to shirk their marital obligations to their husbands by divorcing them and getting unfair benefits for doing so in female biased divorce settlements, and by restricting the number of children they have without the consent of their husbands or lovers. They also see abortion as murder. They see laws against marital rape as undermining the basic concept of marriage where a wife is obligated to have sex with her husband who is the head of the family and should be the ultimately decision maker on all questions in the marriage, in which wives should obey their husbands.

They feel that a transgender identity is contrary to common sense, isn't real, is a voluntary choice, and actually reflects a combination of perversion motivated fraud, and liberal brain washing. They feel that homosexuality is a voluntary choice that is sinful and perverse, is contrary to nature and God, and is disgusting. They see trend of the law treating homosexuality and transgender identity as legitimate as a symptom of the overall moral collapse in society that feminism has likewise facilitated.

In this worldview, gay rights, transgender rights, legalized abortion, birth control without a husband's permission, no fault divorce, prohibitions on marital rape, interpretations of the law that criminalize sexual assertiveness in pre-marital relationships, and greater independent economic rights of women, the decline of Christianity in general and in public institutions, and state intervention in the father-child relationship for abuse and neglect or to recognize an adolescent's or wife's autonomy, are all deviations from traditional values that are symptoms of a larger moral collapse in society.

This moral collapse is in this view the cause of these changes and needs to be addressed by returning society to a previously more implicit, Christian foundation.

In this view, the remedy to the fact that non-college educated men are having increasing difficulty getting married, staying married, keeping their kids and maintaining a relationship with them, and not being accused of rape, is to insist on making society more overtly Christian and to reinstate laws based upon a pre-1960s "traditional values" across the board.

3. Government is harmful theory.

Stylized Consensus Facts

Total nominal government spending has increased steadily. The scope and scale of the federal government, in particular, increased dramatically, first after the U.S. Civil War, modestly again during the Progressive era in the late 19th century and early 20th century, dramatically again during the Great Depression and World War II, and then significantly but less dramatically in the post-World War II to 1970s era. The scope and scale of the federal government far exceeds what was initially contemplated by the Founders and what the practical reality was for the first 80 years or so of the United States.

Government is harmful theory.

A third major pillar of right wing political theory is that government spending generates no value and is inherently less efficient and economically valuable than private sector spending, and that each government employee on average, has a net negative economic impact. And, taxes automatically reduce economic output.

In this view, the correct size of government is always to have less government spending and fewer government employees, with less taxation. So, indiscriminate tax cuts, spending cuts, and layoffs of government employees, especially at the federal level, is a good thing.

4. Education is overrated.

Stylized Consensus Facts

Educational attainment has steadily increased since World War II, with more people graduating from high school, more people attending college, more people graduating from college, and more people earning graduate and professional degrees. At first this was due to the GI Bill (which benefited veterans which a very large share of adult men young enough to consider college were after WWII, Korea, and Vietnam), and due to the creation of cheap state public universities made possible by high levels of economic prosperity at the time. Starting in the 1970s, women and minorities began to receive higher education at greatly increased levels, with women achieving something close to parity sometime in the early 1990s and continuing to have greater educational attainment than men since then.

Many jobs that previously did not require a certain level of formal educational attainment now do, either formally, or as a matter of practical reality. Almost all of the benefits of economic growth since 1970 in the U.S. economy has been captured by college educated people. College educated people have faced less competition from immigrants and off shoring than non-college educated people. Government has devoted far more resources to supporting higher education than vocational education such as apprenticeships in skilled trades.

Education is overrated.

The right sees the educational establishment from kindergarten through higher education as equally as much an institution for spreading left wing ideologies and propaganda, and undermining religion and traditional values, as it is an institution for actually providing value added knowledge. They see most educational requirements for work as artificial cultural and class driven barriers to entry rather than as being genuinely necessary to do the job. They believe that teachers and academics immorally twist what they teach to their own political agendas and self-interest that have little to do with truth and more to do with an agenda to undermine traditional values and to facilitate moral collapse. They will grudgingly acknowledge that sometimes education can be necessary (especially in STEM and in basic literacy), but that even there instruction is improperly undermining traditional values and religious beliefs based upon alleged academic knowledge that they do not trust. They see most teachers and professors as less competent and valuable than people who more directly produce economic value in our economy.

They see this as being motivated, especially, by a collective class effort of the upper middle class of college educated people to appropriate economic gains from the working class and middle class of non-college educated people and people with some college but not four year or greater degrees.

Conclusion

While there are other, less central, foundations of Republican politics, such as economic beliefs about where prices come from, energy policy, homelessness, crime, controlled substances, prostitution, and the political process, these four core theoretical foundations (all of which could be facially plausible, but don't bear out to be true with closer examination) which also impact some of these issues, at least in part, go a long way towards explaining right wing political stances.

Boeing Gets Air Force NGAD Contract Now Dubbed The F-47

Shown is a graphical artist rendering of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) Platform.  (U.S. Air Force graphic) 

Boeing has won an Air Force contract to develop the first ever sixth-generation fighter, dubbed the F-47, which is seen as critical to maintaining America’s air supremacy over China, President Donald Trump announced today.

The aerospace giant’s victory in the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program is a game-changer for Boeing, whose defense business has suffered billions of dollars in losses in recent years stemming from a series of ill-performing fixed-price contracts. In particular, the win gives Boeing the opportunity to build a new fighter jet at a time when its F/A-18 line is nearing closure, a major lifeline for the company’s St. Louis facility.

Boeing bested Lockheed Martin in the NGAD competition, ending Lockheed’s status as the sole prime contractor producing stealth fighters in the West — namely the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. A third competitor, Northrop Grumman, dropped out of the competition in 2023 but is expected to compete for a new Navy fighter jet.

In the decade since the existence of the program was revealed, little has come to light about the highly-secretive NGAD fighter, which is expected to enter service in the 2030s and replace the F-22. . . . 

Trump declined to disclose the value of the contract, stating that doing so would give away too much technology or the size of the fighter, which he described as “a good-sized plane.”

However, he hinted for the first time ever that the United States will consider selling “toned down” versions of the F-47 to “certain” allies — a break from how the F-47’s predecessor, the F-22, was barred from exports. (Trump also noted “We like to tone them down by about 10 percent, which probably makes sense, because someday maybe they’re not our allies.”)

NGAD X-planes have been flying since 2020, “flying hundreds of hours, testing cutting-edge concepts, and proving that we can push the envelope of technology with confidence,” Allvin said in a written statement. For that reason, the first F-47 produced during the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase of the contract will fly during Trump’s presidency, he added.

From Breaking Defense. 

For what it's worth, the notion that he can't disclose the value of the contract, because "doing so would give away too much technology or the size of the fighter," is utter poppycock and absurd (particularly given the fact that this number has already been disclosed publicly).

The 1945 blog offers more details:

F-47 Fighter. Image Credit: U.S. Air Force.

President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Boeing has won the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, unveiling the new sixth-generation stealth fighter designated the F-47.

-Boeing beat Lockheed Martin for the $20 billion contract. The F-47, operational secretly for five years, will replace the F-22 within the next decade.

-It promises groundbreaking stealth, Mach 2+ speeds, and capabilities to control autonomous drones (Collaborative Combat Aircraft).

-Its mission includes hypersonic weapons and teaming with the B-21 bomber. . . .

Once series production commences, each copy of the aircraft has been estimated to cost upwards of $300 million. Although, there was no update on the per airframe price as of this publication.

The NGAD program is included among other ambitious programs, including developing Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones with high degrees of autonomy, new jet engines, weapons, electronic warfare suites, sensors, networking systems, battle management capabilities, and more.

The F-47 will replace the F-22 Raptor in the next decade. The F-22 is still the best fighter in the world, but it first flew in 1997 and was adopted in 2005.

Doing the math, the $20 billion contract will be enough to buy about 67 F-47s, which seems small, compared both to the number of F-22s in service and to the much larger planned B-21 buy. Perhaps the plan is to open up the contract to competitive bidding once Boeing has sold enough of them to recoup its R&D costs.

Laser Guns And Alternatives To Them

Ukraine claims to be one of the first countries to have successfully developed a laser anti-aircraft weapon, according to a high-ranking military official.

The secretive device has reportedly been employed on the battlefield against low-flying targets, likely unmanned aerial vehicles like the Iranian-made Shahed drones. . . . The device is known as “Tryzub,” or trident in English, referencing the Ukrainian national symbol . . . . It is unclear to what extent the Ukrainian laser weapon may still be in an experimental phase. Although the military has claimed that it succeeded in shooting down enemy “aircraft,” it is entirely possible that there may be just a single system and its mobility may be limited.

Laser weapons can be rather bulky due to their need for power generation and cooling infrastructure. This is a big part of why many of the systems developed around the world are ship-based. However, experts said that a laser weapon system with the specifications that Ukraine reportedly has may be made to fit onto a truck bed.

Comparable weapons, such as the South Korean Skylight, which entered regular production last year and has a similar range of two to three kilometers, is housed in a container with a volume of 81 cubic meters and generates approximately 700°C heat during ten- to twenty-second impulses. It entered service in December 2024. . . . A month before South Korea’s laser weapon entered service, Japan revealed its own truck-based 10-kilowatt laser, which had been in development for more than four years.

Ukraine’s opponent, Russia, has also invested in laser technologies. In 2019, its Peresvet system was officially announced as having been deployed with five strategic missile divisions around the country. This weapon, however, is primarily meant to blind satellites in space rather than destroy drones much closer to Earth. Russia’s deputy prime minister in 2022 claimed that a new laser weapon, named Zadira, was deployed in Ukraine capable of destroying targets up to five kilometers away within five seconds, much more akin to the Tryzub that Ukraine now claims to have developed. The U.S. and Ukraine at the time said there was no indication such a system was actually in use by Russian forces.

Germany, Israel and the United States all also have near-operational, land-based laser weapons systems, while other countries like Turkey and Australia are also indigenously working on them.

There has been some speculation whether the Ukrainian laser might be a derivative of the British DragonFire system. Significant amounts of the British “lethal aid” for Ukraine remain classified “for both operational and commercial reasons,” as the defense ministry has stated. The U.K. government had teased its intention of sending its laser system to Ukraine in April 2024, before backtracking a month later and stating that it would not be included in the government’s 2024 aid package, UK Defence Journal reported. Leo Docherty, the British armed forces minister at the time, noted that the system was not yet ready, with the expected date for completion being 2027, a deadline that had been moved forward from 2033. Docherty’s statement left the door open for potentially sending the weapon to Ukraine once the development phase was complete. . . . 

“Laser directed-energy systems, in a military context, are predominantly at the proof of concept stage,” an industry insider, who asked to remain unnamed to discuss sensitive technologies, said. “These could, in theory, be fielded as an initial operating capability.” . . . Ukraine’s February defense expo showcasing domestic military developments, Defense Tech 2025, promised a special focus on lasers and anti-Shahed weapons in its promotional materials – descriptions that fit the Tryzub – alongside other cutting-edge technologies like swarming drones, lethal autonomous weapons and sea drones.

From Defense News. 

One of the biggest unknowns in the future of military technology and warfare is whether directed energy weapons like laser guns will become technological viable to use in actual military conflicts.

Laser weapons have lots of recommend them. 

The electricity necessary to take down one target with a laser is one to ten U.S. dollars. This is a tiny fraction of the cost of the ammunition that a Phalanx close in weapons system uses to destroy a single incoming missile or drone, which is, in turn, a fraction of the cost of a missile that can destroy an incoming missile or drone or low flying aircraft at short range. And, the batteries that provide that electricity can be recharged with generators in the field, reducing the logistics supply chain.

Rays of light travel a consistently straight path, unlike slug firing anti-air guns, and don't require expensive and complicated navigation systems like anti-air missiles.

A ray of light travels at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, which far exceeds the speed of any projectile or missile (the fastest hypersonic missiles in existence, in contrast, travel at up to about Mach 15 which is about 3 miles per second). 

But, the problem is that current state of the art military lasers need to continually hit the same point on a target for 10-20 seconds, and are only effective against targets whose explosive or fuel can be heated to the point of exploding, or can have their guidance systems or structure melted at 700º C. In theory, this could be greatly reduced simply by increasing the power of the laser, say, from 10 kW to 1000 kW, for example. But so far, for some reason, this hasn't been done.

Laser weapons are ineffective against purely kinetic energy weapons that take too much heat to melt quickly, such as a hypothetical tungsten metal rail gun needle.

Lasers weapons might ultimately be able to have a range of more than the 2000-3000 meters of the recently introduced South Korean laser weapon, but even with optimal engineering (to focus the beam to extreme levels) and power, no surface based laser weapon can strike beyond the line of sight, which is at most about 50 km on a clear day on flat terrain (like an ocean surface or plain), and much less to the extent that it is obstructed by mountains, hills, and forests. But line of sight for aircraft at normal cruising altitudes, can be considerably longer, because it isn't burdened to the same extent by the curvature of the Earth.

A variety of counter measures, like water vapor, smoke, or even highly reflective materials, would undermine the effectiveness of laser weapons.

With existing technology, laser guns are basically short range, primarily anti-air, active defense weapons that are useful, if they can get enough time on target to work, against income artillery rounds, small to medium drones, missiles, unguided rockets, and maybe even low flying helicopters and fixed wing aircraft, on a very cost effective basis.

If they work well, they are, essentially, a point defense system for a ship, a small military base, a small complex of buildings, or a small unit of ground forces, perhaps the size of a platoon or a company, in the field.

They might also be possible to use against lightly armored ground vehicles (tanker trucks are a particularly attractive target) and boats, or against critical components like radars or missile batteries on ships, multiple rocket launchers, or anti-aircraft weapons systems.

Realistically, laser guns wouldn't be able to get enough time on target in the near to medium term, even with major power improvements and realistic improvements in range, if used against tank rounds, bullets, or hypersonic missiles, against which some sort of Phalanx (a.k.a. C-RAM)/metal storm/Trophy kinetic interceptors, or anti-air missiles against hypersonic missiles, would be required.

But laser guns as active defenses could revolutionize active defenses for aircraft, potentially making it possible for them to shoot down income anti-aircraft missiles, rather than trying to dodge them with extreme maneuvers, or to thwart their guidance systems with electromagnetic jamming, decoys, or flares.

Laser guns on aircraft could also be used as one layer of active defenses for targets behind them, intercepting income drones and missiles, just as fighter aircraft from a variety of nations did when Iran launched a missile and drone attack on Israel not so long ago, using mostly air to air missiles (which are immensely expensive).

In that case, one of the key issues involved in deciding whether to use lasers or something else as an active defense system would be the weight of the laser gun and its power supply relative to the weight of some sort active defense interceptor like an anti-air to air missile missile, or just a Phalanx style anti-air slug thrower and its supply of ammunition. This in turn, would hinge largely on the energy density of the laser system's batteries or super-capacitors, something that research primarily driven by the race to develop better electric vehicle batteries has been improving rapidly.

Ship based active defense lasers, which have already entered service in the U.S. Navy on an experimental basis, might not change the number of incoming threats that are destroyed. The conflict between the U.S. Navy and the Houthis, Israel's Iron Dome, and the Ukraine War have all showed that active defenses against suicide drones, cruise missiles, and short to intermediate range ballistic missiles are remarkably effective already without lasers. 

But if lasers could be equally effective, this could matter a lot in the war of attrition. Now, each income target can cost the defender $5,000 to $4,000,000 (or more) to destroy, when some of the incoming drones cost $100-$1,000 each to make, incoming artillery rounds cost $500-$2000 each, and even advanced missiles that require the most expensive anti-air missiles to intercept cost $10,000 to $200,000 each. If those income threats can be destroyed for $1-1000 each, the cost of defending against large waves of these threats for sustained engagements can become sustainable in the long run.

Specifically, how much do interceptor missiles cost?

Large powerful laser guns mounted on ships or on land if powerful enough could also, in theory, intercept ICBMs and in the process greatly undermine the threat from nuclear missile attacks.

A handful of state of the art laser weapons are operational and have been deployed in small numbers, after achieving success in test runs against less than maximal threats. They may have even destroyed a small number of targets in real world military conflicts.

But so far, there isn't enough of a track record of success for military lasers in real world military conflict conditions or maximal threat tests to determine if these are really viable as active defenses, and if their overall effectiveness, cost, and size are competitive with other active defense systems.

Other Models For Military Laser Weapons

Far less ambitiously, and more realistically, less powerful lasers, and directed energy weapons that operate outside the visible light range, can be used to jam or fry guidance systems on drones and cruise missiles, and to dazzle and disrupt visual sensors on income threats and the eyes of manned aircraft pilots.

Finally, much lower powered lasers have been used for decades to guide missiles to their targets and improve the aim of soldiers with small arms, in each case, basically putting a little red dot (or infrared dot) on the intended point of impact.

A Moving Target

Needless to say, it isn't sufficient for military active defense lasers to merely reach parity with existing active defense technologies like anti-air missiles, because the alternative technologies are also being developed and improved rapidly.

For example, according to The War Zone:

BlueHalo has, for the first time, launched its Freedom Eagle-1 (FE-1) missile, being developed for the U.S. Army’s Next-Gen Counter-Uncrewed Aerial System (C-UAS) program. The new missile, intended to be relatively cheap to procure and able to be built rapidly in volume, is part of a new multi-pronged Army effort to better meet the proliferating drone threat head-on.

The successful live-fire demonstration of the FE-1 Controlled Test Vehicle (CTV) was only recently announced but took place from Jan. 16-18 this year, at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. It was conducted as part of the Next-Generation C-UAS Missile (NGCM) program, which aims to ramp up America’s munitions industrial base to meet rapidly evolving aerial threats, specifically drones. . . . 

The FE-1 launcher used for the Yuma tests was mounted on a flatbed trailer and was a simple cage-like construction, for a single missile, apparently intended only as a test rig. In the past, BlueHalo presented at least one concept for a four-round box-type launcher mounted on a pedestal atop a Stryker 8×8 wheeled armored fighting vehicle. . . .

Overall, it took BlueHalo 107 days to go from “paper design to first flight,” the company says. . . .

The FE-1 is specifically designed to counter larger drones, in Group 3 and above. The U.S. military defines Group 3 drones as weighing between 55 and 1,320 pounds, being able to fly at altitudes between 3,500 and 18,000 feet, and having top speeds of between 100 and 250 knots. 

To defeat threats such as these, the FE-1 is intended to have improved maneuverability, range, and rapid launch capabilities compared with current systems.

As well as drones, the FE-1 is intended to defeat various other “larger air threats,” and to be integrated with existing infrastructure and command and control (C2) systems.

NGCM is one of at least four U.S. Army counter-drone-related competitions that are now underway, and which also include efforts to field a handheld C-UAS system for soldiers in combat, as well as a counter-drone radar.

The idea, basically, is to build an anti-aircraft missile that is less powerful and have less range than one design to take out military helicopters and fighter jets, at a fraction of the cost, in order to deal with the war of attrition problem of being able to defeat inexpensive income threats only with very expensive missiles.

The cost of the FE-1, despite being marketed almost entirely based upon its claimed affordability, has apparently not yet been disclosed publicly. At $100,000 per missile, it is a big improvement over the 1981 vintage Stringer anti-aircraft missile, each of which costs almost $500,000, but it is hardly revolutionary. At $15,000 per missile, in contrast, it would be less expensive than any other air defense interceptor missile in existence, and even competitive with the Phalanx/C-RAM system which uses ammunition that costs half as much per target, but requires a heavy and expensive launching system and might be somewhat less effective at longer ranges.

But, a laser interceptor, like the Israel Iron Beam, which is scheduled to enter service late this year, to the extent that it is comparably effective to something like the FE-1 interceptor missile proposal, would cost just $3.50 per target, which would be vastly less expensive than any other way to respond to these threats, even if the laser itself and its power supply equipment is very expensive indeed. According to the link:

The system is designed to destroy short-range rockets, artillery, and mortar bombs, and is expected to be deployed in October 2025. It has a range of up to 10 km (6.2 mi), complementing the Iron Dome system which was designed to intercept missiles launched from a greater distance. In addition, the system could also intercept unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs; drones) at a cost of US$2-5 per interception. Iron Beam will constitute the fifth element of Israel's integrated missile defense system, in addition to Arrow 2, Arrow 3, David's Sling and Iron Dome. . . . 

Iron Beam uses a fiber laser to generate a laser beam to destroy an airborne target. Whether acting as a stand-alone system or with external cueing as part of an air-defense system, a threat is detected by a surveillance system and tracked by vehicle platforms in order to engage.

The problem for laser weapons is that air density disperses laser energy, with larger beams facing more atmospheric interference. Iron Beam's solution is to shoot hundreds of small, coin-sized beams at a target, which individually face less dispersion. When a beam is detected through a telescopic reflection to have hit the target, more beams are redirected to the spot to concentrate energy until it is destroyed.

In 2016, laser power levels were reported to be "tens of kilowatts". While official information is not available, a 2020 report said that Iron Beam was thought to have a maximum effective range of up to 7 km, and could destroy missiles, UAVs (drones), and mortar shells around four seconds after the twin high-energy fiber-optic lasers make contact with their target. In 2023, energy levels could reach 100 kW or more and the system could focus a beam to the diameter of a coin at a distance of 10 km (6.2 mi).

The main benefits of using a directed energy weapon over conventional missile interceptors are lower costs per shot, unlimited number of firings, lower operational costs, and less manpower. There is also no interceptor debris to fall on the area protected. . . . .

Disadvantages of energy weapons include the requirement for the beam to penetrate the atmosphere; clouds may prevent use. The beam must be held on the target, which may be spinning, for several seconds (the "dwell time") before enough energy is delivered to destroy it. This makes it difficult to stop a barrage of several missiles even if the system is effective, so that volley fire of interceptors continues to be required. There is also the possibility of rockets being sheathed in heat-resistant material to withstand an energy beam for longer. Energy weapons may be more effective against slower-flying drones, with relatively delicate rotors, control flaps, and guidance systems vulnerable to shorter laser attack, than fast rockets. This technology may also prove effective against paratroopers.

The cost of each interception is negligible, unlike expensive missile interceptors—a few dollars direct cost per shot, and around US $2,000 to cover all costs, against $100,000 to $150,000 per interceptor firing. However, setting up and deploying an energy weapon such as Iron Beam is costly; despite the low cost per firing, it may not be the most cost-efficient defense.

BlueHalo itself is hedging its bets (from the story about the FE-1 quoted above):

While Raytheon is well established in the field, BlueHalo is a relative upstart, but it is currently carving a niche as a specialist in innovative C-UAS solutions.

These also include directed-energy weapons, like the company’s LOCUST laser weapon system — which you can read more about here. Meanwhile, the BlueHalo SkyView system provides for autonomous detection and precision tracking of small drones, using radio-frequency (RF) technology. Titan, another RF-based C-UAS solution from the same company, can detect, track, and force drones to safely land without disrupting nearby communications or electronics.

However, its CEO's name, Jonathan Moneymaker, almost makes you wonder if this is all some big joke or counter-intelligence operation designed to bluff about U.S. military capabilities.

Simply put, some very diverse technological approaches to the emerging military problem of defending against massive waves of incoming cruise missiles and drones, are all racing forward and it is anybody's guess which of these will prove that it is the best solution (or which niches each approach will fill, if more than one approach proves viable) over the next two to ten years or so.

This outcome of this race will dramatically impact the character and large scale experience of warfare, possibly for decades or more.