17 thoughts on “First Blog To Have Its Own Navy <i>And</i> Air Force?”

  1. This armament binge is not going to end happily. If we are so provocative, others may respond in kind, leading to a spiral of violence.

    Also, if we must go this route. Let’s keep it high tech. If the ChicagoBoyz have to turn themselves into a land army, I’m afraid we will not look to good at the end of our first cross-country, full-kit hike. At least I won’t.

  2. This ship was formerly Brazil’s Minas Gerais (ex HMAS Vengeance, ex HMS Vengeance). Crappy catapults (and she’s small), so I wouldn’t trust her for fixed wing. However, if we could get our hands on some surplus Harriers, or maybe just some good ol’ fashioned attack ‘copters we could properly rain destruction on our foes.

    I’d want a missile launching sub as well, so that we could be sneaky with our vicious plans for world domination. There’s got to be a soviet boomer out there for sale…

    As to an arms race, we will have to remain ten years ahead of everyone of everyone else, allowing us to enforce the Pax Chicagoana upon the rest of the blogosphere.

    Mwuhahaha!

  3. I think we should save our money until we can get something that shoots photon torpedos. Why shackle ourselves to yesterday’s technology?

    Or mabye we should hold out until we can get our hands on some of these. Even hypersonic metal darts plummeting from orbit won’t get through the invisible subatomic blister.

  4. Those Martian death rays may be closer than you think.

    I’ve been building the Work Breakdown Structure for our interplanetary-empire project, but I’m having trouble defining the steps between “purchase borderline-obsolete military hardware” and “overawe Earth’s entire population with superweapons.” The triple constraint of cost, schedule, and scope is another problem. Well, the schedule’s no sweat — we’re not in any great hurry; and I think we’re agreed on the scope (at least the part about keeping Earth under our thumbs — the rest of the Solar System is a later project phase). But the budget is something else.

  5. A bake sale perhaps? My mother makes some delicious Rice Krispy Treats. Worth $100 trillion? I don’t know, but they’re pretty damn good…

    I for one say we dispense with all this high-tech munitions jibba-jabba and proceed with Mojo plan #62897Z: the creation of a massive army of genetically engineered midget clone warriors. Biotech is cheap once you’ve got all the chemistry figured out. Far cheaper than the martian death ray. We could just use all the beer brewing equipment I was planning on purchasing anyways. I mean, brewing beer is pretty much the same thing as creating massive armies of 3 foot tall crazed killing machines, right?

    The only thing I haven’t figured out yet is one of the most important aspects of the plan. What color should our minions be: Smurf blue or Oompa Loompa orange? I believe our ultimate victory depends on this point.

  6. Captain, your suggestion is suggestive of the immortal passage from Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster: “But I will show the world that I can be its master. I will perfect my own race of people… A race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world!” In the ’50s “atomic” anything was cool. Now it’s biotech. Whatever. Different decade, same basic plan.

    As to the color of the little bastards, I say, make them battleship grey, like the basement floor of any random suburban pancake house. They’re expendable, dammit. They should know that. They should look it. They’re not men, they’re not even smurfs: They’re AMMO.

    Jay, that is pretty damn cool stuff. Those manta-shaped machines with their cobra-headed death-ray shooters are destined, yes destined, for actual manufacture some day. Anything that cool has to actually be made to work.

    Budget, schmudget. Once our yellow-pad planning for the Boyz global takeover reaches a certain stage, the merits of the approach will become obvious to all interested parties. Checkbooks will open. We’ll have our own skunk works. We’ll have our own Kaiser shipyard for intertialess-drive teardrop shaped space dreadnoughts. The world is just waiting for men of vision to emerge and provide the leadership this world so sorely needs.

  7. OK, this is a good point. We can compromise: battleship grey skin, feldgrau uniforms, and maroon and white insignia. (Now, Jay are we doing robot armies in addition to the midget clones? Since this is a blue sky war budget for now, I say for now we plan to buy everything.)

  8. Well, it’s like in the Manhattan Project, when they weren’t sure what method of isotope separation would be best. So they went ahead and scaled up all three laboratory methods to full-sized industries, and just used them all. We can have clones, robot armies, and Project Thor (crowbars from space).

    The robots should be able to function in a variety of environments, by the way, like the one in Zelazny’s Home is the Hangman, which after spending several years exploring the outer planets, flies back to Earth, splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico, swims the length of the Mississippi, and walks/tunnels its way across Wisconsin to get to the home of its inventor.

    Our project scope statement is becoming rather … substantial.

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