No US carrier strike group in Western Pacific

[OIO]

CVN 71 aka USS Theodore Roosevelt retreated to Guam, to offload Coronavirus patients.


View attachment 620958

Roosevelt princess!

 

[opruh]

Lol, muricunts are currently conducting freedom to get infected by covid19 operation.

 

[ÇölKaplanı]

Don't pretending you are so kind, we all know about your Turkey people. By the way, get the fuxk out of Syria, stop killing the Syrian.

Yeah we are killing the soldiers of ASSad who kills his own people.

People are dying when coronavirus started. Instead of using more resources to fight virus, USN decide to complicate the matter by provocation sailing with carrier battle group near enemies shore to cause more resources committed to intercept it.

Who is the despicable? If taking about justice served, This scenario perfectly reflect it!

I'm not denying that, but still it is wrong for people here to make fun of it. What if the same thing happened at a Chinese carrier? Would that make it wrong?

 

[Viet]

Either the US sailors got it from Vietnamese mongrel who were transmitting more than STD or they already were infected in the US. The carriers are now out of business anyway after the Captain sounded the alarm and got himself dismissed.

Pls don’t bullshit here. There are over a million chinese that live in Vietnam. There are one hundred thousand that work in Vietnam. How do you not one of them work illegal in adults entertainment sector?

Besides the other carrier the USS Reagan has infections onboard too but had not been to Vietnam. How do you explain it?

The USS Theodore has aircraft visits from everywhere. Maybe the infection came from airmen.

 

[Beast]

I'm not denying that, but still it is wrong for people here to make fun of it. What if the same thing happened at a Chinese carrier? Would that make it wrong?

We are not making fun, we are returning the favor. U reap what u sow.

 

[Han Patriot]

Pls don’t bullshit here. There are over a million chinese that live in Vietnam. There are one hundred thousand that work in Vietnam. How do you not one of them work illegal in adults entertainment sector?

Besides the other carrier the USS Reagan has infections onboard too but had not been to Vietnam. How do you explain it?

The USS Theodore has aircraft visits from everywhere. Maybe the infection came from airmen.

Hundred thousand Chinks work in Vietnam? They are many ethnic Hoa controlling the economy, not sure about Chinese citizens though. As for the adult industry.... Lolol...enuff said. Its frigging obvious the sailors got it from Miss Saigon

 

[riscol]

The US Carrier which was at Vietnam most likely got it from Saigon prostitutes. The other Carrier got it from home how hard can it be to come to this conclusion? Mr Viet did post a Vietnamese Air Carrier with scanty dressed females serving male guests if you get my point.

 

[F-22Raptor]

You don't get to talk about delusional or wishful or any kind of thinking. You are a broken spambot devoid of thought. If you had any capacity for thought the irony of posting what you did and saying "wishful thinking" would have doubled you over from laughter, like it did everyone else who read that garbage.

Get one thing straight: every time one of your rust-buckets sails in China's dominion, it stays afloat by China's mercy. Try your luck and your entire navy becomes a collection of sunken mausoleums.

The US military has been operating in China’s near abroad for decades and all we hear from China is crying and warnings. We operate, at will.

The US military could cripple Chinese naval operations at the outset of any conflict if it chose. That graph I posted above is just of ground launched weapons. That doesn’t include the second outer layer of strike assets, which is exponentially larger. That second outer layer is the US Navy and Air Force. Four B-1 bombers alone can carry up to 96 LRASM missiles. LRASMs are the most advanced antiship cruise missiles in the world. Any PLAN operations will be stopped in it’s tracks.

And this doesn’t include US hypersonic assets that will be entering the region in the next several years. So you need to understand Poobah, that if China falls out of line it will be crushed into the face of the Earth. There’s a reason China hasn’t touched Taiwan in the last 70+ years, because China knows its an inferior force. It seems you need to come to grips with reality.

This is what i read: Assuming the US has access to South East Asia like Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia.
Without such access it remains a pipe dream.

WASHINGTON — A $1.6 billion defensive ring around Guam. Millions in new military funding for partner nations. A billion dollars for increased stockpiles of long-range weapons.

These are just some of the investments on a $20 billion wish list quietly submitted to Congress in recent weeks by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command head Adm. Phil Davidson and obtained by Defense News. The wish list was specifically requested by members of Congress who are eyeing it as the basis for a new Pacific-focused pot of money to deter Chinese military action in the region.

In the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress inserted language in Section 1253 requiring INDOPACOM to deliver by mid-March of this year a report detailing what the combatant command needs to fulfill the National Defense Strategy and maintain an edge over China.

The report included questions of force structure, security cooperation in the region and required infrastructure investments. Notably, that report was to come directly from Davidson and not through the Department of Defense — specifically to get a more unvarnished view of what the commander would like to have.

The report serves as the rollout of a new strategy, which Davidson appears to have branded as “Regain the Advantage.”


“Regain the Advantage is designed to persuade potential adversaries that any preemptive military action will be extremely costly and likely fail by projecting credible combat power at the time of crisis, and provides the President and Secretary of Defense with several flexible deterrent options to include full OPLAN [operation plan] execution, if it becomes necessary,” Davidson wrote.

But regaining that advantage won’t come cheap: The report comes with a request for $1.6 billion in additional funding suggestions for FY21 above what the Pentagon put in its February budget request, followed by a request for $18.46 billion from FY22-FY26 — a total that exceeds $20 billion in additional funds for the region, spread over a six-year period.

“This investment plan represents less than 1% of the DoD’s total obligation authority over the FYDP and provides the necessary resources to implement a strategy of deterrence by 2026,” Davidson stated in the unclassified executive summary.


A new Pacific fund

The report could provide a basis for the idea of a Pacific version of the European Deterrence Initiative, a special DoD fund for projects focused on deterring Russia from aggression in Europe. A Pacific Deterrence Initiative, or PDI, would be focused on dealing with China in the INDOPACOM region.


It’s an idea that has been circulating for several years but has steadily increased in popularity among congressional defense hawks. (Of note, Davidson directly compares the “Regain the Advantage" plan with the costs of the European Deterrence Initiative, or EDI, for which the Pentagon requested $4.5 billion in FY21.)

In a recent op-ed, Randall Schriver, who served as the Pentagon’s top Pacific policy official from 2018-2019, and Eric Sayers, who most recently served as special assistant to the commander of INDOPACOM, made a case for the PDI. They said it’s not just a budget exercise, but is “a broader strategic opportunity to message the U.S. commitment to the region.”

“An alignment of the Pentagon and Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill around this effort would be a real opportunity to begin to do in Asia what has already occurred in Europe in the last seven years,” they wrote. “The message the European Deterrence Initiative has sent NATO and Russia should be the same signal we want to send our Asian allies and partners as well as those in Beijing who have grown confident of their military capabilities.”

Speaking to Defense News, Sayers pushed hard on the idea that the 2153 report should provide the basis for what a PDI, starting in FY22, should look like. “Not every item in this package should be considered the answer, but it’s going to start a conversation that is long overdue,” Sayers said.

Right now, the plan to at least create a PDI appears to have important backing

In a March 24 letter to Davidson, Rep. Adam Smith, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, stated that he intends “to identify funding for an Indo-Pacific Reassurance Initiative in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021.” (The EDI was initially branded the European Reassurance Initiative under the Obama administration.)

In addition, HASC ranking member Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Tx., is “very interested in the idea” of an EDI-like fund for the Indo-Pacific region, according to a Congressional source.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has also been a vocal backer of the PDI idea, tweeting earlier this month that “The time for a Pacific Deterrence Initiative has come.”

"Congress is fired up on this, on both sides of the aisle. They have heard INDOPACOM is a priority for years now, but the Pentagon continues to fall short on providing any real answers,” Sayers said. "Section 1253 was an expression of bipartisan frustration with the Pentagon and an effort to bypass the system to ask INDOPACOM directly what they think they need.”

EDI money is a portion of a special Pentagon account known as overseas contingency operations, which is used in the event of war. However, money from the OCO account is allocated to the services to use individually. In the case of EDI, much of the money has been tagged to the Army; with a PDI, it is possible those dollars would be more focused on Navy and Air Force needs.


Arming Guam, building relationships

The funding identified by Davidson is broken into five broad categories:

• Joint force lethality;
• Force design and posture;
• Strengthen allies and partners;
• Exercises, experimentation and innovation; and
• Logistics and security enablers.

“Ultimately, the steps we take must convince our adversaries they simply cannot achieve their objectives with force,” Davidson wrote.

“This requires fielding an integrated Joint Force with precision-strike networks, particularly land-based anti-ship and anti-air capabilities along the First Island Chain; integrated air missile defense in the Second Island Chain; and an enhanced force posture that provides for dispersal, the ability to preserve regional stability, and if needed sustain combat operations,” he added.

Joint force lethality ($5.85 billion): Included in this section is what Davidson calls “my number one unfunded priority” — a 360-degree persistent and integrated air defense capability in Guam, with a $1.67 billion cost over six years.

“America’s day begins in Guam and is not only a location we must fight from, but we must also fight for — given future threats,” Davidson wrote.


Guam aside, the section includes integration of long-range precision fires such as the Navy’s Maritime Strike Tomahawk and the Air Force’s JASSM-ER weapon ($1 billion over six years); a high-frequency radar system based in Palau to detect air and surface targets ($185 million); a homeland defense radar in Hawaii to detect ballistic, cruise and hypersonic threats ($1 billion); and a space-based persistent radar system for tracking global threats ($1.9 billion).

The latter appears to be aligned with efforts already underway inside the Pentagon, such as the large constellation of systems pursued by the Space Development Agency.

The combatant command “requires highly survivable, precision-strike networks along the First Island Chain, featuring increased quantities of allied ground-based weapons,” Davidson wrote. “These networks are operationally decentralized and geographically dispersed along the archipelagos of the Western Pacific to deter and defend, by reversing any anti-access and aerial-denial (A2/AD) capabilities intended to limit U.S. freedom of action or access to vital waterways and airspace.”


Force design and posture ($5.85 billion): This section focuses on the infrastructure investments needed to spread the U.S. military around the region, breaking the longstanding network of large, centralized bases now seen as easy targets for China’s long-distance capabilities.

“It is not strategically prudent, nor operationally viable to physically concentrate on large, close-in bases that are highly vulnerable to a potential adversary’s strike capability,” Davidson wrote. “Forward-based, rotational joint forces are the most credible way to demonstrate U.S. commitment and resolve to potential adversaries, while simultaneously assuring allies and partners.”

In the unclassified summary, details are scarce, but funding primarily focuses on dispersal and pre-positioning facilities.

Strengthen allies and partners ($384 million): Spend any time at an event about INDOPACOM and it won’t take long for someone to point out that America’s longstanding advantage in the Pacific relies on a bedrock of alliances and partnerships in the region.

“Relationships represent important components of U.S. national power beyond our nation’s economic and military strength,” Davidson wrote. “Throughout the region, discussions with foreign national leaders always lead back to the role U.S. values play in shaping global behavior. This is evident based on the network of alliances and partnerships built across the Indo-Pacific over the last 75 years.”

There are two focus areas in this section: setting up a Mission Partner Environment, which uses “cloud-based technologies, integrated systems, and secure access controls to provide assured command, control, and communications (C3),” and the creation of three fusion centers to work with allies on specific tasks, including a counterterrorism cell already in the works with Singapore and others.


Exercises, experimentation and innovation ($2.87 billion): Essentially a pot of money to carry out major exercises across INDOPACOM and beyond, this category includes the use of test ranges in Alaska, Hawaii and California, among others.

“U.S. forces must be capable of fighting in highly contested environments against technologically advanced opponents, while also minimizing detection across domains,” Davidson wrote. “The Joint Force lacks the capacity to integrate service recommended weapons and capabilities into a warfighting concept that deters the adversary and puts us in a position to win. This challenge can only be met by conducting a series of high-end, multi-domain exercises with a continuous campaign of joint experimentation.”

Logistics and security enablers ($5.11 billion): This broad category captures everything else the command might need. Included here are logistic needs for “dispersal locations, airfield battle-damage, repair capabilities, and infrastructure for C4I, munitions generation, mobility processing, and fuel storage.”

It also includes a call to fully fund security cooperation requests under the Maritime Security Initiative, an effort launched in 2015. Fully funding those requests, Davidson claimed in his report, would “result in a 32 percent increase in theater security cooperation, forming the backbone of the ability to engage, posture, and develop partner nations.”

The document also asks that Joint Interagency Task Force West not be shut down, as it was scheduled to be in FY23. Davidson wrote that it provides access to countries without strong naval militaries.

Finally, the document requests a "restart of various counter-propaganda tools designed to target malign influence” to counter information operations in the region targeting the U.S. and its partners.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/...-deter-china-and-why-congress-may-approve-it/

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Pls don’t bullshit here. There are over a million chinese that live in Vietnam. There are one hundred thousand that work in Vietnam. How do you not one of them work illegal in adults entertainment sector?

because Vietnamese are poorer than Chinese.

 

[flowerfan2020]

Yeah we are killing the soldiers of ASSad who kills his own people.

Is their own country their rules. Turkey is not a clean either.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6223/turkey-isis-kurds

 

[Viet]

The US Carrier which was at Vietnam most likely got it from Saigon prostitutes. The other Carrier got it from home how hard can it be to come to this conclusion? Mr Viet did post a Vietnamese Air Carrier with scanty dressed females serving male guests if you get my point.

You are too funny than I thought.
No man they are the chicks from the carrier and cruiser. They are there to defend the freedom and liberty. They make sure chinese clowns don’t run amok.

 

[cochine]

because Vietnamese are poorer than Chinese.

probleme ís that chinese has invented thís covit19.

 

[Paul2]

The US military has been operating in China’s near abroad for decades and all we hear from China is crying and warnings. We operate, at will.


View attachment 621234

The US military could cripple Chinese naval operations at the outset of any conflict if it chose. That graph I posted above is just of ground launched weapons. That doesn’t include the second outer layer of strike assets, which is exponentially larger. That second outer layer is the US Navy and Air Force. Four B-1 bombers alone can carry up to 96 LRASM missiles. LRASMs are the most advanced antiship cruise missiles in the world. Any PLAN operations will be stopped in it’s tracks.

And this doesn’t include US hypersonic assets that will be entering the region in the next several years. So you need to understand Poobah, that if China falls out of line it will be crushed into the face of the Earth. There’s a reason China hasn’t touched Taiwan in the last 70+ years, because China knows its an inferior force. It seems you need to come to grips with reality.




WASHINGTON — A $1.6 billion defensive ring around Guam. Millions in new military funding for partner nations. A billion dollars for increased stockpiles of long-range weapons.

These are just some of the investments on a $20 billion wish list quietly submitted to Congress in recent weeks by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command head Adm. Phil Davidson and obtained by Defense News. The wish list was specifically requested by members of Congress who are eyeing it as the basis for a new Pacific-focused pot of money to deter Chinese military action in the region.

In the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress inserted language in Section 1253 requiring INDOPACOM to deliver by mid-March of this year a report detailing what the combatant command needs to fulfill the National Defense Strategy and maintain an edge over China.

The report included questions of force structure, security cooperation in the region and required infrastructure investments. Notably, that report was to come directly from Davidson and not through the Department of Defense — specifically to get a more unvarnished view of what the commander would like to have.

The report serves as the rollout of a new strategy, which Davidson appears to have branded as “Regain the Advantage.”


“Regain the Advantage is designed to persuade potential adversaries that any preemptive military action will be extremely costly and likely fail by projecting credible combat power at the time of crisis, and provides the President and Secretary of Defense with several flexible deterrent options to include full OPLAN [operation plan] execution, if it becomes necessary,” Davidson wrote.

But regaining that advantage won’t come cheap: The report comes with a request for $1.6 billion in additional funding suggestions for FY21 above what the Pentagon put in its February budget request, followed by a request for $18.46 billion from FY22-FY26 — a total that exceeds $20 billion in additional funds for the region, spread over a six-year period.

“This investment plan represents less than 1% of the DoD’s total obligation authority over the FYDP and provides the necessary resources to implement a strategy of deterrence by 2026,” Davidson stated in the unclassified executive summary.


A new Pacific fund

The report could provide a basis for the idea of a Pacific version of the European Deterrence Initiative, a special DoD fund for projects focused on deterring Russia from aggression in Europe. A Pacific Deterrence Initiative, or PDI, would be focused on dealing with China in the INDOPACOM region.


It’s an idea that has been circulating for several years but has steadily increased in popularity among congressional defense hawks. (Of note, Davidson directly compares the “Regain the Advantage" plan with the costs of the European Deterrence Initiative, or EDI, for which the Pentagon requested $4.5 billion in FY21.)

In a recent op-ed, Randall Schriver, who served as the Pentagon’s top Pacific policy official from 2018-2019, and Eric Sayers, who most recently served as special assistant to the commander of INDOPACOM, made a case for the PDI. They said it’s not just a budget exercise, but is “a broader strategic opportunity to message the U.S. commitment to the region.”

“An alignment of the Pentagon and Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill around this effort would be a real opportunity to begin to do in Asia what has already occurred in Europe in the last seven years,” they wrote. “The message the European Deterrence Initiative has sent NATO and Russia should be the same signal we want to send our Asian allies and partners as well as those in Beijing who have grown confident of their military capabilities.”

Speaking to Defense News, Sayers pushed hard on the idea that the 2153 report should provide the basis for what a PDI, starting in FY22, should look like. “Not every item in this package should be considered the answer, but it’s going to start a conversation that is long overdue,” Sayers said.

Right now, the plan to at least create a PDI appears to have important backing

In a March 24 letter to Davidson, Rep. Adam Smith, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, stated that he intends “to identify funding for an Indo-Pacific Reassurance Initiative in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021.” (The EDI was initially branded the European Reassurance Initiative under the Obama administration.)

In addition, HASC ranking member Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Tx., is “very interested in the idea” of an EDI-like fund for the Indo-Pacific region, according to a Congressional source.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has also been a vocal backer of the PDI idea, tweeting earlier this month that “The time for a Pacific Deterrence Initiative has come.”

"Congress is fired up on this, on both sides of the aisle. They have heard INDOPACOM is a priority for years now, but the Pentagon continues to fall short on providing any real answers,” Sayers said. "Section 1253 was an expression of bipartisan frustration with the Pentagon and an effort to bypass the system to ask INDOPACOM directly what they think they need.”

EDI money is a portion of a special Pentagon account known as overseas contingency operations, which is used in the event of war. However, money from the OCO account is allocated to the services to use individually. In the case of EDI, much of the money has been tagged to the Army; with a PDI, it is possible those dollars would be more focused on Navy and Air Force needs.


Arming Guam, building relationships

The funding identified by Davidson is broken into five broad categories:

• Joint force lethality;
• Force design and posture;
• Strengthen allies and partners;
• Exercises, experimentation and innovation; and
• Logistics and security enablers.

“Ultimately, the steps we take must convince our adversaries they simply cannot achieve their objectives with force,” Davidson wrote.

“This requires fielding an integrated Joint Force with precision-strike networks, particularly land-based anti-ship and anti-air capabilities along the First Island Chain; integrated air missile defense in the Second Island Chain; and an enhanced force posture that provides for dispersal, the ability to preserve regional stability, and if needed sustain combat operations,” he added.

Joint force lethality ($5.85 billion): Included in this section is what Davidson calls “my number one unfunded priority” — a 360-degree persistent and integrated air defense capability in Guam, with a $1.67 billion cost over six years.

“America’s day begins in Guam and is not only a location we must fight from, but we must also fight for — given future threats,” Davidson wrote.


Guam aside, the section includes integration of long-range precision fires such as the Navy’s Maritime Strike Tomahawk and the Air Force’s JASSM-ER weapon ($1 billion over six years); a high-frequency radar system based in Palau to detect air and surface targets ($185 million); a homeland defense radar in Hawaii to detect ballistic, cruise and hypersonic threats ($1 billion); and a space-based persistent radar system for tracking global threats ($1.9 billion).

The latter appears to be aligned with efforts already underway inside the Pentagon, such as the large constellation of systems pursued by the Space Development Agency.

The combatant command “requires highly survivable, precision-strike networks along the First Island Chain, featuring increased quantities of allied ground-based weapons,” Davidson wrote. “These networks are operationally decentralized and geographically dispersed along the archipelagos of the Western Pacific to deter and defend, by reversing any anti-access and aerial-denial (A2/AD) capabilities intended to limit U.S. freedom of action or access to vital waterways and airspace.”


Force design and posture ($5.85 billion): This section focuses on the infrastructure investments needed to spread the U.S. military around the region, breaking the longstanding network of large, centralized bases now seen as easy targets for China’s long-distance capabilities.

“It is not strategically prudent, nor operationally viable to physically concentrate on large, close-in bases that are highly vulnerable to a potential adversary’s strike capability,” Davidson wrote. “Forward-based, rotational joint forces are the most credible way to demonstrate U.S. commitment and resolve to potential adversaries, while simultaneously assuring allies and partners.”

In the unclassified summary, details are scarce, but funding primarily focuses on dispersal and pre-positioning facilities.

Strengthen allies and partners ($384 million): Spend any time at an event about INDOPACOM and it won’t take long for someone to point out that America’s longstanding advantage in the Pacific relies on a bedrock of alliances and partnerships in the region.

“Relationships represent important components of U.S. national power beyond our nation’s economic and military strength,” Davidson wrote. “Throughout the region, discussions with foreign national leaders always lead back to the role U.S. values play in shaping global behavior. This is evident based on the network of alliances and partnerships built across the Indo-Pacific over the last 75 years.”

There are two focus areas in this section: setting up a Mission Partner Environment, which uses “cloud-based technologies, integrated systems, and secure access controls to provide assured command, control, and communications (C3),” and the creation of three fusion centers to work with allies on specific tasks, including a counterterrorism cell already in the works with Singapore and others.


Exercises, experimentation and innovation ($2.87 billion): Essentially a pot of money to carry out major exercises across INDOPACOM and beyond, this category includes the use of test ranges in Alaska, Hawaii and California, among others.

“U.S. forces must be capable of fighting in highly contested environments against technologically advanced opponents, while also minimizing detection across domains,” Davidson wrote. “The Joint Force lacks the capacity to integrate service recommended weapons and capabilities into a warfighting concept that deters the adversary and puts us in a position to win. This challenge can only be met by conducting a series of high-end, multi-domain exercises with a continuous campaign of joint experimentation.”

Logistics and security enablers ($5.11 billion): This broad category captures everything else the command might need. Included here are logistic needs for “dispersal locations, airfield battle-damage, repair capabilities, and infrastructure for C4I, munitions generation, mobility processing, and fuel storage.”

It also includes a call to fully fund security cooperation requests under the Maritime Security Initiative, an effort launched in 2015. Fully funding those requests, Davidson claimed in his report, would “result in a 32 percent increase in theater security cooperation, forming the backbone of the ability to engage, posture, and develop partner nations.”

The document also asks that Joint Interagency Task Force West not be shut down, as it was scheduled to be in FY23. Davidson wrote that it provides access to countries without strong naval militaries.

Finally, the document requests a "restart of various counter-propaganda tools designed to target malign influence” to counter information operations in the region targeting the U.S. and its partners.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/...-deter-china-and-why-congress-may-approve-it/

Do you know that the cost of " pivot to Asia" to US navy is a complete slaughter of marine corps?

Davidson and Acquilino are steering the navy into making a massive cut to offensive budget over the next decade, and throwing near $300B to defence contractors in hopes to restore a proper blue water navy capacity, with accent on standoff defensive weaponry.

My prognosis is however that this all will end like every other grand defence procurement project of the last few decades: a big fail.

 

[riscol]

He will be disappointed when Taiwan rejoins China again. Maybe that is the criteria for believing that the US is still the strongest in the Western Pacific as long Taiwan is still not under the Communist Party ruling

 

[F-22Raptor]

Do you know that the cost of " pivot to Asia" to US navy is a complete slaughter of marine corps?

Davidson and Acquilino are steering the navy into making a massive cut to offensive budget over the next decade, and throwing near $300B to defence contractors in hopes to restore a proper blue water navy capacity, with accent on standoff defensive weaponry.

My prognosis is however that this all will end like every other grand defence procurement project of the last few decades: a big fail.

That's not even close to being accurate.