Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

100:1 spending ratio is not a solution

By Dave Anderson:



The Israelis want to build and deploy a comprehensive projectile defense system that can shoot down anything bigger than a 40mm rifle launched grenade.  It is a technologically difficult project, but within the realm of possibility.  It has just one problem; the costs are enormous and the best way to beat the defense package is to overwhelm the system with plenty of cheap projectiles.  



Defense Tech has more information:

Yet, the IDF is reluctant to buy it, grumbling over the cost of each Iron Dome intercept, estimated at nearly $50,000, compared to the estimated $500 cost of a Palestinian rocket. Press reports put Iron Dome development costs at $250 million, with each battery costing about $50 million.






The Israeli government wants to buy thousands of Iron Dome interceptors. An improved defensive system lowers the cost of offensive war into southern Lebanon as the number of successful Hezbollah strikes would probably decrease. However Hezbollah has an economical counter-measure. It is to launch more cheap rockets to force the Israelis to spend $100 for every dollar Hezbollah spent to attack Israeli. That is not a sustainable spending ratio for Israeli even if the Iron Dome system is partnered with instant counter-battery capabilities. At that point, setting up rockets and firing them from a safe distance is a reasonable counter-measure to avoid incoming artillery two minutes later.


When the technological solution requires a 100:1 spending advantage, it is not much of a solution to a broad problem but a resource sink.

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