Trump’s Military Buildup Promises Little For The Working Grunts

The USS Gerald R. Ford, the new aircraft carrier President Donald Trump praised recently, is costing some $13 billion to build. That doesn’t count the airplanes. It’s the most expensive naval vessel in history, and it will fit easily into the “massive” military buildup Trump has demanded.

But at Camp Lejeune, the sprawling Marine Corps base where the working-class military lives, trains and deploys, there’s not enough money for Cpl. Edward L. Kiser, an anti-tank gunner, to train properly. Kiser, a 20-year-old from Butler, Pennsylvania, needs to be proficient at firing TOW missiles in the desperate heat of battle to kill enemy tanks about to overrun his position. “I’ve been in the Marine Corps two years, and I’ve only shot the thing one time,” said Kiser.

The U.S. soldiers and Marines confronting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are facing so-called “rag-tag” fighters equipped with tiny surveillance and attack drones, which let those forces hunt down Americans and kill them from the sky.

Read the full article at the Huffington Post.