2) Do you really think China is honest with its military budget? Or Russia for that matter? Also, remember the story about using a pencil vs. spending a million dollars to invent the ballpoint pen?
I mean, arguing against excessive military spending isn't really in my own personal best interest; I work for one of the big defense contractors, and my job is a lot cushier than it would be if I was working in the real private sector, but seriously this has gotten a bit out of hand.
Daedalus on
0
Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
edited July 2009
I'm really torn on how to feel about this one--on one hand, I'm glad that they're not throwing money away, on the other hand, my dad might lose his job. :?
I'm really torn on how to feel about this one--on one hand, I'm glad that they're not throwing money away, on the other hand, my dad might lose his job. :?
Like I said, I'm in a similar boat. When FCS got canned everyone around me had a mini-heart-attack. But look at it this way: remember the USSR? They overspent on their military and then everyone was out of a job. If your dad loses his job, he can probably find another one; he's got education and experience or he wouldn't be on it in the first place. If we go over the same precipice that the Soviets did, he and a lot more people will lose their jobs and won't find another for a good long while.
Even if China's military is growing, so what? China does not pose a credible threat to the U.S due to the immense distance. The United States is also not alone. If China started a war with us they would start a war against all of NATO. The fact is that the U.S does not need to be the strongest country in the world. If we spent more time and energy building up our relations with our allies and developing countries that would make us safer. Even if China could get a bigger military then us they could never get a larger one then all of NATO, let alone the rest of the EU, India, Korea, and Japan.
I've talked to pilots about what they think about the SU-35. They think it's a viable contender against America's jets. They don't think it would utterly destroy anything it came up against. Hey look at the value of anecdotal evidence!
3) The Chinese navy is in no way formidible even compared to non-US navies. (No navy is really formidible compared to the US navy; we're orders of magnitude larger and more well equipped.)
Except they're building like 20 ships a year and you're building like 2. Not actually, I haven't seen the numbers recently.
Plus, American anti-shipping capability is actually pretty bad. All those fancy cruisers and their anti-ship load out is 8 Harpoons. That's the same as a Halifax class frigate. Halifax, you know, from Canada.
That leaves the submarine fleet and air power, but China also has submarines in large quantities and are building tons more, so...
But I guess all of this is moot because a full scale engagement between the PLAN and USN is going to never happen.
3) The Chinese navy is in no way formidible even compared to non-US navies. (No navy is really formidible compared to the US navy; we're orders of magnitude larger and more well equipped.)
Except they're building like 20 ships a year and you're building like 2. Not actually, I haven't seen the numbers recently.
Plus, American anti-shipping capability is actually pretty bad. All those fancy cruisers and their anti-ship load out is 8 Harpoons. That's the same as a Halifax class frigate. Halifax, you know, from Canada.
That leaves the submarine fleet and air power, but China also has submarines in large quantities and are building tons more, so...
But I guess all of this is moot because a full scale engagement between the PLAN and USN is going to never happen.
2? Ha! We're dumping tons of money into the fuckers; we've got the LCS, (which is a money pit), we've got the new Ford-class aircraft carrier, (which is a minor upgrade from our existing eleven supercarriers), we've got the America-class AAS, we've got our crazy-ass next generation destroyer and we're building the older destroyers too because the navy can't really decide what the hell it wants. We're building all kinds of shit.
Which is mostly pointless, because a full scale engagement between the PLAN and the USN is not going to happen, and if it did it would turn into a full nuclear exchange within a matter of hours, at which point nobody cares how many boats are in the water.
edit: and our anti-shipping capability went down because wars between superpowers don't happen anymore. You can thank Werner von Braun for that. Our ships need to be good at the wars that we actually fight, which involve precision strikes against ground targets in poverty-stricken third world shithole nations.
I'm glad they did this, my program would be screwed if this budget got vetoed. The fact of it is, for every F-22 gets built that's less for programs we need and I'm tired of good programs getting funding cut and overrunning as a result.
Mishra on
"Give a man a fire, he's warm for the night. Set a man on fire he's warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett
2? Ha! We're dumping tons of money into the fuckers; we've got the LCS, (which is a money pit), we've got the new Ford-class aircraft carrier, (which is a minor upgrade from our existing eleven supercarriers), we've got the America-class AAS, we've got our crazy-ass next generation destroyer and we're building the older destroyers too because the navy can't really decide what the hell it wants. We're building all kinds of shit.
I did claim those numbers were just made up for hyperbole. Point stands.
Off the top of my head though you're going to be building at a rate of about 2 LCS, an LPD, a Virginia (possibly expanded to 2) and a DD yearly for the near future (in terms of fighting ships).
America won't come into service for a while and your big-deck carriers have a huge lead time, so I'll discount them; no one can touch your power projection anyways.
That is still far less than the rate the PLAN is building. Moreover, at your current build rate, the Navy is going to remain mostly the size with the retirement of old ships (the Perry class is on its last legs) whereas the PLAN is expanding at a rapid rate.
TSAT has indeed been cut. My directorate was telling Space Command to ditch the program years ago, but no one listened. I believe SBIRS is the most overrunning program in the DoD by percentage of original budget, they're at roughly 500%. NY Times did an article about 2 years ago on the Top 5 over running Military programs and 3 were from SMC, my old base. God I love the space business.
Mishra on
"Give a man a fire, he's warm for the night. Set a man on fire he's warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett
2? Ha! We're dumping tons of money into the fuckers; we've got the LCS, (which is a money pit), we've got the new Ford-class aircraft carrier, (which is a minor upgrade from our existing eleven supercarriers), we've got the America-class AAS, we've got our crazy-ass next generation destroyer and we're building the older destroyers too because the navy can't really decide what the hell it wants. We're building all kinds of shit.
I did claim those numbers were just made up for hyperbole. Point stands.
Off the top of my head though you're going to be building at a rate of about 2 LCS, an LPD, a Virginia (possibly expanded to 2) and a DD yearly for the near future (in terms of fighting ships).
America won't come into service for a while and your big-deck carriers have a huge lead time, so I'll discount them; no one can touch your power projection anyways.
That is still far less than the rate the PLAN is building. Moreover, at your current build rate, the Navy is going to remain mostly the size with the retirement of old ships (the Perry class is on its last legs) whereas the PLAN is expanding at a rapid rate.
So, you're losing this money pissing contest.
The makeup of the ships is important though. The PLAN has 9 total nuclear vessels, all submarines. The US Navy has 53 Nuclear attack submarines. The PLAN is currently building 3 Conventional Aircraft carriers, to be deployed(estimated) in around 2015. The US Navy has 11 Nuclear Aircraft Carriers currently and is building 3 more. The fact that our numbers are staying somewhat the same but we're getting more advance while they're building a bunch of pea shooters doesn't really matter.
Khavall on
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South hostI obey without questionRegistered Userregular
When you look at the cost though, its advantages look quite a bit less.
I think Japan has some souped up F-16s, but don't quote me on that.
But at least producing modified F-16's and F-15's and selling them to other countries would alllow our manufacturing capability to not diminish, which I keep hearing as a justification for more F-22's and F-35's. And I can't find it right now, but I swear WaPo or NYTimes had an article about how countries either cannot afford or can't get the purchasing rights for the F-35 and F-22, so sales are decreasing because of that.
And for domestic uses, even though the performance increase isn't that great, it would allow old airframes to be replaced without as much money being spent.
South host on
Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
The makeup of the ships is important though. The PLAN has 9 total nuclear vessels, all submarines. The US Navy has 53 Nuclear attack submarines. The PLAN is currently building 3 Conventional Aircraft carriers, to be deployed(estimated) in around 2015. The US Navy has 11 Nuclear Aircraft Carriers currently and is building 3 more. The fact that our numbers are staying somewhat the same but we're getting more advance while they're building a bunch of pea shooters doesn't really matter.
Nuclear in terms of submarines is only important because it allows them to stay submerged longer and have unrestricted range. If you're in China's territorial waters, that doesn't count for much; diesel boats aren't any less quiet. Besides that, Chinese submarines have demonstrated a consistent ability to sneak up on your surface ships.
They also don't need carriers when they can have airfields on land, and it's not like Hornets are the best dogfighters in the world either.
I don't really feel like going on, but basically they're building for a fight on their waters, and in that respect it'll be a tough call. Your fleet will come out with a hell of a bloody nose either way though.
All of which is going to pale in comparison to the fact that both economies will be in the shitters after a confrontation like that.
The makeup of the ships is important though. The PLAN has 9 total nuclear vessels, all submarines. The US Navy has 53 Nuclear attack submarines. The PLAN is currently building 3 Conventional Aircraft carriers, to be deployed(estimated) in around 2015. The US Navy has 11 Nuclear Aircraft Carriers currently and is building 3 more. The fact that our numbers are staying somewhat the same but we're getting more advance while they're building a bunch of pea shooters doesn't really matter.
Nuclear in terms of submarines is only important because it allows them to stay submerged longer and have unrestricted range. If you're in China's territorial waters, that doesn't count for much; diesel boats aren't any less quiet. Besides that, Chinese submarines have demonstrated a consistent ability to sneak up on your surface ships.
They also don't need carriers when they can have airfields on land, and it's not like Hornets are the best dogfighters in the world either.
I don't really feel like going on, but basically they're building for a fight on their waters, and in that respect it'll be a tough call. Your fleet will come out with a hell of a bloody nose either way though.
All of which is going to pale in comparison to the fact that both economies will be in the shitters after a confrontation like that.
Air fields would be one of the first targets of any cruise missile strikes, which can be made from ships 1500 miles away via plane launched cruise missiles.
China's military isn't a threat to the US military, even if there was a war, there's no reason to spend 5 time as much as they do.
That's not even really the issue. If the US had one tenth the military it does and still had nukes, there would be no threat of attack from another world power. Economies are too intertwined, it's not a realistic scenario.
Is the Joint Strike thingy the laser plane they were bellyachin about?
JSF ultimately made the F-35, I don't know what the program is doing now that it's been developed. The ABL, or "Air Based Laser" is the laser plane.
Also on the China v. US thing, I mean... As any strategy game will tell you a completely defensive military does not a war win.
Yeah, but reality tells us that a completely defensive military gives us Vietnam.
Strategy games are biased towards attack with deliberately weak defenses. In reality, any good weapon can be 3x more effective when you don't have to take it on the offensive. (that number I'm pulling out of my ass based on a bit of trivia about how you need about 3x the troop strength of a dug in position to take it, barring air/arty etc.)
The makeup of the ships is important though. The PLAN has 9 total nuclear vessels, all submarines. The US Navy has 53 Nuclear attack submarines. The PLAN is currently building 3 Conventional Aircraft carriers, to be deployed(estimated) in around 2015. The US Navy has 11 Nuclear Aircraft Carriers currently and is building 3 more. The fact that our numbers are staying somewhat the same but we're getting more advance while they're building a bunch of pea shooters doesn't really matter.
Nuclear in terms of submarines is only important because it allows them to stay submerged longer and have unrestricted range. If you're in China's territorial waters, that doesn't count for much; diesel boats aren't any less quiet. Besides that, Chinese submarines have demonstrated a consistent ability to sneak up on your surface ships.
They also don't need carriers when they can have airfields on land, and it's not like Hornets are the best dogfighters in the world either.
I don't really feel like going on, but basically they're building for a fight on their waters, and in that respect it'll be a tough call. Your fleet will come out with a hell of a bloody nose either way though.
All of which is going to pale in comparison to the fact that both economies will be in the shitters after a confrontation like that.
Air fields would be one of the first targets of any cruise missile strikes, which can be made from ships 1500 miles away via plane launched cruise missiles.
China's military isn't a threat to the US military, even if there was a war, there's no reason to spend 5 time as much as they do.
That's not even really the issue. If the US had one tenth the military it does and still had nukes, there would be no threat of attack from another world power. Economies are too intertwined, it's not a realistic scenario.
Your assuming that leaders will always choose what is best for their country rather than what is best for themselves. If a choice for a leader was war and economic disaster or peace and giving up power what choice do you think they would make?
Mr. Pokeylope on
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
3) The Chinese navy is in no way formidible even compared to non-US navies. (No navy is really formidible compared to the US navy; we're orders of magnitude larger and more well equipped.)
Except they're building like 20 ships a year and you're building like 2. Not actually, I haven't seen the numbers recently.
Plus, American anti-shipping capability is actually pretty bad. All those fancy cruisers and their anti-ship load out is 8 Harpoons. That's the same as a Halifax class frigate. Halifax, you know, from Canada.
That leaves the submarine fleet and air power, but China also has submarines in large quantities and are building tons more, so...
But I guess all of this is moot because a full scale engagement between the PLAN and USN is going to never happen.
China's submarines are diesel POSes that we can spot and kill at many KM out, well before they see us.
kaliyama on
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
The makeup of the ships is important though. The PLAN has 9 total nuclear vessels, all submarines. The US Navy has 53 Nuclear attack submarines. The PLAN is currently building 3 Conventional Aircraft carriers, to be deployed(estimated) in around 2015. The US Navy has 11 Nuclear Aircraft Carriers currently and is building 3 more. The fact that our numbers are staying somewhat the same but we're getting more advance while they're building a bunch of pea shooters doesn't really matter.
Nuclear in terms of submarines is only important because it allows them to stay submerged longer and have unrestricted range. If you're in China's territorial waters, that doesn't count for much; diesel boats aren't any less quiet. Besides that, Chinese submarines have demonstrated a consistent ability to sneak up on your surface ships.
They also don't need carriers when they can have airfields on land, and it's not like Hornets are the best dogfighters in the world either.
I don't really feel like going on, but basically they're building for a fight on their waters, and in that respect it'll be a tough call. Your fleet will come out with a hell of a bloody nose either way though.
All of which is going to pale in comparison to the fact that both economies will be in the shitters after a confrontation like that.
Air fields would be one of the first targets of any cruise missile strikes, which can be made from ships 1500 miles away via plane launched cruise missiles.
China's military isn't a threat to the US military, even if there was a war, there's no reason to spend 5 time as much as they do.
That's not even really the issue. If the US had one tenth the military it does and still had nukes, there would be no threat of attack from another world power. Economies are too intertwined, it's not a realistic scenario.
Your assuming that leaders will always choose what is best for their country rather than what is best for themselves. If a choice for a leader was war and economic disaster or peace and giving up power what choice do you think they would make?
A tougher question than you think. The closest contemporaneous example is the Soviet Union, who voluntarily folded, along with their satellite states' regimes. It really depends if there's a structure and bureaucracy around the state, or it's a one-man sort of junta. The latter category hinges on personal politics os no one is willing to give away the store when their bossman goes nuts - see Iraq, North Korea, Turkmenistan, contra the USSR, GDR, Mozambique, South Africa, the Congo.
The PRC since Deng Xiaopeng has relinquished authority - economic, not political - since the 1980s in an attempt to avoid the decline of the communist party. Mostly, it seems to have worked.
3) The Chinese navy is in no way formidible even compared to non-US navies. (No navy is really formidible compared to the US navy; we're orders of magnitude larger and more well equipped.)
Except they're building like 20 ships a year and you're building like 2. Not actually, I haven't seen the numbers recently.
Plus, American anti-shipping capability is actually pretty bad. All those fancy cruisers and their anti-ship load out is 8 Harpoons. That's the same as a Halifax class frigate. Halifax, you know, from Canada.
That leaves the submarine fleet and air power, but China also has submarines in large quantities and are building tons more, so...
But I guess all of this is moot because a full scale engagement between the PLAN and USN is going to never happen.
China's submarines are diesel POSes that we can spot and kill at many KM out, well before they see us.
There have been two instances of a Chinese sub surfacing near a US ship. Once a sub popped up in the middle of a carrier group. There's some speculation that it didn't actually sneak up on the carrier group, but that it surfaced because it had one of the carrier group's sub following it and pinging it, but it's entirely possible that it did just float up to them unnoticed.
Diesel subs running on batteries are quiet as fuck. They are much less of a threat when your fleet isn't sitting in one place within viewing distance of a landmass though. I read a really great article about carriers and it concluded that the greatest threat to a carrier group was a sub with wake homing torpedos, and I haven't read anything to suggest otherwise. It would almost certainly be a suicide mission, as once they knew the sub was there they would be out for blood, but it only takes one good torpedo.
Is the Joint Strike thingy the laser plane they were bellyachin about?
JSF ultimately made the F-35, I don't know what the program is doing now that it's been developed. The ABL, or "Air Based Laser" is the laser plane.
Also on the China v. US thing, I mean... As any strategy game will tell you a completely defensive military does not a war win.
Yeah, but reality tells us that a completely defensive military gives us Vietnam.
Strategy games are biased towards attack with deliberately weak defenses. In reality, any good weapon can be 3x more effective when you don't have to take it on the offensive. (that number I'm pulling out of my ass based on a bit of trivia about how you need about 3x the troop strength of a dug in position to take it, barring air/arty etc.)
Really? Vietnam? Vietnam wasn't a war, it was a political game. If the North hadn't been off limits it would have been every bit the steamroll that one would expect. The US won every significant military engagement in Vietnam, but any war where you aren't allowed to hit back at your enemy is one you cannot win.
It's just like the occupation of Iraq. Occupations certainly even the playing field between two uneven forces.
I mean an actual occupation of any major military power... I doubt the entire world could accomplish that if they all worked together, unless you're unconcerned with civilian casualties.
override367 on
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
3) The Chinese navy is in no way formidible even compared to non-US navies. (No navy is really formidible compared to the US navy; we're orders of magnitude larger and more well equipped.)
Except they're building like 20 ships a year and you're building like 2. Not actually, I haven't seen the numbers recently.
Plus, American anti-shipping capability is actually pretty bad. All those fancy cruisers and their anti-ship load out is 8 Harpoons. That's the same as a Halifax class frigate. Halifax, you know, from Canada.
That leaves the submarine fleet and air power, but China also has submarines in large quantities and are building tons more, so...
But I guess all of this is moot because a full scale engagement between the PLAN and USN is going to never happen.
China's submarines are diesel POSes that we can spot and kill at many KM out, well before they see us.
There have been two instances of a Chinese sub surfacing near a US ship. Once a sub popped up in the middle of a carrier group. There's some speculation that it didn't actually sneak up on the carrier group, but that it surfaced because it had one of the carrier group's sub following it and pinging it, but it's entirely possible that it did just float up to them unnoticed.
Diesel subs running on batteries are quiet as fuck. They are much less of a threat when your fleet isn't sitting in one place within viewing distance of a landmass though. I read a really great article about carriers and it concluded that the greatest threat to a carrier group was a sub with wake homing torpedos, and I haven't read anything to suggest otherwise. It would almost certainly be a suicide mission, as once they knew the sub was there they would be out for blood, but it only takes one good torpedo.
Is the Joint Strike thingy the laser plane they were bellyachin about?
JSF ultimately made the F-35, I don't know what the program is doing now that it's been developed. The ABL, or "Air Based Laser" is the laser plane.
Also on the China v. US thing, I mean... As any strategy game will tell you a completely defensive military does not a war win.
Yeah, but reality tells us that a completely defensive military gives us Vietnam.
Strategy games are biased towards attack with deliberately weak defenses. In reality, any good weapon can be 3x more effective when you don't have to take it on the offensive. (that number I'm pulling out of my ass based on a bit of trivia about how you need about 3x the troop strength of a dug in position to take it, barring air/arty etc.)
Really? Vietnam? Vietnam wasn't a war, it was a political game. If the North hadn't been off limits it would have been every bit the steamroll that one would expect. The US won every significant military engagement in Vietnam, but any war where you aren't allowed to hit back at your enemy is one you cannot win.
It's just like the occupation of Iraq. Occupations certainly even the playing field between two uneven forces.
I mean an actual occupation of any major military power... I doubt the entire world could accomplish that if they all worked together, unless you're unconcerned with civilian casualties.
It's almost like we're entering an age of asymmetric warfare!
Really? Vietnam? Vietnam wasn't a war, it was a political game. If the North hadn't been off limits it would have been every bit the steamroll that one would expect. The US won every significant military engagement in Vietnam, but any war where you aren't allowed to hit back at your enemy is one you cannot win.
It's just like the occupation of Iraq. Occupations certainly even the playing field between two uneven forces.
I mean an actual occupation of any major military power... I doubt the entire world could accomplish that if they all worked together, unless you're unconcerned with civilian casualties.
You do know this is the kind of stupid thinking that brought us the F22, and both the Vietnam and Iraq Wars right (with all the ensuing clusterfuck)?
What good is "winning" the theoretical war that will never be waged?
I'd rather they created more jobs by creating more renewable energy power plants. We could use more Hoover dam's. Public works projects that will save us money in the long run while at the same time creating more jobs.
The military needs to spend more time developing and fielding a better main battle rifle than the M-16/M-4 and lighter weight body armor.
I'd rather they created more jobs by creating more renewable energy power plants. We could use more Hoover dam's. Public works projects that will save us money in the long run while at the same time creating more jobs.
The military needs to spend more time developing and fielding a better main battle rifle than the M-16/M-4 and lighter weight body armor.
The M-16 is one of the top examples of a piece of trash getting legs due to political fuckmuppetry. We could do so much better.
RedTide on
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
I'd rather they created more jobs by creating more renewable energy power plants. We could use more Hoover dam's. Public works projects that will save us money in the long run while at the same time creating more jobs.
The military needs to spend more time developing and fielding a better main battle rifle than the M-16/M-4 and lighter weight body armor.
The M-16 is one of the top examples of a piece of trash getting legs due to political fuckmuppetry. We could do so much better.
The M-16 isn't the whole problem. The 5.56x45 NATO round is also a piece of shit. I'd be willing to stick with the M-4 if it was a bigger round like maybe the 6.8 SPC or 6.5 grendel. 5.56mm usually won't fragment past 100m and it won't create a significant sized wound channel until after it's penetered >7in and that won't happen unless it yaws after entering the target.
It's not likely that we'll switch to a new round that isn't used by other NATO forces though.
I don't know why they're pushing for more F-22's. We're already guaranteed air superiority against any potential enemy. We need better equipment for the troops on the ground. Like maybe those quantum radios they're working on. Those would be beneficial to all branches of the military.
the M-4 is the compact coupe version of the M-16's full-size sedan, so to speak.
And the Army's been trying to get rid of the fucker for like two decades now, and it always gets caught up in so much bullshit. We had the XM-8 ready for production, but because oh noes H&K is a German company, we backed out at the last minute, and the big factory in America that H&K was going to build never happened.
The US had to have the most technologically advanced fighter regardless of the current political climate because it's the world's most militarily advanced nation. The only way to keep this title is to stay one step ahead in terms of global military deterrence. The trouble with these programmes is that you have to estimate what kind of wars you'll be fighting in 30 years when you start a project due to the huge development times.
I agree that at the moment the F-22 isn't relevant (or capable of doing any of the current tasks significantly better than any existing aircraft) so production numbers shouldn't be increased. I also agree that the war on terror is being fought on the ground and via intelligence gathering so more funding could go in to replacing the M4 (with the HK416/417 or possibly the FN SCAR) or developing new combat gear like body armour and radios.
The M-16 familiy of rifles never lived up to the advertised hype. Yes, they fixed most of the problems now, but it took them fucking ages. Its not to far out there to say that there is probably a couple of hundred names on the vietnam war memorial, because of that rifle.
Even now its not up there with the best foreign rifles. Case in point Delta force, the only part of the US army where the soldiers can choose their own guns, switched to the HK416.
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
As for the F-22, part of its fucking problem is the political protection racked the USAF installed(the whole sub-contractors in 46 states part). There is probably a subcontractor in Wisconsin manufacturing some dodad for the F-22, that could be manufactured somewhere else for half the price.
Bottom line is that you don't get the best parts, nor the cheapest, but the most politicaly convinient. If the USAF, wanted to they could probably streamline the manufacturing prosess considerably. So I am not so sure that the F-22 line can not be restarted.
Kipling217 on
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Posts
Yes.
Like I said, I'm in a similar boat. When FCS got canned everyone around me had a mini-heart-attack. But look at it this way: remember the USSR? They overspent on their military and then everyone was out of a job. If your dad loses his job, he can probably find another one; he's got education and experience or he wouldn't be on it in the first place. If we go over the same precipice that the Soviets did, he and a lot more people will lose their jobs and won't find another for a good long while.
Except they're building like 20 ships a year and you're building like 2. Not actually, I haven't seen the numbers recently.
Plus, American anti-shipping capability is actually pretty bad. All those fancy cruisers and their anti-ship load out is 8 Harpoons. That's the same as a Halifax class frigate. Halifax, you know, from Canada.
That leaves the submarine fleet and air power, but China also has submarines in large quantities and are building tons more, so...
But I guess all of this is moot because a full scale engagement between the PLAN and USN is going to never happen.
I, personally, want to see the Warthog made laser powered, or at least Pumba with some spinners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-15SE_Silent_Eagle
When you look at the cost though, its advantages look quite a bit less.
I think Japan has some souped up F-16s, but don't quote me on that.
2? Ha! We're dumping tons of money into the fuckers; we've got the LCS, (which is a money pit), we've got the new Ford-class aircraft carrier, (which is a minor upgrade from our existing eleven supercarriers), we've got the America-class AAS, we've got our crazy-ass next generation destroyer and we're building the older destroyers too because the navy can't really decide what the hell it wants. We're building all kinds of shit.
Which is mostly pointless, because a full scale engagement between the PLAN and the USN is not going to happen, and if it did it would turn into a full nuclear exchange within a matter of hours, at which point nobody cares how many boats are in the water.
edit: and our anti-shipping capability went down because wars between superpowers don't happen anymore. You can thank Werner von Braun for that. Our ships need to be good at the wars that we actually fight, which involve precision strikes against ground targets in poverty-stricken third world shithole nations.
Behold the glory of SIBRS.
I'm glad they did this, my program would be screwed if this budget got vetoed. The fact of it is, for every F-22 gets built that's less for programs we need and I'm tired of good programs getting funding cut and overrunning as a result.
-Terry Pratchett
I did claim those numbers were just made up for hyperbole. Point stands.
Off the top of my head though you're going to be building at a rate of about 2 LCS, an LPD, a Virginia (possibly expanded to 2) and a DD yearly for the near future (in terms of fighting ships).
America won't come into service for a while and your big-deck carriers have a huge lead time, so I'll discount them; no one can touch your power projection anyways.
That is still far less than the rate the PLAN is building. Moreover, at your current build rate, the Navy is going to remain mostly the size with the retirement of old ships (the Perry class is on its last legs) whereas the PLAN is expanding at a rapid rate.
So, you're losing this money pissing contest.
Or T-SAT
But I'm pretty sure that has actually been cut.
Or the Joint Strike Fighter
Or the Army's Future Combat Systems program
We could spend all day finding shit like this.
TSAT has indeed been cut. My directorate was telling Space Command to ditch the program years ago, but no one listened. I believe SBIRS is the most overrunning program in the DoD by percentage of original budget, they're at roughly 500%. NY Times did an article about 2 years ago on the Top 5 over running Military programs and 3 were from SMC, my old base. God I love the space business.
-Terry Pratchett
The makeup of the ships is important though. The PLAN has 9 total nuclear vessels, all submarines. The US Navy has 53 Nuclear attack submarines. The PLAN is currently building 3 Conventional Aircraft carriers, to be deployed(estimated) in around 2015. The US Navy has 11 Nuclear Aircraft Carriers currently and is building 3 more. The fact that our numbers are staying somewhat the same but we're getting more advance while they're building a bunch of pea shooters doesn't really matter.
But at least producing modified F-16's and F-15's and selling them to other countries would alllow our manufacturing capability to not diminish, which I keep hearing as a justification for more F-22's and F-35's. And I can't find it right now, but I swear WaPo or NYTimes had an article about how countries either cannot afford or can't get the purchasing rights for the F-35 and F-22, so sales are decreasing because of that.
And for domestic uses, even though the performance increase isn't that great, it would allow old airframes to be replaced without as much money being spent.
Nuclear in terms of submarines is only important because it allows them to stay submerged longer and have unrestricted range. If you're in China's territorial waters, that doesn't count for much; diesel boats aren't any less quiet. Besides that, Chinese submarines have demonstrated a consistent ability to sneak up on your surface ships.
They also don't need carriers when they can have airfields on land, and it's not like Hornets are the best dogfighters in the world either.
I don't really feel like going on, but basically they're building for a fight on their waters, and in that respect it'll be a tough call. Your fleet will come out with a hell of a bloody nose either way though.
All of which is going to pale in comparison to the fact that both economies will be in the shitters after a confrontation like that.
JSF ultimately made the F-35, I don't know what the program is doing now that it's been developed. The ABL, or "Air Based Laser" is the laser plane.
Also on the China v. US thing, I mean... As any strategy game will tell you a completely defensive military does not a war win.
Air fields would be one of the first targets of any cruise missile strikes, which can be made from ships 1500 miles away via plane launched cruise missiles.
China's military isn't a threat to the US military, even if there was a war, there's no reason to spend 5 time as much as they do.
That's not even really the issue. If the US had one tenth the military it does and still had nukes, there would be no threat of attack from another world power. Economies are too intertwined, it's not a realistic scenario.
Strategy games are biased towards attack with deliberately weak defenses. In reality, any good weapon can be 3x more effective when you don't have to take it on the offensive. (that number I'm pulling out of my ass based on a bit of trivia about how you need about 3x the troop strength of a dug in position to take it, barring air/arty etc.)
then you're unstoppable
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Your assuming that leaders will always choose what is best for their country rather than what is best for themselves. If a choice for a leader was war and economic disaster or peace and giving up power what choice do you think they would make?
China's submarines are diesel POSes that we can spot and kill at many KM out, well before they see us.
A tougher question than you think. The closest contemporaneous example is the Soviet Union, who voluntarily folded, along with their satellite states' regimes. It really depends if there's a structure and bureaucracy around the state, or it's a one-man sort of junta. The latter category hinges on personal politics os no one is willing to give away the store when their bossman goes nuts - see Iraq, North Korea, Turkmenistan, contra the USSR, GDR, Mozambique, South Africa, the Congo.
The PRC since Deng Xiaopeng has relinquished authority - economic, not political - since the 1980s in an attempt to avoid the decline of the communist party. Mostly, it seems to have worked.
There have been two instances of a Chinese sub surfacing near a US ship. Once a sub popped up in the middle of a carrier group. There's some speculation that it didn't actually sneak up on the carrier group, but that it surfaced because it had one of the carrier group's sub following it and pinging it, but it's entirely possible that it did just float up to them unnoticed.
Diesel subs running on batteries are quiet as fuck. They are much less of a threat when your fleet isn't sitting in one place within viewing distance of a landmass though. I read a really great article about carriers and it concluded that the greatest threat to a carrier group was a sub with wake homing torpedos, and I haven't read anything to suggest otherwise. It would almost certainly be a suicide mission, as once they knew the sub was there they would be out for blood, but it only takes one good torpedo.
Really? Vietnam? Vietnam wasn't a war, it was a political game. If the North hadn't been off limits it would have been every bit the steamroll that one would expect. The US won every significant military engagement in Vietnam, but any war where you aren't allowed to hit back at your enemy is one you cannot win.
It's just like the occupation of Iraq. Occupations certainly even the playing field between two uneven forces.
I mean an actual occupation of any major military power... I doubt the entire world could accomplish that if they all worked together, unless you're unconcerned with civilian casualties.
It's almost like we're entering an age of asymmetric warfare!
I'd also be concerned less about absolute chinese diesel sub capabilities than our own deficiencies in ASW: http://www.informationdissemination.net/2008/04/assessing-risk-to-carriers-from.html
You do know this is the kind of stupid thinking that brought us the F22, and both the Vietnam and Iraq Wars right (with all the ensuing clusterfuck)?
What good is "winning" the theoretical war that will never be waged?
The military needs to spend more time developing and fielding a better main battle rifle than the M-16/M-4 and lighter weight body armor.
The M-16 is one of the top examples of a piece of trash getting legs due to political fuckmuppetry. We could do so much better.
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The M-16 isn't the whole problem. The 5.56x45 NATO round is also a piece of shit. I'd be willing to stick with the M-4 if it was a bigger round like maybe the 6.8 SPC or 6.5 grendel. 5.56mm usually won't fragment past 100m and it won't create a significant sized wound channel until after it's penetered >7in and that won't happen unless it yaws after entering the target.
It's not likely that we'll switch to a new round that isn't used by other NATO forces though.
I don't know why they're pushing for more F-22's. We're already guaranteed air superiority against any potential enemy. We need better equipment for the troops on the ground. Like maybe those quantum radios they're working on. Those would be beneficial to all branches of the military.
M-16 is older, M-4 is newer, right?
/not a gun guy
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
They're actually about the same age.
And the Army's been trying to get rid of the fucker for like two decades now, and it always gets caught up in so much bullshit. We had the XM-8 ready for production, but because oh noes H&K is a German company, we backed out at the last minute, and the big factory in America that H&K was going to build never happened.
I agree that at the moment the F-22 isn't relevant (or capable of doing any of the current tasks significantly better than any existing aircraft) so production numbers shouldn't be increased. I also agree that the war on terror is being fought on the ground and via intelligence gathering so more funding could go in to replacing the M4 (with the HK416/417 or possibly the FN SCAR) or developing new combat gear like body armour and radios.
Even now its not up there with the best foreign rifles. Case in point Delta force, the only part of the US army where the soldiers can choose their own guns, switched to the HK416.
Bottom line is that you don't get the best parts, nor the cheapest, but the most politicaly convinient. If the USAF, wanted to they could probably streamline the manufacturing prosess considerably. So I am not so sure that the F-22 line can not be restarted.