Quote:
Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
And those Navy F-18s are fighting what? The likelihood of coming up against a superior aircraft is somewhere between slim and none. Where there might be a real threat, they send the F-22s, which are unequaled anywhere.
But the reality of the world today is they don't need $160 million dollar F-22s, which is why they are building the F-35s. Actually, I think the F-18 with a hot pilot, might be a match for an F-35.
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Here's an example: landing on an aircraft carrier (especially at night), with an F-18 is one of the most difficult things you can imagine doing. Difficult, and dangerous. We lose men and women (and aircraft) doing this. We are the only service in the world that does night landings.
With the newer jet (F-35), the vectored thrust landing is a gentle drop downward, from a speed of zero knots. You can even press a button and let the computer do most of the landing, for you.
There are many tricks you can do with vectored thrust - in a dogfight, or against a ground to air-missile, that you just can't do without it. Once you learn those tricks, you have a distinct edge over non vectored thrust aircraft. We learned that from exercises with the Harrier what, twenty years ago?
You might recall that we helped the Afghani's chase out the Russian's, by giving them shoulder-fired AA missiles, and training them in how to use them.
Most of our military mistakes - like Mogadeshu ("Black Hawk Down"), failing to capture Bin Laden, etc., have been caused by not committing the resources we needed, to get the job done. Whether it's deterring the North Koreans from attacking the South, or the Chinese from attacking Taiwan, or the Russians from taking over Baltic countries they owned in the past, we need modern military hardware, all around.
Including fighter jets. Maybe we don't need the F-22 today, but we should have the F-35, clearly.
Another example:
In Afghanistan, they have a LOT of mountains. Thousands of years ago, the Afghani's learned to take the high ground, and shoot down on the hapless (Romans, Mongols, Brits, Russians, etc.), because they generally couldn't fire back that far.
We're too cheap to put the right length of barrel on our soldier's rifles, so we're having a problem with snipers and such, shooting at us, before we can shoot back with our rifles. The army now has "rationed" longer shooting rifles, out to the troops. Ideally, some day, one in ten army infantry soldiers will be able to have one.
As for the marines? Well, no.
I'm not sure you can fight a war "on the cheap". I'm sure, if you try hard enough to pinch those pennies, you'll increase our casualties exponentially. In Vietnam, in the early years, we didn't have sniper rifles newer than WWII. The snipers had to order their own rifles, from Remington or Winchester.
We do this all the time. During peace times, we close our eyes and dream that there won't be another war, and if we dream hard enough, peace will prevail. But it doesn't - human nature hasn't changed. Putting our fingers in our ears too, won't help, really.
Most people don't know that our number of Naval ships, has been cut by about one-third since Reagan's term as President. Likewise our defense budget. Meanwhile, the fact that we can't USE nuclear weapons unless the other side tries to uses them first, has really sunk in, around the world. That advantage, is no advantage, for the kind of wars we're fighting these days.
What would you guess in our current percentage of Gross Domestic Product is, for all of our Department of Defense (All services)?
I'll let you ponder that, but here's a hint: it's less than you think.