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Military Grounds Stealth Bomber Fleet
Ponca City, We Love You writes "America's entire B-2 stealth bomber fleet, which has played a crucial part in all major US conflicts since 1989, has been grounded after one of the jets crashed near a military base in Guam. The crash — the first involving the B-2 — was the most expensive single aircraft accident in history. (The planes cost $1.2B each.) Officials assume the crash was caused by either mechanical failure or human error, but have grounded all B-2s to ensure there is not some fundamental fault developing in the 21-strong fleet. The crash occurred Saturday morning local time as the B-2 was taking off from Andersen Air Force base on Guam, a US territory south of Japan. An Air Force spokesman said, 'The cause of crash is unknown, pending an investigation. The pilots had ejected safely — no serious injuries. One is mobile, one is still in the hospital under observation.'"
Maybe I'm being naive again, but what is the point of designing an untrackable aircraft and then telling the whole world its fleet status? Why is the B2 in the news at all? Or should I be reaching for a tinfoil hat?
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Oh, so you manage to spend more than everybody else even _without_ fancy new bombers.
See how that doesnt help your argument one bit.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
It isn't as though this really changes anything. There aren't any nations that will go "Oh well with those aircraft gone we can certainly take the US! Their 12 carriers, hundreds of ICBMs and such aren't any worry at all!"
You also have to remember that the planes aren't being destroyed or anything, just taken out of operation until they do a review. In the event of an emergency, they could be put right back in service. Also, the B2 isn't untrackable, it is just very hard to see on radar. It isn't invisible or anything. Any nation with reasonable satellite intelligence can easily keep watch on the bases (or maybe just base, they used to only fly out of Whiteman, not sure if that's still true) where they fly from and tell when they leave.
The B2 is a stealth jet, and there certainly are some things about it that are classified, but it isn't as though it is some big secret anymore. You can go and see them at air shows and such. It generally isn't even secret what they are being used for. They are just high altitude bombers for whatever conflict the US happens to be in. They are only special in that they are extremely difficult to track on radar (and thus to get a missile to lock on) and that they have a truly world-wide range with refueling (and like a 6000 knot range even without).
At least not that anyone saw ;)
I love it when people complain how expensive something is. When you ONLY make 22 of something, factor in the R&D, and that is why the per copy version is so expensive. You think McDonald's double cheese burgers would be only $1 dollar if they sold only 20 per day? They sell thousands per day, bringing the per cost copy down. If they would TEACH economics properly in the United States, maybe asshats wouldn't comment on things they know nothing about. As once said by a GREAT statesman.... "It's not that liberals are wrong, it's that they know so much that isn't true"
The USSR was a big part of it.
You're blowing a lot of liberal fuses here. Massive violence, unleashed on largely civilians, by the US, for a prolonged period of time, with massive casualties on the US side (not nearly as massive as on the enemy's side, but massive nonetheless).
...)
And this was a good thing. In fact it wasn't just good, in fact 64 years later people (those civilians that were targeted) are still holding relatively massive ceremonies for thanking the US of unleashing said violence on, again, largely on them.
Because, as bad as the US was in WWII, it was a lot better than the other guys.
Just like every other war. The US soldiers were no angels. Nobody's really claiming that. But every conflict they were a hell of a lot better than the guys they killed, and every retreat by the US military was immediately followed by genocide (e.g. Vietnam, Korea, Gulf War I,
Today, liberals claim the opposite. They're "postmodern". Every ideology is equally good. Islamic ideology is equally good as american. In practice, that means blowing up your neighbour by kidnapping a mentally ill girl and strapping a remotely-controlled bomb to her, because you disagree with him not stoning his daughter to death for looking at a boy, is equally good as bringing down saddam.
Constant genocides was how Saddam came to power, and how he stayed in power. Of course fighting against an army that commits genocide as a matter of policy is morally reprehensible, right ? Well that's how democrats view things.
That's liberal (liberal as in the democrats ideology) ideology for you. Obviously it's wrong. That's why their "every ideology is equally true" mantra has to be defended by constant violence obviously.
A classic sign of a declining empire is a massive surge in military spending. During the rise of an empire, many countries will voluntarily join the empire because it is in their own economic interest to do so. As the empire ages, satisfaction with the empire in outlying states begins to decline. The dominant power makes increasing economic demands on these outlying states, while providing decreasing benefits to them. In order to quell the dissatisfaction, the dominant power needs to use increasing amounts of force to preserve imperial power. The increased military spending becomes a huge economic burden for the dominant power, which in turn further increases the economic demands on the outlying states. This becomes a vicious circle of surging dissatisfaction in the empire, and surging military spending. It ends when the economy of the dominant power can no longer sustain the large military. The outlying states fall away to form other alliances, and the former imperial power becomes "just another country".
History has shown this to be true. The Roman Empire collapsed partly because its outlying states rebelled against a huge economic burden. The Spanish Empire collapsed after building a huge armada of ships, only to see the fleet destroyed by an upstart Britain. The British Empire collapsed, as outlying states fell away, despite its huge military power. The Soviet Empire collapsed under the burden of massive military spending. I believe that something similar is happening to America.
Many of America's client states are rebelling against the economic burdens placed upon them. A clear example of this is seen in South America, where several countries (Venezuela included) are acting in contravention to America's economic wishes. One can arguably say that the Islamic insurgency in the Middle East is also a symptom of dissatisfaction by outlying states in the Empire. As the American dollar has declined recently, other currencies, such as the Euro are displacing the US dollar is the currency of choice for international trade. Furthermore, the American economy is in deep trouble, largely because it has borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars to build expensive weapon systems (and also to build too many unproductive but expensive toys such as big screen TV's).
I don't want this decline to happen because I am a part of this empire, but make no mistake: it is happening. Our only hope in this is that America will fade peacefully, like Britain, to become "just another country".
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The B-2 has an internal crew of 2. That's ignoring all of the ground crew, like Air Traffic Control and mechanics. The real size of the B-2 crew is considerably greater than 2.
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I wonder about this common knowledge, since it seems to me that the Nazis were getting seriously routed by the Soviets by the time the US got involved in Europe. If the US hadn't gotten involved in Europe during WWII, they wouldn't be speaking German in France, they'd be speaking Russian*.
At the end, it was a foot-race to get our own little piece of Germany from the Soviets, and our own sphere of influence in that part of the world.
* Personally, I think our supply lines to "free Europe" were more pivotal in the conflict than our personal involvement in the fighting.
PS
The bulk of the Allied forces in the African campaigns were British, with as many French troops as American. They were all under the command of the British Eighth Army.
I don't know who *you* think was primarily responsible for the Allied victories during WWII, but I'm quite sure it would be entertaining to hear. The French, perhaps? Maybe the mighty Canadian forces?
That would be the USSR.
The US played a secondary role in WWII.
Let's be fair here: it's not exactly fair to compare the US military budget with the needs of defending the US alone, since we have many obligations to other countries. Japan, for instance, only has a small "Self-Defense Force", and depends on the U.S. to defend it from attack. A lot of the peace and prosperity of east Asia stems from our obligation to protect Japan--if Japan were to re-arm, it would endanger their relations with South Korea and China, severely hurting trade. Likewise, our presence in South Korea saves them from having to get into an arms race with the North.
Then there's Europe. Europe isn't in such a precarious position anymore, and we could probably withdraw our troops, but in order to get the same level of protection the European countries would have to spend more on their militaries. There's also the fact that, even if we did withdraw, NATO still obligates us to intervene should any of those countries be attacked. Iceland is a special case--they don't even have a military, just a permanently stationed detachment of the American military to protect them. Part of this is due to the strategic importance of securing the G-I-UK (Greenland-Iceland-UK) gap in the north Atlantic.
As for the Americas, Canada is part of NATO, and anyone who wanted to invade or attack the Western Hemisphere would be a threat to us, although there's the occasional allowance for very close allies like the UK. This is the original intent of the Monroe Doctrine--Monroe intended it as a mandate to protect the Americas from foreign intervention, although it was later abused by Roosevelt to justify US intervention.
By treaty or by necessity, we are obligated to protect not only ourselves, but also most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the entire Americas. I would certainly expect that defending that much territory would require more money than the rest of the world's military budget put together.
The sad part is, most of that budget is pork. When the chips were down, defeating and pacifying Iraq took most of what we could deploy. Now, defeating and pacifying Iraq in the first place was a horribly bad idea to begin with, but the point remains--despite the spending, US military effectiveness is a lot less than we bargained for, and a lot less than anyone would expect looking at the numbers.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
What the fuck mods? This is not funny, it's childish and off topic.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
To be fair, Arleigh Burke destroyers and Virgina (or Los Angeles) subs also have support crews much larger than their actual onboard crews.
For most people, the rear seats in a Prius are as useful as the rear seats in a Porsche Carrera - yes, you can call it a 4 seater, but two of those seats are really just convenient places to put groceries.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
This is just out of curiosity, not a flame. With the exception of a few additives (anti icing, antistatic, anti corrosive) JP-8 and Jet-A are essentially the same thing, and with the exception of the odd aircraft type here or there with bizarre needs, basically the whole air fleet runs JP-8. But that's just the start. The interesting thing is that when I say "entire military fleet", I'm not just talking about aircraft, I'm talking about all combat deployed vehicles. JP-8 in planes, JP-8 in helicopters, JP-8 in CUCV's, JP-8 in tanks, JP-8 in APCs... JP-8 in EVERYTHING! It's all part of the Single Fuel initiative started in 1988. We had a hard time in Afghanistan, as a lot of the "JP-8" we were supplied with was actually locally procured "Russian formula" jet fuel, which wasn't quite the same. Thinner, or something; doesn't work right with the fuel pumps (not sure--- I was an intel analyst). I hate JP-8. Get it on your clothes, you smell it for days. od forbid you get it in you mouth or nose--- you taste/smell it for days and there's no way to escape it.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
What you wrote is idiotic. Based on your "logic", Luxembourg has a more powerful economy than the US.