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F-22 Raptor Cancelled
BayaWeaver writes "Slate reports that the F-22 Raptor has been cancelled by the Senate. At an estimated price tag of $339 million per aircraft, even the powerful military-industrial-congressional complex couldn't keep this Cold War program alive in these hard times. They look very cool though and have appeared in movies like Hulk and Transformers. But not to worry too much about the future of the military-industrial-congressional complex: the F-35 Lightning II begins production next year!
As a side note, in 2007 a squadron of Raptors became deaf, dumb and blind when they flew over the International Date Line."
Reading the title and summary would make you think that the entire program has been cancelled and the planes aren't going to be used by the US military. This is not the case. The Senate reduced the number of aircraft being produced such that no additional planes will be made. The F22 is already in service and will remain in service for quite some time.
We've already spent a bundle on them and this latest "cut" was mediocre compared to how much we've already invested. On top of that, I expect the F-35 to get ample funding. And, I doubt it's VSTOL capabilities will approach anything I ever saw in Battlefield 2.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I look at it like I do Technology, there will *Always be something better tomorrow*.
The research and development used to culminate the F-22 will surely be used in the next F-XX.
$4 billion in the fiscal year 2010 budget to build 20 more F-22s
200 Million per plane (not counting R&D costs). Some estimates w/ R&D costs included bring the price up to $300 Million per plane. Damn.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
They've already got 187 of them. All they did was cancel an order for an additional 12 that were budgetted last year. The summary would lead you to believe they're moth-balling all of them or something. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class, especially since I rule.
The F-22 Raptor was not cancelled. A recent bill that called for production of _7_ additional F-22s (in addition to the 186 already in the pipeline) was cancelled.
This story indeed deserves to be tagged "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense". Producing such an expensive aircraft in large numbers is a pretty dumb idea: I'm not sure there are enough important targets on the Earth for a squadron of these to be cost-effective. UAVs FTW!
With the way the gov't is throwing money I'm surprised anything under a billion registers on their radar. They've probably got rounding errors (intentional or not) that could pay for a whole squadron of these.
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How bad-ass? This badass. The link is to a YouTube video where the guy who had the initial design ideas talks about getting the plane together, and the video features some awesome footage of the F-35's capabilities.
RIP F-22, you were cool and did a great job. The F-35 is a worthy replacement.
It's just the F3 Lightning, no 5 on the end.
Oh, you didn't mean that Lightning interceptor?
``No American soldier has been killed by an enemy aircraft since 1951.''
Only because the U.S. doctrine has been to have total air superiourity and the Air Force (and Navy) have been able to achieve it through superiour technology (and training) --- if 187 Raptors aren't sufficient to achieve that in some future conflict, a lot of soldiers are going to die, and that statement will cease to be true.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The F-22 is a cool plane, but there are only so many the US really needs. Reason is that they are not carrier based planes, which is how a great many missions are done these days. It also is more or less strictly air superiority, not multi-role. Ok well there is value in that, while there may not be any current threats to the US, doesn't mean there won't be. You don't have good defense, in the real world or on your computer, by staying complacent. However that doesn't mean that there is the need or reason to roll out tons of the things.
The F-35 is more suited to a larger scale production because it is multi-role, and carrier capable. Thus with it likely to come out soon (next year if they remain on target) it doesn't make sense to produce a ton of F-22As. The F-35 also has the advantage of having a good deal of support from other nations, which helps pay for R&D and will also bring unit costs down in the form of increased orders.
So it makes sense to keep the F-22 around for when top-notch air defense is needed, it doesn't make sense to keep building them if an all around more useful plane is going to be coming out. Use what is complete, and use the research from the project on other projects (like the F-35).
The f-35 Lightening is half the size and has less than a third the weapons payload of the Raptor. It is a multimission fighter intended for all services except army, but you'd need three-four of them to replace one Raptor and remember the single most expensive component in a modern fighter jet is the pilot. 3-4 pilots instead of one and the saving don't add up real fast.
The Lightning is seriously cool but it simple cannot replace the Raptor - and it was never meant to, except, it appears, in the minds of Democrats. Let's face it, they aren't going to buy any extra Lightnings because of the reduction in the Raptor fleet. In point of fact, they'll cut the ones they have already committed to.
I predict. And I've been dead right about every prediction I've made about Obama and his lunatic lefties.
Only because the U.S. doctrine has been to have total air superiourity and the Air Force (and Navy) have been able to achieve it through superiour technology (and training) --- if 187 Raptors aren't sufficient to achieve that in some future conflict, a lot of soldiers are going to die, and that statement will cease to be true.
William
Yeah - or you could just stop invading countries. That's a good way of keeping your soldiers from dying.
Fly Me.
Respectfully,
Philboyd Studge
they have problems communicating with other planes:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070903020_4.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009071001019
and don't seem to like the rain:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_07/019076.php
among other things like jammed canopies.
And it's funny too. People who don't like unions, bloated government and stimulus packages seem to think the government owes them a job when it comes to flawed weapons systems and unneeded military bases.
But it's nice to see A10s and B52s still in service. Made dack when the US actually knew how to build something.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Here's a novel thought... _if_ that times comes, BUILD MORE
How many Americans die each year because they don't have health insurance? About 20,000. Maybe there's better things to spend money on than more planes? How useful have those Raptors been in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway?
The F-22 is already in service! They just cancelled the next order of planes.
I agree with this decision. The F-35 is still a better fighter than just about anything else out there, and is also an excellent multi-role attack craft. Not to mention much cheaper per unit than an F-22.
The value of the F-22 lies in that it is probably the best fighter in the world for many years. Any adversary who intends to fight a conventional war against the US (cricket... cricket... but hey, we do expect our military to be prepared, so I'm not complaining) has to act as if the most badass fighter in the world will be contesting air superiority. That is a healthy kick towards solving things with diplomacy.
and you, sir, are a pussy!
They're built here in Marietta. Bad news in a tough economy.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem becomes a nail.
We can give them 4 billion dollars and have aircraft to show for it, or give them 4 billion in bailout money to save the jobs this will impact and have NOTHING to show for it. :-)
As has been mentioned numerous times, "the F-22" was not canceled. What actually happened id that "plans to acquire MORE F-22s in the short term have been canceled." The 187 Raptors in the US Air Force are deployed and will be around for a while. Come on guys - I know it doesn't involve Linux, but that doesn't mean you can just jump on the drive-by-media train and not bother to be precise.
As if the F-35 isn't a perfectly acceptable aircraft for handling any conflict the US will realistically be involved in. For that matter the F-15, F-16 and F-18 are all still perfectly servicable for just about any scenario. No, none of them is on par with the F-22, but honestly the modern day uses for a pure air superiority aircraft are quite limited, and no one else anything even realistically on par with aircraft other than the F-22. That said, I do hope two things happen 1) the export ban is lifted so Australia (which has expressed interest) and Canada (for whom it would be a better northern patrol aircraft than the F-35) can get some. 2) the aircraft is developed into the next gen medium bomber as has been discussed, and happened with the F-15.
"As a side note, in 2007 a squadron of Raptors became deaf, dumb and blind when they flew over the International Date Line."
Our all-American pinball wizards went global!
(You sets 'em up, I knocks 'em down...)
The Raptors are already irrelevant. According to this article in the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-f-22-plane22-2009jul22,0,750816.story) they have NOT been used in Iraq or Afghanistan.
All the fighter jets in the world won't win a guerilla war against insurgent enemies.
What is going on now is our military is finally realizing this - the big obstacle to a more nimble military is not the military itself, but the massive multi-billion dollar military industrial complex that refuses to get weened off the teet.
they played a mean pinball.
"a squadron of Raptors became deaf, dumb and blind when they flew over the International Date Line."
A good way to solve this would be to stop being the world police and pissing everyone off. If we were just cool with people we easily get by with 10% of the defense budget we have now. Besides, I am sure that if we spent less on military and more on social programs we can save more civilians than we would lose soldiers. This whole nationalist, jingoist, fascist thing that the neo-Cons call Patriotism makes me throw up a little.
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Assuming that the tooling, parts & skills are all available to do so in the time required.
Fighters are needed less and less now a days, if we want air superiority we can just put up dozens of cheap drones with Air-to-Air missiles with remote pilots. I am pretty sure they would not cost $100+ millions each either.
If you look at when they actually are producing F35 vs F22 at nearly identical production rates, F22 is only a little bit more expensive. The main reason why F35 is projected to be significantly cheaper is they are planning on producing more of them at faster rates.
F-35 Flyaway Unit Cost
FY2011: $124.580 million (24 per year)
F-22 Flyaway Unit Cost
FY2007: $136.826 million (20 per year)
A bird in the hand is better than 2 in the bush. I'd bet F35 ends up costing just as much as F22.
Give me more F22s and fewer F35s.
When the time comes, it's already too late. And any built at the 11th hour wouldn't be nearly as valuable as they could have been if they could have been built earlier and served as a deterrent instead of only a defense.
Since the interest alone on the "Economic Stimulus" package is costing the U.S. around $100 million per DAY, I can see how saving 17 days worth of interest will definitely have a major impact.
Unless stealth penetration is required (for which not that many planes are needed), isn't a swarm of inexpensive (and non-casualty bearing) drones better than a few expensive fighters and even more expensive pilots?
The people who argue that giving up fighters makes us weak against potential adversaries appear just like the people who argued that battleships were the decisive force in naval warfare--even after Pearl Harbor.
I'm not against spending big dollars for national defense. I'm for spending those dollars intelligently.
That would be a great plan. If we wouldn't have our air force crushed due to insufficient numbers then have our industry pounded into the ground by an uncontested enemy air force.
But yes, we should aim for the lowest common denominator in defense spending because it is only soldiers lives and the citizenries safety at stake.
...old or new, military or non-military, US or foreign.
Technical superiority aside, the machine is just... beautiful.
if 187 Raptors aren't sufficient to achieve that in some future conflict
Which conflict would that be? It's not the ones we are in now, which we're going into astronomical debt over. I don't know who has an air force that would rival us, but I'd guess China and North Korea. Either way, we can't afford it even with these cuts. In fact, I think/hope we can't afford to fight ANY more unilateral wars against ANYONE.
Any war/conflict in which 187 raptors is insufficient is a war our economy is also insufficient for.
These programs have become unsustainable. There's no reason for the F-22 to cost what it does. We're talking about runaway projects with padding to line the pockets of the military-industrial complex. This isn't about protecting the nation, this is about extracting wealth from the treasury. Defense contractors are doing more to harm the safety and security of this country than the long-haired hippies ever did.
The F-15 is still a world-beater. Why not just upgrade the avionics and fire up the assembly lines again? Retire the old airframes, field new ones.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
How many soldiers will die if 240 F-22s aren't enough?
How many soldiers will die if 320 F-22's aren't enough?
How many soldiers will die if 1,780 F-22's aren't enough?
My god, numbers just keep going!
Superiority against what? I must have missed the part where the Taliban had the latest models of air-superiority fighter. Or any *planes*, for that matter. You must be one of the unreconstructed Cold War guys, that thinks we're going to go to war against Russia any day now.
Smart missiles and remote controlled drones cost much less, are more reliable and don't kill their pilot when they fail.
I'm sure if we spent less on the military, and more on social programs that don't work that we'd be speaking German. This whole pacifist, Utopian, lets hold hands while the rest of the world stabs us in the back makes me throw up a little.
How useful have those Raptors been in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway?
Answer: COMPLETELY USELESS, because the plane HAS NOT been used in either war AT ALL.
The F-22is a relic of the cold war, and has taken a back seat to the Predator. The future of air-superiority and air-to-ground is unmanned aerial vehciles (UAVs) aka drones.
The USAF should begin planning it's reintegration with the Army.
Part of what lets us do so well against the Taliban is that we do have air superiority. Not hard to do, in this case, but we can move troops and supplies where they are needed. The Taliban can't do that.
My bigger concern is that we're in the tough spot we're in because we focused for too long on fighting powerful conventional enemies and ignored guerrilla warfare. Now people want to cut the ability to do the former and focus just on the latter. It sounds like it would be a better idea to prepare for both.
Yeah, it's not like that liberal left lunatic John McCain guy knows anything about war fighting and fighter aircraft.
Here's a clue for you: Levin-McCain Amendment.
People like you are never wrong.
``No American soldier has been killed by an enemy aircraft since 1951.''
Only because the U.S. doctrine has been to have total air superiourity and the Air Force (and Navy) have been able to achieve it through superiour technology (and training) --- if 187 Raptors aren't sufficient to achieve that in some future conflict, a lot of soldiers are going to die, and that statement will cease to be true.
William
If it's just about saving lives how many more would be saved by putting a few hundred billion into health care? This is about having the latest toys and little else. The F-15s and F-16s are exceptional aircraft and cost a fraction of what the Raptors cost per plane. Picture it this way every time one crashes it's like a 130 million dollar lottery tickets being burned. I'm pro defense but only within reason. We've been talked into a constant state of war without an obvious enemy. The last time this country was attacked by another country was WW II and that was because we had effectively blockaded Japan. We are told constantly they'll make us safer. Quantify that? If we spend another 100 billion will it make us 5% safer? It's silly. Since the Cold War ended there has been no threat from a foreign power on US soil and even then it's debatable since the Russians in hindsight were more afraid of us attacking them than they were serious about attacking us. The military tends to be self perpetuating. When's the last time you heard the military say they didn't need more money? They'll consume as many resources as you allow them. High time to put them on a diet until there's a real threat.
The original Hulk movie had the canceled RAH 66 Comanche too.
Anything the hulk touches is doomed!/
But then we can't kill a lot of brown people AND give money to our friends in the Military Industrial complex.
You could be like Clinton and kill a lot of brown people through sanctions, like in Iraq but you don't get the added bonus of watching it happen on TV.
First "My Name is Earl," now this. They cancel everything I like.
My vote as a former USAF intel analyst is that this is a good move. We have plenty of them already and we can put that money to use in myriad other ways, for defense and other purposes. The 22 is bad ass and worth every penny, but i'd rather see more spent on HumInt or humanitarian stuff.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
``No American soldier has been killed by an enemy aircraft since 1951.''
I'm quite sure not all the pilots shot down by MiG-21s over Vietnam managed to bail out. Unless pilots don't count as soldiers...
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
CNN reported on this yesterday.
Senate voted out 1.75 billion dollars from the budget specifically slated for new F-22 Raptors.
This doesn't affect the more than 185 planes currently being built or on order.
They're using their grammar skills there.
This is a totally backward though process that is holding the world back immensely; WWII was absolutely not an inevitability -- it was made possibly by how badly we screwed Germany after WWI. It is this mindset that causes us to go to war and creates the bad people, and then you people have the gall to come back and use the mess you've created as justification for your worldview! I am not naive enough to think that we can just immediately disband the military and things will be fine right away, the world is a huge mess. What I am saying is that we need to get past all of this schoolyard bully pissing contest, bigger fences mentality and started working together as one race as we move into the future. War is not necessary. Nationalism is not necessary. Until people can realize this, I fear that there is no future for us here...
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Reading the title and summary would make you think that the entire program has been cancelled
The program has been cancelled. When they make no more planes, that means, cancelled.
The F22 is already in service and will remain in service for quite some time.
The original point of the F22 was to replace an aging F15 for air superiority. So we have 600 F-15s to be replaced by 188 F-22s.
Lost in the shuffle is that the argument that we do not need to invest in air superiority because we already have it. Air superiority comes from the aircraft, and if you don't have them, you don't have it. The USA has just given up strategic air superiority, is what this means. We did good for a while because nobody could touch the F-15, but, in simulated missions a flight of USAF F15s were shot to pieces by an Indian Air Force flying more modern Mirages.
The amount of money being saved by the cancelling the F22 is cheap... this is more of a "lets send some kind of a message and show how we won't escalate a gen V fighter arms race" crap.
This is my sig.
The pricetag on all this fancy military hardware goes up to beyond reasonable returns. We're losing the war to Al-Queda where their costs are nearly nothing (I suppose sending a fundamentalist nutjob to suicide bomber school is rather cheap) and the 2 Billion dollar bomber (The B-2 Spirit) crashes in 2008 in Guam on the way to fight him. As a taxpayer I think we need to say enough is enough and I think Congress is seeing the light. As far as I'm concerned, "slightly less capable, and far less expensive" is the exact tact we need to take as a country in the midst of a crippling recession.
Until Al-Queda grows an Air Force what's wrong with our fleet of 80's movie aircraft (the F-15, F-16, etc) The Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. North Korea? What are they flying these days? MIG 29S's (their few but modern units - which match to the F-15) and MIG 21's (a Vietnam era unit)
I dunno, but didn't the Nazis lose with the current "Overengineering, exepensive and too few versus" principle the US is using today to the "Just barely good enough, cheap and lots of them" principle we had in WWII? The Tiger vs the Sherman?
We lost our way.
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Thank you, Congress, for sacrificing the nation's safety so you can buy up the problems of those who make bad decisions. Not going to sacrifice power for their bad decisions, t.
Actually, the people who were OPPOSED to continued F-22 production include the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Air Force, and other top brass. The only people who are FOR the continued production are members of Congress whose districts include the defense contractors who build the plane, and those contractors themselves.
IOW, the MILITARY does not want any more of these planes.
Ok, so I've been wondering about this for a while. Why can't we start building more fighters when we see that enemy nations are starting to build theirs? I mean, it's not very easy to hide that fact that you are starting a multi billion dollar weapons program...
You are correct, the world is a huge mess. It was a huge mess well before The USA was created, and it will be a mess for my grandchildren. If my grandchildren are able to live in relative peace in their homes because we spent a ton of dosh on maintaining air superiority, then so be it. Just because war itself is not necessary, a well trained, well prepared military is necessary for us to be even be able to dream of any future.
I was just wondering if you were using WiFi to type up your comment? If so you are definitely going to have to give it up because in your version of the past we wouldn't have spent the money developing some of our communications gear for the military which includes DSSS that WiFi uses. Actually, come to think of it you are going to have to give up this whole Internet thing and your cellphone and computers in general. Yes I want to live in your world. Everyone is missing these things but are perfectly content because the money we would have spent on there research was better spent on a social program.
.
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How about we agree that we are spending too much on some parts of our military but that some of the funding of social programs hasn't been all that efficient either and that the answer is probably not some easy quick fix that just reallocates money from military into social?
During war time, there should be no profit driven motivation for developing the military, period.
War industry employees should all work for subsistence wages, and really should be volunteers if not draftees. Industrial business should not even be allowed to take profits for the duration of war. If they must be paid, they should be paid in interest bearing war bonds that are redeemable upon victory. Take away the profit-driven parts of the equation, from raw materials down to workers being paid more than subsistence wages, and I'm sure the cost of these airplanes will be considerably lower per unit.
The stakes should be "winning the war so that the nation can continue to exist", not something that's even measurable in monetary value.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I'm on the top floor of a building near where they land/take-off (formerly Dobbins AFB) so I see them at least a few xs/wk (they're probably between 500 - 1K ft up & ~ 1 mi out when they go by my desk). parts of them are this funky yellow (think school bus) before they're painted which is kinda funny - saw a few that were seafoam green instead a yr or so ago so don't know if they switched primers, materials or what... one of the little unofficial perks of my job - every day's an air show!
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for unaccountable entities whose primary responsibility is profit.
And how is that different from government? In the end, its just power, and guess who has the most? Why, the government.
This is my sig.
Who makes the F-22? LockMart. Who makes F-35? LockMart.
Parent post is obviously a joke to those decrying the loss of F-22 jobs.
I'm not sure that "fact" is even true.. Zero fatalities from aircraft in Vietnam? Really? I know we lost many aircraft, some from Air-to-Air combat, some from Anti-Air Artillery, but I can't find any figures on fatalities either way. I would find it hard to believe that the number is 0, however.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
A good way to solve this would be to stop being the world police and pissing everyone off. If we were just cool with people we easily get by with 10% of the defense budget we have now. Besides, I am sure that if we spent less on military and more on social programs we can save more civilians than we would lose soldiers. This whole nationalist, jingoist, fascist thing that the neo-Cons call Patriotism makes me throw up a little
You can call it jingoism and patriotism as much as you want, but the way I see things, half the world lines up each morning to try and dump products onto American consumers to earn their living because their own cultures and countries are too screwed up to provide one for them. How can you sit there and say, "oh, all these poor people around the world don't have running water...", like, how stupid is that? You're like probably in the same breath crying that Americans should buy birth control for third world people because they are too stupid to have safe sex.
I agree that we shouldn't be policing the world. In fact, I think we should be withdrawing some of the defense obligations we already have.
Jingoism is valid. Patriotism is true. Nationalism is just. When you see one country succeeding, and, many others roiling in their own stupidity, [despite trillions of dollars in foreign aid, btw], you have to ask, why have we been successful, what are those values that made us that way, and adopt institutions and civic rules to preserve them. But of course in your mind its wrong to not preserve that which makes your country better, and really, underlying your heart is more a desire for the destruction of your country than the benefit of humanity. If everyone was a jingoistic patriotic nationalist, their countries would be better, and the world would be better.
This is my sig.
Spending more on the military does nothing long term to stabilize the world and bring about peace. Short term safety? Sure. Long term peace? Absolutely not. We are only perpetuating this cycle of violence. How will society survive when we have the technology to create weapons that make thermonuclear weapons look like cherry bombs? Or when any crackpot malcontent can put together a 20 megaton bomb in their garage using spare parts? How, other than a global understanding that fosters peace and communication, can we hope to survive?
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
UAVs can completely replace manned military flight within the next decade. Any further investment in manned aircraft is pure politics.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
The Raptors are already irrelevant. According to this article in the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-f-22-plane22-2009jul22,0,750816.story) they have NOT been used in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The Raptors are irrelevant because they have not been used in the current conflict. Brilliant! We'll just wait and whip up a defense real quick as soon as the next conflict surfaces - no point on being prepared ahead of time!
I apologize if that comes across flamey. The logic was just so far off in that statement I couldn't resist responding. And, before anyone goes off the deep end, I'm not advocating we build a billion F-22's. I would advocate building whatever the military says they need to keep us safe.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money
You mean the long retired F-14? Iran is the only nation with flying F-14s, and yeah, I'm really afraid of those.
For what purpose? To never see combat against the advanced Chicom and Russky designs that don't exist (except on paper) for a hypothetical future war that won't happen? Sounds like the rational choice to me.
The only reason other people can "be cool with people" is there is one military hyperpower. If we were "cool with people" too eight zillion wars would break out instantly - balance of power, WWI again.
For the sake of argument, if China started to become a real air threat, it would take them time to build up their Great People's Fighter fleet, or whatever they'll call it. It's not like you can build such things in stealth. Thus, we can wait until the threat surfaces before we arm against it, such as putting the F22 back into production.
It's difficult to think of a scenario where they could sneak up on us that way.
Table-ized A.I.
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I wonder if you'd say the same crap if your grandchildren died from lack of healthcare, because the money was spent on an unused military machine. Everything is fine and dandy to you, as long as it doesn't affect you or your loved ones, of course.
``Soldier'' in this context means ground troops --- pilots are fliers, not ground troops.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I know you mean it as satire, but based on John's actual flying record, one could indeed claim such.
Table-ized A.I.
Why? The F35 is more useful in any fight we are likely to get into during the lifetime of these airplanes. Why spend money on something you don't need?
'Sensible' is a curse word.
You pose the question, how can we hope to survive without Pax Terra? We disagree on the use of the military, and more than likely neither of us will change our stance. I ask, how do we achieve long term peace if all of the others in this equation are just as equally ready for war as the next guy? How do we get North Korea to lay down its guns? How do we approach Iran to leave Israel alone? On the other side how do we get Israel to drop their ambitions? Or the Palestinians to stop lobbing rockets into Israel? These things stop true peace, it is not just us.
Is it just me, but I thought the actual stock (inventory count) of our jet fighters was classified... Now it's being blasted out all over the world that we only have 187 F-22s? In addition they state how many of the new planes we are ordering next year (100 F-35's I believe).
Is there something wrong here?
Drop dead. EUROPE created the mess, not the US. Woodrow Willison was against the reperations. You might want to check out the Treaty of Versailles and the US' 14 points.
Why? The F35 is more useful in any fight we are likely to get into during the lifetime of these airplanes.
The F22 can do what the F35 can just as the F15 can do what the F16 can.
Exactly what kind of conflict are you imagining where 187 F-22 Raptors is not enough to achieve Total Air Superiority, but 194 is?
No soldiers killed by enemy aircraft since 1951... We haven't fought a conflict since 1953 against anything close to a comparable Air Force. In the majority of conflicts we've fought in the time period of interest we had Total Air Superiority just by showing up. The only exception was a couple years in NK where the new Soviet MiGs gave us some trouble, but they weren't ground attack aircraft so yeah no "soldiers" were killed by them.
If you're imagining war against a nation with a major military, then you'd better just give up this notion of "Total Air Superiority". We didn't have it in NK, we won't have it against anyone who can stand up to a couple dozen F-15s, forget 200 F-22s. We might be able to maintain dominance in the air battle, but we won't be able to have free run of the skies like we enjoy today.
Of course in any such conflict, many, many soldiers will be dying regardless of what is happening in the skies. So... if that's really the concern, maybe there are better ways of approaching it.
Gates is right. The F-22 is not something we need.
The enemies of Democracy are
The F-35 is being built by Lockheed as well, and much of what they learned on the F-22 project has gone into the F-35 project. The planes even look fairly similar.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I am within a couple miles of a hospital, and a plethora of excellent doctors. An hour or two from major research hospitals. There is no lack of healthcare in the US. There is a lack of funds to pay for healthcare. When my daughter is sick, I take her to the doctor, I pay the doctor to give his diagnoses and get a prescription for medication. Why should the government pay for healthcare? Where in the US Constitution were we garunteed government sponsored healthcare?
You guys will be glad we have these bad boys when WWIII starts in 2012. You know, the Mayan's predicted it.
Little do you sad people know but the attacks of 9/11 were actually perpetrated by the Chinese (they got plastic surgery to *look* like Arabs) to sink our economy, thereby causing the US to default on any future repayment to China, thereby giving the Chinese the excuse to invade America! Two things happened in the interim, most notably was the release of classified Chinese documents that mentioned the threats of "Team America World Police", which was so realistic in its portrayal of our counter-enemy operatives (you could hardly notice the strings) that they decided to wait until 2012, the fabled and shared Chinese/Mayan prophecy!
They also realized BASEketball wasn't a real sport and thought they could win a "cultural war" by beating us at the Olympics. God, you people are f**king ignorant. Get off your ass and read!
If that is the case then why don't we keep building them until they are free? As a bonus, we will have an unstoppable Air Force. Oh wait, we already did before the F-22.
Great thinking!!! No need to modernize technology.Planes, cameras, cars, and even computers. There is a reason our air force no longer flies the F4 (which would have been incredibly cheap by now). Why would we want to at least keep up with other (not so friendly) nations?
And a little Google on your part, might have educated you on the different roles, between the 22 and the 35. Tsk Tsk
(typing from my Amiga, because it's "good enough" for a liberal)
So how does the F-35 stack up against the performance of the F-22 and other likely advisories?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Park a submarine off the cost and lob in cruise missiles. Death from Below!!!!! 24 empty missile tubes and a mushroom cloud, now comes Miller Time!
The USA is past collapse and has been on global life support! We have far far far bigger problems than the economy of some corporations that make pointless products that do not contribute to the survival of the nation. Military survival is not a problem by a long shot even before people woke up to the economic disaster we created and the environmental disaster where we contributed the lion's share.
100 years ago Americans were smart enough to count the military as unemployed. Military spending doesn't produce anything, it is like insurance-- a losing investment best minimized only to extreme necessity. Those depression stats were calculated differently than they are today. It is worse than they are telling you. You don't need to be an expert to see it coming; I figure most this major stuff out years ahead of the "news". Research works, test sources out on a topic to measure their skill for future reference.
It is rather simple: Consumption wasn't enough to drive the economy a 100 years ago; we have over consumption supplemented with pointless military waste propping up an endless growth model that ended up so bad that personal/societal savings had to be converted into consumption -- to the point where they wanted to take our social security from us to prop up the model for a few more years. It wasn't really ideological, the move behind privatization of SS was calculated and sold using propaganda just as over consumption itself was for generations.
Madoff reflects the mentality of the system. A system we (the public) superstitiously are afraid to tamper with while other powerful forces are free to experiment at our expense.
"Welcome to the Desert of the Real"
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Really?
I guess you just plain "missed" that whole "Vietnam" thingy huh?
For f's sake, go read the wikipedia article at the very minimum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_F-14_Tomcat#Iranian_Service Beyond that, it would help to be somewhat knowledgeable about subjects before making flamboyant and silly claims, such as the insane notion that the F-14 "saw more action in Top Gun than they ever saw in real life." Even if taken as hyperbole, that statement still has no factual basis whatsoever - even if you threw out all of the combat time in service of the Iranian Air Force. It makes sense to consider where the F-22 would be used during it's lifetime - indeed thats a major argument for not buying anymore - but painting the F-14's storied history as one of uselessness and inaction is going down a wrong, totally false path.
The military nearly always gears up to fight the last war, not the next one. I'm waiting for an air to air combat drone that can kill Predators, etc. Once those are in the air there will be no manned fighters; their performance is utterly abysmal by comparison.
You seem to be new here.
This is an empire. We're an empire because we're special and need to export that special-ness to the uncivilized world. So says us, and every empire before us. If we don't, why, chaos will reign! It would be like allowing people to do what they want with the fruits of their labor!
> This whole nationalist, jingoist, fascist thing that the neo-Cons call Patriotism makes me throw up a little.
What about when they were called neo-liberals or Trotskyites? Is it still fascism now that Pelosi and Obama are in charge?
I think you'll find that most neo-cons aren't against domestic spending, or any kind of spending. Deficits don't matter, reality-based community, etc. It's all for the health of the welfare-warfare state.
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
IOW, the MILITARY does not want any more of these planes.
But the keyboard commando's want these plans badly, and while whine loudly about not getting their way. Quite often they will talk about strategy and tactical defense, from the PoV of someone who's only actual knowledge is that game of Risk back in college.
Are you referring to the Russians, Chinese, or Iraq? I agree, if evil murdering dicator nations would stop invading other countries then a lot of our soldiers would indeed not have to die defending our allies.
weren't there another countries on this project ?
clutch parts manufacturer
unfortunatley, 22 has the RD cost of a giantic elephant. 22 also has some awesome, but un-needed features: super-cruise anyone?? and given that 35 was designed to basically be a shrunken down 22, it was able to leverage many of the original tech that was in 22. but one area where 35 takes the cake is upkeep time/costs.
You're right, the title is awful, they've cancelled 7 planes.
$1.75bn for 7 planes in the middle of an economic crisis when you already have 187 of the things or will have shortly?
It's a smart move period, 7 aircraft really aren't going to have any net impact for the country. The jobs impact isn't even likely to be a big deal, as the summary pointed out, the same company makes the F35, and that's exportable, so the amount of manpower needed to build F35s is going to be far and above that needed for the F22 creating far more jobs in the long run if they concentrate on it.
If the need arises for F22s nothing about this decision will prevent them being built at a later date, Lockheed is going to be ever more financially solvent with the F35 so they aint going anywhere.
According to a friend of mine who worked at Lockheed Martin for a bit, there's a clock out in California counting down to the time we'll lose air superiority with our current air force. If I recall correctly, the clock had 50 years or so to go when he was there, and I don't think they were counting the current crop of F-22s yet.
The F35 is designed to carry the heavier bombs internally (either 1000lb or 2000lb, can't remember) whereas the F22 cannot. The F22 is great for air-superiority but not general purpose.
On a side note, I really don't get why they don't sell the F22 to Japan, who is interested in buying. Is it really worthwhile to protect the technology from a ally ... or just politics. The line could be kept open by the Japanese. Speaking of which, how is the trade deficit with Asia anyways?
While anything is possible. I don't see anybody whipping up a F22 ass kicking airforce without us noticing and having a chance to plan.
Any chance that the F-22 will be available for export? I believe Japan and Israel are interested in them.
Is there a way to change the "sensitive" components and 'dumb down' the plane a bit for export?
It is reliable, safe, cheap to maintain, and an insane ass kicker. If only all military aircraft were like that...
Canada, the second largest country on earth has the CF-18 (an F-18 basically) and wikipedia says that only about 80 are operational. Canada has more airspace than the US (continental) and they seem to get by perfectly well.
Also compare the numbers of the Eurofighter in Europe:
The country with the most fighters is the UK with 208 (wikipedia). Since the Raptor is technologically more advanced than the Eurofighter the numbers seem to even out... and it isn't like the US will ever wage war against the UK, they're allies.
A good way to solve this would be to stop being the world police and pissing everyone off.
So you think that America would be better off for that? You may be right, it's hard to say. I wonder though at the 'pissing everyone off' part being better for everyone else.
America has certainly done a lot of damage around the world, but they've also done a lot of good. I'd say, on the whole, it has been more good than bad. At the end, some nation, somewhere, is going to have the strongest military. For all my problems with America, I can't pick a different nation I'd rather see as the strongest. Unfortunately the real world doesn't require that a perfect, or even good option exist, merely a choice of options from which you take what you can get and try to improve upon it. In my book America is a better starting point than any other nation.
I also am sure many would argue about the world being better off if America just minded it's own business. For all that people argue the good America has done in removing or fighting worse governments/dictators, the other side declares it would be better if America did not do so, that things would be better if those wars were not fought. For proof one can easily point to Africa and the fact America has no interest there because there is no profit in it. This would seem to prove that America is acting selfishly. I would point out that just because it is selfish, doesn't mean that it isn't also in the better interest of the civilians of the affected region. Disagree? Look no further than the original example. Which region is better off, the American manipulated Middle-East or the Africa it ignores?
For every Saddam that America is damned for warring against, there is an African genocide like Rwanda it is not being damned for ignoring. I used to be alongside the peaceniks in damning America for going into Iraq because they failed to go into a place like Darfur where people needed the help even more. I've now realized that if I really think they should be damned for not going into Darfur, it was contradictory to damn them for removing a genocidal dictator like Saddam.
Where in the Constitution were we guaranteed a standing army? That argument goes both ways. In fact, unlike healthcare, a standing army was explicitly guarded against. Moreover, healthcare in its present form didn't exist when the Constitution was written, so its absence is irrelevant.
Personally, I believe both the military and national healthcare are beneficial to the well being of our society, and in fact, they both have the same goals -- to keep people safe and secure -- even if one fights people instead of disease. It's absurd that we fully recognize that the benefit of collectively funding a defense against other people, but not against disease, especially when the latter kills far more people than the former.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Saving $330 million per plane not built, your government could set up factories to build an awful lot of other things instead and pay for a heck of a lot of training to give workers the skills to do work in other sectors. I heard that while your publicly funded military is in reasonable shape your publicly funded health care and education could do with some help; build tools and equipment for these industries? Maybe lobby your politicians to spend money on improving those services and building factories to turn out equipment for those sectors instead? (also train people as teachers, nurses, etc)?
Easy there. I didn't realize you were a professional asshole. I take it all back - I don't want to tangle with someone who is so far out of my league.
its a bit of speculation for sure, but...
F-22, Mach 2.4
http://tech.military.com/equipment/view/89685/f-22-raptor.html
Compare the F-22 to say, the Mig-25... Mig-25 could hit Mach 3. It was bad for the plane, for sure, but it could do it. I would think the F-22 could hit Mach 3, depending on what its afterburning thrust is. probably burn the paint off, but, hey, the skin is almost all titanium.. its not gonna melt.
would there be a tactical advantage of doing so? maybe if you were running....
This is my sig.
First off, learn what the fuck a fascist is before you go around screaming it. A lot of people who have suffered under their leaders would like to punch you in the jaw.
What are you gonna go up to some Mogadishu war general and say; "hey is it alright if we just be cool and you could just stop killing all those people by genocide"
As soon as you turn your back you realize he will shoot you.
I am sure we could have gone up to Slobodan Milosevic and done the same thing right?
This whole, lets be isolationist and hope these leaders are peaceful crap has got to stop.
What makes me throw up is people who turn a blind eye to other peoples sufferings and genocide.
I love naive people, they think they can solve all the worlds problems and ignore all history in the past.
Are you considering declaring war on us sometime soon?
What is your definition of being "just cool with people"? Do you really believe that the world will stop hating America if America stops meddling in other nations' affairs? What are your thoughts on interfering when a state-sponsored genocide is in progress? There is no happy medium. Large portions of the world are going to hate the United States of America no matter its foreign policy. You can't make everyone happy, and you certainly can't do it when they have already come to depend on you for one thing or another. It would not surprise me to see America the target of more hatred and violent attacks after returning to isolationism than in its most internationally-meddling times.
A good way to solve this would be to stop being the world police and pissing everyone off.
But then you would be Canada.
... those who make bad decisions.
Like people who waste money on weapon-systems that don't actually make you any safer? BTW, don't you think our soldiers in the field would have a use for that money we're spending on weapons we don't even use, because they have no use in the current wars were fighting? Don't you support our troops? Why are you in favor of taking money we could be spending on armored transports for them and instead sinking it into planes that sit on airfields because they're designed to fight a different war that never happened? Is it really that bad an idea to spend money on weapons our troops can actually put to use than ones they can't?
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Wow it sounds like your government is actually working. The Congressmen are concerned about their areas first (not the whole nation) and the military is concerned about the whole country (not a touch of prestige). I think this may be remembered as the best example of the American Government working. My heart goes out to all those who will loose their jobs over the F-22 plant shutdowns. But it is better than the drive to deeper recession caused by avoiding steps like this.
Hypothetically how many people would die if we didn't have a strong standing military? I am all for Government funded research into combating disease. I am all for Government funded research into anything that makes life better. I am against completely the idea that the Government should be in control of who, how, and when I receive healthcare.
Even if everyone in the US unanimously decided that we were no longer going to meddle in international affairs other nations will inevitably drag us back into them due to the simple fact that we're an economic superpower. It's unavoidable.
And the US government already spends plenty on social programs. The problem, like with this F-22 program, is that the money isn't being spent wisely. The US in general already spends more on education per student than most countries, and many areas, including the city where I live spends close to double what any other country spends. And yet education is by and large crap compared to other countries. The reason isn't because we're not spending enough money, it's because we're not managing anything properly and have this idiotic notion that more money will fix anything.
And back to my original point, there are a lot of nations out there that could potentially become a threat in the future. I realize some people hold the believe that love will fix anything, but there are many more who disagree and may try to take advantage. China might currently be behind the US, but they sure are working hard to catch up, working on their own advanced fighter. Russia may not currently be a threat to the US, but they are working hard on their own competitors to the F22 and will certainly be selling the aircraft to China.
That said, it made sense to cut back the F-22 program although it really is a drop in the bucket compared to how much the government is spending.
There are other things to spend money on besides weapons.
Yeah - like Lasers!!!
The time to cancel this project was the day the Berlin wall came down. The money spent on a single f22 can pay for a lot of counter-terrorism operations. Hell, we probably could have bought Bin Laden from the Taliban for $100M in cash.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Saving $330 million per plane not built, your government could set up factories to build an awful lot of other things instead and pay for a heck of a lot of training to give workers the skills to do work in other sectors.
Better still, we could leave that money in private hands, to be saved or spent on whatever people choose of their own free will.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Funding and management are two BIG DIFFERENCES regardless.
The Federal government needs limitations. However, federal FUNDING does work and could work for many things. Social Security is federal and works well. Federal funding could provide per-student funding for education; like a voucher system. Federal limitations are possible but can not be maintained due to lack of state influence at a federal level. So idiotic plans like no child left behind would still happen... unless states could fight back for their right to decide.
Non-profit Healthcare and Co-operatives have been done and have failed to out perform government institutions.
Police and Fire work great. They are socialism too. They are also insurance; you pay for them to be there when something goes wrong and they indirectly serve you every day with prevention-- stopping crimes and fires elsewhere stops the spread of those to you or the impact of those getting out of hand on your local economy, friends, family, etc. People don't think of police or fire as a form of insurance because it is unthinkable to do otherwise-- and someday basic healthcare will be the in the same unthinkable situation.
Many people pay for anti-virus software (that doesn't work well) which is a waste of money until it blocks something in the event you actually get a virus that it knows how to block. It is a form of insurance too; thankfully, it doesn't let you get the virus it could stop because you had previously had a virus 10 years ago on windows 95...
IF you get a dangerous disease they stick you in a hospital to stop harm to others - for free (well, it is deferred and if you have any money they take it all later.) This example is similar to criminals being put in jail to stop harm to others; which is done for "free" by the existing socialist system (leaving aside the fact the prison system "cures" very few people and hospitals cures many people.) Crime happens, Fires happen and diseases happen - we need to put money in a pool to deal with bad situations that inevitably arise which DOES NOT further victimize you for being unlucky.
Knowing that it can indirectly help us in the long run to do so even if we do not care about anybody other than ourselves we get police and fire-- and thinking longer term we even have free education which helps our economy. Healthcare has many indirect costs and the LACK of a system (which is what it is now: anarchy) is hugely impacting the US economy which is indirectly impacting us individually-- if you have any experience with the medical "systems" in the USA you likely have experienced being screwed directly.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Why did we spend billions on social programs in the latest stimulus that do not create jobs and just give handouts; but are not willing to spend a cent on military projects that create thousands of jobs? How many people do you think will be out of work because they lost this contract? What about the suppliers that produce the parts and materials for these jets?
Or at least it got him through a couple Ender/Bean novels.
This happens in just about every forum on the internet, military interest and non military interest. Keyboard commandos screaming about this or that until finally, someone asks, "Hey, just what IS your military experience?" A few weeks ago, I had some guy lecturing me about "realistic" tactics in BattleTech. It's one of those, "Really?!? What planet do you live on?" moments.
The USAF should begin planning it's reintegration with the Army.
Well the important thing to keep in mind is that for all we know it's a temporary condition. We might just find ourselves at war with Iran, who has MiGs, Sukhois, Mirages, F-4s, F-14s, is rumoured to have F-16s, and if we did, then we'd need to kick their ass with some air superiority.
And that's the dilemma, if such a conventional war is going to pop up, we have to be ready to kick some ass in the air, and because of that we have to maintain a form of superior Air Force. Don't get me wrong, I believe that UCAVs are the future, and hopefully in 50 years from now most of the air fighting on our side will be remote controlled/automated. But in the meantime we have to maintain air superiority, even if it seems useless.
You just got troll'd!
"``No American soldier has been killed by an enemy aircraft since 1951.''
Only because the U.S. doctrine has been to have total air superiourity "
That's nice and all if you happen to be one of the tiny fraction of the world's population who are a US soldier, but a more interesting question would be how many foreign civilians have died in attacks since 1951 BECAUSE the US has total air superiority?
Has the US dominating the air been a net win in humanitarian terms?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
What is your definition of being "just cool with people"?
Hmmm... Let's see. Maybe not invading countries under false pretenses. Not propping up dictators and puppet governments. Not supplying weapons to countries with poor human rights records. Not using cruel sanctions against poor countries with corrupt governments. Not torturing POW's and not being so hypocritical. That might be a start.
"Do you really believe that the world will stop hating America if America stops meddling in other nations' affairs?"
Yes.
"What are your thoughts on interfering when a state-sponsored genocide is in progress?"
In theory there is room for the U.S. to act as international police in this kind of situation. However, 1) U.S. provides weapons for genocides and turns a blind eye to genocide performed by allies 2) in the past, the U.S. has used "genocide" and other excuses not to help other countries, but to brutally advance selfish interests.
"There is no happy medium."
Other, more civilized countries are doing much better.
"Large portions of the world are going to hate the United States of America no matter its foreign policy."
Depends by what you mean "no matter". If U.S. foreign policy remains within the parameters established in the last several decades, then without a doubt.
"You can't make everyone happy, and you certainly can't do it when they have already come to depend on you for one thing or another. It would not surprise me to see America the target of more hatred and violent attacks after returning to isolationism than in its most internationally-meddling times."
Whatever.
Do you really believe that the world will stop hating America if America stops meddling in other nations' affairs?
Well, actually, this is the most likely result of this kind of action. When the general population sees you as partial to one side of the equation (usually the bully side) then they will hate you.
What are your thoughts on interfering when a state-sponsored genocide is in progress?
This has only ever happened once, and only because NATO's Europeans were involved: The Balkans wars in the early 90s. None of the African genocides were addressed while in progress.
Large portions of the world are going to hate the United States of America no matter its foreign policy......It would not surprise me to see America the target of more hatred and violent attacks after returning to isolationism than in its most internationally-meddling times.
Unfortunately, since WWII this hypothesis has never been tested; however, contrasting the relations that most European countries (with the exception of the UK and France) have with the rest of the world, you can see that a country can be quite open, involved and very non-isolationist and still have good relations with most of the rest of the world.
The reason why most people "hate America" has nothing to do with culture but more to do with the way "America" (ie, the government and it's supporters) trample on these people's choices by supporting "pro-western" dictators.
As the debate is whether the US should be buying planes, I hardly think the equipment of the Iranian Air Force is a relevant consideration.
Remember about three weeks ago, the site(s) that were building it were compromised? Even if it was all worked out, even free, we'd still have a machine that another nation pwned.
:
They never should have made PC-hacking so profitable.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Hypothetically how many people would die if we didn't have a strong standing military?
Exactly, and how many people would be banging down the doors of Congress to demand a strong military if we were getting bombed by Mexico every other week? We should be doing the same with healthcare.
I am against completely the idea that the Government should be in control of who, how, and when I receive healthcare.
And therein lies the problem. If you had a private army, you probably wouldn't want to pay taxes for a national military either, especially if the government took away your army, and started dictating when, where, and how you could deploy it. Unfortunately, the privilege of your choice in healthcare comes at the cost of many others having no healthcare at all. Additionally, neither of the healthcare systems in either Canada or the UK restrict *who* your doctor is -- you're free to choose your GP. Canadians bitch about wait times for doctors, but we have ridiculous wait times here, AND millions of uninsured. When's the last time you went to an ER, or had to make an appointment to see a specialist. Odds are you waited *hours* in the ER, and got an appointment for sometime the following month.
Despite the fear mongering regarding nationalized healthcare in single-payer systems like Canada and England, the fact remains that they have *better* care by every metric, including cost. And right now, your insurance company is the one standing between you and your doctor. You may trust them more than the government, but there's plenty of examples of people being denied coverage for lifesaving procedures from their insurance company, and meanwhile active duty military never pay a dime for any healthcare services, *including voluntary surgery* like breast reductions or Lasik. Good luck getting your insurance to cover those.
Anecdotally, I've never had better healthcare than when I was either a government employee directly, or a contractor whose employer was subject to government requirements for minimum standards of coverage. Yeah, we could pass legislation to mandate that *all* insurance companies meet minimum standards, but they're still going to be motivated by profit, and experience has shown them that denying coverage drives profit more than enticing new customers (who normally don't have a direct choice in the first place, since their employer chooses) by *expanding* coverage. The medical insurance system we have in place today for is a far cry from car or homeowners insurance, where companies compete vigorously to earn customers. It's exactly the opposite, because they know the only thing the purchaser (employer) typically cares about is the bottom line, and most people can't or won't just switch jobs to find better coverage. Do you really think McDonalds is trying to lure better burger flippers by finding the best healthcare available? Of course not.
And finally, it's not like private healthcare will simply disappear. There are plenty of private providers in the UK despite the existence of the NHS. So if you're wealthy, you'll still be able to use your capital to obtain better care than the little people. But if you're not wealthy, and if we mirror the systems of the UK or Canada, then *most people* will get better care, yourself included, the 50 Million people who have no insurance will *definitely* get better care, and the very few people who receive worse care as a result can at least know that their minor sacrifice of not getting a premium suite, or having to use generic drugs when available, has improved the overall state of affairs.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Yes. A large amount of anti-US sentiment is definitely generated by US interference - social, economic, political, covert or military - in the affairs of other countries. It is ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
If the US actually did this maybe people would like it more. I am still waiting for the US interventions in Sudan and Zimbabwe, for example.
Why? This is a ridiculous assertion. After World War II most of the world actually loved America and it was widely regarded as an inspirational role model for a modern democracy. The USA had a hell of a lot of goodwill, and it then set about burning through it as fast as it could.
It depends, do you mean real isolationism or 'we won't invade you but we will continue to dominate and manipulate you economically and politically'?
Basically your theory comes down to that old chestnut, "they hate out freedom" (or some variant of the same). You have not explained one cogent reason why anyone would hate the US if it ceased interfering in the affairs of other nations for its own benefit.
Read Pynchon.
That's right, a grand total of 5 kills for the 712 F14's we bought. (By the way, one of those kills was a stinking helicopter). You can try to make something out of its re-purposing as a strike aircraft, but with the F18 and F35 already superior to the F22 in that role, it's no argument for churning out a few hundred extra F22's.
Yep. Worked really well in 1940.
Should the need arise, we could obviously ramp production back up much, much faster than (e.g.) China could design, test, and build a large number of competing aircraft.
While technically true, this statement is pretty much irrelevant. Once production is shut down on a product this sophisticated it takes years to ramp production back up absent a crash program of immense expense. The assembly lines aren't normally mothballed, they are either torn down or re-purposed to other products. The talent pool that produces the plane is dispersed and close to impossible to put back together coherently. Institutional memory is lost. The supply chain becomes fragmented. While it is technically possible to restart production, it would be very difficult and EXTREMELY expensive to do so. Quite possibly every bit as expensive as starting over from scratch believe it or not.
Pretty much once production stops, the F22 program is likely dead for good. If there seems to be a need for more planes to fill the role of an F22 I would expect it to be filled by a new design rather than more F22s.
China doesn't have to engage us in war. If they ever get pissed at the U.S., all they have to do is stop investing in our economy and call in all our notes.
You don't know much about international finance do you? The Chinese central bank holds a lot of Treasury bonds and US dollars in order to control their own exchange rate. If they want to dump their holdings, exactly who do you think is going to buy them? The Europeans? Japan? Nope, they hold so much US cash and debt that they basically are stuck with it in the short term. The notes they hold aren't callable either btw. They can't just demand payment whenever they want.
Even if they tried to dump it they would trash their own economy in the process. China has painted themselves into a corner in order to support their export economy.
We won't be able to buy ammo or fuel to attack or defend against anything, then. Instant capitulation.
Please. You are forgetting that the US government has the ability to raise taxes. The weenie politicians just don't want to because they'll get voted out of office. Borrowing is just one way to raise money and not always the best.
Number friendlies (US and allied forces) killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by USAF: 47
Number of USAF personnel killed in GWOT as of this writing: 42
The armed services continually fought the concept for 50 YEARS -- ever since McNamara first pushed for it http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2009/07/robert-mcnamara-tfx-the-total.html/
Understand the real reason the F-35 procurement finally happened (and, not coincidentally, probably the reason Lockheed's bid beat out Boeing's) is that Lockheed got smart enough to offer 3 different planes (with the accompanying extra development and maintenance costs) instead of asking the services to live with a "joint" fighter.
The F-35 does have advantages over the F-22, but nothing like what we could have gotten from a Joint Strike Fighter.
No, I didn't say that they only hate Americans for their freedom. I said that they will hate America regardless of the amount of meddling it does. People definitely hate imperious meddling. But they also hate having America sit idle.
Do I think that American foreign policy could stand to be improved? Yes. That's undeniable. Do I think that the world will love America if it cuts its military to 1/10 the size (as the OP's suggestion was)? Not a chance.
It's an accurate statement. I don't know about 1951-1953, but no American soldier (ground combatant) has been killed by enemy aircraft since the Korean War. When the US engages in war, for the rest of its flaws and faults, it owns the sky.
As a former American infantryman, this is something for which to be grateful. As I understand it, being attacked from the air is a particularly unpleasant experience.
You've bought the administration's lie. See, the F-35 is not a stealth fighter. It's only stealth if it ONLY CARRIES INTERNAL STORES. Which means that in a stealth configuration, it's less capable in every single way then the F-22. In a non-stealth configuration, it's less capable then the Su-32MMK, which is coming off the production line. Either you're retarded or your a whore.
The F-22 will always be more expensive because the U.S. is only buying a few of them relative to F-35s. The fewer you buy, the more they cost per plane because you have to recoup development costs. The same thing happened with the stealth bomber - the $2 billion plane. It was only $2 billion because the government cut back on how many they would buy - down to 21 from almost 200. Overall, the government spent less money on the planes but per plane costs were through the roof because they purchased only a sixth of what they originally planned.
Because research takes a very long time.
Because design takes a very long time.
Because manufacturing takes a very long time.
Because shakedown and bug testing take a very long time.
Because the best strategy to avoid somebody picking a fight with their second-best military is to openly possess the best one.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
That "global understanding" you want won't come as long as any person wants to exert control over any other person. That is what causes that "cycle of violence." It's also called "being human." There is no alternative, there is no escape. Will we survive? Maybe not. But "global understanding" in the form that the peace-and-love sorts (amongst whom you may not be, but what you're spouting is pretty similar) results in appeasement and, eventually, destruction at the hands of the people who don't care about "global understanding" and do care about taking what you have for themselves.
Some parts of the human race only understand fear. To those you must be the biggest, baddest, scariest motherfucker on the block. Whether it's good or not is immaterial; I personally don't like it but I also don't think that they'll change and it's not my place to try to change them. It is what it is, and we deal with it.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Isolationism has been tried.
Appeasement has been tried.
The current system is the best one we can come up with, built upon the failures of the past. Pixie dust won't magically solve the problem, but it's easy to believe so when you are flagrantly ignorant of the real issues involved.
In fact the behavior you're roundly criticizing, is perhaps the most positive aspect of the US, versus every other nation in the world. Getting deeply involved in conflicts on a purely moral basis, over and over, with no direct benefit to be seen... That, sadly, is unique in the world, today.
For all the bluster of the E.U., they sit idly by and watch genocide from the sidelines. Of course they're only too happy to spout off on what a horrible thing it is, and how they must NEVER let it happen again... right up until it's actually happening, then they spout off on how terrible it is, and why they can't get involved this time around. It happened in Rwanda, it happened in Dharfur, it will happen again.
That's right... the USA has been acting like the world police for the better part of a century now. The most politically and financially stable century anyone has ever seen. Thank god the US is doing it, because no other nations have shown themselves willing to do so.
The staunchest allies in recent US wars are those who were saved by past US wars.
Yes, Iraq was the wrong thing to do, but that's an outlier, an there's absolutely no question about the balance of the US' effect on the world.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"One was produced by Lockheed, the company that had recently delivered the F-117 on-time and under budget."
Which goes to show that choosing on that basis did no good. Past performance is apparently no predictor of future performance, as virtually every program Lockheed Martin ("LockMart") is running is grossly over budget and behind schedule. The Littoral Combat Ship LCS-1 is now approaching three times its initial cost estimate, and the "cheap" F-35 is now approaching the cost of the F-22 itself. CBO says the initial production versions will cost close to $200 million apiece, and even if full production kicks in, we're looking at probably well over $100 million apiece for a "low end" fighter, one that has a top speed that even late 1950's fighters could beat. I'm a gadget freak like anyone else here, and very supportive of a strong military, but we simply cannot sustain this kind of madness. As a defense analyst so eloquently put it, we're getting the worst of both worlds here. We're unilaterally disarming ourselves, and going broke while doing it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"As another comparison, the cost per hour in 2008 was $19K, compared to the F15 which was $17k. History shows that this typically goes down as the plane matures and is ironed out"
I don't know where you get your info, but the Washington Post claims they've acquired Pentagon info stating that exactly the opposite is true with the Raptor; maintenance costs are going up over time, not down. They also say this report shows costs of $44K per hour for the F-22, not $19.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It practically* pays for itself!
"Russia and France both have fighters in development on par with the F22."
Sorry, but bullshit. What does Russia have that compares? The Su-35, which is yet another Su-27 upgrade? Please. The F-22 only works half the time, but modern Russian fighters aren't exactly known for their reliability either. They're even worse at complexity than we are. And the French? Are you kidding me? Surely you're not talking about the Rafale, a newer aircraft that's more or less in the F-16's class.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Apparently, we are buying a couple thousand F-35s anyway, which is - again NPR - "only slightly less capable, but far less expensive".
The F-35 is vastly less capable in the air to air mission than the F-22 (when the Raptor isn't grounded for maintenance, that is). And its cost is rapidly approaching that of the F-22 itself. It's like trading that BMW in for a Volkswagen, and then finding that the payments are the same.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"It is very cheap (inexpensive) and is a good asset."
Whatever else the F-35 is, it is not cheap. Far from it.
For comparison, Boeing is offering the Navy a fixed price quote for new Super Hornets at just over $50 million apiece if a minimum of 230 are purchased. Brand new F-16's are currently around $40 million apiece. The brand new Silent Eagle stealth redesign of the F-15 costs $100 million apiece. That's a top of the line air superiority fighter.
So how much does an optimistic estimate of F-35's run per aircraft?
If you're a taxpayer, read 'em and weep:
Year Aircraft Average unit cost/aircraft
FY2008: 6 $184.2 million
FY2009: 8 $200.2 million
FY2010: 18 $172.3 million
FY2011: 19 $146.4 million
FY2012: 40 $124.4 million
FY2013: 42 $115.1 million
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
But...it's not our fault! THEY started it!
, my good fellow. Now your highly technical, well-trained workforce can get to designing and building something USEFUL instead.
The F-22, by all accounts, hasn't ever even been used in a real war-time mission - what the FUCKing hell is a FUCKing war plane supposed to be useful for, if not in one of your "highly justified foreign wars"?
Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick - I bet you're all good Christians in that Marietta town too, building and supporting superweapons is such a peaceful, loving, humanity-rescuing enterprise, isn't it?
Of course, you'll need to bribe a different congressman for your pork next year, but that shouldn't take long.
The USA has one of the most corrupt political systems in the world - don't even think of comparing it to others - just look at the gazillions that are pumped into Marietta-support type programs and the whole stock market/sub-prime/banking fiascos.
Just to fuck over the average working Joe through his tax payments.
Entitlement prima donnas galore - half the world hasn't even got drinking water, and you believe you have a duty, or a right, or even a good reason, to build planes that almost never fly, and when they do, are used to support liar-generated oil-company-beneficiary war scenarios like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Glad I don't live there any more....
The F-22 has proven to be extraordinarily expensive to maintain. The combat readiness has been around 55%. If the F-35 can achieve 80%, that means you need one and a half F-22 just to field the equivalent of a single F-35.
Because research takes a very long time.
Because design takes a very long time.
Because manufacturing takes a very long time.
Because shakedown and bug testing take a very long time.
Because the best strategy to avoid somebody picking a fight with their second-best military is to openly possess the best one.
And since we've already done the research, design and have plenty of experience in manufacturing these, along with additional insights from the shakedown and testing of the 187 that we do have, we'll be in very good position to get a very large jump on anyone else. In the meantime, we're not likely to face the sort of conflict where we'd need more than a handful of these planes, so the money would be better spent on practically anything else. Spend it on something that will help our troops who are out there fighting wars that these planes are absolutely useless for. Spend it on anything that does some good rather than on building more of a plane that we really don't need more of and that will just sit around sucking up more money in maintenance. We've got a lot of problems to deal with in the world. Air superiority is not high on that list.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
That would be a great plan. If we wouldn't have our air force crushed due to insufficient numbers then have our industry pounded into the ground by an uncontested enemy air force.
But yes, we should aim for the lowest common denominator in defense spending because it is only soldiers lives and the citizenries safety at stake.
If you're concerned for our soldiers, then spend this money on something that will actually help protect them in the kinds of wars we're actually having to fight now, and that we'll likely be fighting more of in the future. You know, the ones where we're losing thousands of soldiers. These planes are not going to help with those. We'll probably never see an F22 over Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or anywhere else that doesn't have a threat in the air. That accounts for pretty much everywhere we're likely to have a problem with in the foreseeable future. Everyone else has nukes and it's a whole different ballgame.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
No pilot would be able to fly enough hours in a month to keep qualified if this were the case. I call bullshit.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
We've done the research for now. We have successfully built the aircraft necessary for a modern air-to-air war, should one arise. We have not done the research for the next necessary aircraft--you know, the one to compete with whatever sixth-generation fighter craft the Russians or the Chinese start selling to the highest builder. In addition, manufacturing experience stops being relevant almost embarrassingly quickly. We do not need more F-22s for combat purposes--but to stop building them means to repurpose the lines necessary to manufacture them should we need them in the future. This is never a good idea without a replacement in mind--hell, we haven't stopped building F/A-18s just because the F-35 is nearing rollout, have we?
And the idea that air superiority is somehow unimportant is laughable. If you don't have air superiority, you don't have anything in a conventional war--and while we are not currently in a conventional war, to write off the idea that one may not occur is a joke. Powers that matter--that is to say, not the dirt merchants we're foolishly picking a fight with right now--do not fight from camels, and they are the opposition that we much always keep an eye on.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Is that right? Or maybe the only reason is that you haven't got into a fight with anyone with a decent airforce, like maybe Russia?? I mean, that is a good idea and all, but don't pretend it is because you are better than everyone else. Just those you pick a fight with.
Just to let you know, the European theater of WW2 was primarily a war between Russia and Germany. The US did a lot to help out and history would have been very different had we not gone in, but Russia would have beat the Germans without us.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Do you have any sources you could share? I'd like to see the Secretary of the Air Force arguing against F-22 production, or any other top AF brass for that matter.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I'm sure if we spent less on the military, and more on social programs that don't work that we'd be speaking German.
Germany in 1939 was the only world superpower, and was in the process of invading everyone else and making a serious bid for world domination. They needed stopping.
However, none of the over 20 countries that the US has bombed since then has been even remotely similar. How many of them were actually a threat?
Sadly, in the eyes of the non-US countries, the role of terrorist world superpower is now in American hands rather than German. If you disagree, you might want to remind yourself what terrorism is: tactics designed to coerce people through fear. As just one example, the 'Shock and Awe' policy used in Iraq in 2003 was described by it's designers like this:
Shock and Awe must cause ... the threat and fear of action that may shut down all or part of the adversary's society or render his ability to fight useless
The fact that it is done by a state, rather than a dispersed trans-national ideological group like al Qaida makes no difference - the effect is the same. Defence spending is a very good idea, but the military spending you're talking about is used to fight wars of aggression, often with little regard for civillian caualties. That needs to stop.
This whole pacifist, Utopian, lets hold hands while the rest of the world stabs us in the back makes me throw up a little.
What exactly does 'stabs us in the back' mean? Who's bombing who here?
We've done the research for now. We have successfully built the aircraft necessary for a modern air-to-air war, should one arise. We have not done the research for the next necessary aircraft--you know, the one to compete with whatever sixth-generation fighter craft the Russians or the Chinese start selling to the highest builder. In addition, manufacturing experience stops being relevant almost embarrassingly quickly. We do not need more F-22s for combat purposes--but to stop building them means to repurpose the lines necessary to manufacture them should we need them in the future. This is never a good idea without a replacement in mind--hell, we haven't stopped building F/A-18s just because the F-35 is nearing rollout, have we?
And the idea that air superiority is somehow unimportant is laughable. If you don't have air superiority, you don't have anything in a conventional war--and while we are not currently in a conventional war, to write off the idea that one may not occur is a joke. Powers that matter--that is to say, not the dirt merchants we're foolishly picking a fight with right now--do not fight from camels, and they are the opposition that we much always keep an eye on.
We're so far ahead of everyone else in the research and dev, as well as actual equipment that it's not going to be an issue for a very long time. I'm not saying we don't need to have air superiority for a conventional war. I'm saying that air superiority is not even remotely a problem for us with the countries that are on our enemies list. We could easily have air superiority over any of them even without the F22s. And if needed, we've got 187 of them as well. The "powers that matter" all have nukes and we're not going to be in a conventional war with them. Russia isn't building anything that could challenge an F22, and probably won't for a very long time. China and India are the only ones that have the resources to do so, but there's no indication that they are building anything that could challenge it either.
It's time to take a realistic look at the world and realize that those "dirt merchants" are the ones that are killing thousands of our troops, and we need to start putting our money towards capabilities that will correct that problem rather than continuing to build hideously expensive weapons systems that will likely never see any real use.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yes. A large amount of anti-US sentiment is definitely generated by US interference... It is ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
But that wasn't what the parent said. You were responding to this:Do you really believe that the world will stop hating America if America stops meddling...? The parent agreed with you on many hating America for intervening, he just went on to ask if the world would no longer hate America if it stopped intervening. That's an entirely different question that you seem to have missed.
Q:What are your thoughts on interfering when a state-sponsored genocide is in progress?
Response:If the US actually did this maybe people would like it more.
But intervening against state sponsored genocide is NOT an isolationist policy, it's an intervention, meaning WAR. But you are right it could lead to more people loving America, specifically the victims of genocide. Nearly 6 million Kurds love America for it's removal of Saddam, but pleasing them pissed off other people. Make no mistake though, if America had instead ignored Saddam they would have hated America. Either way, intervene or not intervene, millions of people get hurt and hate America as a result of either response.
This relates to the prior question. There are millions of Rwandans who do not hate America for it's interventions, but instead for it's FAILURE to intervene. The bitter part is if America had intervened in Rwanada, every dead Rwandan after America's intervention would be blamed on that intervention. Don't believe me? Look at how the death tolls in Iraq are presented:
It's as though every Iraqi was an immortal living in eternal peace before America invaded. As though every bit of sectarian hatred and violence was caused solely and entirely by America's intervention. Pretending like decades of life under the rule of a genocidal, iron fisted dictator who ruled along the harshest of sectarian lines hadn't seeded that sectarian hatred. It's like the Iraqi infrastructure and economy were in great shape before American bombs blew that all away.
After World War II most of the world actually loved America and it was widely regarded as an inspirational role model for a modern democracy.
But how many would love America for it's role in WW2 if it had NOT intervened? If it wasn't to 'police' the world anymore, shouldn't it have stayed out of WW2 as well? Parent's point was simply that never intervening is NOT the path to having everyone in the world love you.
You have not explained one cogent reason why anyone would hate the US if it ceased interfering in the affairs of other nations for its own benefit.
You seemed to have provided examples yourself though in Sudan, Zimbabwe and WW2. Or do you really believe that the US involvement in WW2 wasn't for it's own benefit? Tell me again, when did they finally join the war effort? It wasn't to stop the genocide, as there were no clear reports of that until the end of the war. Oh, now I remember, it was Pearl Harbor. America went to WW2 on the basis of what happened in Pearl Harbor, not an any selfless goal of freeing the Jews or Europe.
Here's an analogy for the truthers still reading this far. If Pearl Harbor was America's WW2 rally point, why did America invade Europe? It was Japan that had invaded, not Germany. Sound similar to arguments about 9/11 and Iraq? It goes further though, ask anyone to defend American aggression in WW2 against Germany and they'll talk about the holocaust. But that's not fair, because America didn't even know about the holocaust until after and never justified the war on that basis, but instead on Pearl Harbor. Sound similar to arguments about Saddam's annexation of Kuwait and Genocide of the Kurds being used to defend the current Iraq war? They weren't used by the administration, it just chanted 9/11, 9/11.
1940... that was when Britain and its allies were fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan simultaneously, while Americans sat at home and sent Jewish refugees from Europe back to the gas chambers, right?
U-S-A! U-S-A!
Your post doesn't make any sense. The F-35 is the JSF. Is there a word missing or something? The F-35 fits the wars we anticipate fighting. The F-22 doesn't fit as well, though we will have 187 of these Ferraris available anyway.
-l
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You farking idiot. Do you have anything, anything at all, to back up what you're saying????
In February of 2004, a group of F15c's from the 3rd fighter wing at Elmendorf flew to India for a little head-to-head tactical. The pilots were the absolute best I've ever worked for. The Indian Air Force flew Russian SU-30's, and absolutely handed our guys their asses in 9 out of ten encounters. Our F15's were outclassed from the moment they left the ground. There's a good reason to build the F-22:
You'll never win a war in the air, but you can stop the other guy from winning.
The problem is that the procurement process is impossibly broken. The military doesn't really want these things, but the Congressional budget process encourages Congressmen to lavish money on their hometown defense contractors in what would, in any other industry, be referred to as pork. We wind up with impossibly expensive, pointless weapon system that we can't even afford.
The problem is the military-industrial complex, same as it ever was.
And all of this doesn't even help maintain a globe-spanning empire of imperial domination and control. Shit, if we're not going to maintain a globe-spanning empire of imperial domination and control, the least we could do is make life at home somwwhat less Hobbesian. But no, of course we couldn't do that.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
As PopeRatzo pointed out, that's not very likely. Given that we'll be spending at least as much money on a lot more F-35s, which are, according to the AF, superior to anything other than an F-22, it's really unlikely.
The train of thought you're following would prevent any weapons system from being cancelled, ever. It's sheer lunacy, and it completely ignores the opportunity costs of pursuing something like the F-22.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I find it hard to believe that more expensive replacement parts make up for the cost savings in declining to purchase over five hundred more aircraft. The parts may be expensive, but they can't possibly be that expensive.
The "Cold War junk" refers, I think, to the mentality that we're still in an arms race, only now there's just the one country running in it.
The project should never have gone forward once the Cold War ended, certainly not at the level of expense it did--the F-35, while also stunningly expensive, is far cheaper and easier to maintain. Why the F-22, then? The pathological terror that the US government has at the suggestion that it might not be able to force everyone else in the world to simultaneously acquiesce to its will leads to ridiculous projects like this--it's never powerful enough, never advanced enough, never expensive enough. No matter how much money you throw into its maw, the military-industrial complex only wants more.
I have a rock which dissuades tigers. No tigers around, right?
Somehow, the US managed to avoid wars with China and Russia even before the F-22 was introduced. (Perhaps the world-shattering assortment of nukes might also act as a deterrent.) You might as well claim that the M110, to pick a random recently-introduced weapons system, is all that stands between the US and global war.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Shouldn't that tell you something about the opportunity cost of allocating defense money in this way? Is this really the best use of it? Are we just building impossibly-expensive future museum pieces?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Yeah, good luck there. Apparently systems like the A-10, despite being much less expensive and much more useful, aren't particularly sexy, so while there are billions available for pie-in-the-sky ideas like the F-22, you won't see a fraction of that for actual useful items.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Other commenters have followed this chain of logic: The F-22 has not been flown in combat -> The F-22 is useless -> The F-22 should not be funded.
You're essentially changing it to this: The F-22 has not been flown in combat -> The F-22 is an air-superiority fighter, and air-superiority fighters are useless -> The F-22 is useless -> The F-22 should not be funded.
I suppose it's an important distinction, but the conclusion is exactly the same in either case.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
If simply nibbling away at the edges of such an obvious boondoggle creates this kind of whining backlash, can you imagine what it would take to actually reform the procurement process, hell, the whole military establishment?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
War industry employees should all work for subsistence wages, and really should be volunteers if not draftees. Industrial business should not even be allowed to take profits for the duration of war.
If it's a total war for your survival (i.e. Europe in WWII), then of course everything should take a backseat to national defense. It's another story entirely when you're engaged in an aggressive war of choice like we are now.
The last time this country was attacked by another country was WW II and that was because we had effectively blockaded Japan.
And it should also be mentioned that we've had a grand total of one (1) invasion in our country's history, and that was nearly 200 years ago. We're surrounded on two sides by the world's two largest oceans, and surrounded on the other two sides by large, friendly nations. Our actual defense needs are pretty damned small.
Looking at history, it should be European countries spending extravagant amounts of their GDP's on defense. Yet they don't, and have managed not to be wiped out by unnamed enemy xyz.
Isolationism has been tried.
Appeasement has been tried.
And now your lame straw man has been tried as well. Ray Charles could see that the parent said jack about isolationism or appeasement. And Ray Charles is blind.
And dead.
The most politically and financially stable century anyone has ever seen.
Sphincter says what? 60 million people died in WWII alone.
Even if everyone in the US unanimously decided that we were no longer going to meddle in international affairs other nations will inevitably drag us back into them due to the simple fact that we're an economic superpower. It's unavoidable.
Funny, the rest of the G7 nations manage just fine without spending more on military hardware then the rest of the world combined. On the other hand, there's all those "lesser" economies that have had to put up with so many invasions, like Australia and Iceland....
But that wasn't what the parent said. You were responding to this:Do you really believe that the world will stop hating America if America stops meddling...?
Reading comprehension much? He answered that question in his first sentence.
But intervening against state sponsored genocide is NOT an isolationist policy, it's an intervention, meaning WAR.
Who said anything about isolationism, Captain False Dichotomy?
Make no mistake though, if America had instead ignored Saddam they would have hated America.
But not the other 190 nations in the U.N., JUST America...
There are millions of Rwandans who do not hate America for it's interventions, but instead for it's FAILURE to intervene. The bitter part is if America had intervened in Rwanada, every dead Rwandan after America's intervention would be blamed on that intervention. Don't believe me? Look at how the death tolls in Iraq are presented
Boy did you just fly off the rails into crazy town. OF COURSE the U.S. is responsible for the Iraq's broken state, BECAUSE WE'RE THE ONES WHO BROKE IT. The country was invaded on WMD lies, and the neocons had no post-invasion plan whatsoever. They thought it would be a six week operation, and pulled the standard No One Could Have Seen It Coming excuse when the country dissolved into a sectarian conflict that goes back centuries, as any history professor could have told them.
But how many would love America for it's role in WW2 if it had NOT intervened?
1. That undercuts the "they'll hate us anyway" excuse
2. Apples to irrelevant oranges
Getting into a war to fight a country responsible for 50 million+ deaths not only isn't on the same page as wars of choice or CIA-backed coups, it's not on the same frikkin planet.
Some other inconvenient facts for you: we've faced only one (1) invasion in our country's history, and that was nearly 200 years ago. And pre-WWII, the United States was spending a pittance on national defense - and yet we ramped up quickly enough to win two major wars in two theaters. Finally, we're surrounded on two sides by the world's two largest oceans, and on the other two sides by two large, friendly nations.
Our defense needs are a fraction of what we're spending right now.
I said that they will hate America regardless of the amount of meddling it does.
Why. There are countries with higher per-capita GDP's yet don't have but a fraction of a percentage of the animosity that's directed towards the U.S.
So you think that America would be better off for that?
As long as we're throwing out stupid questions...would OJ be better off if he hadn't murdered a couple of people? And before some wingnut starts whining about how this is a lame comparison, the U.S. has tortured about 100 people to death - that we know of.
America has certainly done a lot of damage around the world, but they've also done a lot of good.
Irrelevant. Just because you do the dishes and wash the car doesn't mean your parents are going to let you off for starting the cat on fire.
At the end, some nation, somewhere, is going to have the strongest military. For all my problems with America, I can't pick a different nation I'd rather see as the strongest.
Or maybe...just maybe...we could have a world where no single nation has a dominant military. Any morally justified military action can be done as a coalition.
For every Saddam that America is damned for warring against, there is an African genocide like Rwanda it is not being damned for ignoring.
Yeah, you go and attack that straw man! Get him! Saying that we could get by with but a fraction of our military spending is not calling for a return to 1930's isolationism, but of course you knew that already.
The only reason other people can "be cool with people" is there is one military hyperpower. If we were "cool with people" too eight zillion wars would break out instantly - balance of power, WWI again.
Yes, because Africa, South America, the Middle East, and South Asia have been such serene utopia's under America's military dominance.
Not.
balance of power, WWI again
Under the No One Could Have Seen it Coming defense, maybe. Which means, of course, that plenty of people that aren't Republicans saw the problem a mile away years in advance, as much today as in the 1930's. If say, China started to become a belligerent power and build up it's military a la Germany 70 years ago - people would notice. Remember that we managed to go from spending a pittance on our military to winning two major wars on separate fronts while developing the atomic bomb.
Spending trillions of dollars every few years on "defense" spending is asinine and indefensible.
Do you really believe that the world will stop hating America if America stops meddling...?
Reading comprehension much? He answered that question in his first sentence.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize a simple yes or no was sufficient. I'll say no, you'll say yes and we'll just keep going until one of gets tired? Here's the full response that was given:
Yes. A large amount of anti-US sentiment is definitely generated by US interference - social, economic, political, covert or military - in the affairs of other countries. It is ridiculous to suggest otherwise.
A simple yes, then stating the obvious about intervention making enemies. The question though was not if intervention makes enemies. The question was if NOT intervening makes enemies. Though perhaps not as obvious, the answer is again of course you will still make enemies if you do not intervene.
Who said anything about isolationism?
Well, if you haven't been following, the original poster said:
A good way to solve this would be to stop being the world police and pissing everyone off. If we were just cool with people we easily get by with 10% of the defense budget we have now.
To which came the reply about that being an isolationist policy:
It would not surprise me to see America the target of more hatred and violent attacks after returning to isolationism than in its most internationally-meddling times.
To which came the reply:
It depends, do you mean real isolationism or 'we won't invade you but we will continue to dominate and manipulate you economically and politically'?
So yes, the assertion was that America would no longer be hated if it just isolated itself and minded it's own business. Several of us are decrying that as ridiculous, where do you stand?
Make no mistake though, if America had instead ignored Saddam they would have hated America.
But not the other 190 nations in the U.N., JUST America.
Yes. Sucks, to be American, doesn't it? It'd be just like in Rwanda, the survivors of that genocide hold most of the outside world in contempt for it's complete unwillingness to protect them when they needed it. But with America being the largest and most capable of helping they are hated more than any other nation for their inaction. The same scale of response is true in Iraq, everyone hates on America for the war, but very few are hating on Australia, even though it was there from day one as well.
OF COURSE the U.S. is responsible for the Iraq's broken state, BECAUSE WE'RE THE ONES WHO BROKE IT.
You'll have to explain to me exactly when you think the US broke it. Because as I see it, they broke it when they backed Saddam and helped him stay in power to become one of the worst dictators of our generation. If you believe in you broke it, you bought it, then the Iraq war was in fact a responsibility they had been shirking for decades.
Getting into a war to fight a country responsible for 50 million+ deaths not only isn't on the same page as wars of choice or CIA-backed coups, it's not on the same frikkin planet.
Tell me, how many deaths was Germany responsible for at the point Pearl Harbor was hit? Are you ignorant of the million dead bodies on Saddam's border with Iran? Is the annexation of Poland that different from the annexation of Kuwait? Was the genocide of the Jewish people really so different from the genocide of the Kurds?
Our defense needs are a fraction of what we're spending right now.
I addressed that, you're just ignoring it, I'm not gonna argue if you aren't gonna listen.
Drop dead.
Pull your head out.
EUROPE created the mess, not the US. Woodrow Willison was against the reperations.
Which changes his point...how exactly...that we keep using jingoistic meddling to fight bad guys created by jingoistic meddling 20-30 years ago?
Anything that would attempt to jam a spread spectrum signal would need to emit a lot of radiation. Program the drone to shoot anything transmitting a lot of power, then fly away from the source. If it's airborne it would get shot down. If it's ground based and hardened, then flying away will restore communications.
America has certainly done a lot of damage around the world, but they've also done a lot of good.
Irrelevant.
Oh, I see. So you don't need to balance the good and bad of a nations actions? You can just find a single example of bad foreign policy and that nation would be better off leaving everyone alone?
Just because you want to avoid the question doesn't make it irrelevant.
Or maybe...just maybe...we could have a world where no single nation has a dominant military.
Oh, I see the problem now. You're just not familiar with human history. You see, as a species, when no single nation has a dominant military, the nations inevitably fight with each other until one of them does. That experiment has been run countless times, and those that died as a result are just as countless.
Any morally justified military action can be done as a coalition.
But it won't be. In Rwanda 800,000 died while every single nation in the world could have formed a coalition but simply chose not to. Rwanda was not only a morally justified military action, there was no moral justification for military inaction, but no coalition from anywhere came to the scene.
Saying that we could get by with but a fraction of our military spending is not calling for a return to 1930's isolationism, but of course you knew that already.
Actually, it is, but you too already knew that. Maybe, just maybe, America could field a sufficient military to assure it's own defense after slashing it's budget to 10% of the current amount. But, no nation in it's right mind is going to leave itself vulnerable at home to help another. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but on a gross scale, humans are selfish. Individually we might run into our neighbors burning house to save his cat. On a national level though, one dead neighbor or family member is more valuable than a thousand dead strangers. The bottom line being, America with 10% of it's current military budget, would never send troops to some African jungle to save a bunch of strangers. It would mean opening a very real vulnerability to attack.
I am within a couple miles of a hospital, and a plethora of excellent doctors. An hour or two from major research hospitals.
I'm within two miles of an Air Guard post with fighter jets. Doesn't mean I can use them.
there is no lack of healthcare in the US. There is a lack of funds to pay for healthcare.
Distinction without a difference.
When my daughter is sick, I take her to the doctor, I pay the doctor to give his diagnoses and get a prescription for medication.
And when your insurance company delays & denies treatment for your daughter in the name of higher profits? What then?
Why should the government pay for healthcare?
Why shouldn't the government pay for healthcare? It provides better treatment for far less money.
Where in the US Constitution were we garunteed government sponsored healthcare?
Where in the US Constitution are there provisions for having the Air Force, NORAD, spy satellites, or any intelligence agency not a part of the Army or the Navy?
I am against completely the idea that the Government should be in control of who, how, and when I receive healthcare.
A canard with zero basis in reality. As opposed to a private insurance industry that very much is in control of "who, how, and when" you receive care - while taking the money you pay in in premiums and using it to try and find ways to deny you care while paying their CEO $10 million or more per year.
People hate America for many reasons. It would be naive at best to suggest that there is a simple fix (reducing military spending by 90%, as was suggested by the OP) that would eliminate all (as was claimed by the OP) of these reasons. History has shown that America cannot just adjust its response to any one reason that it is hated without adversely affecting another reason, unless you know of counterexamples that I am not thinking of right now.
In reality, the hatred of America is a complicated thing that one must grok every reason for before claiming to have a solution.
For instance, if you think that there is any action whatsoever that America could take that would keep even just the Middle East as a whole from hating it, much less the entire world, go ahead and suggest it. It is very likely that some Middle East nation or people would hate America for taking your advice, even if it improved relationships with another.
Actually, that was when many Americans volunteered to fight with the British against Nazi Germany. The American government, however, "didn't want to invade anybody", so they simply provided a variety of "lend / lease" supplies to the Allies and hoped everybody else would like us. You know, the policy recommended by the Anon Coward to whom I was responding.
Didn't work then. Won't work now.
But "global understanding" in the form that the peace-and-love sorts (amongst whom you may not be, but what you're spouting is pretty similar) results in appeasement and, eventually, destruction at the hands of the people who don't care about "global understanding" and do care about taking what you have for themselves.
False dichotomy. We don't need to spend the better part of a trillion dollars a year to intervene in third world genocides.
But "global understanding" in the form that the peace-and-love sorts (amongst whom you may not be, but what you're spouting is pretty similar) results in appeasement
Wow, that's stupid. If you're for "peace-and-love", naturally you're going to be against brutal dictatorships and ethnic cleansing. It was the "peace-and-love" types that ended apartheid in South Africa, not the jingoists (who if anything supported the government at the time).
Some parts of the human race only understand fear. To those you must be the biggest, baddest, scariest motherfucker on the block.
Which, as you should have learned in Vietnam or from Al Queda, means jack when they don't give a shit about how much you're overcompensating for something, and are perfectly willing to die for their cause.
The Raptors are irrelevant because they have not been used in the current conflict.
Yeah....annnnnd? Why pay billions for something that's not even used when we're involved in two wars?
We'll just wait and whip up a defense real quick as soon as the next conflict surfaces - no point on being prepared ahead of time!
We went from spending a pittance on our military in the 30's to winning two major wars on different fronts and developing the atomic bomb. Yes, we can ramp up military production if an actual need arose.
I would advocate building whatever the military says they need to keep us safe.
How about giving the military what we actually need to keep us safe? We're surrounded by the world's two largest oceans and two large friendly nations. A defense budget that's 5% of our current size would be perfectly adequate to give us actual defense.
If we wouldn't have our air force crushed due to insufficient numbers then have our industry pounded into the ground by an uncontested enemy air force.
Yes, because some random enemy would just whip out a larger, technologically superior air force at the drop of a hat.
False dichotomy. We don't need to spend the better part of a trillion dollars a year to intervene in third world genocides.
I agree. I'm not in favor of interventionism except where it benefits us.
Wow, that's stupid. If you're for "peace-and-love", naturally you're going to be against brutal dictatorships and ethnic cleansing.
But that crowd generally rejects the tools they need to actually address them.
Which, as you should have learned in Vietnam or from Al Queda, means jack when they don't give a shit about how much you're overcompensating for something, and are perfectly willing to die for their cause.
Awesome. Let 'em die. We won't run out of bullets any time soon. :-)
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Because research takes a very long time.
As opposed to the instant research that our enemies would do, hidden from the view of the CIA and the NSA.
Because design takes a very long time.
As opposed to the instant design that our enemies would do, hidden from the view of the CIA and the NSA.
Because manufacturing takes a very long time.
As opposed to the instant manufacturing that our enemies would do, hidden from the view of the CIA and the NSA.
Because shakedown and bug testing take a very long time.
As opposed to the instant shakedown and bug testing that our enemies would do, hidden from the view of the CIA and the NSA.
Because the best strategy to avoid somebody picking a fight with their second-best military is to openly possess the best one.
Yes, because a military of a sufficient size, sophistication, and threat level to us wouldn't be at all threatened by our frikkin nuclear weapons.
We've faced one, repeat, one invasion in the entire history of our country, and that was almost 200 years ago. We could spend 5% of our current defense budget for actual defense of our nation and be just fine.
The F-35 still being in production relates to the F-22 in no way - they are completely different planes with completely different missions!
Why do people always link the two planes?! It's like comparing an A-10 to an F-16.
Do I support the troops? Absolutely, being one of them.
I don't think any of you addressed the elephant in the room: that is, that most of the current airframes in the USAF have long ago reached their planned service-life. As these current platforms (F-15, F-16, F/A-18A/C, A-10) age, they have a lower and lower number of operational hours between maintenance overhauls. Eventually, you are going to have to replace these with new aircraft, regardless of the relative capability of the older airframes. Sure, the F-35 is the cheap jack-of-all trades, but you don't want a Family Practice doctor doing brain surgery, so to speak. The F-22 is a far more capable system for what it is designed to do - stealthy air superiority/precision strike. We don't need as MANY F-22s for this role, but that was already written into the contracts - close to 700 F-35s between the Air Force, Navy, and Marine variants. In the Air Force of, say, 2025, the vision is that the F-22 would fill the role of the F-15A/C, while the F-35 would fill the role of the F-16 and F/A-18. Both have clearly-defined roles and are necessary to maintain control of a war-zone. And besides, the cost of the F-22 is nothing compared to the cost of what has actually built the national debt - out-of-control mandatory spending. $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities in Medicare alone. $12.4 trillion stated national debt. That means each additional F-22 contributes to an additional 2.6 x 10^-5 % increase in the National Debt. I'm assuming of course that maintenance costs will eventually level out compared to not acting because of the increasing late-life failure rate of existing airframes.
tl;dr - Don't cut 187 F-22s based on "cost" when you are spending more money in the same fiscal year than in every year in the country's history - COMBINED - on useless earmarking "stimulus packages" and budget-busting "health care reform."