Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
I agree.
Gaining air superiority over the Taliban isn't much of a concern either. It was obsolete before the assembly line was even fired up.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
Conversely, if you are the head of the Department of Defense and don't need or want a pointless weapons program, you have to lobby Congress like hell not not fund it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You don't build them to use them, you build them so you don't have to use them. You also force anyone who thinks they need to counter them to spend resources on developing and deploying the countermeasures.
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.
Actually most of the cost is what they call a "sunk cost" which is what the rest of us call R&D and building the facilities to produce the plane. I've seen estimates where the cost of actually producing one now is around 70 million per additional plane.
That said the F-22 is way more plane supposedly than any of our potential competitors can field. And even a few F-22's can dominate a force of 5 times their size. The 180 something of them that we are already planning to produce should be enough to keep our forces superior. The new F-35 isn't actually as good as the F-22 in many respects but it is cheaper and good enough to fill the roles it's designed for.
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).
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.
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for the Federal Government.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Where exactly is this airborne threat you're so afraid of? The F-35 is an excellent ground attack aircraft, and from my understanding still a compatent fighter. Who precisely are we likely to be fighting with an air force more advanced than Iraqs (pre 91 that is)? In any case, I'd be more concerned about a naval fighter being cancelled; the Air Force mission really does seem to be transitioning to homeland defense and bombing, neither of which needs anything like the F-22. I'd rather see a next gen bomber in the real world, however cool F-22s are.
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.
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for the Federal Government.
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.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
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.
Not exactly... You build them to show their potential, once you've done that in a couple of wars here and there, sell them to other countries 15 years later.
TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs
The push for producing less F-22's comes from the DoD not the congress critters. In fact it had a hard time getting through because the opposition to reducing the production run was bipartisan. The opposition primarily came from representatives that have a vested interest in the continuation of the F-22 production, as in parts are made or assembled by their constituents.
The problem with this is this: what if the countermeasures cost "them" far less than the F-22 costs us, or "they" use a military doctrine, such as guerrilla warfare, that makes the F-22's strengths irrelevant?
We could bankrupt ourselves and hand our enemies the victory. Remember: the Germans had by far the best tanks in WW-II, but the Allies produced A LOT MORE tanks. And planes. And ships. And we produced a nuke.
It's not as simple as just having the "best" weapons. You have to maximize your resources overall.
Personally, I think we need unmanned aircraft. Imagine a fighter jet that can pull 50 G's, which would squish a human. Would you want to be in an F-22 vs., say, 10 of those? Would an F-22 even be able to shoot such a thing down?
--PM
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.
Wow - it's not paranoia if everyone really is out to get you, right? Get at least your facts straight. Republicans and Democracts voted for the bill, and Republicans and Democrats voted against it. Not to mention that Gates, a Republican, Air Force and Joint Chief of Staffs didn't want to continue the purchase program. I don't know how you lump those people into the group of Obama's lunatic lefties.
How's the weather on your little planet?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
You don't build them to use them, you build them so you don't have to use them. You also force anyone who thinks they need to counter them to spend resources on developing and deploying the countermeasures.
They've already got countermeasures for F-22 stealth so no need to bother now. Remember how that F-117 got shot down?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The US will not be invaded suddenly. We can and will produce more weapons when we are threatened, we currently have enough of a military that we can protect the majority of our allies. While production may slow, development will still trudge on, so that if or when the US is directly threatened we should be able to pop up more up to date designs.
The F-22 has played its role in helping the US determine how to build the next generation of planes. We don't NEED them until a conflict, and any conflict that can threaten the continental United States will take along time to reach our shores.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
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!
Actually, this isn't a partisan issue at all. It has less to do with Democrats and Republicans than it has to do with Congress trying to defend jobs in their home states by keeping a program that the Pentagon doesn't want. The vote did not break down along party lines. Chambliss (R-GA) and Dodd (D-CT) were vocal supporters of the F-22, whereas McCain (R-AZ) and Gates (a Bush appointee kept on by Obama) were against. You might want to read up.
Yes I remember how it was shot down. It was flying the same path over and over. It's LO not "stealth"
Part of the reason is that pointless weapons programs are a major source of federal pork projects for many congresscritters' districts. Plus the lobbyists for Lockheed, Raytheon, etc make darn sure it's worth the congresscritters' while to vote for more contracts for each of them.
I am officially gone from
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.
This democrat wants to know if there's any reason to care about replacing them. You mentioned it's half the size and has a third of the weapons payload. Is it just the phallic symbolism that you are upset about?
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.
They're accountable to their customers, their shareholders, and their potential customers they want. There is a reason most people who have the money send their children to private schools: they're usually better.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is a Republican, and he's one of the people who lobbied most strenuously to do this. 15 Republicans voted to kill it and 15 Dems voted to keep it alive.
Also, if the F-35 has one third the payload of the F-22, how could it take four F-35s to replace one F-22?
Huh? I hope you were being sarcastic. From TFA. "The amendment to halt the plane's production was co-sponsored by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz. McCain, who has never been an F-22 fan, went so far as to quote at some length President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address, which warned of the "military-industrial complex," though McCain noted that the proper phrase should be the "military-industrial-congressional complex."" Anyway, thanks for playing, come again.
"all i wanted was a pepsi..."
Ya, it was taken down by a ground based radar network that had the capability to use low enough frequencies to make the F-117 intermittently visible enough to lob a valley of SAMs in its flight path.
The F-117 wasn't an air superiority fighter. The F-22 is. The F-22 isn't meant to strike ground targets, it's meant to keep the enemy out of its airspace. The F-22 is still effective against current fighter based radar.
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.
Though you should build what you need the most first. In recent trends the largest proportion of troops maimed and killed are primarily by roadside bombs. Comparatively little has been spent on that, mostly for improved armor. How much has been spent on technology to improve roadside bomb detection? It seems that would be a high tech area, but unfortunately due to the the way the industrial military complex operates very little has gone to that. In fact we are still in the stages of specing what are the reqs.
Another point is that we already have built F-22s, so that addresses your point.
Then there is the point that they really are not all that scary since China has tech to detect the F-22, is working on SAM and A2A tech to down them at long range, there are already tactics to deal with the F-22 that rely on concentrating forces on the tankers and AEWCs that serve the F-22. Finally it is likely that the F-22 is not all that hot anyway and plagued with issues. In addition to the dateline bug, there have been two that crashed for not public reasons in routine low altitude flight (a typical mode of operation to evade RADAR) and the F-22 has yet to see combat.
If Turkey had not already been used, that would have been a more apt nickname for the F-22.
You don't build them to use them, you build them so you don't have to use them.
And that's how the Cold War happened...
First, the F-22 is an "air superiority" fighter, meaning it's a Cold War leftover, built to shoot down super-MIGs (that never got built). The F-35 is a "multi-mission" fighter, meaning it can support troops on the ground, AND take out other fighters (probably F-18s that Republicans sold to the Bad Guys). The F-22 is simply a poor (expensive, fragile, hard-to-maintain) aircraft, built for a threat/war that never materialized.
Second, your "number of pilots" argument is laughably specious.
Third,
Heh. Yeah, those lefty's are ruinin' the country. If the Repubs had won, they'd be buying LOTS more F-22s and keepin' us safe.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
There is a reason most people who have the money send their children to private schools: they're usually better.
Including the current occupant of the White House, no less.
I've always found it amusing that the champions of public education usually send their kids to private school while simultaneously fighting policies that would give the rest the sheep the ability to do the same thing. I guess loyalty to the public school teachers unions that vote for your party is more important than the ability of the next generation of Americans to compete successfully in the global economy.
Fucking hypocrites.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
Perhaps. With with the new F-44 Apology the need for military prowess is largely rendered moot. Provided the "Apology" is accepted.
The original Hulk movie had the canceled RAH 66 Comanche too.
Anything the hulk touches is doomed!/
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for the Federal Government.
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.
I don't find any of this amusing.
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!
This is of course assuming that we don't have such aircraft in or near service readiness. And of course the danger of having a purely remote control weapons platform is that an opponent, who doesn't use simple doctrine like guerilla warfare, can possibly jam the necessary communications or hijack control of the vehicle somehow.
``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.
Not every private sector health and education provider is driven by profit
[Citation needed] Please, explain that before you go any further. Especially publicly-held companies, who are legally obligated to look out for shareholders' interests first and foremost..? You can't just skip over that little detail with a dismissive, unsupported statement, and expect me to accept it as fact.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
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
If only the Taliban were our only problem, with Iran forging ahead with its nuclear weapon ambitions despite the stern talking to they received from the current administration or North Korea with a lunatic leader who is dieing and his successors are trying prove their insanity. Both have Russian AA, Radar systems, and Planes they are much harder to over power with our current force then the Taliban with their rocks. The F-35 is a utility plane it was designed to do many things well it is a light bomber not a fighter, the F22 is a fighter and limiting them to 180 is foolish they will have to last until the 6th generation fighter is ready for production (30 years). The Russian su-47 is more then capable of handling F-35's and they are currently shopping it, Iran would be a perfect customer they have oil money and hate the US as much as Russia. It's not just the threats the US will face today but will face in the next 30 years once production is stopped the molds are destroyed are starting up production will take many years not good if Russia or China decide to become aggressive.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
the big problem with drones is
1 lag time: even when you are talking subsonic you have very little time to correct for "stuff"
2 local intelligence : even the dumbest pilot is about 20X the smarts of anything that we could put in a plane
3 payload : if you have a drone the size of a normal plane you might as well put a pilot in so you need to use
X number of drones to replace each plane
4 retrieval and performing a mission on the way "home": even if a pilot has to eject you still have a soldier that could do "something" in the process of getting to an evac point with a drone you have scrap metal
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Russia and America had pretty much the same strategy for their tanks because they had the production capabilities and raw resources to just spew them out (and were of such high quality that they acquired nicknames like "The Ronson").
Germany didn't have the luxury of the level of resources that the Russians or Americans did. Germany wouldn't have had the fuel to field an American or Russian style of armor.
Why shoot down a drone when you can just jam its communications?
Hrm. those people would probably argue it fits in there somewhere around "Establish Justice" or "Promote the general welfare"..
Personally.. I like the *idea* of everyone being able to get the same access to health care and education..I just hate the idea of the gov't trying to provide it, considering how well they do at everything else.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
Interesting...Why would McCain cosponsor the amendment?
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for the Federal Government.
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.
I don't think Shakrai was implying that education and health care should be run by for-profit corporation. Only that they should not be run by the Federal government. While I like my private health insurance, I believe that education should be run by the local government. Afterall, they should understand the local community better than any bureaucrat in D.C. or a state capital.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
Better than a Hot War.
They're accountable to their customers, their shareholders, and their potential customers they want
The order here is important, I think.
Hearing "corporations are accountable to their customers!" strikes me as the same idealist wishful thinking that caused the supporters of communism to declare all of The People equal. Corporations are accountable to money. Period. The PR says that the money flows from the customer, and that's why corporations listen to their customers. Reality says, call your local regional monopoly and attempt to get good customer service from them.
In fairness, your examples on education are more on-target than the buzzword Obamacare generalizations so popular now. Of course, I hope you see the conflict in nerfing the hell out of public education budgets, then laughing at how much public education sucks... :)
That which does not kill us makes us... st
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for the Federal Government.
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.
What's amusing to me is the frequent use of the phrase "What's amusing to me" in this thread.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
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.
Perhaps. But the 10th Amendment suggests that health care and education should be a state responsibility (if at all). People make a big deal of the Canadian health care system, but there's an important point: the Canadian health care system is not run by the Canadian federal government. Each province runs its own health care system. For example, the Alberta health care system operated very much like a private insurer until this year, whereas in Nova Scotia it is more like a traditional universal health care system. The Canadian federal government mandates certain minimum standards, but it has the constitutional authority to do that. The actual operation of the health care system is a provincial matter, as the Canadian constitution dictates it should be.
What's amusing to me, in this day and age of massive civil suits against private corporations, that there are people that think corporations are unaccountable.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You kind of make sense, and I think the F-22 raptor is an awesome plane, and am sad to see it end, but how much deterrence do we really need? We can already remotely hit any site in the world with a nuclear weapon. Any country would be a fool to start a serious war with us.
War machines are really a drain on the economy, because once they are built, they are capital expenditures that add nothing, and if they are actually used, they destroy the economy.
If you build a passenger airplane, it is an expenditure that helps people get around the world more easily, and will continue adding value to the economy. It is a net producer, a net plus. Fighting implements are a negative, a drain on the economy. The faster we can get away from massive war expenditures, the better it will be for the economy, and the whole world, actually.
Qxe4
Apparently you don't. It got shot down because it always flew the same path over and over, and the Serbians put guys under the flight path. They phoned up the AA batteries when they heard a jet flying overhead, and the AA batteries, knowing where to look, tracked and targetted it visually. Still only one missile got close enough to do any damage.
I guess you've never heard of a not-for-profit hospital?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Religious schools.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money
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.
I wish I had mod points... :)
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money
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.
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.
Personally.. I like the *idea* of everyone being able to get the same access to health care and education..
I don't, because if everybody gets the "same" then it's going to suck for everybody.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery"
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
[Citation needed] Please, explain that before you go any further. Especially publicly-held companies, who are legally obligated to look out for shareholders' interests first and foremost..? You can't just skip over that little detail with a dismissive, unsupported statement, and expect me to accept it as fact.
First off the GP never said anything about publicly held companies just private sector.
Private Education provider not drive by profit - Parochial Schools because of their tax status they are forbidden to make a profit they are only allowed to save money for a rainy day fund.
Private Sector Health not driven by profit - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-profit_hospital
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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
Speak softly, but carry a big stick.
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
What's amazing to me is people that think a business that is afraid their customers will fire them for someone that does a job better, and leave them unemployed isn't accountable. And I'm also amazed that that same person thinks that teachers that can't be fired for doing a piss poor job, and having public schools that poor students are forced to attend because they have no other option is somehow doing society some sort of benefit.
unaccountable entities whose primary responsibility is profit.
You mean people?
Maybe we can put those skiing robots in charge and have utopia.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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
I read recently that the these complex weapon systems are contracted out to various companies across the US to maintain support from a broad spectrum of Congresspeople. This one had contractors in 40 states, thus the widespread support from Senators looking to bring home the bacon in their respective states.
"When you see one country succeeding, and, many others roiling in their own stupidity"
Invalid. A great deal of the problems in the rest of the world are due to them being systematically held back by the first world to achieve a political and economic goal. Using this as evidence of our superiority is not just incorrect, it's deplorable.
"If everyone was a jingoistic patriotic nationalist, their countries would be better, and the world would be better."
No. We would all be dead by now.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
One of the defining points of a free market is an educated consumer that is able to make rational, informed choices. One of the defining points of distributing education is that consumers are not yet educated. Consequently, a free market can never be an efficient model for distribution of education.
So, if fully private education is deeply irrational, you turn to the public sector. There are very real public benefits to widespread education, so this makes sense. In the United States, we have several levels of public: the State and the Federal governments. Under our current system, states are greatly underfunded, as the bulk of revenue goes to the Federal government. Also, levels of funding vary wildly from state to state. The poorest, least educated states are least able to invest in education. They would also see the greatest benefit from that investment. So, nationally it makes sense to have large investment in the poorest states, as that is where you'll see the biggest bang for your buck in terms of economic benefit per investment. Consequently, it makes sense that education should be a responsibility for the Federal government.
You can make an argument that it isn't an enumerated power of congress. Fine, go and try to get an ammendment passed granting congress that authority. In the real world, a strict congressional adherence to enumerated powers has been shat on so much over that last two centuries that nobody really cares about it. Congress has whatever authority people let it get away with. Sad but true.
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.
Whatever the method, the pilots and owners of that plane were stupid enough to let it get shot down.
Seriously, why the scramble to explain it was some sort of fluke? No one cares if it was a fluke or not. What matters is they let themselves get shot down.
Why is [my] grandparent post modded flamebait? Some guys with lots of mod points and free time at their hands?
Please provide proof. How are we holding them back? Who is we? Why have India and China succeeded the more they embrace evil capitalist ideals?
That's an emotionally charged statement, but how many of those 'massive civil suits' succeed? How many are even an option for the average consumer with a legitimate grievance? Of course, this also brings the issue of legal system abuse into the debate, and i suspect you and i would probably find some common ground there.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
I'm on the board of a private center that caters to veterans with substance abuse and mental health problems. We're a 501(c)3 organization, which put's us squarely in the "private sector" by anyone's reckoning. At least, whenever the *government* has dealings with us, they insist that we're a private sector institution. And yet, somehow, profit is not our primary motivator.
Your leap from "private sector" directly to "publicly-held companies" is incorrect. From age 6 onwards, not one of the private schools I attended - all the way through college - were "publicly-held companies". The school my girls attend right now is a private institution, and it isn't a publicly-held company either.
The hospice my mother volunteers at isn't a publicly-held company. Nor is the extremely long-lived local athletic association that my father and brothers all invest their time in. The hospital that a good friend of mine is at right at this moment, in fact, is a private institution, but is not publicly-held. Same goes for my credit union. All of these organizations are concerned with funding, finances, and operating costs... but it is not their primary and stated purpose for existing.
If you think that "not government" automatically means "motivated solely by profit", then you really need to get off your butt and take a look at all the organizations around you, and understand that there are already well known and well understood ways of getting big things done without involving the government and without making profit the primary motivating factor in a private institution.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
``Soldier'' in this context means ground troops --- pilots are fliers, not ground troops.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
That's good, but what would really impress me is more nonprofit preventative care. And let's all laugh together at nonprofit pharmacuticals (which, i suppose, would be possible, if you could attract nonprofit researchers).
That which does not kill us makes us... st
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.
A standards-based state run (in the 50 sense, not the conspiracy sense) public healthcare system is an intriguing idea. As with education, tho, there'd be massive differences in quality of care from state to state. I'm not sure what the solution to that would be.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
Seems Ronald R. kick-started over-spending as our "biggest" weapon. It's something we do well. Now whether it's effective or not...
Table-ized A.I.
Wow. Just wow. Please do a little bit of research, and then we can talk. Please look into United States involvement in Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, Haiti, Laos, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Bolivia, Honduras, and too many other places to list. Just do a little bit of research and then try to tell me that we are not actively holding back the third world and giving the world a reason to hate us. Please try to come up with a rational justification for these actions, and please try to make a valid argument that these illegal actions have not destabilized the world.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
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?
That's the second nonprofit hospital reference... but we're talking about, i thought, health care as a complete system. That means your GP, specialists, peds, geriatric care, meds, insurers, etc. The whole life cycle of care. Hospitals, hopefully, won't come up too many times per year for the average person.
I'm not sure i should even go into religious schooling.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
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?
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.
Right... because nobody is profiting from the broken system overseen by "accountable" politicians. Take a look at the education system in California. Corrupt politicians bound to their lobbyist masters. CTA spending $58 MILLION on advertising in 2007 to defeat reform measures that Govenor Schwarzenegger was trying to get passed. California's education meanwhile, ranked 40th out of the 50 states (and DC).
Private corporations may have profitability as a goal, but you're sadly mistaken if you believe they can achieve that goal without providing a satisfactory product (in this case, education). Why do you think some parents pay expensive tuition at private schools? Despite the fact that private schools may want to be profitable, the education they provide is generally better than their public counterparts. Meanwhile the administrators of the public school system are happy to piss money away because, when it eventually becomes time to raise taxes, they know nobody will want to be the jerk voting "against education".
California is a very visible example of the naivete inherent to the "government is non-profit and accountable and therefore better" argument.
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!
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."
Are you really naive enough to believe that someone in business is -only- there to make a profit? Do they cease being human beings with wide-ranging values and mores just because they own a company? So all business owners are monsters to you? You've been brain-washed that badly, eh?
Business owners want to make a profit because you simply must do that to survive in business. It's not 'make a profit, all other things be damned.'
You're also ignorant of the effect of Adam Smith's invisible hand principle. By seeking to make a profit, a business owner is forced to make decisions which are in the best interest of consumers. What forces a politician to make decisions in the best interest of the people?
You call business owners unaccountable? That's ludicrous. If you don't like what a company sells, buy from another one. Unaccountability means nothing in a world where you have choice. Where the current health care system fails is where it has walked away from the free market, away from choice.
We really have to question your judgment when you think a government entity is more effective at anything compared to the free-market when viewed in the light of the history of economics and industry. It's simply not.
Politicians aren't actually in favor of the people. They simply want power and control and to get re-elected. Disagree with that? That's just the converse of your statement that business owners simply want to make a profit. Both business owners and politicians are human beings who care about other human beings, and approach their responsibilities with the same human values--but have very different constraints.
The business owner must make a profit to stay in business. The politician must get re-elected to stay in power.
The business owner can never force you to buy from him. The politician -can- force you to buy from him.
The business owner can never take money out of your wallet at the point of a gun. The politician -can- pass laws which take money out of your wallet against your will.
The business owner can never force you to not buy from others and establish a monopoly. The politician -can- establish legal monopolies and has done so historically, notably with the phone company, and the Post Office. In fact, the post office still has a legal monopoly on letter carrying. It's actually illegal for anyone except government employees who work at the Post Office to put mail into anyone's mailbox.
Now, how does the government racket work? They manipulate voters through immoral transfers of wealth, and we can see that today with the current health care proposal. Obama wants to make the rich pay for the poor's healthcare, thereby giving the poor 'free' healthcare. Thus the government system will be cheaper, not because it's better run, or anything like that, but because transfers of wealth are covering the soon to be massive shortfalls of an organization not being run at a profit. Government monopolies always work by putting existing companies out of business by this shady and immoral tactic.
But a government organization is not inherently better at administrating than a private company. After all, a government org is simply a group of people. And a business org is also a group of people. It's illogical to say that a group of people is a better administrator than a group of people. And when it comes to accountability, nothing is less accountable than a government office to which there is no alternative, such as the DMV. The only difference between a gov org and a biz org is that the gov org has the rule of law, it has the power to force, the ability to legally hold a gun to your head. And you think this somehow makes it a superior administrator of any service? I'd love to see you explain that.
The truth is, a government organization will always be less accountable, less consumer friendly, less responsive to the needs of those it serves because of the way it operates and how it gains power. A government organization cannot go out of business for lack of cus
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
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
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 problem is *we* (the U.S.) can't offensively use our nuclear arsenal. Right now it's there to keep other sane countries from thinking of using theirs and making the less-than-stable countries hold out for some opportune moment.
The world knows this and thus they know they can drag the U.S. into a conventional war and not have to worry about us deploying nukes against them.
What would be foolish would be start a serious war with an unstable country that has nukes (and wouldn't mind seeing their own cities being glassed over as long as they get to nuke their enemies and the top brass and VIPs can survive). Which is why there's been long, drawn out, and relatively fruitless negotiations with certain countries.
Eventually military research makes its way into the civilian sector so defense spending isn't entirely a money pit. Its not nearly as good a return as other investments but it is sort of the investment that makes all the other ones possible.
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.
Wow. Just wow. Please do a little bit of research, and then we can talk
How about this. We nuked the Japanese, twice, and we firebombed Germany into the stone age. That pales in comparison to anything that we did to Iran, Guatamela, Haiti, Laos, Cuba, Dominican Republica, Bolivia, etc...
Even in Vietnam, we did not wage the sort of air war that we waged over Germany. In Germany we did indiscrimant bombing of every target there was.
And what happened, after that war?
I'd say not even a decade after being completely flattened, the Germans and Japanese were well on their way to rebuilding their own countries. Indeed, Europe was already revived as an economic rival to the USA by the 1960s. Having flattened itself with two back to back world wars, that's a pretty good accomplishment.
By similar comparison, the Russians had a giant portion of their population killed by the Germans, and 20 years later, put the first man into orbit, and lead off with a number of advances in the sciences.
The Chinese were beat up for a couple of centuries by the west, got mauled by the Japanese in WWII, had the Japanese kill like 20M of their people, then, they killed 30M of themselves after that during the Cultural Revolution, and, then they changed their economic system and within a decade became a manufacturing power and within two decades a world power.
So... all of this persecution talk is an excuse...
If all of these third world countries had people that wanted to succeed, they could succeed, but they don't, and so they won't, no matter how much money you throw at them.
This is my sig.
That's because politicians dont want to cut funding and have ensuing job losses :(
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
Hence, liking the idea. The practice never works out quite as well as intended. Not wanting everyone to have access to health care they need is cold-hearted. But so is providing everyone with the same shitty care that doesn't help.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
is health care the role of any government in your opinion? or does the market get to decide that my health isn't valuable?
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
Specious argument because you disregard all the poor and working class people that both champion the public school system and actually send their kids there.
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
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
Really? If your local hospital sucks you can go to another one several hours away? Good luck with that while dealing with a heart attack or stroke.
Same thing with schools, where I grew up you only had two choices, one public school, and one private school and they were both pretty much the same.
Free market only works when there is healthy competition and in both health care and education there is no such competition.
Even as it is, a friend of mine with cancer has to drive two hours to see her doctor because her local hospital proved to be grossly incompetent. This is a huge problem for her. Voting with your wallet I'm afraid only works in retail these days and even then the market is simply too large for your vote to make any difference. Did people stop buying Chinese toys when it was discovered that a number contained lead? No they didn't even blink.
The only valid point you could possibly have here is that politics can screw with your results but I'll argue that politics already does screw the situation anyways. Abortion was illegal and then became legal. This will happen regardless of who administers either program.
The problem is *we* (the U.S.) can't offensively use our nuclear arsenal.
I would hope that we don't offensively use our conventional arsenal as well.
Qxe4
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.
Only when their customers and potential customers are capable and actually DO represent their interests through money. It's an unlikely situation when someone knowingly votes against their self interest, but people frequently and knowingly do not wield their money in their own self interest. So if people don't spend they're money in their self interest than what the market does and tells us is not a reflection of those interests and you end up with things like the gross food that is mass produced. The power of "saving money" (when consuming) in our consumer culture outweighs so many of the self interests of consumers that the market has ceased to operate in the conceptual free market fashion.
Not to mention that when you're poor you're often not faced with choices and you're forced into supporting companies and their operations when you're rather not.
The market relies on this operation of money as a representation of self interest to gain it's morality because it inherently has none. And in areas like health and education a huge dose of morality is a fundamental requirement.
I KUT J00 M4NG!!!
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for the Federal Government.
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.
The point is that the Federal Government is not really accountable. Private schools have to exceed expectations or shut down.
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
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.
False... Except the very expensive high end.. private schools are generally worse.. especially at the high school level Ever met someone who learned math at a catholic high school? Very scary
It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man.
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.
Parochial and religious schools? So if I want my child to be educated outside the public school system and outside of home schooling, he needs to hear about The Great Sky Fairy and Resurrection Boy when he goes to school?
No. It is in our national interest to fund primary and secondary level education. An educated workforce benefits everybody, those that own capital, to the lowest level of manual labor. I'm not saying what we have for a school system is good, though, just that some form of public education is valuable and cannot be replaced by religious entities.
To those who argue against using collective resources for basic education, what, if anything, should we direct resources to? Only the military? At some point the quality of the republic is degraded to the point that it isn't worth defending.
What's amusing to me is that if you want to education or health care funded in the US, you have to lobby Congress like hell to fund it.
What's amusing to me is that people think education or health care is a proper role for the Federal Government.
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.
Unaccountable entities? You mean like the private schools where you can simply not enroll your child? If enough parents don't like the way a private school is run, it goes out of business.
Oh, you were referring to the public schools. The ones that are run by the government and really are unaccountable. Silly me.
It's not hypocritical at all.
The entire idea behind a public school system and a public health system is that you provide a system that is ok but not great.
That way wealthy people won't use it, they'll send the kids to private schools and take out private health insurance (or just pay directly themselves) and go to private hospitals.
But they still pay for the public system they don't use, which means the public system can hopefuly reach "ok" standards since it is being subsidized.
If you use a voucher system, then the less good public system is no longer getting the funding it needs to be "ok", since the wealthy people are no longer contributing to it (they use their voucher to pay some portion of the private cost).
The whole idea is to make the school/hospital good enough to not be embarrassing and to provide the education/health care required to stop a large portion of society being unproductive. But not good enough that people who can afford not to use it - but you need those non-users to keep paying for it anyway.
You don't build them to use them, you build them so you don't have to use them. You also force anyone who thinks they need to counter them to spend resources on developing and deploying the countermeasures.
This is why China is spending big on economic development. Economic war is the real war and it can bring United States to our knees. While doing that they get to keep a smile on their straight face! Not to mention all the wealth they collect from us in the process! What a bargain!
Real war is for the uncivilized and the weak. The true world players wage their wars on something better.
It is reliable, safe, cheap to maintain, and an insane ass kicker. If only all military aircraft were like that...
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.
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."
What amuses me is that people think United States of America is a singular noun.
States have a fairly good grip on education, and most recent federal attempts at improving it do the exact opposite. No Child Left Behind, for instance. There are things that could be improved, but the federal government would be better left to fixing existing, broken educational laws than nationalizing education any further.
As to health care, please itemize the existing nationalized health care systems in the world and indicate, citing to empirical sources, which of them provide better or more timely care than is currently available to Americans. Let's leave greedy insurance companies out of the equation for now. We can talk about the admitted shortcomings in affordability of health care to certain (but not nearly a majority of) people in America later, once it is shown that quality and timeliness of care decrease as a function of nationalization.
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."
And as someone who grew along the Canadian border can attest that health-care is not in any way consistent. Some provinces are much richer than others as I'm sure you know and Quebec gets a lot of federal money but the consequence is that in some areas you experience long wait times and in other areas you get right in. This is not unlike the state of the current health-care system in the US. Health-care in BC or Alberta is better than most of the provinces in the east.
While I'll agree that health-care should be locally managed I have absolutely no problem with the programs being federally funded with loose guidelines much like the education system has and much like the system you describe.
While I understand that much of the movie was taken out of context you should watch the movie Sicko.
Contrast what you see in the movie with experiences you've had in your own life and you begin to see why people think corporations are unaccountable. Do you think the big tobacco lawsuit wasn't special? Or the other massive civil suits that you are referring to? How much had to go wrong from within these large companies for these suits to go all the way through to a loss for the company? It is exceedingly hard to take down a large organization behaving badly. Look at Microsoft and see how accountable they have been? How about AT&T with warrantless wiretaps that had to made into law after the fact, and Verizon with billions in tax payer money to fund fiber which only saw deployment two years after the fact, or Comcast with out and out advertising fraud, or IBM with it's chemical processing causing employee health issues? How about MediaSentry with it's illegal evidence gathering?
Sorry, the list goes on and on and on... large companies wield too much power and that makes them unaccountable when their actions only serve the most profit. Yes, they are doing right by their shareholders but they are often doing wrong by the American people.
I'd agree with you, except you mischaracterize the current state of health care as "capitalism." It is not, it is economic fascism. While the means of production are privately held, their use and application are stringently controlled by the state. This results in wildly different prices for different people for what are essentially the same goods.
I'm self-employed and middle class and pay for my own health insurance, for which the premiums seem to double ever 4-5 years. While I'm writing that check to Blue Cross Blue Shield (quite confident that if god forbid I ever actually got sick they'd find 15 different reasons to deny my claims), there's poor motherfuckers getting free treatment at the emergency rooms. How come when poor people get free healthcare that's "compassion," but if I were to get healthcare in exchange for my tax burden, that would be "socialism?"
Let's have one or the other. Let's either kick the freeloaders out of the hospitals and pay as you go, or let's all get the same shitty health care paid for by our tax dollars, but this bastardized system is ruining us all.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I neglected to review my post. Verizon started receiving money 20 years prior to deployment and only acted when certain legislators started getting pressure for us to modernize our infrastructure which of course was far too late meaning it will cost more money now than it would have if they had done with the money what they were supposed to do to begin with. The American public is much worse off because of this as we no longer have the edge in the last mile when compared to other countries.
That is the US propaganda on what happened. The propaganda from the other side is that the Chinese brought a radar system they had in development under the cover of being modern weather forecasting equipment prior to the conflict. Then they tweaked it until the F-117 had no chance with lots of opportunities.
You can believe that one propaganda is more valid if you like, I just know that shortly after that F-117 was downed, NATO bombed the rest of the weather stations. Also one side points to the "accidental" bombing of the Chinese embassy after that as more than a simple accident.
Chambliss would be an obvious supporter as the F-22 airframe is made in Marietta, GA. The engines are made in Dodd's state, and he is looking out for the unions.
It might seems selfish or corrupt but on the other hand I've been personally screwed over by my congressmen NOT lobbying on my state's behalf. There are states with half our population and natural resources getting twice the federal programs that we do because, frankly, our legislators aren't very charismatic or experienced. Hint, Al Franken is our new junior senator. No I didn't vote for the guy even though I've read his books.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
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
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
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.
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.
To be fair, Germany, Japan, and Europe in total turned around so quickly because of substantial external aid. Aid that was not afforded on the same levels to Vietnam or anywhere in Latin America or the Caribbean.
Additionally, you seem to attempt to strike a comparison between Germany et al. and Latin America et al. in the form of "Germany was treated so badly and look what they accomplished; thus, Latin America should be able to do similar."
However, by your own admission, Latin America and Iran were treated worse than Germany. Is it any wonder that it's more difficult for them to succeed when we played a massive role in overthrowing governments there for the past 50 years?
I mean, it's not like the US overthrew the Iranian government 50 years ago, overthrew the Guatemalan government 50 years ago, spent 20 years trying to overthrow the government in Laos, overthrew the government of Haiti 50 years ago, blockaded Cuba for decades, overthrew the Dominican, Ecuadorian, and Congolese governments 50 years ago, a few years later repeated the overthrow of Dominica and Ecuador, overthrew the government of Brazil 45 years ago, Indonesia 45 years ago, Greece 45 years ago, Congo again 45 years ago, Greece again in 1967, Cambodia in 1970, Bolivia in 1971, Chile in 1973, Haiti again in 1986, Panama in 1989, Haiti again in 1993, and Iraq in 2003.
Yep. Worked really well in 1940.
I agree. "Peace Through Strength" was a popular Reagan term!
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.
Um yes, it is, thats why if you cant pay for your private education they kick you out so fast your head fucking spins. And they dont have to show ANYTHING in regards to grades to ANYONE. They take no federally required testing, and submit NOTHING to No Child Left Behind while reaping the money from the government if the public school "under preforms." You sir have NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Non-profit doesn't mean no money. A non-profit pharma company would price their drugs to cover their costs only (this includes paying researchers), and wouldn't waste millions of dollars on advertising and marketing.
Outside the USA many drugs are invented by university researchers and workers at various government research bodies. Not for profit work is entirely possible, is happening and often has better results for mankind than the for profit companies.
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 also force anyone who thinks they need to counter them to spend resources on developing and deploying the countermeasures.
That is such Cold War-era reasoning, and other than a few hardline Reagan-worshipping conservatives, there is no consensus as to whether the "outspend your enemy" concept had anything to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union. There's plenty of evidence to suggest that it was about to collapse on its own due to a variety of other factors, not the least of which was pure corruption at the top levels of government.
We aren't fighting that kind of war again, and likely never will. Wars these days are going to be against barely-defined, ragtag groups of loosely-associated factions (e.g., the current Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns) who certainly are not worried about economics or countering fancy new military gear. They've been successfully harassing our highly-financed troops for years using low-tech guerilla tactics.
The other possibility of war is against another superpower, but no one wants to go there because no one wants to risk a nuclear exchange. Anyway, Russia's unlikely to ever seriously bother us, and if China wants shut down the US they could probably do it without firing a single shot, just by pulling back all investments they have.
Really, what do we need F22s for anyway? Against whom do you think they'd be useful?
I do agree that building them so you never have to use them makes a certain amount of sense, much like learning martial arts, or stocking nuclear weapons. But even without F22s the US could clean the chronometers of damn near anyone. We don't need them in order to demonstrate our military might.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
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."
You don't build them to use them, you build them so you don't have to use them. You also force anyone who thinks they need to counter them to spend resources on developing and deploying the countermeasures.
I don't know, 8 years ago a bunch of guys in a couple of airliners seemed to work out well....and hell, they didn't even have to build the plane themselves!
Really, how much more useful is a F-22 when compared to a UAV with cruise missile support from a ship off shore?
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
What doesn't amuse me is people who think it's ok to tell an inefficient government to take someone else's money to fund healthcare.
I'll take this debate a lot more seriously when the proponents who think it's everybody's basic right to have healthcare start making deep personal sacrifices to fund it instead of trying to force other people to make small sacrifices.
"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!
However, by your own admission, Latin America and Iran were treated worse than Germany
I never admitted that at all...
To be fair, Germany, Japan, and Europe in total turned around so quickly because of substantial external aid. Aid that was not afforded on the same levels to Vietnam or anywhere in Latin America or the Caribbean.
To be accurate, the Marshall Plan was not actually -that- expensive. It was maybe about a 100 billions dollars in today's dollars over the life of the plan and, it was more of a system of credits by which American products could be purchased for nations that had no reserve currency.
The thing that got Europe and Japan off of the ground was trade. They made good stuff and sold it.
I mean, it's not like the US overthrew the Iranian government
Whine whine whine whine....since then how many billions of dollars has Iran had? Why are they still a s--thole? It's not the USA's fault. It's their own dumb culture.
This is my sig.
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
Yes you did admit it. Here's the relevant quote:
Right there, you said, effectively "We did X to Germany. We did Y to other countries, and X<<<<Y.
Why do people give a shit which level of government runs things? As soon as the collective pool of voters is larger than I can hope to influence personally (lets say, a few hundred people), it becomes irrelevant to me.
This is a serious question--I am genuinely puzzled by this phenomenon.
On what fucking planet are the Chinese going to INVADE the continental USA (let alone in the next decade or so)? That's just batshit insane crazy talk.
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!
Right there, you said, effectively "We did X to Germany. We did Y to other countries, and X lt Y.
That was a joke, silly.
This is my sig.
You don't really need super-stealth for the wars we're fighting now and the fact is we will still have a complement of 187 F-22s. No one says the F-35 is as good as the F-22 at what the F-22 excels it. What is said is that we don't really need the capabilities that the F-22 provides for the vast majority of missions.
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
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
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
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
Are you really naive enough to believe that someone in business is -only- there to make a profit? Do they cease being human beings with wide-ranging values and mores just because they own a company? So all business owners are monsters to you? You've been brain-washed that badly, eh?
I said none of those things; read again. You projected your own bias on to me; then proceeded to call me brain-washed; followed by a wall of text quoting capitalist dogma. Sorry, i can't really take that seriously.
You didn't address what i said; you chose to attack what you think i believe in based on your own preconceptions of someone who criticises any aspect of capitalism. You didn't open a dialogue; you quoted chapter and verse from the most idealistic aspects of business-as-religion, despite the many real-world examples that prove that businesses don't *always* display the rational-actor characteristics we'd like them to.
That which does not kill us makes us... st
Well, technically i said "responsibility," not "motivation" or even "method" :)
That which does not kill us makes us... st
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.
No. It is in our national interest to fund primary and secondary level education
I don't disagree. The only thing I take exception to is the fact that the Federal Government is involved. Every dime of Federal money comes with political strings and mandates that may or may not make sense on a local level. It would be far better if the school system was funded and controlled locally.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
That was a joke, silly.
Translation: your wingnut BS got shot down. Again. So now it was just a "joke".
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.
Translation: your wingnut BS got shot down. Again. So now it was just a "joke
No it didn't, and with every moment of this communist occupation, I mean, administration, people will see so-called social justice as the larceny that it really is.
This is my sig.