I always want the the troops to have the best equipment, but there's a practical side to this as well. I don't deny the F-22s superiority over anything else that flies these days, but in terms of dollars vs benefits I just don't see the value, its an air superiority fighter at at time when in our current wars we have air superiority by default meaning we don't even have to fight for it. Plus you have the fact that an F-22 costs about 5 times more than an F-15C, Apache was right about the designation, now does an F-22.
Its an amazing piece of equipment that's for sure but I don't know if I see it as being worth the taxpayer dollars that went into it.
Very true. Trust me. I fly UAVs for a living.
What makes you think we have air superiority by default? Because we are able to establish it against crap nations like Libya or Iraq while only losing a couple of pilots?
China and Russia both have 5th Gen fighters, as well as some pretty bad-a-- SAMs.
What makes you think we have air superiority by default? Because we are able to establish it against crap nations like Libya or Iraq while only losing a couple of pilots?
China and Russia both have 5th Gen fighters, as well as some pretty bad-a-- SAMs.
I could be in the minority, but does anyone seriously believe that Obama would enter into a war with Korea, regardless of the provocation with the exception of a nuclear strike on a major American city?
There's no way to prove it, but if Obama had been President on 9/11, the US would not have gone to war in Afghanistan, whether you think the US should or should not have done so.
Kim Jong Un has IMHO already done enough to justify a US military response. He's pointed missiles at American bases in Japan and Guam. He cut the line that allows emergency communications between North and South Korea. Last year he fired missiles at a South Korean residitial area killing innocent civilians seemingly for no other reason than to look tough/crazy. Before his rise to power his father ignored the international community and has successfully proliferated nuclear weapons, weapons Junior now possesses. Under treaty agreements, military actions against South Korea are considered attacks on the United States of America. Un has publically stated a state of war exists between North South Korea, translation: he declared war against America under US treaty obligations. The question is will he come to his senses and back up and/or will president Obama spank that A and treat North Korea as part axis of evil or ignore him? My observation is Obama talks a good game of peace and love when it comes to playing nice with homocidal maniacs but still kicks butt most of the time.
Not sure if I should even say this but I heard on relatively good authority troops scheduled for deployment in Afghanistan have had their orders cancelled 'in case they're needed elsewhere.' A new type of naval sea to surface battle ship never used before is now parked off the coast of North Korea.
And I heard from a reliable source that you like mudkipz. The Korean war never ended, we just have a mutual ceasefire. I don't think Jong Un dumb enough to give up a good thing, because they know they won't win another round of combat with us.
And I heard from a reliable source that you like mudkipz. The Korean war never ended, we just have a mutual ceasefire. I don't think Jong Un dumb enough to give up a good thing, because they know they won't win another round of combat with us.
A formal armistice ceasing hostilities was signed 27 July 1953. It postponed hostilities "until a final peaceful settlement is achieved." A final settlement has not yet been achieved, and therefore, the South and the North are still formally at war.Was WAR ever actually declared? If not, I don't believe a formal peace treaty must be signed either.
Maybe he's naive enough to think he can saber rattle non stop and we'll never take him seriously. I hope it doesn't come to it be it looks likely at this point forgetting we might be a little concerned about his nukes. One good thing is he's seemed to have shut his mouth after seeing the US military build up off his coast.
A formal armistice ceasing hostilities was signed 27 July 1953. It postponed hostilities "until a final peaceful settlement is achieved." A final settlement has not yet been achieved, and therefore, the South and the North are still formally at war.
Formal declarations of war died in the 40's with the changing face of global politics, and are no longer necessary.
I should have been clearer, what I meant was that the F-22 doesn't give us any edge because we've already achieved total air superiority over any enemy we are likely to fight. Its like trying to improve upon perfection you just can't do it. Now I know there is no such thing as perfection war but for the cost of what the program was we really didn't gain much in the realm of air superiority because already totally dominant that field. Plus you can achieve more with few F-15 than you can with an F-22 and you get the F-15s for cheaper.
The F-22 program cost us what? 66 billion dollars or there abouts, and we got 185 planes out of it, plus you have future maintenance costs which cannot be calculated yet but I haven't seen any estimates. I think we could have got better bang for our buck with F-15s.
But I'm glad you do agree with me that the F-35 is a total flop.
bwhahaha F-35's (A-B-C) are not a total flop. https://www.f35.com/news-events/top-issues.aspx
From the perspective of the budget they are.
Well that would be a one dimensional perspective.
They always do.
Yeah, I'm far from panic mode over the latest threats from NK. I am not, however, as blaise about it as I have been in the past. For one thing, NK has already attacked the South militarily since Un took over, a real shooting skirmish with real casualties. What was his "punishment" for this aggression? Nothing. Nada. Nein.
Now he has gone so far as to declare war on the US and SK (yeah, yeah, I know, formally a state of war has existed for 60 years) and threaten to use nukes. I think it's possible that his military leadership, which quite frankly runs the North, having been deprived of substantitive outside news, is arrogant and ignorant enough to think that it's brilliant plan will actually work, that they can nuke Seoul, instantly take out the US presence, then march through the South unopposed.
That isn't true, of course. We'd wipe the peninsula with them... but we'd still have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dead people in a sea of green glass.
So, do we sit back and wait for the bomb to drop? Do we pre-emptively take out their nuclear capacity (which makes more sense now in NK than it ever did in Iraq)? Or do we just yawn and mumble, "another day, another idle threat"?
I don't know, and I'm glad I don't have to decide. I do know that I'm more uncomfortable about the future of the two Koreas now than I ever have been in my lifetime. Something feels... I dunno... a bit more ominous and real at the moment. Hope I'm wrong.
On second thought....
CNN) -- North Korea on Tuesday demonstrated its commitment to its controversial nuclear program, saying that it plans to restart a reactor at its main atomic complex that it agreed to shut down in 2007.
North Korea says it plans to restart shuttered nuclear reactor - CNN.com
I'm not trying to predict what WILL happen... too many variables.
All I'm saying is that the risk of Kim Jong Un doing something the West would consider Irrational is real, and that NK missle/nuke capabilities may be more serious that many believe due to covert military aid from other nations.
That, and that it may not be as obvious to Un that he'd be defeated or nuked as people around here think it is.
I'm not trying to predict what WILL happen... too many variables.
All I'm saying is that the risk of Kim Jong Un doing something the West would consider Irrational is real, and that NK missle/nuke capabilities may be more serious that many believe due to covert military aid from other nations.
That, and that it may not be as obvious to Un that he'd be defeated or nuked as people around here think it is.
Kim Jong Un has IMHO already done enough to justify a US military response. He's pointed missiles at American bases in Japan and Guam. He cut the line that allows emergency communications between North and South Korea. Last year he fired missiles at a South Korean residitial area killing innocent civilians seemingly for no other reason than to look tough/crazy. Before his rise to power his father ignored the international community and has successfully proliferated nuclear weapons, weapons Junior now possesses. Under treaty agreements, military actions against South Korea are considered attacks on the United States of America. Un has publically stated a state of war exists between North South Korea, translation: he declared war against America under US treaty obligations. The question is will he come to his senses and back up and/or will president Obama spank that A and treat North Korea as part axis of evil or ignore him? My observation is Obama talks a good game of peace and love when it comes to playing nice with homocidal maniacs but still kicks butt most of the time.
Not sure if I should even say this but I heard on relatively good authority troops scheduled for deployment in Afghanistan have had their orders cancelled 'in case they're needed elsewhere.' A new type of naval sea to surface battle ship never used before is now parked off the coast of North Korea.
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