F-35 continues to be an expensive debacle

[ImTheCaptain]

jh, you gotta separate the soldier from the institution. everyone's proud of our men & women in uniform but nothing is infallible

 

[jhmd2000]

LOL. Our military has "never failed"? I love it. Someone call and tell the North Koreans/Chinese, Vietnamese, Iraqis, and Al Qaeda that we never failed. Tell the pilots who were passing out when their oxygen failed in their F-22s, too. Don't forget about the Marines and their wives and kids who got poisoned by the water at Camp LeJeune.

As usual, your zeal to disagree has sped you right past the facts. "air power" -- the subject of the proposed revisiting (not "[o]ur military", as you either negligently or dishonestly replied), has been the signature strength of the American military since 1944. Please recite the conflicts that American forces have not enjoyed air superiority since that time. I'll wait.

 

[jhmd2000]

jh, you gotta separate the soldier from the institution. everyone's proud of our men & women in uniform but nothing is infallible

I gotcha, but your post was basically the equivalent of saying that Britain should have taken a second look at the Royal Navy in the 1800's (or college football in the State of Alabama needs a reboot in the current decade). Pax Americana was built on the back of air power. American air power has saved millions of American lives (and probably a million most civilian Japanese lives that would have been taken in 1946 in a land invasion).

 

[ImTheCaptain]

actually it would probably be more like the German and British navies prior to WWII, where they continued to invest in massive battleships that became obsolete in less than a decade

 

[Deacon923]

As usual, your zeal to disagree has sped you right past the facts. "air power" -- the subject of the proposed revisiting (not "[o]ur military", as you either negligently or dishonestly replied), has been the signature strength of the American military since 1944. Please recite the conflicts that American forces have not enjoyed air superiority since that time. I'll wait.

Oh, I see, you were talking only about airpower. Absolutely, the US has never chosen to enter a conflict in which it would not enjoy unquestioned air superiority (although we got a nasty surprise in Korea when the new MiGs showed up).

The US has also paid almost unimaginable amounts of money to buy that airpower - and the cost is the subject of this thread. I find it interesting that you chose to point to our "failing" schools as something that needs attention more than the ever-spiraling cost of our air fleet. I invite you to consider that if the US government had lavished similar amounts of money on the education sector as it has on the military-industrial complex, without regard to (or with active connivance in) the incredible amounts of waste and profit-taking built into that cost, we might not have "failing" schools. Instead, we would have a situation analogous to the modern military air fleet - shit tons of wasted taxpayer money and complete school superiority over the rest of the planet.

 

[TheTwinAndreBen]

never fail = drone strikes on weddings

I wasn't able to afford a flyover for my wedding. Pretty cool if you ask me.

 

[BigEastDeac]

actually it would probably be more like the German and British navies prior to WWII, where they continued to invest in massive battleships that became obsolete in less than a decade

It could also be like the American Navy prior to WWII, where we maintained a large battleship force but still had more carriers and aircraft than any other navy.

 

[dmcheatw]

Right. All of our entitlement programs are going bankrupt, the schools are failing and we essentially have an open border to the South...and someone is proposing to take the only part of government that has never failed and take it back to the drawing board. Good grief, Charlie Brown.

just remember jhmd, you may have an undergrad in history, but you haven't ever really studied history. you just like to study war, and that's not what the actual study of history is about. you're the same as those ROTC guys in the Korea War class. they're not there for the korea part so much as the war part, and most of 'em seem to have a disturbing taste for blowing things up.

by the way, the U.S. military has failed plenty of times. odd for you to not know that, given your passion, patriotism, and education.

Ah, ETA: jh is rightly taking a lot of heat for his comment, and now he's either moving the goal posts or didn't articulate himself correctly initially.

 

[dmcheatw]

I gotcha, but your post was basically the equivalent of saying that Britain should have taken a second look at the Royal Navy in the 1800's (or college football in the State of Alabama needs a reboot in the current decade). Pax Americana was built on the back of air power. American air power has saved millions of American lives (and probably a million most civilian Japanese lives that would have been taken in 1946 in a land invasion).

and we see that you don't even understand war tactics or strategy either, despite being so enthusiastic about it. No invasion of japan was necessary, nor were the two bombs. i'm cool with government schools, but, as all students of history know, you gotta consider your source...our government schools are not going to tell you that we didn't have to drop those bombs, but the truth is we didn't and most of the top brass agreed (eisenhour, nimitz, even macarthur ultimately all said those bombs weren't necessary...but we did it anyway) in today's world that sort of action would be a war crime. a very very heinous war crime. no question.

and if we just HAD to do it for political reasons a detonation over the ocean would have had the same effect for japan and the ussr. there had been enough human suffering by 1946 that i can't see how anyone would think dropping those coup d'etat bombs was a good idea.

 

[jhmd2000]

and we see that you don't even understand war tactics or strategy either, despite being so enthusiastic about it. No invasion of japan was necessary, nor were the two bombs. i'm cool with government schools, but, as all students of history know, you gotta consider your source...our government schools are not going to tell you that we didn't have to drop those bombs, but the truth is we didn't and most of the top brass agreed (eisenhour, nimitz, even macarthur ultimately all said those bombs weren't necessary...but we did it anyway) in today's world that sort of action would be a war crime. a very very heinous war crime. no question.

It's like you fail to understand that those bombs fell on Japan but were dropped on Russia.

B/c you do.

 

[TR1982]

It's like you fail to understand that those bombs fell on Japan but were dropped on Russia.

B/c you do.

Was just about to say this. Of course we could have defeated Japan without dropping the bomb. The decision was entirely about preventing the Soviets from having a say in the post-war order in East Asia. The Soviets had just entered the war against Japan. They likely would have interfered in the Chinese civil war as well.

 

[dmcheatw]

It's like you fail to understand that those bombs fell on Japan but were dropped on Russia.

B/c you do.

oh please, check the edit. you're not telling me anything i didn't already know. I actually studied history.

 

[dmcheatw]

Was just about to say this. Of course we could have defeated Japan without dropping the bomb. The decision was entirely about preventing the Soviets from having a say in the post-war order in East Asia. The Soviets had just entered the war against Japan. They likely would have interfered in the Chinese civil war as well.

yeah but dropping it on people? that was necessary?

 

[TR1982]

yeah but dropping it on people? that was necessary?

Probably. The Japanese didn't even surrender after Hiroshima, what makes you think they would have surrendered if we had just dropped it off the coast? If anything that would have demonstrated that we were unwilling to use it. Also, it's not like we had an unlimited supply of bombs. If we had wasted them on the ocean it would have been weeks before more could have been prepared.

 

[dmcheatw]

*sigh* we didn't have to drop anything and japan would have surrendered within 6 months. a tiny island with few natural resources that had no planes, no pilots, no fuel, no food for the populace, no soldiers, and no navy. they had literally 0 fighting capability. it's call laying siege/running a blockade and, once again, this was eisenhour's position as well. and nimitz, etc.

once people get tired of eating boiled leather and sawdust they tend to come out with their hands up.

 

[TR1982]

*sigh* we could have not even done a demo and japan would have surrendered within 6 months. they had no planes, no pilots, no fuel, no food for the populace, and no navy. it's call laying siege and, once again, this was eisenhour's position as well. and nimitz, macarthur, and this is all just off the top of my head.

Yeah, well, we dropped the bomb, so clearly there were some members of the brass who thought it was necessary. And six months would have seen a Soviet invasion of China and the home islands. So, yeah, not really an option.

 

[dmcheatw]

Yeah, well, we dropped the bomb, so clearly there were some members of the brass who thought it was necessary. And six months would have seen a Soviet invasion of China and the home islands. So, yeah, not really an option.

sure, but ultimately it was trumans decision and he's a politician, not a soldier, our supreme commander in the european theater said no. the bolded is highly speculative, but besides, my position is that dropping the bomb was a good idea. just not on people.

truman was wrong, eisenhour was right.

 

[dmcheatw]

you know when those two bombs fell, they were and still are the two worst acts of violence ever committed in all of human history. these were the two worst moments in human history, so i've done my homework wrt this topic. as an aside the greatest moment in human history was when adams gave the presidency to jefferson.

I want to see the U.S. get back into achieving milestones for humanity, not destroying things trying to move humanity backwards. It's not too late for the U.S. to turn things around, but we have to use our waning influence NOW to secure influence in the future. no amount of f35s can help us maintain our hegemony in the distant future.

 

[TR1982]

sure, but ultimately it was trumans decision and he's a politician, not a soldier. the bolded is highly speculative, but besides, my position is that dropping the bomb was a good idea. just not on people.

let me know if you can cite any of this stuff, cause i know i'm in good company if eisenhour shared my opinion.

Actually, Truman was a soldier, not to mention the fact that he was Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. An invasion of China is not speculative, because the Soviets invaded Manchuria the same day as the Nagasaki bombing. As for the home islands, any student of the Cold War (or military history in general, as you claim to be) would know that that was the next step. They had already conquered the Japanese half of Sakhalin. Regardless, none of this is any more speculative (actually, it is less speculative) than saying that Japan would have surrendered if we had just dropped a bomb of the coast. The only thing you have going for your argument is that Eisenhower (whose name you apparently can't spell, ironic given all the personal attacks against jh's credentials) happened to agree with you. And that shouldn't even be all that comforting to you, considering he wasn't even active in the theater in question.

 

[TR1982]

you know when those two bombs fell, they were and still are the two worst acts of violence ever committed in all of human history. these were the two worst moments in human history, so i've done my homework wrt this topic. as an aside the greatest moment in human history was when adams gave the presidency to jefferson.

I want to see the U.S. get back into advancing global society and less of us tearing it down by destroying things.

And here I thought you knew history. That's just fucking retarded.