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We Were Once Masters of the Air: It's High Time to Restore US Air Power
- mistrial9 3y agolet's say N-O to War instead?
- CamperBob2 3y agoTell Pooty-poot.
- newsclues 3y agoSure, but if war is inevitable, do you want to be prepared to win or not?
- neilv 3y agoThe article opens with pretty much that idea, introducing their suggestion as a way to avert war.
- iKororo 3y agoSure thing. Say no to bad things! Say yes to all the good stuff! It is so easy, isn't it? When you are robbed, just don't forget to say that you are against robberies - this will totally work
- 303uru 3y agoYour type of stupidity is exactly why we've spent decades, trillions and millions dead/injured fucking around in the middle east to achieve fuck all. But please stand to clap for the veteran of the day! And don't forget to go home and vote away their healthcare.
- jncfhnb 3y ago> The American people do not want a war with China. In order to prevent the outbreak of war, the US must deter the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from initiating combat operations against their own neighbors.
- outside1234 3y agoukraine
- munk-a 3y agoIt is pretty amazing that this article continuously asserts that Okinawa is a "foreign airbase" - the US has an extremely visible basing presence in south east asia.
- jandrese 3y agoThis is some old fashioned Cold War military spending arguments. We can not have a fighter plane gap! The assumption that an air war with China will result in a 1:1 trade of aircraft needs more citations. I’m also not sure they were counting the Navy and Marines airframes in the estimate. I am not sold on the need to buy more military aircraft at the time.
- munk-a 3y agoThe article specifically mentioned - then dismissed - the training gap between airmen.
- tayo42 3y agoWhy are people acting like the US and China are always on the brink of war?
- jandrese 3y agoHow else are you going to get those clicks?
- pinko 3y agoIt fascinates me when people deploy "we" in statements like the one in this title, with the implicit premise that the majority of the American people (even if you presume them to be the readership) and the US military share a common identity and common interests. If Vietnam taught us one thing it's that most Americans are little more than cannon fodder to the US military. Or as the old saying goes... who's "we", white man?
- pinko 3y agoDwight Eisenhower: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
- credit_guy 3y agoYeah, yeah, yeah. People forget the context. Eisenhower said all this in the days after Stalin died, hoping to convince the new Soviet leadership to disengage from the arms race. It did not work. And Eisenhower had zero qualms about saying something and smoking something else: the US had about 500 nukes when Eisenhower became president and about 20000 when he stepped down.
- TMWNN 3y agoThe first thing Eisenhower did after taking office was to cut the defense budget. His administration built nukes, besides fitting with the administration's policy of massive retaliation, because nukes are cheaper than conventional weapons, pound for pound. There is a thesis to be written (if not already existing) on how both Truman and Eisenhower viewed tactical nukes as, well, very large conventional weapons and potentially usable as such on the battlefield, while still viewing strategic nukes as something different. The thesis would deal with both presidents' military backgrounds affecting their opinions, and how being intimately involved with the discussion of just how much more powerful thermonuclear weapons are than fission weapons affected taking such a nuanced view, an ability that I think has been lost to later generations (I doubt 5% of today's politicians, let alone citizens, can explain the difference between fission and fusion bombs I'd be amazed).
- upon_drumhead 3y agoDrones seem the obvious future to me. Bulk build and just overwhelm the manufacturing capacities of your enemies for pennies on the dollar.
- throwoutway 3y ago> Bulk build and just overwhelm the manufacturing capacities of your enemies for pennies on the dollar. Why would China not win this arms race?
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoDoD forgot how to make things for pennies, and the institutional wall[1] against commodity is too high and too thick. It'll take a sizeable and strategic US defeat to overturn the applecart. Best case, we manage to get a few decent drones for $10m a pop, but we still risk getting shanked by a frickin' mob of Chinese crap, because they don't need to go that far to get into theatre. I dig what Anduril's trying[2] to do with Roadrunner, but it's still too damn expensive - the hard kill mechanism still results in a total loss-of-vehicle. [1] I.e., quivering mass of overpaid box checkers getting salaried as Analyst IIIs. [2] There's some whispers, too, that Anduril isn't actually able to operationalize any of their widgets at any sort of scale, but I don't have any inside eyes on this. I DO see, though, that their fab capacity is . . not amazing.
- simonblack 3y agoThere will be no return of US Air Power until the MIC makes robust, cheap effective planes instead of expensive boondoggles that are hangar queens. In History, the Germans relied on low-numbers of high technology planes during WW2. They were swamped by thousands of cheaper 'good enough' planes mass-produced by the US and the Soviets. The US persists on making the same mistake now as the Germans did in the 1940s.
- xnx 3y agoNot a military expert, but that this article doesn't contain the word "drone" at all makes me think it is more relevant to a bygone era than the present.