191 replies to this topic

[Alyster]

Manoka, I understand the Western world's position in the world depends on USAF and US Navy's ability to control the world seas and air. But I have this crazy idea. Maybe instead of 10 active 1 reserve air craft carrier fleet build up, just maybe, you can have 9 active + reserve carrier?

 

And just maybe you can have 10% less Abrams in the Army? Fuck it, let make it 50%. It's not like Leopard 2 is an awful tank. In the end of teh day doesn't really matter who's in the battle the Marines or the Royal Marines. In regards of ground forces remaining NATO nations can step in quite effectively. And with new aircraft carriers entering the Royal Navy's service in 2020 there's a less need for Nimitz class carriers. 

 

When I say cut military spending I'm not proposing anything crazy. 10 billions here 10 from there would make no difference for your capabilities whatsoever. 

 

PS. Good point about the nukes being built so fast. Indeed raises some questions. 

Edited by Alyster, 24 December 2013 - 12:38 PM.

[Manoka]

Well the only way an organization can survive is by the support of others. Eventually, it's going to need to become an oligarchy, just by the necessary factor of including many administrators, generals, and so on; it's going to require a systematic way to replace old leaders, and thus add in new ones. There's no doubt that other Korean leaders have power, and could easily be responsible for huge amounts of what's happening. 

 

But as for any central power it's clearly concentrated in Kim Jong and a few other people, who get the last say so. As he is more of a figure head, it's plausible that he's not really the only one in control. 

 

 

 

As for political instability, that's a given. 

 

What is it specifically that you find so interesting, Jorost? In my mind, North Korea has been a powder keg waiting to explode this entire time. While you've argued in the past that you think they're in for regime survival and wouldn't do anything reckless, I think their history in general refutes that with all the blind zealotry and insane actions they've taken. Oppressing your own people hardly leads to good regime survival, when they starve to death, there goes your power base, since you rely on them for taxes. The North Korean leadership lead extravagant lifestyles regardless of how much their citizens suffer, so they have little care if they're sent off to war to die or get executed in public just for fun. It's a self destructive manner of operation which will inevitably lead to the degradation of their powers, and thus chaos; it's inherent with any oppressive regime, as evil breeds disdain for evil; even evil people do not themselves like to be treated evily, and a large enough organization will eventually effect enough people to generate controversy in response. Because they rely on power and fear to control the people, they will inherently require violence and demonstrations to do that. It's possible they were preparing to sacrifice this man his entire life just to have a figure to sacrifice. They pretty much stupid and insane, willing to do dumb things even at time if not just simply to be hyper violent, because that's the type of people they are, and the type of people they've cultivated to be in leadership positions. 

[Manoka]

Manoka, I understand the Western world's position in the world depends on USAF and US Navy's ability to control the world seas and air. But I have this crazy idea. Maybe instead of 10 active 1 reserve air craft carrier fleet build up, just maybe, you can have 9 active + reserve carrier?

 

And just maybe you can have 10% less Abrams in the Army? Fuck it, let make it 50%. It's not like Leopard 2 is an awful tank. In the end of teh day doesn't really matter who's in the battle the Marines or the Royal Marines. In regards of ground forces remaining NATO nations can step in quite effectively. And with new aircraft carriers entering the Royal Navy's service in 2020 there's a less need for Nimitz class carriers. 

 

When I say cut military spending I'm not proposing anything crazy. 10 billions here 10 from there would make no difference for your capabilities whatsoever. 

 

PS. Good point about the nukes being built so fast. Indeed raises some questions. 

While I would agree, the only problem is that the largest amount of the money goes to research and development, as well as wages. While the actual aircraft carriers themselves are about 5 billion dollars, and cost about 1 billion a year to maintain, the computer systems on them, for trafficking and navigating, alone, cost trillions of dollars. Granted, this has gone on to be in iphones, home computers, aircraft, and other things, but, the actual cost per unit includes research and development costs in general. To make say, 1000 guns, still implies factories that had to be made, multi million dollar factories with the ability to produce 1 million lasers sights, 1 million rubber stocks, 1 million soft grips, and so on. If this machinery cost say, 20 million dollars, and you made 1000 firearms, that would be like, 20,000 dollars per firearm from machinery alone. However, if they produced 1 million firearms, and the cost per firearm and workers wages was inherently say, 500 dollars, then it would only be an extra 200 dollars per gun, or 700 dollars. 

 

With aircraft, it's the same way, but they only ever end up making 52 of it, and it's a lot more complex factories. Just stalling, that is time based set backs, means more wages for workers, and therefore increased costs. The F-35 for instance is the single most expensive program ever developed, by the military, and people have suggested cutting back on the number of F-35's we produce. The fly away cost per aircraft is predicted to be close to 150 million dollars a pop, compared to F-16's at 20-40 million dollars. Since every F-35 is a stealth aircraft, and an B-2 bomber is 1.4 billion dollars over it's lifetime, it's actually a pretty good deal to get 3000 new stealth planes that have such accurate new bombs it doesn't need to be the size of a B-2 bomber, and thus is just as effective (a new term coined "fighter bomber").

 

But the actual cost per plane is something like 80 million a pop. Additionally, since many country's contributed to this, and are demanding the prices be lower, such as Israel, Germany, and even Canada, the U.S. has decided to pick up slack on the project, thus raising the cost per aircraft since we are essentially contributing to them getting those aircraft. It's hard to find exact figures, but! 

 

 

 

A much easier to present case is with the Nuclear Destroyers. Zumwalt-class destroyer had a 9.6 billion dollar research and development cost, originally intended to be spread out among 32 ships, or be 300 million per ship. When this got cut from 32 ships to 3 ships, this equated to roughly a 3.2 billion dollar spike per ship, on top of an already 3 billion dollar cost per ship, and actually caused it to breech the Nunn–McCurdy Amendment since the price per ship more than doubled. 

 

 

Unfortunately, the answer is not to cut back on ship and aircraft amounts, but actually to produce more. Rather than wrap the project in red tape, killing it before it can even get a handful of ships out, the issue should be to go back to the original argument of making 32, since the over-all cost per ship would be fairly low if development costs were more evenly spread out. People cut back on ship amounts, say congress, and then gawk at the fact that each ship has now gone up in price, not really understanding that cutting guns isn't the answer. 

 

I once did an estimate for all the "guns" in the U.S. military; aircraft carriers, submarines, tanks, and so on. These costs ended up being less than a trillion dollars; since most of these projects were developed from the 70's onwards, we can easily say that the money is spread out over a 40 years. This ends up being about 25 billion a year, or so. 

 

Just looking at big things, U.S. aircraft carriers are 5 billion dollars each, and we have 10. U.S. abram tanks are 5 million each, and we have 10,000. Submarines are about 72 billion dollars all combined, with Sea wolf, virginia, and ohio classes taken into account. So that's 50 + 50 + 72. Strykers are about 1.4 million (although since they had to reopen factories, it raised the cost per unit to 5 million a pop), and the U.S. has about 3000, so that's 4.2 billion. We have 1000 Apache's, so that's about 20 billion, and all of our aircraft are close to 450 billion. Long story short since Humvees are 65,000 a pop, M16's are 1500 dollars and so on, they are largely negligible costs (all the M16's produced in the world, including in Canada, only amounts to about 12 billion dollars, if at today's prices, since they were used as far back as Vietnam), so even without them it's basically extra pennies added. All combined that's just 700 billion dollars, although the F-35 may have raised it up to over a trillion today (I don't know the actual cost per plane, to be honest, since most of what I find is end total estimates including research costs).

 

 

Basically, the way I put it is, "guns" are cheap. Tanks, ships, guns, they don't really cost a whole lot. It's all the other things leading up to them that makes them so expensive. Stinger missiles are about 38,000 dollars each, and yet the total cost of the program was 7.28 billion dollars, and it produced 13,400 missiles; this ended up being about 550,000 dollars per missile launcher, even though it was just 38,000 per to actually, physically make them. 

 

The answer seems to not be to reduce our guns, but to mass produce as much as possible on these platforms to save money for creating a whole new system from the ground up, which keeps happening when people reduce total numbers of units, in an effort to save money, see the price per unit has gone up, and then abandon the project all together, to make a new one, and then have it go through the same issues all over again. If we just choose a system and stick with it, basing everything on those platforms, we'd save WAY more money, instead of saying reducing it from 30 ships to 3 and then saying "MY GOD, COSTS HAVE DOUBLED!" and scrapping the project to make new ships which will invariably encounter the same problem when they try to cut ship amounts to save money. 

Edited by Manoka, 24 December 2013 - 01:20 PM.

[the rebel]

A saving on spending can be in the form of not pissing more and more money away on R&D and manufacturing of next gen military hardware, which becomes ineffective on release or shortly after by cheaper counter technology.

[Manoka]

The actual production of the hardware isn't the issue, but the research and development. 

 

It is unwise to only make 1000 aircraft when it virtually doubles the price compared to making 3000 simply because the base cost is so high for making them in the first place. The most efficient thing to do is to buy more planes, and use it for everything possible. Since the F-35 was actually designed to replace the F-15, the F-16, and the F-18, this is actually going to be pretty easy to do. 

 

 

But interfering and saying, reduce the total numbers of aircraft down ignores that the bulk of the cost comes not from the actual creation of planes, but everything that went behind getting a plane to those capabilities in the first place, generally speaking not the mass production itself. 

 

Like, it only takes so much aluminum and silicon per plane to make one. 

[the rebel]

You're missing the point new advanced technology put in a new and advanced hardware, isn't needed and a waste of money. Buying more to lower overall cost per unit isn't going to be worth it if they get shot down like balloons, you mention F-35's but nobody knows how effective they would be against S-300's because they have never been seen used in combat but many experts believe that the system is on par if not better than the US Patriot Air and Missile Defense System.

 

Now if we ignore the rag tag weapons market and go on to a "WW3" situation how would those F-35's cope with the Russian S-400's a missile defense system that far exceeds the S-300 variant and isn't on the foreign arms market and won't be.

 

Experts agree that missile technology is cheaper and makes future of Jet Aircrafts obsolete.

 

There is one things the Russians are good at and thats SAM systems.

[Manoka]

Well, the F-35's are stealth technology, with stealth capabilities equal to if not exceeding a B-2 bomber. Since they are way smaller, they are almost impossible to target. Given Russia's missile defense systems, and Chinas, they've made ALL of our new aircraft stealth, which is why they're so expensive. 

 

Given that it's got VTOL, it can go straight up and down if it needs to, which means it doesn't have vector thrusting, but, it can make super fast turns to move out of the way. It even can mask it's infrared signature for a few minutes by dumping stuff into it's fuel, and has nearly 100% coverage, meaning it can track missiles from any direction nearly perfectly. 

 

 

So, it's basically invisible. 

 

Since it's made of composites, it doesn't need radar tape. While wooden aircraft are almost invisible to radar, they're really weak; when you have high strength composites, it's almost inherently invisible to radar. A few shaped designs and a few things later mixed in with a ferraday cage and it's practically invisible to radar, which negates their missiles. It's also largely unmagnetic, not that there's been any magnetic detectors on aircraft yet (but it's quickly replacing sonar on submarines, but, there's things against that, like non-magnetic hulls). 

 

 

The S-300 is great, but has trouble against F-16's as is. 

 

Against an F-35 I don't think it stands a chance. The only problem is if nuclear subs become more common, like with Iran, which make aircraft carriers harder to use; but, since Aircraft carriers already have a submarine, destroyer, cruiser, and many other compliments, as well as regular aircraft maintenance craft (which can drop torpedos!) forming a parameter they should be fine. 

Edited by Manoka, 24 December 2013 - 08:13 PM.

[the rebel]

The S-300 is great, but has trouble against F-16's as is.

Ignores the fact an S-300 has never been used in anger yet....

Also an F-16 and A Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk got shot down and one damaged in the Kosovo war 1999, by SA-6 (S-125)

 

The Russian military certainly took notice of Operation Allied Force and this is reflected in fundamental doctrinal and technological changes in their approach to operating and designing air defence systems.

There is much new equipment, primarily of Russian and Chinese origin, but also from Belarus and the Ukraine, now available on the open market as building blocks, for any country with enough money and the motivation, to create a highly survivable Integrated Air Defence System.

This equipment includes both passive and active, and soft and hard kill measures as part of the air defence network, including transportable GPS/GLONASS jammers, decoy radar emitters, active defensive countermeasures for radars, ISR radar and airborne communications jammers, and point defence missile systems designed to intercept anti-radiation missiles such as the HARM and ALARM, and Precision Guided Munitions such as the JDAM and JASSM.

However, the biggest lesson learnt by Russian strategists was the need to be able to ‘shoot and scoot’

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2009-04.html

If an S-125 back in 1999 can shoot down a F-16 and F-117, then for a today's S-300 it would be like swatting a fly.

Please research before always going "team america"

 

-----------------------------------------

Edit: At current cost trends the F-35 and variants would be anywhere from $35 million to $153 million per unit, a lot to pay for something that could potentially be shot down by a $1 million missile.

[Alyster]

F-35B is STOVL not VTOL. 

[Chax]

A few things I feel I must point out here. 

 

 

Regarding the nuclear talks in the 90s: Alyster is actually dead-on correct. The United States had a deal with North Korea, and under the Clinton administration tensions between our two countries were beginning to thaw ever-so slightly. However, when 9/11 happened, Bush ran his mouth off with his Axis of Evil speech. Keep a few things in mind here:

 

1. The Iranians actually offered to support the United States in defeating terrorism after 9/11. Thousands of Iranians took to the streets in mourning the loss of civilians in the United States. Our government's response to this? We threw them on the "axis of evil" list, thus destroying any chance we had at reconciliation with what could have become our strongest ally in the region (again). 

 

(Links)
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=44b_1359356589&comments=1

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-gave-us-help-on-al-qaeda-after-9-11/

 

 

2. North Korea's leadership and citizens do not understand Western democracy. They simply cannot fathom the idea that our leader does not speak for each and every one of us. Remember, these people have never seen the outside world. When Clinton sent a letter to Jong-Il in the late 90's, the pudgy despot was so stoked he excitedly ran around his manchild-layer chattering like a little chipmunk. He was thrilled to have something from Clinton, and he was happy to be taken seriously. We go from this seemingly-positive shift in ties to Bush calling them "Evil" and comparing them to the Axis powers, and you can see why the Koreans told us to go fuck ourselves and three generations of our ancestors. Further, keep in mind that while a lot of the anti-American sentiments in North Korea are based on propaganda, we did play Dresden Fire Bomber on all of their cities, indiscriminately bombing every square inch of every city for several years. That'll piss anybody off. To fully understand the North Korean state of mind, I'd highly recommend reading The Cleanest Race, by B.R. Meyers. To sum it up, stemming largely from Japanese propaganda in WWII, the Koreans under Japanese occupation were led to believe they were a holy race, that they should bow to nobody (except Japan) and that someday they would have their land back. Jump to postwar, Japan is out of Korea, and now the Soviets and United States are in their place. They are falsely led to believe they are "fighting back" against South Korea in the Korean War (In reality, Pyongyang started the war with what they thought was the approval of the Soviets and the Chinese), wherein the United States "propped up" the Seoul government and leveled the North's cities. It's no wonder they've been led to hate us. For more information on our campaigns in Korea and how they have led to today's situation, I'd also recommend reading Killing Hope by William Blum. 

 

So, tl;dr is that we had an agreement with the Koreans, and we were supposed to be the "big kids" in the deal, give them a bit of leeway with their shittiness. We didn't. We tore the agreement up and spat in their faces at the same time we spat in Iran's face. 

 

 

 

 

The only reason the United States listens to anything coming out of Pyongyang is because of their nuclear capabilities. Think of how it looks from their perspective: we're warming up to them, suddenly we put them on a list with Iran and Iraq and start bombing the shit out of Iraq. Iran wasn't going to be an easy war, but we start rattling the saber with North Korea, and yeah, it's no surprise they started working on their nuclear deterrent again. Will they use their nuclear weapons aggressively? "No" would be a very safe bet. They're crazy, but they're not stupid. They know full-well that they would be glassed as soon as a missile lifted off. 

 

 

 

Finally, regarding the F-35's capabilities: While it may be stealth, it cannot fly at night. It cannot fly within 25 miles of lightning. It cannot fly faster than the speed of sound, and they rarely fly them when it's below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Basically, the F-35 is your grandmother's drivers license. It is a tremendous waste of money that isn't going anywhere soon because Lockheed has managed to space the manufacturing to (iirc) 46 states, ensuring every politician has his or her hand in the pie and can "bring jobs to my people". Brilliant, really, but a huge waste of time and money, considering existing aircraft were more than capable of handling threats for years to come. The simple fact is, we won't see a massive war between states as we did in WWI and WWII. It would be too devastating to the global economy, and the only war we'd ever see would be a nuclear war. In that sense, nuclear wars have assured large-scale global peace. We all know that a conventional war between, say, the US and Russia, would rapidly deteriorate into a nuclear war. So that's good for the world as a whole, but really bad for small proxy states, as they get used as pawns, or as the Korean proverb says, they are "shrimp crushed in a battle of whales". 

 

More on the F-35 and it's 1.45 trillion dollar clusterfuck: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/12/f-35-pentagon-budget-deal-cupcakes

[Alyster]

Wow, I didn't know that about the F-35. 

 

Anyway I just wanted to add about the 1994 talks between DPRK and US. The crises begun in 1993 for the US where Clinton even was quite stuck on these issues for a while looking for a solution. But on the background what we seem to forget sometimes was the fact that the Soviet Union and thus the entire Communist Block's economy collapsed.

 

The DPRK had enjoyed quite good social development in 1960s due to Soviet loans and investments, even being more successful at recovering from teh war at times than the Southen Korea. By 1980s they had hit stagnation. In 1990s it took a turn to the worse. DPRK's economical relations with the Eastern Block were basically cut off. Thus they suffered a huge economical hit. While losing the ex-Soviet republics as partners they also had no access to Western market due to embargoes. 

 

Part of the economical problems were related to energy. They were not able to import enough oil to keep their collective farms at work nor produce enough electricity to power their factories. When their agricultural economy collapsed they hit a famine in 1994-1998 which killed up to 3 million people. At the same time it worsened their economical situation as a down spiral from where they had no escape. They have no energy -> farms/factories can't work -> they produce less -> they have less money to import energy -> farms factories can't work etc.

 

In the light of these issues the 1994 agreement was signed. DPRK would give up on it's independent right to develop nuclear energy (and promise not to develop nuclear weapons) in exchange of the West solving their energy crises and lifting the embargoes and allowing trade with the Northeners. This agreement didn't deliver anything to the regime that was promised, they had to struggle to keep their nation alive and stay in power. I'm fairly sure had the relations normalized in 1990s DPRK would have had the chance to come out of its' shell like Communist China did. 

[Chax]

Wow, I didn't know that about the F-35. 

 

Anyway I just wanted to add about the 1994 talks between DPRK and US. The crises begun in 1993 for the US where Clinton even was quite stuck on these issues for a while looking for a solution. But on the background what we seem to forget sometimes was the fact that the Soviet Union and thus the entire Communist Block's economy collapsed.

 

The DPRK had enjoyed quite good social development in 1960s due to Soviet loans and investments, even being more successful at recovering from teh war at times than the Southen Korea. By 1980s they had hit stagnation. In 1990s it took a turn to the worse. DPRK's economical relations with the Eastern Block were basically cut off. Thus they suffered a huge economical hit. While losing the ex-Soviet republics as partners they also had no access to Western market due to embargoes. 

 

Part of the economical problems were related to energy. They were not able to import enough oil to keep their collective farms at work nor produce enough electricity to power their factories. When their agricultural economy collapsed they hit a famine in 1994-1998 which killed up to 3 million people. At the same time it worsened their economical situation as a down spiral from where they had no escape. They have no energy -> farms/factories can't work -> they produce less -> they have less money to import energy -> farms factories can't work etc.

 

In the light of these issues the 1994 agreement was signed. DPRK would give up on it's independent right to develop nuclear energy (and promise not to develop nuclear weapons) in exchange of the West solving their energy crises and lifting the embargoes and allowing trade with the Northeners. This agreement didn't deliver anything to the regime that was promised, they had to struggle to keep their nation alive and stay in power. I'm fairly sure had the relations normalized in 1990s DPRK would have had the chance to come out of its' shell like Communist China did. 

 

 

Pretty much this. Unfortunately, Kim Jong-Il may have been the last chance to actually negotiate. By that I don't mean that Un won't be open to talks, it's just that he isn't Kim Il-Sung (Father of the nation), and he's not the direct son of said father, whom they saw in public a lot before Sung's death. He's rather unknown to the Korean people, and he doesn't have the same "street cred" among the rest of the G-Unit (herein G-Unit refers to Government Unit, obviously). 

[Manoka]

A few things I feel I must point out here. 

 

 

Regarding the nuclear talks in the 90s: Alyster is actually dead-on correct. The United States had a deal with North Korea, and under the Clinton administration tensions between our two countries were beginning to thaw ever-so slightly. However, when 9/11 happened, Bush ran his mouth off with his Axis of Evil speech. Keep a few things in mind here:

 

1. The Iranians actually offered to support the United States in defeating terrorism after 9/11. Thousands of Iranians took to the streets in mourning the loss of civilians in the United States. Our government's response to this? We threw them on the "axis of evil" list, thus destroying any chance we had at reconciliation with what could have become our strongest ally in the region (again). 

 

(Links)
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=44b_1359356589&comments=1

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-gave-us-help-on-al-qaeda-after-9-11/

Things aren't always what they appear to be. While Iran has supposedly helped us and to help after 9/11, Pakistan as well has offered us their support, and it hasn't worked out too well. In Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden was found just .8 miles from the Pakistan Military Academy, equivalent to the U.S.'s west point. In fact, the Taliban were made by the Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) in 1994.

 

According to Pakistani Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid, "between 1994 and 1999, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis trained and fought in Afghanistan" on the side of the Taliban.^[76] Peter Tomsenstated that up until 9/11 Pakistani military and ISI officers along with thousands of regular Pakistani armed forces personnel had been involved in the fighting in Afghanistan.^[77]

In 2001 alone, according to several international sources, 28,000-30,000 Pakistani nationals, 14,000-15,000 Afghan Taliban and 2,000-3,000 Al Qaeda militants were fighting against anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan as a roughly 45,000 strong military force.^{[23][24][78][79]} Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – then as Chief of Army Staff – was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud.^[24][60][80] Of the estimated 28,000 Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan, 8,000 were militants recruited in madrassas filling regular Taliban ranks.^[23] A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirms that "20–40 percent of [regular] Taliban soldiers are Pakistani."^[60] The document further states that the parents of those Pakistani nationals "know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan."^[60] According to the U.S. State Department report and reports by Human Rights Watch, the other Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan were regular Pakistani soldiers especially from the Frontier Corps but also from the army providing direct combat support.^[19][60]

Human Rights Watch wrote in 2000:

Of all the foreign powers involved in efforts to sustain and manipulate the ongoing fighting [in Afghanistan], Pakistan is distinguished both by the sweep of its objectives and the scale of its efforts, which include soliciting funding for the Taliban, bankrolling Taliban operations, providing diplomatic support as the Taliban's virtual emissaries abroad, arranging training for Taliban fighters, recruiting skilled and unskilled manpower to serve in Taliban armies, planning and directing offensives, providing and facilitating shipments of ammunition and fuel, and ... directly providing combat support.^[19]

On August 1, 1997 the Taliban launched an attack on Sheberghan the main military base of Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum has said the reason the attack was successful was due to 1500 Pakistani commandos taking part and that the Pakistani air force also gave support

 

 

Despite Pakistan supposedly being on board with it, their actual actions and even statements proved otherwise. "The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salem Zaeef, responded to the ultimatum by demanding "convincing evidence"^[120] that Bin Laden was involved in the attacks, stating "our position is that if America has evidence and proof, they should produce it."^[121][122] Additionally, the Taliban insisted that any trial of Bin Laden be held in an Afghan court.^[123] Zaeef also claimed that "4,000 Jews working in the Trade Center had prior knowledge of the suicide missions, and 'were absent on that day.'"^[122] This response was generally dismissed as a delaying tactic, rather than a sincere attempt to cooperate with the ultimatum.^{[120][124][125]"} 

 

The argument that these people legitimately tried to help us us sketchy at best. Pakistan to this day still claims that Osama Bin Laden and dozens of other Al Qaeda operatives were not caught, despite official confirmation by most world Authorities. It's just a flat out lie, and a very clear one. 

 

 

Since Iran and Pakistan are major allies, allying ourselves with Iran would be like allying ourselves with Germany in WWII. In any case, despite having supposedly sent "300 arab" passports and deporting 300 "arabs" according to your article, they did not send any to the U.S., and at best simply allowed them to leave the country, actually forced them to, without issue, making them harder to track. In addition, there were dozens more Al Qaeda members operating out of Iran such as Yasin al-Suri and others. When found, Iran simply claims that they weren't there, like Pakistan claiming Osama Bin Laden wasn't there. Their help is usually just a mask; they pretend to be friendly up front and really intend to take over Afghanistan and other country's to spread their view of Islam. They've even threatened the U.S. recently, so even if they offered to help, us and Iran are not on good terms, anyways. There's no reason to believe their help would be legitimate. 

 

 

2. North Korea's leadership and citizens do not understand Western democracy. They simply cannot fathom the idea that our leader does not speak for each and every one of us. Remember, these people have never seen the outside world. When Clinton sent a letter to Jong-Il in the late 90's, the pudgy despot was so stoked he excitedly ran around his manchild-layer chattering like a little chipmunk. He was thrilled to have something from Clinton, and he was happy to be taken seriously.

I don't think any of this can be substantiated. At all.

 

We go from this seemingly-positive shift in ties to Bush calling them "Evil" and comparing them to the Axis powers, and you can see why the Koreans told us to go fuck ourselves and three generations of our ancestors. Further, keep in mind that while a lot of the anti-American sentiments in North Korea are based on propaganda, we did play Dresden Fire Bomber on all of their cities, indiscriminately bombing every square inch of every city for several years. That'll piss anybody off. To fully understand the North Korean state of mind, I'd highly recommend reading The Cleanest Race, by B.R. Meyers. To sum it up, stemming largely from Japanese propaganda in WWII, the Koreans under Japanese occupation were led to believe they were a holy race, that they should bow to nobody (except Japan) and that someday they would have their land back. Jump to postwar, Japan is out of Korea, and now the Soviets and United States are in their place. They are falsely led to believe they are "fighting back" against South Korea in the Korean War (In reality, Pyongyang started the war with what they thought was the approval of the Soviets and the Chinese), wherein the United States "propped up" the Seoul government and leveled the North's cities. It's no wonder they've been led to hate us. For more information on our campaigns in Korea and how they have led to today's situation, I'd also recommend reading Killing Hope by William Blum.

Well, the city was a military target producing weapons and other places. While there's a LOT of information about Dresden that has been falsified and even made up, such as the Nazis reporting over 200,000 casualties, the actual city members themselves and the US. reported about 25,000 casualties. There were likely civilians killed in the conflict, but as horrible as it is, it was a military target. If they went death to all America for something that happened back in WWII and killed a few military individuals it's quite a bit of a stretch. Not only this, but we didn't bomb all of their cities. 

 

 

 

So, tl;dr is that we had an agreement with the Koreans, and we were supposed to be the "big kids" in the deal, give them a bit of leeway with their shittiness. We didn't. We tore the agreement up and spat in their faces at the same time we spat in Iran's face.

We accepted the help from Iran, but they have issues in their own right, and much of the help didn't really do anything for us, in fact it likely made it harder to track these guys. 

 

The only reason the United States listens to anything coming out of Pyongyang is because of their nuclear capabilities. Think of how it looks from their perspective: we're warming up to them, suddenly we put them on a list with Iran and Iraq and start bombing the shit out of Iraq. Iran wasn't going to be an easy war, but we start rattling the saber with North Korea, and yeah, it's no surprise they started working on their nuclear deterrent again. Will they use their nuclear weapons aggressively? "No" would be a very safe bet. They're crazy, but they're not stupid. They know full-well that they would be glassed as soon as a missile lifted off.

I'm pretty sure their crazyness super sedes whatever intelligence they might have. They kill off hundreds if not thousands of their own people every day, and yet, you think they wouldn't go out in a blaze of glory to take us down with them? It's possible, but if they were smart they'd give up the nuclear weapons program all together and just accept our help without having to do anything themselves. It would be easy for them to be moochers and not try to be violent people. Unfortunately this isn't the case, though. 

 

The reality is that the agreement with North Korea broke down in 2003, and in 2005 just two years later atom bombs were created. To be able to produce these atom bombs implies that North Korea had had this infrastructure in development for quite some time before hand. The reason for the end of the agreement was the fear that North Korea was developing these weapons of which the entire point of the agreement was to get North Korea to not do this. It turns out, they were right. If we had continued helping them today they would surely be a power to be reckoned with, so, that would just be dumb. It sucks that their leaders are so adamant on such self destructive principles, but even if we sent them food aid it's likely their government would just get it all up and redistribute it for money, or even just keep it for themselves. There's little chance of it going to help the people unless the government is disposed, first. 

 

 

 

Finally, regarding the F-35's capabilities: While it may be stealth, it cannot fly at night. It cannot fly within 25 miles of lightning. It cannot fly faster than the speed of sound, and they rarely fly them when it's below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Basically, the F-35 is your grandmother's drivers license. It is a tremendous waste of money that isn't going anywhere soon because Lockheed has managed to space the manufacturing to (iirc) 46 states, ensuring every politician has his or her hand in the pie and can "bring jobs to my people". Brilliant, really, but a huge waste of time and money, considering existing aircraft were more than capable of handling threats for years to come. The simple fact is, we won't see a massive war between states as we did in WWI and WWII. It would be too devastating to the global economy, and the only war we'd ever see would be a nuclear war. In that sense, nuclear wars have assured large-scale global peace. We all know that a conventional war between, say, the US and Russia, would rapidly deteriorate into a nuclear war. So that's good for the world as a whole, but really bad for small proxy states, as they get used as pawns, or as the Korean proverb says, they are "shrimp crushed in a battle of whales". 

 

More on the F-35 and it's 1.45 trillion dollar clusterfuck: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/12/f-35-pentagon-budget-deal-cupcakes

 

Um... I'm not entirely sure where you get your information. Immediately, the lifetime cost of the project is going to be 1.45 trillion over 50 years, or about 29 billion a year. This includes maintenance, training pilots, fuel, research and development costs, and basically every cost associated with the project. All in all, for 3000 aircraft, that are all stealth planes and exceed the capabilities of the F16, F15, and F18 in every war, including the capacity to carry twice as many bombs/missiles, and 3 times the weight (meaning bigger bombs) it's fairly incredible. 

 

Any aircraft can fly at night. Any aircraft can fly within 25 miles of lighting, although it's not advised. I don't really know what to say to that. It's flat out wrong. First, it's top speed is 1200 mph, which is 1.6 the speed of sound. However, the speed of sound is lower at altitude, so as high up as it can go, it's about Mach 2, but slightly under. So, not only is it breaking the sound barrier, but it's technically supersonic. 

 

"Six additional passive infrared sensors are distributed over the aircraft as part of Northrop Grumman's AN/AAQ-37 distributed aperture system (DAS),^[33] which acts as a missile warning system, reports missile launch locations, detects and tracks approaching aircraft spherically around the F-35, and replaces traditional night vision goggles for night operations and navigation."- It doesn't what is considered to be night vision, it uses infrared instead. Infrared is often used in night vision goggles, but infrared sensors are better since it can see lasers invisible to normal light, can pick up heat signatures from people and other aircraft, can see through smoke and fog, and even clouds that normal light is typically reflected by, and as well doesn't need any light to operate. While night vision typically requires at least a little bit of light to operate, and too much light will blind the user, thermal stays constant, since day or night the same amount of infrared is given off by everything, ever, in the entire universe. Since everything has heat, it gives off a proportional amount of infrared. They even have software that can turn infrared into color vision these days, so it's way better than traditional night vision. It can very much see at night, and it can see entire areas instead of just where the pilots eyes are pointing, and in addition can be used as an early warning system to track missiles. 

 

The lightning issue is more of a precaution than anything, with fears that the fuel tanks could explode. Since it is a new aircraft fielding just prototypes at the moment, it's banned from going within 25 miles of lightning. However, it can fly within this range, and the fuel tank problem has been fixed. It was a light problem, all around. 

 

 

Anyways, the purpose of the aircraft is to be multirole. It's a fighter bomber, that carries a significantly higher payload than the F-16, F-15, or F-18. This means it can carry far more than 2 2000 pound bombs, and an additional array of defensive missiles. It'll be able to, bare minimum, carry 2-3 times the bombs per payload, and being as stealthy as it is can very easily dodge missiles. 

 

It would be pretty stupid to be the most powerful military in the entire world and not have an effective air defense. More importantly, since aircraft carriers are the basis of our power projection, and short take off and vertical take off aircraft will likely be the norm on this, it will simplify take off by not requiring catapults and being more capable on it's own, and new aircraft carriers are predicted to only need about 2000 crew members, instead of 5000. They'll be cheaper, more sophisticated, and more effective, as well as safer in general since both versions of the F-35 have vertical landing, instead of needing wires and to land hitting the deck extremely hard. They'll be easy to deploy off of aircraft carriers, and be as capable if not better than current stealth bombers, except we'll have 300 of them. So it will be pretty great. 

[Manoka]

Okay, why are url's not working?

 

Google.

 

 

Dafuq?

 

Didn't work. 

 

Okay. 

 

 

Anyways! 

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Bin_Laden.27s_compound

Osama Bin Laden was found just .8 miles from the Pakistan Military Academy, equivalent to the U.S.'s west point.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Role_of_the_Pakistani_military

In fact, the Taliban were made by the Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) in 1994.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II

F-35

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreed_Framework

North Korea agreed framework- 1994

 

Dresden bombing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

Edited by Manoka, 27 December 2013 - 07:51 PM.

[Manoka]

The S-300 is great, but has trouble against F-16's as is.

Ignores the fact an S-300 has never been used in anger yet....

Also an F-16 and A Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk got shot down and one damaged in the Kosovo war 1999, by SA-6 (S-125)

 

>>>The Russian military certainly took notice of Operation Allied Force and this is reflected in fundamental doctrinal and technological changes in their approach to operating and designing air defence systems.

There is much new equipment, primarily of Russian and Chinese origin, but also from Belarus and the Ukraine, now available on the open market as building blocks, for any country with enough money and the motivation, to create a highly survivable Integrated Air Defence System.

This equipment includes both passive and active, and soft and hard kill measures as part of the air defence network, including transportable GPS/GLONASS jammers, decoy radar emitters, active defensive countermeasures for radars, ISR radar and airborne communications jammers, and point defence missile systems designed to intercept anti-radiation missiles such as the HARM and ALARM, and Precision Guided Munitions such as the JDAM and JASSM.

However, the biggest lesson learnt by Russian strategists was the need to be able to ‘shoot and scoot’

http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2009-04.html

If an S-125 back in 1999 can shoot down a F-16 and F-117, then for a today's S-300 it would be like swatting a fly.

Please research before always going "team america"

 

-----------------------------------------

Edit: At current cost trends the F-35 and variants would be anywhere from $35 million to $153 million per unit, a lot to pay for something that could potentially be shot down by a $1 million missile.

 

Having shot down two aircraft =/= it is an amazing system. The F-117 has had a number of issues, including needing radar tape, which falls off in flight or in particularly bad weather. 

 

However, since all modern F-35's are intended to be stealth planes, and the S-300 and S-400 almost exclusively use radar tracking systems, it should be difficult to hit them; since they do not need radar tape as they are inherently radar resistant, these problems likely will not result. In addition, the F-35 can mask it's infrared signature in multiple ways, such as by dumping the heat momentarily, for a few minutes, and with dozens of flares to attract the attention of infrared missiles. It should be hard to target the F-35 since it has a nearly non-existent radar cross section, smaller than a tennis ball, and in stealth mode is even harder to detect, (I.E. having bombs in it's internal bomb bay instead of on it's wings, and flying a bit more slowly), it should be nigh impossible to detect. 

 

 

Radar resistant craft have been around for some time. In WWII wooden aircraft were developed by the germans to be radar resistant and very fast, but they were too easily taken down by enemy aircraft, since they were incredibly weak, and ordinary tracers, while not intended to be particularly powerful, could easily catch them on fire. 

 

While the F-35 is not made out of wood, it's nearly all composite construction means it doesn't reflect radar like aluminum and other metals do, making it naturally invisible to radar. As for the S-300, it has been tested, and it's capabilities compared to what we think could take down an F-16. Although it's likely improved sense then. 

 

 

Anyways, the F-35 was designed in part specifically to counter these threats, as well as be stealthy. 

Edited by Manoka, 27 December 2013 - 08:16 PM.

[Manoka]

On to my original point was that the 35 to 150 million dollar per aircraft cost depends on the method of counting. The actual cost for guns, that is "per plane", is around 35 million. But research and all other factors included, it would be 150 to 200 million. 

 

If we made 1/10th as many planes, it would be closer to a billion dollars per aircraft, simply due to the base cost for development and manufacturer, such as training F-35 workers, keeping it all secret, designing the different pieces, paying them, building the machinery, and so on. 

 

 

Think of it like this. It would take say, 1 million dollars to make a pencil making factory. It would cost 100,000 extra dollars to make 1 million pencils, as the pencil making factory can make 1 million 10 cent pencils for 100,000 dollars input. 

 

But if you just made 1 pencil, it would be a 1 million dollar pencil, including factory costs. More or less, cutting guns wouldn't cut prices, since the factories are already built, the workers are already hired and trained (albeit doing little), and so on. You're best off just making the aircraft in the meantime. 

[the rebel]

Things aren't always what they appear to be. While Iran has supposedly helped us and to help after 9/11, Pakistan as well has offered us their support, and it hasn't worked out too well. In Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden was found just .8 miles from the Pakistan Military Academy, equivalent to the U.S.'s west point. In fact, the Taliban were made by the Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) in 1994.

 
The best place to hide when someone is looking for you is right under their nose because they would be looking everywhere but there.

The Taliban were a faction within the Mujahideen which were supported and funded by the USA and Pakistan in its fight against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. The North-West Frontier province in Pakistan was the command center for the Mujahedeen groups fighting the Soviet troops. The Taliban and that area are predominantly Pashtun.
 

The argument that these people legitimately tried to help us us sketchy at best. Pakistan to this day still claims that Osama Bin Laden and dozens of other Al Qaeda operatives were not caught, despite official confirmation by most world Authorities. It's just a flat out lie, and a very clear one. 

 
Pakistan had arrested scores of al-Qaeda affiliates, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. You know the guy who was waterboarded over 180 times which apparently doing so saved countless lives.
 
I'm curious where the confirmation by most of the world authourites on Osama's death comes from? Because he was killed and buried at sea within 24hrs and no public proof.
 

Their help is usually just a mask; they pretend to be friendly up front and really intend to take over Afghanistan and other country's to spread their view of Islam.

 
Its geopolitics, they would rather have a Pakistani friendly government in power than the current Indian friendly government.
 

Having shot down two aircraft =/= it is an amazing system. The F-117 has had a number of issues, including needing radar tape, which falls off in flight or in particularly bad weather. 

 
Well if you read the link then you realise why they would of had difficulty hitting more.
 
But still missing the point is that a stealth plane being shotdown was unheard of and unthinkable at that time, if they could hit one they could potentially be able to hit all of them.
 

However, since all modern F-35's are intended to be stealth planes, and the S-300 and S-400 almost exclusively use radar tracking systems, it should be difficult to hit them; since they do not need radar tape as they are inherently radar resistant, these problems likely will not result. In addition, the F-35 can mask it's infrared signature in multiple ways, such as by dumping the heat momentarily, for a few minutes, and with dozens of flares to attract the attention of infrared missiles.

Nothing is invisible. There is one major problem all stealth planes have, a cookie if you can guess it.

[Redezra]

Uhhhh.... you can see stealth planes? 

 

Oooh! ooh! and they make a lot of noise!

[Chax]

Stopped reading when you tried to legitimize the firebombing of Dresden. 

[Alyster]

a) In case of North Korea and other similar countries an argument is often used "They're more crazy than they are sane, they'll use the A-bomb first, because they're that crazy etc." .... At times I'd make the same argument about the United States. Their not sane, their crazy. In the end of the day it's just hysterical lobbing of dirt around based on no real assessment aside propaganda. 

 

 

b) Fire bombing of cities. After the World War I Italian General Giulio Douhet wrote very important book, called Command of the Air  which imminently got famous over the world. In that he states that for future wars aerial warfare will assume much greater role. He stated that an objective in war must from then on be gaining air supremacy and caring out strategical bombarding. His idea was that through this you can reduce your opponent to the level where he is unable to carry on the fight. 

 

Allies, much like the rest of the world, were quite influenced of the works. Well basically every air force was. The problem about it however was that Douhet forgot to specify which targets to aim. Later thinkers developed two plans for that. First of all the "bottle neck effect." Meaning you bomb specific industrial complexes creating a shortage of that particular asset across the enemy nation. For example ball bearings or oil. Both worked well in WW2. 

 

The other line of thinking said that the previous suggestion is not possible. Bombers flying over 5000m high are extremely inaccurate. Moreover to bomb factories you'd have to go in at day time to even have any chance of accuracy, which is much more dangerous. Instead they argued that allies must target German civilian population. The plan was to demoralize them. End of story. Demoralized people are less effective workers, demoralized nation's soldiers are less effective and all in all it can call on a coup perhaps. 

 

In defense of the States I must say here that in Europe the British were much more keen on the latter idea than the yanks. USAAF did carry out much more day time bombing attacks aimed at industry than the RAF. Nevertheless you were part of the terror attacks on civilian population as well, especially in Pacific theater. On a side note, that's where your nutjob General Cutis LeMay learned all his tricks. He later wanted to preemptively bomb the crap out of the USSR, with nukes.

 

Anyway the bombing missions aimed at civilian populations had very different signature. They were launched at nights, they used fire bombs (napalm predecessors) instead of General Purpose bombs. The firestorms created by the firebombs burned the cities and the people but left the industrial equipment quite intact, brick building walls, bunkers - left standing. 

 

A reason why Dresden has been the symbolic actions here, is quite simple. That city had no military importance what so ever. It was late in the war, they had no significant military installations not factories. Only possible target there was the railway - on the edge of the city. It was left untouched by the allies. German propaganda indeed blew up the numbers here. But it's not the only such attack that has happened: Hamburg (40 000 dead), Sweinemuende (23 000 dead), Pforzheim (20 000 dead), Darmstadt (12 500 dead), Kassel (10 000 dead). 

 

In Pacific in Operation Meetinghouse, Tokyo living areas, built of wood, with extensive civilian population per sq mile, were bombed by over 300 B-29s carrying fire bombs. 100 - 150 000 civilians died. No military importance what so ever. By the way, we're talking about same casualty number here as nuclear attacks already.

 

Thus horrible attacks against civilians were carried out. They were not collateral damage, they were the targets. It was a decision made in the allied HQs. And in the end of it - their plan failed. While according to US Senate's launched survey after the war the morale in Germany did in fact decrease, German economical output achieved its' height in 1944. The nation wasn't brought do its' knees by aerial bombarding but by the Red Army.  

 

Now fuck Korea. Just don't destroy my writing by quoting it 5 million times twisting it by demagogy. Write something nice and long in reply, it would warm my heart (I'm really into that WW2 aerial warfare shit) 

Edited by Alyster, 28 December 2013 - 08:18 AM.