A graph of the 2009 US Budget.

[Tiger]

Cut military spending. Divert some of that to education, some more to universal health care. Both of those will improve our economy and help generate revenue, especially in the long term. Use the rest to pay off our debts.

But that'll never happen, since we have people like Skyfire who think that having a nation bordered by two friendly nations and two oceans somehow needs the largest military on the planet. (Another reason to divert that money to education.)

Jun 10, 2009 11:13:32 GMT -5 skyfire said:

2. Contrary to popular belief, other nations aren't resting on their laurels. For example, the F-15 airframe is about as old as several posters here. The Eurofighter, a proposed new French fighter, and several of the newer MiG fighters either meet it stat-wise or are slated to exceed it; we need the F-22 just to maintain even some level of edge.

Thank you for proving Nickerson's point. You and the rest of the right wing are stuck in the mentality that we absolutely need to have the strongest military on the planet at any cost. The French are our allies, and war with Russia is a rather remote possibility. And don't even get me started on China. There's absolutely no way we're going to start anything with them, considering the amount of our debt they own. It'd be economic suicide. (Which is rather sadly ironic. We're borrowing money from China in case we fight a war with them, but we can't fight that war because we're borrowing money from them.)

3. America's reputation as the world's policeman isn't simply something that the nation has taken upon itself; other nations tend to look at us to help provide both peacekeeping efforts and emergency relief efforts; the US military is normally the most efficient way of doing both (there's a reason why the headquarters for the US relief effort after the 2004 Tsunami was an aircraft carrier...).

Except our military and their budget isn't structured around either peacekeeping or emergency relief efforts. The F-22 you mentioned above hasn't been used once in any of the nations we have peacekeeping forces, and is utterly useless for emergency relief. We only have them because we're stuck in the Cold War mentality that World War III can break out at any moment. Same thing for the experimental projects you mentioned in point 1.

We can either have a military 10x larger than any other nation's that will eventually bankrupt us, or we can have a balanced budget. Isn't it about time we expected our allies to pick up some of the slack instead of relying on us to provide military muscle?

[Old Viking]

Yeah, ya never know when we might have to defend ourselves, or get in some practice by bombing brown people. What I'm trying to figure out is when, exactly, we became a nation of pusillanimous whiners. For at least two decades the national slogan has seemed to be, "Dont Let the Bad Mans Hurt Us."

[m52nickerson]

Jun 10, 2009 13:52:52 GMT -5 skyfire said:

Any sort of product development is essentially shooting craps.

Let's go back to the RAH-66. The thing was intended to be a "stealth" helicopter in the sense that it would combine advanced electronics with a profile and design that would make it hard to detect through electronic means. Both a scout version and a gunship version would be offered, with the difference being that the gunship would have "wings" and would thus have two extra weapons hardpoints.

Thing is, the rise of the unmanned aerial drone killed the need for the scout model. This left the whole thing up to the gunship model, but when it was discovered that existing AH-64s could hypothetically be modified to produce the AH-64D (which is why the development cost on the 2004 budget was so much lower) it was the death knell for the project.

Was it revolutionary? Sure. Did it help us figure out new things in regards to military aviation? Hell yeah. But did we ultimately need it? Nope. .

What did it teach us? The whole point was to have a stealth helicopter. It did not help is developing unmanned drones.

Actually, the F-35 is succeeding in pissing a lot of people off in the sense that it's meant to replace the A-10 as well as the F/A-18. While the A-10 is also old and the air frames went out of production shortly before Desert Storm, there's no way in hell that the F-35 will ever come close to boasting the sheer ordinance load, rate of fire, or loiter time as the A-10. We'll need a specially-build ground support craft to ever do that, but it just doesn't seem to be in the cards.

That is why they dropped the idea of replacing the A-10. At this point I doubt it will replace the all of the F-18's the Super Hornet is still a damn good air craft.

Tell that to the rest of the world.

For example, during the bit with Bosnia the US was responsible for providing 50% of the peacekeeping presence. Other peacekeeping efforts have similarly leaned heavily on the US military.

Ok!? If we only provide 35% instead of 50% the rest of the world will have to step up.

Thing is, a lot of what we take for granted in the civilian world was given to us by either military research or as an offshoot of military research. As such, even pay-as-you-go has issues in the sense of potentially axing too much in the way of development.

.....and not all the cuts would have to come from research Sky. If you look at the chart some of the biggest numbers on the military side are Administration, and Combat Deployment.

Don't assume that just because I think Military spending can be cut back I want to cut research. As it is the F-22 program has given us a plane that even with only 180 of them we could potentially shoot down every other foreign military aircraft. So instead of needing 600 F-15 we have a smaller, less expensive to maintain air superiority force. Then however you look at the RAH-66, when did we think we would need a stealth helicopter? It is not like you can't look up a see the damn thing or that we don't use helicopters to take out first defenses, such as radar.

[skyfire]

Jun 10, 2009 14:52:38 GMT -5 m52nickerson said:

That is why they dropped the idea of replacing the A-10. At this point I doubt it will replace the all of the F-18's the Super Hornet is still a damn good air craft.

At this point, I'm wondering why they're still doing the JSF above and beyond using it as a testbed for VSTOL fighter capabilities (the Harrier is functional, but primitive in this regards). It can't do squat to fill the A-10's role, and the F/A-18 still has another decade of service life left in it before it even begins to seriously age.

Ok!? If we only provide 35% instead of 50% the rest of the world will have to step up.

...which is my point.

Some of the other nations of the world do indeed need to be a little more willing to handle some things that they otherwise defer to the US.

If anything, one of the more surprising moments of the Iraq war was that several nations - such as El Salvador, Poland, and Japan - that don't normally do a lot of peacekeeping work stepped up to the plate.

.....and not all the cuts would have to come from research Sky. If you look at the chart some of the biggest numbers on the military side are Administration, and Combat Deployment.

Admin can be hacked away at if done carefully, but for the "deployment" bit as long as we're committed to the Middle East there's no real way to drop the budget.

As it is the F-22 program has given us a plane that even with only 180 of them we could potentially shoot down every other foreign military aircraft. So instead of needing 600 F-15 we have a smaller, less expensive to maintain air superiority force.

"Potentially" doesn't translate into actual fact. A best-case scenario would be phasing in the F-22s as the existing F-15s begin to age and falter; it'd limit the number of planes we'd need to purchase at a given time, but still give us that edge.

Then however you look at the RAH-66, when did we think we would need a stealth helicopter? It is not like you can't look up a see the damn thing or that we don't use helicopters to take out first defenses, such as radar.

The RAH-66 came from the same period of time to where we were kinda looking to make everything stealthy, hence the YF-23 Black Widow II and several proposals for light combat vehicles.

[ironbite]

I just found a way to slash the military budge almost 3/4s....WE GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST! WHAT A CONCEPT!

[m52nickerson]

Jun 10, 2009 21:02:00 GMT -5 skyfire said:

At this point, I'm wondering why they're still doing the JSF above and beyond using it as a testbed for VSTOL fighter capabilities (the Harrier is functional, but primitive in this regards). It can't do squat to fill the A-10's role, and the F/A-18 still has another decade of service life left in it before it even begins to seriously age.

Me too.

...which is my point.

Some of the other nations of the world do indeed need to be a little more willing to handle some things that they otherwise defer to the US.

If anything, one of the more surprising moments of the Iraq war was that several nations - such as El Salvador, Poland, and Japan - that don't normally do a lot of peacekeeping work stepped up to the plate.

"Tell that to the rest of the world" and that was your point. Ok, you sometimes need to be clearer on your points.

Admin can be hacked away at if done carefully, but for the "deployment" bit as long as we're committed to the Middle East there's no real way to drop the budget.

Which is the reason we need to get out of their. We would be much better off.

"Potentially" doesn't translate into actual fact. A best-case scenario would be phasing in the F-22s as the existing F-15s begin to age and falter; it'd limit the number of planes we'd need to purchase at a given time, but still give us that edge.

We have the edge right now with the number of F-22's we have. I do think that money that is going to the F-35 program could go to a few more f-22's and upkeep of the A-10 and F/A-18s.

The RAH-66 came from the same period of time to where we were kinda looking to make everything stealthy, hence the YF-23 Black Widow II and several proposals for light combat vehicles.

Yes they did, all of those program were at best ill conceived, except the YF-23 which was the competitor to the F-22. The 22 ultimately won the competition and became the US's new fighter.

[m52nickerson]

Jun 10, 2009 21:14:44 GMT -5 ironbite said:

I just found a way to slash the military budge almost 3/4s....WE GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST! WHAT A CONCEPT!

Even more reason to get to a point were we don't need foreign oil.

[ltfred]

3. America's reputation as the world's policeman isn't simply something that the nation has taken upon itself; other nations tend to look at us to help provide both peacekeeping efforts and emergency relief efforts; the US military is normally the most efficient way of doing both (there's a reason why the headquarters for the US relief effort after the 2004 Tsunami was an aircraft carrier...).

Other countries often live in fear of doing the slightest thing to upset the United States, like excersive sovereignty, or repudate the Washington Consensus and try to develop. Because, along with being the worl's policeman, the US army is the world's mafia don, flattening those who fail to pay protection.

Other countries also look with interest at the US defence force, designed not to defend anywhere, or to keep peace or respond to disasters (or even to fight small-scale wars against resistence movements in Iraq and Afghanistan very well). They see that it is good at two things- blasting entire areas of ground into little tiny pieces very quickly and thereby keeping casualties to an absolute minimum. It's good at fighting conventional wars against (say) Iran or North Korea with very small casualties, at blinding speed and with massive enemy and civilian death toll. When the US millitary tries to do something without massive firepower in a low-intensity conflict (say Mogadishu), they lose (and take lots of casualties). The US army isn't armed as a policeman, it's armed as a knight.

US troops simply should not be in Iraq, not only because a million people have been killed, but because it's cost 3 trillion dollars. US troops shouldn't be in Germany, or Soth Korea, or Japan, or anywhere in the middle east including Afghanistan. Or you can change the name of the Department of Defence back to the Department of War, to better reflect it's role.

In all honesty, I too would like an overhaul of Congressional spending and such, especially in light of how much $$$ has been pushed through for the sake of stimulus over the past year. I would likewise appreciate more transparency in the budget process.

See, here's why people call you a hypocrite. Everyone in a thread notes that the largest source of debt is unnecessary and wasteful spending by the US millitary. You defend that spending but criticise stimulatory, recession-ending Economic Recovery money. That isn't wasteful. Because debt is bad right now.

[Damen]

Jun 10, 2009 10:09:53 GMT -5 Yaezakura said:

Because there's too many people who feel that accounting for 50% of the entire world's military budget just isn't enough. Having the biggest dick is great, but having a dick that can subjugate the planet is better.

Oh, that's some lulz right there. Enjoy your exalt.

[m52nickerson]

Jun 10, 2009 21:45:11 GMT -5 ltfred said:

Other countries often live in fear of doing the slightest thing to upset the United States, like excersive sovereignty, or repudate the Washington Consensus and try to develop. Because, along with being the worl's policeman, the US army is the world's mafia don, flattening those who fail to pay protection.

Really? Name one.

US troops shouldn't be in Germany, or Soth Korea, or Japan, or anywhere in the middle east including Afghanistan. Or you can change the name of the Department of Defence back to the Department of War, to better reflect it's role.

I agree that the bases in Germany and Japan are at this point unnecessary. South Korea because of the threat of the North that one should stay. As far as Afghanistan, we do still need to be their. Granted that the US should have never gone into Iraq, but because we did we never finished what we started in Afghanistan.

.....and yes Fred. No matter what you think the US did have a right to go into Afghanistan after 911.

[ltfred]

Jun 11, 2009 6:30:29 GMT -5 m52nickerson said:

Really? Name one.

Well Iran. Venezuela, Bolivia, North Korea. They're pretty shit scared. Iraq, too. Saudi Arabia. Pretty much everywhere in the middle East actually. Other than Israel.

I agree that the bases in Germany and Japan are at this point unnecessary. South Korea because of the threat of the North that one should stay. As far as Afghanistan, we do still need to be their. Granted that the US should have never gone into Iraq, but because we did we never finished what we started in Afghanistan.

I'll give you South Korea, right now. But I think the South Korean millitary will actually surprise you. But the problem (if it is ever solved before Mr Il's death) will be solved by diplomacy anyway.

Based on what does the US army need to be in Afghanistan. Specifically, why do US troops need to be tilting at windmills in an attempt at constructing a nation in Afghanistan, the search for Osama Bin Laden being a task that was largely tasked to second-rate Northern Alliance troops within months of invasion, and has been totally abandoned by now.

.....and yes Fred. No matter what you think the US did have a right to go into Afghanistan after 911.

By what basis do you claim the right to aggression? Or, failing that, which 'instant, overwhelming attack leaving no choice leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation' did you stop with a 8-year invasion? Or failing that, which UN security Council Resolution do you cite?

[CtraK]

Jun 10, 2009 14:52:38 GMT -5 m52nickerson said:

What did it teach us? The whole point was to have a stealth helicopter.

Given the nature of the wars and operations America has fought over the past 20 years or so, surely a stealth helicopter is pointless? I mean, if recent history is any guide it'd only get shot down with an RPG from some guy who conducts his military strategies from a tent, and who has no fucking radar whatsoever.

I don't claim to be a military expert, but a stealth helicopter just seems to be like trying to invent the military equivalent of that toaster that burns the weather forecast onto your bread.

Also, $800bn works out at roughly £512bn. Pre-recession, the UK government spent around £550bn - and that's on everything.

[skyfire]

Jun 10, 2009 21:16:40 GMT -5 m52nickerson said:

Yes they did, all of those program were at best ill conceived, except the YF-23 which was the competitor to the F-22. The 22 ultimately won the competition and became the US's new fighter.

It wasn't that the YF-23 was ill-conceived.

Rather, there was a critical flaw with the missile bay door and the payload delivery mechanism.

In order to be stealthy, the design had it that the YF-23 had no guns and all missiles were housed in an internal bay. Thing is, the bay doors periodically jammed in one position, and the missile delivery mechanism would sometimes jam as well. With no guns, that left the YF-23 incredibly vulnerable in a fight against other planes; given the bad things that happened with the early, gun-less F-4 model, the Air Force wasn't keen on facing that prospect.

[skyfire]

Jun 11, 2009 7:34:45 GMT -5 ltfred said:

Well Iran. Venezuela, Bolivia, North Korea. They're pretty shit scared. Iraq, too. Saudi Arabia. Pretty much everywhere in the middle East actually.

In other words, nations that need to be scared we'll take them off the map.

Iran and North Korea keep trying to get nukes even though the entire world has told them "no" repeatedly.

Venezuela's little dictator started being a pissant a few years ago and began to actively undermine foreign relations with several other countries. Now that his economy is in the toilet because gas prices are too low to support his "socialist paradise," he may well pick a fight with someone in order to keep people distracted from everything else.

Several Mid-East nations have also made it their policy, official or not, to try and take Israel off the map. Before Obama came to power (Obama's policy towards Israel is another matter altogether), US policy was to have Israel's back.

I'll give you South Korea, right now. But I think the South Korean millitary will actually surprise you. But the problem (if it is ever solved before Mr Il's death) will be solved by diplomacy anyway.

For Germany, we will never abandon the Rammstein airbase or Landstuhl military hospital short of the German government forcibly ejecting the US. And even then, the German government is entirely too dependent upon the expenditures of US service members and their families within the local economy to actually try it. The bases that Bush did close in Germany were closed more for retaliation against the German government than for any real military need ("Hate the troops, eh? Let's see how you like it when they're not spending their money in your towns."), similar to what happened with Vieques.

With Japan, there's really no place else in the Pacific that can handle the fleet operations we need to have in order to suppress places like North Korea or coordinate aid / relief efforts w/o our presence also sparking an international incident.

Based on what does the US army need to be in Afghanistan. Specifically, why do US troops need to be tilting at windmills in an attempt at constructing a nation in Afghanistan, the search for Osama Bin Laden being a task that was largely tasked to second-rate Northern Alliance troops within months of invasion, and has been totally abandoned by now.

So you're saying that we should just pull out and leave the populace to the predations of the surviving Taliban fighters?

By what basis do you claim the right to aggression? Or, failing that, which 'instant, overwhelming attack leaving no choice leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation' did you stop with a 8-year invasion? Or failing that, which UN security Council Resolution do you cite?

We gave Afghanistan an ultimatum: hand over Bin Laden by X date or be turned to paste.

The Taliban decided that they had to be dicks about it.

[dasfuchs]

Jun 10, 2009 11:13:32 GMT -5 skyfire said:

Jun 10, 2009 10:38:38 GMT -5 m52nickerson said:

The sick part is that much of that spending is to prepare for a full scale war.....against everyone.

The fact is the US government feels that it needs to maintain this superiority in it's military. We just can't be just better then everyone else, we have to be 100 times better then everyone else.

......and the country suffers from it.

1. A lot of the listed expenditures for the military side of the house are for experimental weapons and equipment; the costs are high during the initial years of testing and deployment, and will (barring rather high purchase orders) flatline over the years as the move to mass-production brings costs down.

Yeah, that explains stuff like the MRAP, Abrams, Humvees, etc that all cost hundreds of thousand if not millions per item to make and/or upkeep.

2. Contrary to popular belief, other nations aren't resting on their laurels. For example, the F-15 airframe is about as old as several posters here. The Eurofighter, a proposed new French fighter, and several of the newer MiG fighters either meet it stat-wise or are slated to exceed it; we need the F-22 just to maintain even some level of edge.

Against what? Are the French gonna invade? No current or forseen threat has anything resembling a modern air wing, let alone a futuristic one that costs millons to produce each plane. the F-22 is and was a money hog, both in testing and would be to build and upkeep when other fighters do the job just fine. The days of dogfighting are fairly past, you don't need manuverabillity to defend or fight back as much as you do capable weapons that can strike first

3. America's reputation as the world's policeman isn't simply something that the nation has taken upon itself; other nations tend to look at us to help provide both peacekeeping efforts and emergency relief efforts; the US military is normally the most efficient way of doing both (there's a reason why the headquarters for the US relief effort after the 2004 Tsunami was an aircraft carrier...).

Because it was the largest ship there, twit. We are not, and are not viewed as the world policeman, we are and are viewed as an overbearing jerk country full of rude, moronic people that try to force what they want on everyone else, and should you decline that "gentle" nudge, we use firepower to give you a second offer

4. It's assumed that the state and local levels will pick up the slack in regards to social spending, which is why the government has traditionally felt free to have large military spending. It hasn't exactly turned out that way, but that's the mentality.

No, that's YOUR and the Republicans way of thought. Many ideas have been put forth for federal social programs, some worked, some never made it past their vote. Republicans then and now try to quash anything related to 'socialistic' ideas because they equate socialism to Russian communism

In all honesty, I too would like an overhaul of Congressional spending and such, especially in light of how much $$$ has been pushed through for the sake of stimulus over the past year. I would likewise appreciate more transparency in the budget process.

Because they won't give your church money or build the right multimillion dollar a piece weapons/vehicles for the military, or worried the Dems will start pushing for intelligent ideas that go against your ideas