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Post by skyfire on Mar 23, 2009 8:09:42 GMT -5
I agree though, both parties are guilty of subsidizing defense contractors in their home states, regardless of whether extensive spending is warranted or not for national defense. For pure purposes of national defense, how much protection does a country protected by two oceans, bordered by two friendly nations really need? That's something to be considered whenever politicians talk about strong national defense. Our dozen or so aircraft carrier task forces and 5000+ nuclear warheads are overkill in the truest sense of the word. And to think, all that money could be going to education instead of giving the rest of the world the finger. ...but then when stuff goes wrong in the rest of the world and we don't quite have the ability to take care of it the international community will give us hell for not shouldering our part of the burden, even if no one else is lifting a finger. The honest, sad truth is that part of the reason why we maintain such a large military force is because other nations expect us to, both as a peacekeeping force and as a relief / emergency force. IE, after the 2004 Tsunami one of the main headquarters for relief aid workers was one of our aircraft carriers; not only did it represent a floating runway, it had water purification equipment and a nuclear reactor on board and so power and water weren't issues. Few other nations have anything resembling both the level of military capability we have or the ability to project it. Heck, France's little aircraft carrier has become infamous even in France itself for having done almost as much time as a submarine as it has carrier duty.
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Post by headache on Mar 23, 2009 11:41:58 GMT -5
Ok, skyfire...
Paint a credible international threat picture for me. And give me some indication to what needs to be done and why and when. Also make sure that use of military is the ONLY option in resolving said threat.
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Post by pdc1987 on Mar 23, 2009 12:39:19 GMT -5
Apparently sometime yesterday the Congressional Budget Office issued a statement saying that if the budget Obama has proposed goes through, it'll bottom out the national debt; we'll be looking at a national debt of over a trillion dollars and it'll be 10+ years before the nation can get out of it. There was a blurb about it on Fox News... And that's where I stopped reading.
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Post by m52nickerson on Mar 23, 2009 12:44:15 GMT -5
How long did it take us to get into it?
It was not like anyone thought that we could eliminate the national debt in a few months.
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Post by the sandman on Mar 23, 2009 13:13:27 GMT -5
Heck, France's little aircraft carrier has become infamous even in France itself for having done almost as much time as a submarine as it has carrier duty. I assume you are referring to the Charles de Gaulle R 91? While it is true that the CdG has had more than it's fair share of difficulties and retrofits, but are you seriously implying that the CdG has been submerged and raised at least once? Dude, no carrier has ever been raised from submerssion. Ever. So I asume you are making a joke concerning the quality of the ship. Are you aware that the ship is largely based on American designs? And have you the slightest clue how expensive it is to operate a carier? The USA can barely afford the eleven we have (and frankly, of those should probably be mothballed), so I see no vald reason to criticize France for only having one. And "little?" The CdG is 261 meters long and weighs 42,000 tons. It's comparable in size to the USS Enterprise CVN-65.
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Post by ltfred on Mar 23, 2009 17:53:21 GMT -5
And to think, all that money could be going to education instead of giving the rest of the world the finger. ...but then when stuff goes wrong in the rest of the world and we don't quite have the ability to take care of it the international community will give us hell for not shouldering our part of the burden, even if no one else is lifting a finger. When has the United States ever heeded the United Nation's call? Has it ever? Think of Rwanda. What did the US do? How many troops did they send? Oh that's right, less than nothing. The honest, sad truth is that part of the reason why we maintain such a large military force is because other nations expect us to, both as a peacekeeping force and as a relief / emergency force. The honest, sad truth, is that the United States congress chooses to keep a millitary force better funded than all other millitary forces put together, partly to fund their retirement acounts and partly to run their empire. The wishes of the American people, let alone the people of the world, are ignored. After all, how may people enjoy having their houses flattened, their families killed, and their natural rersources carted off?
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Post by skyfire on Mar 23, 2009 19:08:27 GMT -5
I assume you are referring to the Charles de Gaulle R 91? While it is true that the CdG has had more than it's fair share of difficulties and retrofits, but are you seriously implying that the CdG has been submerged and raised at least once? It's taken on water an alarming amount of times and threatened to go under, forcing it back into drydock for extensive repairs each time. The criticism is over the number of technical setbacks (and WTF? moments) and redesigns that have caused the ship to be in dry dock for such an extensive amount of time.
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Post by Julian on Mar 23, 2009 19:18:07 GMT -5
It's taken on water an alarming amount of times and threatened to go under, forcing it back into drydock for extensive repairs each time. Source please! Someone's lying their ring off... Find a source, or it's going to be pinned on you! Even then you're going to be called a fool for believing said 'source'. What is it with mormons and far fetched tales about submarines?
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Post by the sandman on Mar 23, 2009 19:31:21 GMT -5
The CdG R 91 has never "threatened to go under" from shipping water. If you knew the slightest thing about modern naval architecture you would know that a ship the size of the R 91 does not "threaten to go under" in this manner. It either does or it doesn't. And seeing as how it is currently afloat....
I dashed off an email to a fraternity brother who works with RN. According to him (and I believe him, he works in naval logistics and eats and drinks this stuff), the R 91 has been drydocked only 2 times in it's history: once to handle a reactor malfunction, and once to switch out propellers. It has also spent time in the shipyards to retrofit an extension to the flight deck, to deal with a second reactor problem and to refit the starboard engines due to vibration causing extreme noise, but none of those repairs required drydock
Do you have the SLIGHTEST concept what drydocking a CARRIER requires? It's damn near harder than just junking it and BUILDING ANOTHER ONE from scratch.
Never has it been drydocked for shipping water. Ever.
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Post by headache on Mar 23, 2009 19:32:06 GMT -5
I assume you are referring to the Charles de Gaulle R 91? While it is true that the CdG has had more than it's fair share of difficulties and retrofits, but are you seriously implying that the CdG has been submerged and raised at least once? It's taken on water an alarming amount of times and threatened to go under, forcing it back into drydock for extensive repairs each time. Charles de Gaulle (R 91) - Trials and technical problems does not carry any information about any of these events. care to provide us with some links?
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Post by the sandman on Mar 23, 2009 19:58:37 GMT -5
It's taken on water an alarming amount of times and threatened to go under, forcing it back into drydock for extensive repairs each time. Charles de Gaulle (R 91) - Trials and technical problems does not carry any information about any of these events. care to provide us with some links? He can't. There are no such events to document.
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Post by Tiger on Mar 23, 2009 22:43:46 GMT -5
...but then when stuff goes wrong in the rest of the world and we don't quite have the ability to take care of it the international community will give us hell for not shouldering our part of the burden, even if no one else is lifting a finger. That explains why we've caught so much flack for intervening in Iraq. Seriously, drop the whole "the world would fall apart if it weren't for America" attitude and move into the 21st century, please. Thank you for proving my point for me. We continue to build up our military even though we rarely use it for its stated purpose. If we're using these carriers for disaster relief, why are we still building them for war? I'd be in favor of converting a few of them into vessels specifically equipped for international aid and disaster relief. It'd probably be cheaper and would actually serve a useful purpose. What we need right now are forces equipped and trained for counterterrorism and peacekeeping, not conventional warfare. Yet Washington seems to be stuck in the belief that the Cold War is still going on, and that we could be going toe-to-toe against the Soviet Union at any moment. For instance, Congress recently approved the production of several new F-22's. We haven't used a single F-22 in either Iraq or Afghanistan. We're building them for... um... well... actually, there's not a single reason we need them. The simple fact of the matter is that we're devoting half (!!) our national budget to maintaining a military we don't need and whose usage has only made us less safe*, while our educational institutions decline. Cut military spending to "only" a quarter of our national budget and put the rest of the money towards education. Perhaps then the next generation won't be pig-ignorant enough to think that a nation bordered by two oceans and two friendly neighbors needs a military budget larger than the GDP of Africa. Oh, why the hell are we still sending military equipment to Israel? *We have 16 spy agencies in this country. Every single one of them agrees that our invasion of Iraq has only increased the chances of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Also, what the hell do we need 16 spy agencies for?
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Post by dasfuchs on Mar 24, 2009 7:31:04 GMT -5
...but then when stuff goes wrong in the rest of the world and we don't quite have the ability to take care of it the international community will give us hell for not shouldering our part of the burden, even if no one else is lifting a finger. That explains why we've caught so much flack for intervening in Iraq. Seriously, drop the whole "the world would fall apart if it weren't for America" attitude and move into the 21st century, please. Thank you for proving my point for me. We continue to build up our military even though we rarely use it for its stated purpose. If we're using these carriers for disaster relief, why are we still building them for war? I'd be in favor of converting a few of them into vessels specifically equipped for international aid and disaster relief. It'd probably be cheaper and would actually serve a useful purpose. What we need right now are forces equipped and trained for counterterrorism and peacekeeping, not conventional warfare. Yet Washington seems to be stuck in the belief that the Cold War is still going on, and that we could be going toe-to-toe against the Soviet Union at any moment. For instance, Congress recently approved the production of several new F-22's. We haven't used a single F-22 in either Iraq or Afghanistan. We're building them for... um... well... actually, there's not a single reason we need them. The simple fact of the matter is that we're devoting half (!!) our national budget to maintaining a military we don't need and whose usage has only made us less safe*, while our educational institutions decline. Cut military spending to "only" a quarter of our national budget and put the rest of the money towards education. Perhaps then the next generation won't be pig-ignorant enough to think that a nation bordered by two oceans and two friendly neighbors needs a military budget larger than the GDP of Africa. Oh, why the hell are we still sending military equipment to Israel? *We have 16 spy agencies in this country. Every single one of them agrees that our invasion of Iraq has only increased the chances of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Also, what the hell do we need 16 spy agencies for? I thought we scrapped the Raptor because it was too expensive and a waste on the budget? I'm prolly wrong. Though a 100,000 dollar canopy sounds like there's a bit of an excess in funds dumped into it. Why would we need a plane that can dogfight better than anything else? How often do we go up in a dogfight on anything? I've heard the conservatards mouthing off before about some naval contract keeping jobs available. So I had to ask, does this mean we keep building warships to infinity? How will we keep them seaworthy? How will we man and pay for them? When I posted the yearly costs of the high end carriers and the low end destroyers, jaws dropped, but the blindness continued. But hey, the US has the biggest penis to wave as long as we've got that huge military.
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Post by CtraK on Mar 24, 2009 16:06:52 GMT -5
*We have 16 spy agencies in this country. Every single one of them agrees that our invasion of Iraq has only increased the chances of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Also, what the hell do we need 16 spy agencies for? To avert the disastrous, catastrophic and simultaneous failure of 15 spy agencies. Of course, the same happening to 16 is impossible.
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