Breetai says:

What a stupid poll.

How about one that says “No: Save Jobs?” Gee only a hint of bias not including that one. Why don’t you just come out of the closet and admit your favorite hobby is setting kittens on fire.

Phydeau says:

Geez stopher, you mean the army can’t build fixed wing aircraft because that’s the air force’s domain? That is dumb…

GregA says:

Military is not being cut. They are moving resources around to where they are needed. If you don’t like it and think that we need things liket the F-22 and 10k+ icbm’s then go back in time and stop the Iraq war.

Somebody_Else says:

#17 “So basically, this hugely expensive airplane was designed for a mission that no longer exists, and its mission has been changed. Hopefully it can do its new mission, even though it wasn’t designed for it. For this, we’re paying one hundred forty million dollars per airplane????”

Kind of. It was designed mainly as an interceptor, but like the F-15 it was also designed to be configured as a fighter-bomber. Besides interception the F-22 will fill the role of the old F-117 stealth fighter, fast long range stealth strikes. In a first day of war scenario F-22′s and B-2′s fly in deep and take out radar and major defenses and the less-survivable strike fighters and bombers come in after them. There were only 64 F-117′s, so even if they “only” build 187 F-22′s its still a pretty significant upgrade.

In regards to the A-10 discussion, the A-10 will be in service until the late 2020′s and the new F-35 multirole fighter crosses into its mission.

Like I said before, I think the plan sounds good and I’m glad they’re not cutting back the F-35′s. Its a cheaper stealth strike fighter for each branch of the military that generally replaces/expands on the abilities of the F-16, F-18, and Harrier.

I’d rather not fight wars in the first place, but at least the F-35 was designed for the sort of wars we might expect to be involved in over the next 20-40 years.

Phydeau says:

And yes, you can say, what if Russia and China start ramping up their war machines. But as mentioned before, China has already conquered us economically, and Russia is in just as bad shape as we are. So I hardly find that plausible.

However, the big military contractors will surely flog that scenario to death.

Phydeau says:

Yes, I saw a cartoon that expressed that… Two guys are looking at plans, one says to the other, “This airplane will be invulnerable… it has parts built in every Congressional district in the country!”

What a shame.

Phydeau says:

lol, Fusion, that was me saying that… I was expressing the opinion that they shouldn’t ask me whether the defense budget is right any more than they should ask me about which stent to use in open-heart surgery. We need to have experts that we trust to decide this issue…

LibertyLover says:

#31, Phydeau said, “Why isn’t the military being cut? What happened to the “peace dividend”? ”

When the military made their list of cuts it immediately became a game of NIMBY for members of congress whose districts would lose $ & jobs because of the plan(s)…

And it isn’t just “that system is made my district.” The military complex has managed to break up a simple system into multiple parts that have to be manufactured in multiple different districts. It’s hard to kill a “system” when its parts are made in 40 representatives’ and 16 senators’ backyards.

I can’t remember the name of the ship class, but something very similar happened in Mississippi. I don’t remember the exact details, unfortunately.

GF says:

Saw Gates on the Newshour and he clarified some things. He said deployment of short and medium range anti-missile systems will increase. Long range anti-missile systems will not be expanded but that research will continue and the current systems will be upgraded when needed. My guess is that that is a concession given to the Russians. The F-22 production will be discontinued by 2011 I believe. He is actually expanding the number of F-35′s. The new orders for F-35′s will lead to more job creation than job loss due to the closing of the F-22 production line. He didn’t mention anything about military satellites, which is what I’m worried about. He also mentioned that he was well aware of China’s new anti-carrier missile systems and was making sure we had systems in place to counteract the threat.

Seems like he knows what he’s doing to me.

Toxic Asshead says:

We have all this great weaponry but never use it properly. Lokk at how we pussyfooted around in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a waste of money if it’s not used correctly.

If we started a program to double our available megatonnage in the nuke arsenal I would be all for it.