China's first aircraft carrier starts sea trial: Xinhua

[malloc]

While the USMC and Navy need a VTOL fighter, the Air Force doesn't, and even the Marines and Navy don't need one for all missions. The F-22 was far better for many fighter missions, and a smaller fleet of JF-35s would meet the requirements for the far more specialized role that the Marines and Navy have in mind. A one-size fits all solution will end up fitting nothing. This is similar to the kind of thinking that stuck the Air Force with the F-16, and reduced the A-10 fleet. Not that the F-16 was a bad plane, but it wasn't a great ground support aircraft, which the A-10 was. Specialization isn't a weakness.

Oh, trust me. I wasn't singing the praises of uniformity and generality, I was wondering why congress was!

Military spending is going to become a focal point very quickly. There was an article I read somewhere, the Daily Caller I think, which was talking about a choice America has to face. That choice being a strong military, or a European style welfare state, because we can't afford both. I think that's a bullshit false dichotomy, because we can't afford either the way we are going. Military spending is going to become a conservative Achilles heel I can hear the liberals now, "You'd rather spend money on a military that bails out other countries, and builds nations on foreign shores than take care of our own poor and elderly?"

Most people on this board would look at my above statement, shrug, and say, "well....yes." Most independents will not. That means we'll have the European style welfare state instead of the strong military, because independents will vote Democrat if Republicans play hypocrite about welfare spending versus military spending.

I know our military can do more with less, remain on top, and not only refrain from bankrupting the nation, but steal that aforementioned thunder right out from under the liberals. The key isn't to cut off our military advancement and the funding of new projects, the key is slow the rate of advancement by prioritizing projects and realizing that all new technologies in the inventory are a function of time. Basically, take it slower and stop all this rapid development nonsense. It seems all new military projects must be done yesterday, and that is an effect caused by the usual suspects who always end up with the contracts fleecing the taxpayers. We end up at F-22/F-35 dead ends when we go that route. The military industrial companies are realizing that there's more money in treatment than in cures if you get my drift.

Government should cast a wider net when looking for companies to implement a project. More importantly though, the military should express a role to be filled instead of a specification that fills the role, and give the private sector more leeway in solving problems.

I know a lot of what I just said was very general, but it's really difficult to describe this idea of how military dollars should be spent. Basically, instead of ideas for military tech flowing down from the government to the private sector, demand to fulfill a need flows down, and the ideas and prototypes for the solutions flow up from the private sector to the military.

[Odysseus]

Why the hell not? :D

Because you got your ass handed to you?

So what. Nothing in any of that whether it's two different bases occupying the same space takes away from the sheer numbers. Whether it's 600 or 700 or 900... However someone wishes to count them. It's so complicated by equivocation that even our own government can't get it straight.

Except that our government does keep it straight. I had no problem finding the report online, getting the actual numbers and explaining why it's a BS talking point. And it does matter if there are 600, 700 or 900. My fellow troops are manning those installations. Our lives depend on them being accounted for and supported, and I consider that somewhat critical.

It's too bad that now 10 years on after when Rumsfeld destroyed the old guard upper echelon leadership of our military like Gen. Hoar, Shinseki...and Newbold...to name only a few, because he wanted it all his way. It seems there aren't many left who won't kiss the establishment butt and speak out against how overextended we are. At least you and I agree that we are overextended. I just wish there were a few more like those above who would stand up with their careers on the line and say "enough".

Yeah, a few more like Shinseki and we'd have had propellers to go with our berets. In case you missed it, Rumsfield actually did a superb job of getting troops trained up, deployed and equipped. And he had to clear out the time-serving hacks who made their stars under Clinton and who were ineffectual warfighters, guys like Shinseki, who couldn't get armor to troops in Somalia, but knew that berets would make us look fabulous. I don't miss them. Petraeus, Odierno and McChrystol were a serious improvement, and they got results.

Yes, we are overextended, but only because politicians keep trying to economize on defense and cut out "non-essential" systems and units, only to find that they really were essential when things got hot. Clinton thought that he was getting a peace dividend, but what he really got was a reprieve, temporarily, which a person who knew and understood history would have seen as an opportunity to consolidate and enhance American power. Instead, he squandered it, and the result was a decade of vicious attacks on our embassies and troops overseas, culminating in 9/11. Now we have Obama, who claims to want to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who doesn't understand the strategic issues, and wastes our strength on pointless asides like Libya, instead of focusing on the real threat, which is Iran. Speaking of Iran, did you know that they've just put their first satellite into orbit? Or that the capability to put a satellite into orbit is almost identical to the capability required to put a warhead on a target on another continent? That's right, Iran now has an ICBM capability, and is hell bent on getting nukes. If you think that we're overextended now, wait until they marry up a tactical warhead with a missile. We don't have the luxury of hiding behind two oceans and pretending the world can't get to us anymore. 9/11 demonstrated the folly of that, and nothing that we say or do will dissuade the bad guys from their chosen course of action, because ultimately, they want to usher in WWIII and the age of the Mahdi. Bush's mistake wasn't invading Afghanistan or Iraq, it was staying to try to turn two backwards, tribal pits into functioning nations, in effect rewarding them with our largess for having harbored our enemies and threatened our peace. He understood the threat, but lacked the ruthlessness to deal with it. Obama doesn't even understand that much. He thinks that Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian mullahs are just dandy, but that Tea Partyers are dangerous ideologues. So, yeah, we're overextended, and we're operating with one hand and both feet tied behind our backs, while the world gets more chaotic and dangerous daily, and you want to bring us home? Nope. Not until we've done what we have to in order to secure the peace. We used to know how to do that, and the change in the Germans and the Japanese, from belligerent lunatic death cultists to hardcore pacifists was the result of one of the great attitude adjustments in history. We have the means to do it again, and we sure as hell have the need to do it, but we lack the will, because the left wants us defeated, and the libertarians don't get that nations and governments do have a basic, critical function, which is to protect their citizens from preventable evil. If we're not willing to do that, then we might as well pack it in and hope that the next global hegemon is as benign and enlightened as we were when we were the top dog.

[Molon Labe]

Yeah, a few more like Shinseki and we'd have had propellers to go with our berets. In case you missed it, Rumsfield actually did a superb job of getting troops trained up, deployed and equipped. And he had to clear out the time-serving hacks who made their stars under Clinton and who were ineffectual warfighters, guys like Shinseki, who couldn't get armor to troops in Somalia, but knew that berets would make us look fabulous. I don't miss them. Petraeus, Odierno and McChrystol were a serious improvement, and they got results.

I'll be real brief. Every officer who advised Rumy in a way that didn't fit his world view has been proven right by history, and most everyone he kept as "yes" men were wrong. Proofs in the pudding after 10 years. There are few officers I know who believe that the Army is the same organization of overall effectiveness presently as it was prior to OEF. I remember very well the logistic problems of body armor and getting vehicle armor up to standards. You remember Rumy very different from me. You can blame all this on Obama, and he has his share of blame, but we both know that nearly all of the restructuring and reorganization and brilliant battle planning was done under Rumy. He sucked..good riddance to this fool. If this had been WW2, FDR would have relieved him in 2004. This is not to say I don't somewhat agree with your assessment of Petraeus, McChrystol etc. It's to say these men don't nearly have the wherewithall to speak out like Hoar and Newbold did. Not gonna happen. Sometimes you need a few more Pattons who stick out their necks.

And if you think that one stupid beret decision, which it was, has anything to do with battlefield management, or defining a person's career overall, then....good grief. At least the new CSM Chandler got the soft cap back...but that doesn't mean that Obama is a success.

[Constitutionally Speaking]

What purpose would that serve? There was a good reason for China to retake Tibet. What is the reason to take Taiwan?

Their honor. They feel they are the rightful government of what used to be called Formosa - modern day Taiwan.

They have ALWAYS said they want it back - the only thing that has prevented this has been our promise to
defend Taiwan no matter what.

Now, if they no longer fear us or think we won't follow through on our promise - Free Taiwan is history.