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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #20 on: July 14, 2015, 09:58:19 PM »
This isn't WWII and we aren't fighting Hitler. Dogfights aren't even real anymore.
Tell that to Korea, Viet Nam and Gulf War fighter pilots. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_engagements_of_the_Gulf_War

Hi, my name is Markjo and what is a dogfight?

Hi my name is Rushy and I didn't read anything Markjo linked to.

Even Markjo doesn't read the things Markjo links to. His posts exist in an attempt to waste your time. Did it work on you?

Yes and no. It took some time to determine that there were indeed dogfights in the Gulf War. My employer thought it was a waste of time.

Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #21 on: July 14, 2015, 10:20:41 PM »
This isn't WWII and we aren't fighting Hitler. Dogfights aren't even real anymore.
Tell that to Korea, Viet Nam and Gulf War fighter pilots. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_engagements_of_the_Gulf_War

Do you know how long ago Korea and Vietnam were? And there were like 1 or 2 engagements in the Gulf War that could be called 'dogfights'.

Modern radar and missiles means most engagements will typically happen at range. Even if the pilots do somehow manage to get within visual range, technology like HOBS missiles combined with HMCS allow missile shots at large angles, meaning you no longer have to maneuver to get a gun kill so long as you have an AIM-9x. The F-35 takes this a bit further with the ability to fire at anything within a 360 degree sphere around the aircraft.

But ignoring all of that, going into the merge is near suicidal in a realistic context as it almost always ends with you or your enemy being shot down by someone not in the fight. You lose all of your energy maneuvering, and significantly reduce your awareness through focusing on one enemy. Pilots still train with dogfights because they demand a large amount of skill and endurance, not necessarily because they're still relevant.

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Offline Rushy

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #22 on: July 15, 2015, 12:20:18 AM »
Yes and no. It took some time to determine that there were indeed dogfights in the Gulf War. My employer thought it was a waste of time.

Well, try not to. If you haven't noticed by now Markjo responds bluntly to quips for some odd reason. I've become fairly confident that the 'odd reason' is simply an attempt to waste the other poster's time since it mostly includes some link to a vast amount of information that you have to sift through.

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Offline Rushy

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #23 on: July 20, 2015, 02:59:42 PM »
In other news, Lockheed finally announced confirmation of a Sikorsky buyout. Up up up goes the stock ticker.

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #24 on: July 20, 2015, 05:23:24 PM »
Modern radar and missiles means most engagements will typically happen at range.
Do you honestly think that the US is the only country working on stealth technology or that other countries aren't working on countermeasures to stealth technology?
« Last Edit: July 20, 2015, 05:25:44 PM by markjo »
Abandon hope all ye who press enter here.

Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -- Charles Darwin

If you can't demonstrate it, then you shouldn't believe it.

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Offline Rushy

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #25 on: July 20, 2015, 06:12:09 PM »
Modern radar and missiles means most engagements will typically happen at range.
Do you honestly think that the US is the only country working on stealth technology or that other countries aren't working on countermeasures to stealth technology?

Yes.

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Offline markjo

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #26 on: July 20, 2015, 06:57:36 PM »
Modern radar and missiles means most engagements will typically happen at range.
Do you honestly think that the US is the only country working on stealth technology or that other countries aren't working on countermeasures to stealth technology?

Yes.
In that case, I have some investment opportunities that you might be interested in.
Abandon hope all ye who press enter here.

Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -- Charles Darwin

If you can't demonstrate it, then you shouldn't believe it.

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Offline Rushy

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #27 on: July 20, 2015, 07:19:30 PM »
Do tell.

Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #28 on: July 20, 2015, 10:11:57 PM »
Modern radar and missiles means most engagements will typically happen at range.
Do you honestly think that the US is the only country working on stealth technology or that other countries aren't working on countermeasures to stealth technology?

No, of course not. But that doesn't mean you can invalidate stealth technology. This kind of view is indicative of an extremely simplistic understanding of stealth. It isn't some fabulous new technology for which a magic bullet will be invented; it's the result of a combination of advances in materials science and computing which allows simulation of radar behaviour with specific body shapes.

Radar operates in a series of frequencies that have been defined as bands. Different types of radar systems use different bands, as each band offers its own advantages and disadvantages. Stealth technology is already and has always been useless against specific bands, such as OTH low frequency systems that are used for early warning. They're able to tell you there's aircraft in the air, but not much else due to the clutter and low resolution they suffer from. This means they're never used in a firing solution.

The radar systems that guide missiles typically operate in the bands that the F-22, F-35 and B-2 are optimized against. Now, this doesn't mean they're invisible to these systems, it just means they have to get extremely close before they can be adequately detected. I've no doubt competitors will come up with something to negate this huge advantage, but I highly doubt it will invalidate the technology. And if it does, I fully expect the US to innovate better coatings.

Right now, to my knowledge, Russia does have a low frequency missile for the S-400 system. However, they're low in number and likely in range too, which means an F-35 with a HARM will be able to outrange the S-400 and still get first shot.

Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #29 on: July 20, 2015, 10:28:20 PM »
Adding to that, other countries are developing stealth technology. Both Russia and China have stealth jets being tested right now, although their stealth aspects are questionable (and it is their first attempt at doing so). China in particular just stole the plans for the F-35 a while back, copied the design and chucked two shitty Russian engines into it. Russia's attempt, the PAK-FA or T-50, has its share of problems with only 12 currently on order (cut down from 150 to 70 to 12, or something like that). It will almost certainly have a lower RCS than the Su-35, but it's doubtful it will match the 0.001m2 of the F-35 and 0.0001m2 of the F-22 on account of certain design choices and Russia's comparatively inferior materials science research.

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Offline Rushy

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #30 on: July 20, 2015, 11:25:51 PM »
We could give the exact specifications of the design of each aircraft and engine to Russia and China and it would still take them a decade to build the facilities capable of manufacturing the materials. Russia's economy is built on raw exports and China's is built on low tier industry. Neither country is technologically capable of building military equipment on the scale or quality that the US does.

It's also why Intel elected to build its newest foundries in the US at cost. China has been screwing up anything smaller than 28nm.


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Offline Tau

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #31 on: August 11, 2015, 06:09:01 PM »
Isn't ridiculously powerful private armies one of the big reasons the Roman Republic turned into a dictatorship?

I'm personally in favor of dramatically reducing the size of the US military, by any arbitrary percent, but this is a stupid and dangerous way to do it. NGOs should not have militaries.

The way I see it, the world powers are already incapable, and unwilling, engage in direct armed conflict with each other. We proved that in the cold war. At best it would be a repeat of the first world war, at worst it would be nuclear armageddon. With that in mind it seems like folly to maintain early 20th century standing armies. We're never going to use them for anything more than small-scale engagements and military occupations (i.e. Russia in Ukraine, China in Tibet, the US in Iraq), but our militaries are based on the idea of an impossible conflict between the giants. It's silly and paranoid.
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Offline Rushy

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #32 on: August 11, 2015, 06:25:02 PM »
World powers can and probably will fight each other, just not on their home soil. Conventional warfare is still viable for control of outside lands. A war between Russia or China and the US isn't by default a nuclear one.

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Offline Tau

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #33 on: August 11, 2015, 06:28:58 PM »
World powers can and probably will fight each other, just not on their home soil. Conventional warfare is still viable for control of outside lands. A war between Russia or China and the US isn't by default a nuclear one.

No, but it seems like the nuclear deterrent is enough to stop open conflict before it begins. Don't get me wrong, I understand that what I'm asking for is impossible unless Russia and China were to agree to also downsize their militaries, but I still think that a scenario where the world powers had militaries only large enough to enforce their superiority would be preferable to the current situation. Think of what we could do with all of the saved resources.
That's how far the horizon is, not how far you can see.

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Offline Rushy

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #34 on: August 11, 2015, 07:22:17 PM »
Oh, you were just interested in expounding idealistic nonsense and not interested in an actual discussion.

Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #35 on: August 12, 2015, 01:17:25 AM »
Isn't ridiculously powerful private armies one of the big reasons the Roman Republic turned into a dictatorship?

I'm personally in favor of dramatically reducing the size of the US military, by any arbitrary percent, but this is a stupid and dangerous way to do it. NGOs should not have militaries.

The way I see it, the world powers are already incapable, and unwilling, engage in direct armed conflict with each other. We proved that in the cold war. At best it would be a repeat of the first world war, at worst it would be nuclear armageddon. With that in mind it seems like folly to maintain early 20th century standing armies. We're never going to use them for anything more than small-scale engagements and military occupations (i.e. Russia in Ukraine, China in Tibet, the US in Iraq), but our militaries are based on the idea of an impossible conflict between the giants. It's silly and paranoid.

Western nations are downsizing their militaries quite a bit, and the overall size is already tiny compared to WWII numbers; the USAAF had in excess of 50,000 aircraft relative to today's 5,000. The F-35 and LCS are good examples of this new cost saving mentality; mission versatility and interoperability built in to an already cheap platform, which then replaces the bigger and purpose built platforms of old.

There's also been plenty of news stories published in recent months regarding the capability of individual forces within NATO (i.e the Bundeswehr training with broomsticks instead of rifles, Luftwaffe Typhoon's not being ready, etc). Russia, too, has shown its lack of readiness in the consistent aircraft hull losses driven by a heightened state of readiness brought on by the Ukraine crisis. There just isn't the military spending that there used to be, and it shows.

I also disagree that a conflict similar to WWI would ever take place again. What distinguished WWI was trench warfare, which was largely dictated by the immobile nature of warfare at that time and the superiority of defensive tools like the machine gun. Modern technology means an entirely different battlefield if such large scale combat were to take place again. I wouldn't be surprised if conflict between nation states fizzled out quickly on account of quick losses in expensive hardware, such as aircraft or ships. It's all well and good for rebels to blow up a few old T-72's in disparate regional conflicts, but how many T-90 losses could Russia stomach? How many F-16's could the US stand to lose?

Finally, conflict between the big boys doesn't necessarily mean Armageddon. From memory, Russia always planned the use of tactical nuclear strikes in the case of hypothetical conflict with NATO. I doubt such an attack would spark global nuclear warfare. MAD just means nation states are unlikely to nuke each other, not that they won't enter conflict at all.


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Offline Tau

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Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #36 on: August 12, 2015, 04:45:14 AM »
Isn't ridiculously powerful private armies one of the big reasons the Roman Republic turned into a dictatorship?

I'm personally in favor of dramatically reducing the size of the US military, by any arbitrary percent, but this is a stupid and dangerous way to do it. NGOs should not have militaries.

The way I see it, the world powers are already incapable, and unwilling, engage in direct armed conflict with each other. We proved that in the cold war. At best it would be a repeat of the first world war, at worst it would be nuclear armageddon. With that in mind it seems like folly to maintain early 20th century standing armies. We're never going to use them for anything more than small-scale engagements and military occupations (i.e. Russia in Ukraine, China in Tibet, the US in Iraq), but our militaries are based on the idea of an impossible conflict between the giants. It's silly and paranoid.

Western nations are downsizing their militaries quite a bit, and the overall size is already tiny compared to WWII numbers; the USAAF had in excess of 50,000 aircraft relative to today's 5,000. The F-35 and LCS are good examples of this new cost saving mentality; mission versatility and interoperability built in to an already cheap platform, which then replaces the bigger and purpose built platforms of old.

There's also been plenty of news stories published in recent months regarding the capability of individual forces within NATO (i.e the Bundeswehr training with broomsticks instead of rifles, Luftwaffe Typhoon's not being ready, etc). Russia, too, has shown its lack of readiness in the consistent aircraft hull losses driven by a heightened state of readiness brought on by the Ukraine crisis. There just isn't the military spending that there used to be, and it shows.

I also disagree that a conflict similar to WWI would ever take place again. What distinguished WWI was trench warfare, which was largely dictated by the immobile nature of warfare at that time and the superiority of defensive tools like the machine gun. Modern technology means an entirely different battlefield if such large scale combat were to take place again. I wouldn't be surprised if conflict between nation states fizzled out quickly on account of quick losses in expensive hardware, such as aircraft or ships. It's all well and good for rebels to blow up a few old T-72's in disparate regional conflicts, but how many T-90 losses could Russia stomach? How many F-16's could the US stand to lose?

Finally, conflict between the big boys doesn't necessarily mean Armageddon. From memory, Russia always planned the use of tactical nuclear strikes in the case of hypothetical conflict with NATO. I doubt such an attack would spark global nuclear warfare. MAD just means nation states are unlikely to nuke each other, not that they won't enter conflict at all.

Well trench warfare dominated the Western Front, but the real defining characteristic of WWI was that the weapons they were using had never really been used in large-scale warfare between major powers before, so the old strategies were obsolete, and that the nations involved were powerful enough that only what essentially amounts to total annihilation could cause one to surrender. I think a modern world war would be similar, if there were no nukes involved. I doubt there'd be many trenches, but it would be drawn out and bloody and everyone involved would be totally devastated. I think the issues of expense wouldn't be enough to end it quickly unless one side was losing everything and the other side wasn't, which seems kind of unlikely (although the US would probably have a pretty big technological advantage, so who knows). I don't know a whole lot about the mechanics of the military, but I do know politics and history and those say that the loser wouldn't surrender until they had nothing or no one left to fight with. Especially Russia. I mean, look at them in every major war they've been in during modern times. When they run out of equipment they just send waves of soldiers at the enemy until they win. If it came to total war, I don't think they'd be beyond doing that again.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2015, 04:53:36 AM by Tausami »
That's how far the horizon is, not how far you can see.

Read the FAQ: http://wiki.tfes.org/index.php?title=FAQ

Re: Invest in the Military
« Reply #37 on: August 12, 2015, 05:56:38 AM »
Well trench warfare dominated the Western Front, but the real defining characteristic of WWI was that the weapons they were using had never really been used in large-scale warfare between major powers before, so the old strategies were obsolete, and that the nations involved were powerful enough that only what essentially amounts to total annihilation could cause one to surrender. I think a modern world war would be similar, if there were no nukes involved. I doubt there'd be many trenches, but it would be drawn out and bloody and everyone involved would be totally devastated. I think the issues of expense wouldn't be enough to end it quickly unless one side was losing everything and the other side wasn't, which seems kind of unlikely (although the US would probably have a pretty big technological advantage, so who knows).

I just can't see that happening with the way modern militaries are equipped and trained. As we've both said, WWI essentially came down to a war of attrition. That hypothetical placed in the context of a modern conflict would be significantly hampered by the reliance on highly expensive hardware, in the hands of trained soldiers. Then there's the proliferation of precision weaponry.

The small scale conflicts currently going on emphasize a standstill, mostly on part of the factions fighting them lacking the training, manpower and hardware to make substantial territory changes. It's certainly possible that modern conflict could devolve into this given enough time, but just don't see it lasting that long. And yes, I know everyone said that about every major conflict in the 20th century.