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GIVEN CURRENT WARS, F-35s ARE BETTER CHOICE THAN MORE F-22As



 
 
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  #211  
Old June 20th 08, 09:14 PM posted to rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,sci.military.naval
Jack Linthicum
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 301
Default GIVEN CURRENT WARS, F-35s ARE BETTER CHOICE THAN MORE F-22As

On Jun 19, 2:24 am, "Michael Shirley" wrote:
On Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:19:11 -0700, eatfastnoodle
wrote:



Actually, China has huge internal problem to overcome before it can go
out and compete with the US on a global scale. If the US and China
could work something out on Taiwan, I don't think conflict between
China and the US is inevitable. (assuming Korean peninsula doesn't
blow). The thorny issue is always Taiwan, for China, giving up Taiwan
is simply a political impossibility, for the US, allow China to take
over Taiwan would mean the beginning of the end of American dominance
in East Asia. (anybody controls Taiwan would also control Japan's oil
lifeline, if China took over Taiwan, the foundation of American Asian
strategy: US-Japanese alliance would be shaken to its very core).


Very true. I also think that the Chinese are running against a clock that
makes them think that exporting problems on bayonets is easier than
solving them at home. Their water's polluted, their arable land is
shrinking, desertification is growing, they've got a failure of the One
Child Policy and they're overproducing males out of balance with females
as a result. The economic growth curve is outstripping the population
curve and they're starting to see what a paradigm/reality mismatch is all
about as they discover the limitations of a highly centralised government
in a dynamic society where change happens faster than they can get the
reports on what happened yesterday.

If I were on the Standing Committee of the Politburo, that would scare
the living crap out of me. And the number of really big projects like the
Three Gorges Dam that isn't even finished yet but which is starting to
suffer from silting, has got to be causing some panic. Hu Jintao started
out as a civil engineer specializing in water projects and dams and even
with that kind of expert knowledge at the top, the problems are
increasingly insoluable for the guys in Beijing.

So increasingly, external military policies, (something that has always
wound up being ruinous to the Chinese in the end) are looking better and
better, while the local problems become something that they'd just as soon
avoid. So, I think that we're going to see a period of optional
adventurism in Beijing's future and that's bad for us, especially since we
really can't afford a war with those people. Even if our overdependant on
Chinese trade economy would survive it, the fact of the matter is that
neither our industrial base nor our education system will support it.

We need to go tactical defensive/strategic offensive in our actions, and
a lot of that needs to revolve around soft power while being militarily
unprovocative. We don't, in the crude vernacular of our times, need our
politicians to be writing a check with their elephant mouths that our
humming bird asses can't cash.

In short, we need to change the game, because the one we're playing is
gonna get our nose bloodied. All the Chinese need to do in order to win is
simply not lose, and our own best option is not to play.

Lets let Beijing expend their capital, both economic and political for
awhile while we rebuild our industrial base, clean out our universities
and other schools and generally start behaving like we still want to be
around in 2050, by which time the Adventurists in Beijing will have spent
their capital. If they want to have fun trying to police an empire in
Africa, lets let them bleed to death doing it. Things might even improve a
little bit over there.

--
"Implications leading to ramifications leading to shenanigans"-- Admiral
Elmo Zumwalt, USN.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/20...ef_cites_d.php

CoS USAF, Gates differ
  #212  
Old June 21st 08, 08:31 AM posted to rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,sci.military.naval
Michael Shirley
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 23
Default GIVEN CURRENT WARS, F-35s ARE BETTER CHOICE THAN MORE F-22As

On Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:14:40 -0700, Jack Linthicum
wrote:


CoS USAF, Gates differ


I saw that. Still, I hope that the contract isn't rebid. Boeing has been
behaving rather badly lately, doing everything from bribes to transferring
sensitive
technologies to the Chinese. They really don't deserve that Tanker
contract.

We wouldn't be having these problems if the merger between Boeing and
McDonnell-Douglas had been denied as it should have been. Boeing's the
only domestic maker of large airframes. Absent inviting EADS in, there's
no quick way to get some competetion in that area of manufacture. And
that's serving us badly.

If McDonnell-Douglas were still a separate company, we could do a
conversion of the C-17 airframe to a tanker as plan B. Replace the rear
door with an afterbody carrying a boom and a station for the boomer and a
hose reel for supporting planes that use the Flight Refueling Probe &
Drogue method. Leave the front cargo door in place for secondary cargo
deployment. That would be a great tanker, but we can't do that either
without rewarding Boeing for behaving like a firm that deserves to be cut
off from further contracts pending a major shakeup and maybe even spinning
off assets to reform McDonnell-Douglas since that merger was a lethal
mistake.



--
"Implications leading to ramifications leading to shenanigans"-- Admiral
Elmo Zumwalt, USN.
  #213  
Old June 21st 08, 08:49 PM posted to rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,sci.military.naval
Mike Kanze
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 114
Default GIVEN CURRENT WARS, F-35s ARE BETTER CHOICE THAN MORE F-22As

If McDonnell-Douglas were still a separate company, we could do a conversion of the C-17 airframe to a tanker as plan B.

Personal opinion: If MD had not merged with Boeing, it would likely be bankrupt today, or teetering on the edge, or seeking the sale of its more profitable units (which would NOT include production of "heavies"), or seeking a different merger partner.

Today's global economics of "heavies" manufacture boil down to only three players: Boeing, EADS, and the output of Russian industry. (China may be a future player.) MD's "heavies" business would have made it the fourth horse in a three-horse race.

--
Mike Kanze

"Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain."

- Anonymous

"Michael Shirley" wrote in message newsp.uc28ilh2ra3qj7@schooner-blue...
On Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:14:40 -0700, Jack Linthicum
wrote:


CoS USAF, Gates differ


I saw that. Still, I hope that the contract isn't rebid. Boeing has been
behaving rather badly lately, doing everything from bribes to transferring
sensitive
technologies to the Chinese. They really don't deserve that Tanker
contract.

We wouldn't be having these problems if the merger between Boeing and
McDonnell-Douglas had been denied as it should have been. Boeing's the
only domestic maker of large airframes. Absent inviting EADS in, there's
no quick way to get some competetion in that area of manufacture. And
that's serving us badly.

If McDonnell-Douglas were still a separate company, we could do a
conversion of the C-17 airframe to a tanker as plan B. Replace the rear
door with an afterbody carrying a boom and a station for the boomer and a
hose reel for supporting planes that use the Flight Refueling Probe &
Drogue method. Leave the front cargo door in place for secondary cargo
deployment. That would be a great tanker, but we can't do that either
without rewarding Boeing for behaving like a firm that deserves to be cut
off from further contracts pending a major shakeup and maybe even spinning
off assets to reform McDonnell-Douglas since that merger was a lethal
mistake.



--
"Implications leading to ramifications leading to shenanigans"-- Admiral
Elmo Zumwalt, USN.
  #214  
Old June 21st 08, 10:07 PM posted to rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,sci.military.naval
Michael Shirley
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 23
Default GIVEN CURRENT WARS, F-35s ARE BETTER CHOICE THAN MORE F-22As

On Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:49:23 -0700, Mike Kanze
wrote:

If McDonnell-Douglas were still a separate company, we could do a
conversion of the C-17 airframe to a tanker as plan B.


Personal opinion: If MD had not merged with Boeing, it would likely be
bankrupt today, or teetering on the edge, or seeking the sale of its
more profitable units (which would NOT include production of "heavies"),
or seeking a different merger partner.


Maybe, but that merge & RIF trend that started in 47 is one that has left
us without a lot of alternatives and it leaves us with no technical
defense in depth when a designer or design team hit's it's slump. When
Donovan Berlin, (P-40) started turning out turkeys, guys like Kelly
Johnson and Lee Atwood were there to take up the load. There's nothing
like that now, especially since instead of experienced designers, you have
twenty plus year product development cycles which means that the guy who
designs an airplane maybe gets to complete one in his career. That whole
trend is suicidal for us.


Today's global economics of "heavies" manufacture boil down to only
three players: Boeing, EADS, and the output of Russian industry. (China
may be a future player.) MD's "heavies" business would have made it the
fourth horse in a three-horse race.


True, but a fourth horse would have made us a lot better off. As it is, I
really hate to reward Boeing. They didn't respect their customer because
they figured that the Air Force had no real choice in the matter. They've
been outsourcing a lot of prime technology to China, and that's gonna come
back, and nail us right where it hurts.

At the rate things are going, we might be smarter to just buy surplus
747s that are in storage at Mojave and put fuel cells and a boom on those
and declare it a supplemental interim system while we encourage somebody
else to get into the large airframe business.

The whole thing makes me wish that I had a time machine so that I could
go back and strangle Stewart Symington, because he's the one that started
this disaster. We should have stuck to the open market system we had in
the 20's & 30's rather than letting Symington and the Air Force pretty
much apply Mussolini's economic theories to the defense sector and
especially to aircraft production.

Either way though, rewarding Boeing and it's pack of crooked politicians,
leaves an extremely bad taste, and it encourages a system where we've got
no viable options if one of the designated hitters screws up.

It's no accident that most of the real innovation you see in aviation
right now is being done by the guys who do pilotless aircraft. The big
companies really didn't fight to monopolize that market and the Air Force
wasn't paying enough attention to rationalize them by merge & RIF as a
result of the Air Force being the sole buyer and sales agent for what they
produce.
We're lucky that the Air Force lost it's bid to become the sole executive
agency for unmanned aircraft because that merge & RIF policy would have
been imposed on them next.

If we want to really fix things, we need to step away from the current
suicidal policy and go back to an open market in military systems.
Symington's creation is gonna leave us with an Aviation Industry every bit
as extinct as Britain's. And why we chose to copy the Brits industrial
policies as far as military systems go, eludes me. They merged & RIFed
until they got down to one major company, Hawker Siddley and one
specialist helicopter producer, Agusta-Westland, and now, as nearly as I
can tell, it's all EADS and their ability to produce the kind of
innovation that leads to a viable military capability is suspect. When
their prime design team hit's it's slump, they've got,............Nothing!

And I hate looking down the muzzles of a resurgent and revanchist China
with as thin of an industrial base as we've got and that's especially when
you consider aircraft.




--
"Implications leading to ramifications leading to shenanigans"-- Admiral
Elmo Zumwalt, USN.
  #215  
Old June 22nd 08, 05:53 AM posted to rec.aviation.military,rec.aviation.military.naval,sci.military.naval
tankfixer
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 80
Default GIVEN CURRENT WARS, F-35s ARE BETTER CHOICE THAN MORE F-22As

In article ,
says...

"Raymond O'Hara" wrote in message
...

"tankfixer" wrote in message
...
In article , raymond-
says...

"tankfixer" wrote in message
...
In article , raymond-
says...

"Typhoon502" wrote in message
...
On Jun 11, 6:51 am, "Roger Conroy"
wrote:
"Tiger" wrote in message

...





Raymond O'Hara wrote:
"Ian B MacLure" wrote in message
...

"Raymond O'Hara" wrote in
:

we are in two wars now{which we are losing} and you're worried
about
an
imaginary war against an imaginary opponent.
russia is not a credible threat. and it is decades away from
being
one.

Losing? Lose to whom? Current events don't seem be anywere close.
As
for
Russia? They have in the last year expanded their military
activity.
They
are flying Bears again, opposed our missile defence plans, and
Nato
expansions. Decades may be a bit much.

Russia is not the only possible future technologically advanced
enemy -
don't take your eyes of China, or a possible Arab alliance.- Hide
quoted
text -

Not to mention Venezuela...

we don't need F-22s to fight venezuela.

You are one of those who believe in fair fights ?



it still won't be a fair fight.

So ?

If technical superiority will allow my country to prevail with fewer
casualties then I vote for the fancy tech.


if the fancy tech results in bankruptcy and the cancelations of needed
things i'll pass on that tech for a while,


High Tech is what the Army wants but they don't want to spend anything for
it in terms of People, Money, Cutting back, etc.. The simple fact still
remains, sooner or later, a boot on the ground must go in and secure things.
At that point, it doesn't matter if you have an AK47 that is decades old,
the newest shiny M-16 variant, the XM-8 or your brand spanking new lazer
rifle. The AK to the Lazer Rifle is just the weapon and it's not such a
huge leap from one to the other nor is it such a leap between the operation
of both. It still requires for the boots on the ground to be there.

tinkerbell never set foot in that kind of situation and still believes John
Wayne movies were taken directly from the history books. Next, he will be
saying all war movies by Chuck Norriss are believable as well.


As you can see Daryl has issues...


--

"Oh Norman, listen! The loons are calling!"
- Katherine Hepburn, "On Golden Pond"
 




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