US Guards JSF Crown Jewels

The true cost of weapons is not a bad thing to know as a tax payer.

We do not need anymore weapons. for what? Who? When? Where? unconventional approaches to doing away with bad guys seems a lot more productive. What weapons system any where can defeat us? NONE

We do need a much more robust development budget for R&D, prototype, and development. The idea to keep the good industrial base alive is to keep the R&D open along with a robust prototype system that stocks the shelves with stuff we could bring to production. Every once in a while take one off the shelf and do the do diligence to make sure we can produce what we think up. Maybe even produce a few to check out manufacturing.

Keep the F-16, 15 lines open or reopen them if necessary. We do not need anything else. The F-22 along with what we have will keep us air dominate for many, many years to come.

The Army needs new ideas about how to defeat the Taliban. I mean clean slate.

The Marines need what they want they are always the last in the line for money.

The Air Force needs to pay attention to the out of control costs for all of its programs.

The Navy needs to keep doing R&D -Development on a grand scale to re thing carrier battle groups from the ground up. Currently it is just a big target that costs us a lot of money to operate with no pay back. They need to rethink how they deal with hundreds of Chinas new subs that are much smaller and cheaper besides nuke em.

The military industrial complex is the biggest it has ever been. freeze their budgets and have them make due. the have to make choices like the rest of us.

And the state department needs to think though the take over of Taiwan by the PRC which will happen when we are hopelessly in debt to the PRC.

I understand your thinking, and I am also of the opinion that the US military is still mostly geared up to fight yesterdays war. For the conflicts of today we dont need as many tanks, artillery and engineers. We need more infantry and taxis to move them around quickly - especially helicopters. Carriers are actually really useful...basically they are mobile airfields, which can be handy if you dont have any bases near a potential trouble spot.

The problem with your idea is that weapons are not conjured up quickly. It can take years, even decades, to conceive, develop, design and test a platform like a ship, or an aircraft, or even a vehicle. Then you have to build them, train people to operate and maintain them - its not an easy process. If you stop or slim the process down, it will indeed save money now, but it will also mean that the weapon systems needed in 5-10 years time will not be ready.

Its also a multidisciplinary process. To build a ship you need naval architects, designers, draughtsmen, electricians, shipwrights, caulkers, boilermakers, sheet metal workers, pipemakers, painters, radarmen, sonarmen, weapons experts, comms specialists...oh, and sailors (eventually). Although all these people are neccesary, their involvement with making the vessel is not uniform through its service life. Naval architects, for example, will be very busy at the conception and design stage, much less so once the vessel is actually under construction. This means that a warship yard needs a constant stream of new orders to keep all the various disciplines occupied. If you “slip” the program, most people will still be ok, but some others will have nothing to do, so they get laid off. Once you do that, if you choose to ratch up production later on, you will be lucky to get half of them back (they’ll have disappeared to other jobs) and the expertise will have gone.

As i said. whats the threat? Where? Nothing we have, save the drones, really works in this new environment except men.

We have a modern obsolete armed force and industrial pork beyond the dreams of any career politician.

We built AF plant 4 and produced bombers in less than one year. My guess is the next war will be over in 30 min if it is a world war.

Carrier battle groups are sitting targets with 6000 navy combatants who will be toast in any real exchange with any of the super powers. They cost to much and are obsolete by the time you make them.

State Department needs more robust solutions than saber rattling with a navy that is out date and slow and they laugh at us.

I have been in this process for many many years. We need to cap the budget and make them live on what they have going forward.

Take us out of being the world arms supplier.

Use the industrial process for domestic solutions like road, bridges, cars, internet, green things that make sense.

Smart power grid would be good, drilling, acquiring local sources of energy and not solar that is a ruse.

Like i said the RDTE is the key to cutting the long lead multidisciplinary approach. Robust prototypes on the shelf. No production. All with in the current budget so that would force them the cut production and stop be the arms merchants of the world.

Stop giving up our secrets.

Research and Development Test and Evaluation. 61 money before the production go ahead. So a robust RDTE not production would give us lots of options to go to production. yf22, yf23 we prototypes.

We need Research and Development at the embryonic stages through prototypes on the shelf. Lots of projects instead of producing stuff that just costs more money to buy and then to operate and fix.

Carrier Battle Groups are WWII technology and think. The Chinese and other have master the art of a cheap, quiet, diesel submarines and are making them like pop corn. We will not be able to defend the Battle Group at sea like we have in the past. We now have a real competitor and they mean business.

One Carrier down and we will turn tail and run home. I believe as do most military folks the carrier will be lost in a meaningful exchange. Remember the USS Cole, a small boat. With UAV’s on everyone side and cruise missiles coming from every where there is no way to protect it from attack. So Pakistan has nukes, Korea, and other who are not so friendly, etc. one kiloton war head and the carrier is a shinning sun. AFTER ALL A CESSENA LANDED IN RED SQUARE AND IT IS ARGUABLE THE HARDEST TARGET THERE IS.

When you take conventional stuff and put in unconventional times there are degrees of freedom that can not be anticipated. Air Lines into buildings for instance. What would our current set of enemies do to kill 6000 americans. We would be asleep at the wheel and asking permission to fire when it went off.

It is is called “fish from the sea” strategy from China. The idea of this is when you are on a boat you hear a splash and you want to catch fish so you go to the splash, no fish you hear it again and you go again. You get the idea. China uses stalking horses like Korea to do the splashing and they watch us and gauge our reactions. The splashes cost lives and the running around makes you look like you don’t know what you doing. You lose face.

This new strategy is employed by terrorists to great effect.

I would argue that the Navy needs to be transformed into some completely different and the number os ship and size on/in the water is not a new world measure of effectiveness . Smaller foot print, much faster and agile. I would also believe that we need purple force instead of all the stove pipes. integrations of missions, systems, operations, and men/woman.

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