As much as I hope that Obama’s snarkey comments are a vote loser, I don’t see any sort of sea change (hehe) with respect to Romney’s thinking on the military. I’m a 10+ year vet, much of it spent in the reserves (two post 9-11 tours) with my civilian career in business.
My take on Romney’s military advisers is that they are the types of people that are so wedded to the status quo in the military that they cannot really conceive of a smaller, leaner, military. They won’t see, and Romney consequently won’t see, that there are way too many generals and admirals, that there is way too much tail compared to the fighting tip (tip to tail ratio) and a very entrenched bureaucracy.
I would love to see a president really tackle the cost of the military, especially considering our deficits and debt.
Zero was churlish !
With the technology we now have, big carriers might well become a thing of the past. So, small fast ships that can launch drones will come into play.
Subs will forever stay in service.
OMG....is he 5 years old??
Obviously the issue isn't that simple. Numbers re important. Nevertheless, cheap airplanes are going to have less performance than expensive ones. How much difference does that make?
I wrote a paper, presented at a conference of the OPERATIONS RESEARCH SOCIETY OF AMERICA, that showed that if the performance differential between the low-performance and high-performance aircraft was big enough, the cheap airplanes were simply cheap targets. The Air Force that counted on numbers instead of performance would we wiped out with little damage to the opponent. My paper was runner-up for an award. Runner-up only because I intentionally didn't address research & development costs, but only production costs. Still, it indicated the judges found my paper to be of high quality.
The same analysis applies to naval vessels. If their performance is reduced sufficiently to make a big cost reduction, they're simply going to be sitting ducks on the ocean.
The trick is to find the right tradeoff between performance and affordability. Maybe our carriers are "too big to fail." If so, we need to decide whether several smaller carriers in a carrier task group would provide equivalent performance to one big carrier at lower cost.
The important thing to remember, though, is that both numbers and performance matter. As someone has said, the most expensive thing you can have is a second-best Air Force. The same applies to a second-best Navy.
First - let me commend you for your proper “Hear” Hear!” and not the oft misused “Here! Here!”
I am actually blown away by this brilliant revisualization of our military. This alone proves the superior firepower of Romney’s mind.
For the first time in years, I have heard an idea from a politician that is not a compilation of basic conservative concepts or a repackaging of the same. Those ideas are fine, and I am not critical of them - but Romney’s concept here is brilliant in it’s simplicity and counter-current direction (no wonder he was so successful in turnarounds!) - and I am left asking myself, “Why didn’t I think of that?” and “Why haven’t I heard that before?”
This clear explanation of Romney’s philosophy gives me more hope for our country, the deficit and our military all at the same time.
big bump
There was a Soviet premier (don’t remember whether it was Stalin or Krushchev) who said in regard to military equipment that “quantity has a quality all its own” or something. And while the Soviets usually didn’t have cutting-edge weaponry, they always had a LOT of it, and they made up for deficiencies in quality by making most of their gear easy to field-service (as one example, I remember reading somewhere that the engine on a MiG-21 could be swapped out in around an hour).
And it probably wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for the US military to embrace this philosophy.
Certainly they are great for transporting our planes to the enemies shores, but they are also great targets. So far with the little wars we have ought the enemy had no way to take these carriers out. That is no longer true with Russia and China, and perhaps Iran if they develop a Nuke.IMO. If we lose a Carrier we lose a major part of our air defense and about 6,000 seaman. I would opt for smaller ships and many of them. take one out and we don't hurt so bad.
O mocked Romney but didn't answer the basic point. The navy said they needed 313 ships.
We also need more, not fewer, nuclear weapons. Smaller, less yield, cleaner. In short, we need the neutron bomb.
Then why is Romney calling for a 350 ship navy if the Navy puts their needs at 313? Why is Romney saying they need an 11th air wing when the navy hasn't had a one-for-one relationship between air wings and carriers since before the Cold War and has done very nicely all that time? Why is Romney calling for a whole new class of frigates when the need for frigates died with the Soviet Union? Is is a defense budget or a pork barrel? Or is it a campaign idea in search of a strategy?
Quantity has a quality of its own.
Spanish Armada—huge, powerful ships; British Navy—smaller, more maneuverable ships. Not the only reason the Armada lost, but it was certainly an important one. One of the few lessons in history that stuck with me.
As a Cold War vet, YES, the Soviets had the numbers, and we kept designing items that would handle more of those items per aircraft/ship.
The F-15 went into service in the ‘70’s, as did the A-10 and the F-14, for starters. The BUFF, er, B-52 has been around since 1952! There are some long-toothed airframes doing phenomenal jobs.
Fast attack ships go back a long way. Look at the Cuban Missile Blockade to see what was doing the majority of duty then. They are designed for it. In our history, we had destroyers running in, and providing close gun support on D-Day, due to the draft of the ship. Missile ships are fine, but you still need a real gun, now and then, too.
The big ships are squadrons of planes and cities of personnel. The lighter ships can swarm, zip in and out, while the floating cities are meant to be on station flight decks.
Attack subs are the checks and balances of nuclear missile subs. We need them, just as much as we need AC-130’s!
I also think it is Obama who is advocating cheaper designs. To the extent that in December 2009, at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base, he had his people remove the F-22 that had been parked as a backdrop and had it replaced with a F-15. Why? Because he was against the F-22 program and wanted the cheaper/more numerous Eagle.
While it is true that quantity has a quality of its own, in the modern battlefield there is a limit to the value of that 'quality.' That is a strategy used by nations that simply do not have the qualitative capacity to match up with technologically advanced nations. This is why Iran, for example, has been churning out dozens of small watercraft with the hope of overwhelming the USN. They cannot match US quality, and thus their only option is to try and compensate by having a lot of targets in the hope that a couple of them will survive long enough to do some damage.
The moment a country is able to not have to rely on 'quantity' it immediately stops doing so. Case in point? China (and India for that matter). China had the same strategy Iran now has ....churning out lots of sub-grade military equipment. Now that it has the money to invest in superlative equipment what does it do? Engage in the greatest military buildup the world has seen in half a century! Building AEGIS-esque ships (with phased radar arrays), investing in new submarine technologies, working on aircraft carriers (the ex-Soviet carrier plus indigenous designs), new planes, etc. Why? Because they know the value of one J-20 is better than that of 10 MiG-21s, and the value of one Type-52C Luyang II destroyer is worth more than five Type 51 Luda destroyers. Easily.
Romney is about building a stronger US military ...not building the appearance of a stronger military simply by having more numbers. For example, increasing the production of the LCS would very quickly add numbers, but in terms of capability the LCS is a ship closer to a target than a victor. I believe Romney is for strengthening the US military, and having many cheap (a joke, since the 'cheap' LCS and the 'cheap' F-35 are anything but) ships is not strengthening the military.
The Reagan navy had the numbers, but it also had the quality (for the era). It was not just numbers. If the US goes for a numbers strategy, of the type espoused by the article, then it may learn the same lesson Saddam Hussein received when his numbers were obliterated with ease by a technologically superior adversary.
The example of Germany has key lessons that show that quality is not everything, but that is a lesson that is often looked at in the wrong way. Germany did have amazing quality, but they also had significant drawbacks. For one they started using some of their super-weapons too late in the war (and for that matter Hitler, according to many people who analyzed the war, started the war too early ...had he waited 5 more years I'd probably be typing this in German). They also had significantly destroyed war infrastructure. They had the quality, but the numbers were simply not enough.
In the case of the US it has always, since it became a super power, had both numbers and quality. Not just one.
Going back to Germany it is easy to see where things broke apart using the Lanchester Square equation. It states that to stalemate a force N times more numerous you need to have N-squared effectiveness. E.g. to defeat a force that is three times as many as yours is, you need to be at least 9 times (3^2) as effective.
Now, take the JV 44 Luftwaffe squadron, which has been called the most dominant airwing EVER! The JV 44 used the Me-262 jet fighter in WW2, was comprised of 50 pilots of which more than 25 were aces (with the top 6 aces having over 1,100 kills, and the next eleven averaging 50+ kills), and flying jet fighters in propeller-era WW2. The ME-262 was 24% faster, could climb 70% faster, had 7 times the firepower, and reduced reaction time from first detection up to 62% ...compared to any adversary the JV44 would face. Basically, they were absolutely unbeatable. Even the F-22 will never have such advantages. But Germany lost. There were simply not enough of them. The Lanchester Square equation was against them.
People like to use the above example to show how quality is 'bad' (together with the Tiger Tank examples), but they are looking at it the wrong way. If JV 44 had ME-109s would that have helped? Nope ...by the time the war was already lost. Nazi Germany could have received F-22s and the war would still have been lost. It's like a human being armed with a M-4, stuck in the ground up to his waist, surrounded by thousands of fire ants. The war is lost! But what if the Germans had decided to wait until they had sufficient numbers of superlative technology? If that was the case then Deutsch-lernen would be critical for communication.
To win there has to be a mix of quality and quantity. I believe Romney wants to do both. The article makes it seem that he only wants greater numbers. That is not what he wants. He is not a fool.
Especially considering that simply making more 'cheap' designs would only mean expensive designs that are not effective. Again, look at the LCS designs. Almost as expensive as an Arleigh Burke destroyer, but less effective than Israeli and European frigates that cost a fraction! The only thing the LCS can do well is go at high speeds, but even that is not for a long period of time (and they cannot outrun an anti-ship missile anyways). It is not about cheap designs ...it is about effective designs that incorporate proper (and stringent) cost management.
I may be wrong about this, but I think the writer of the article is putting words in Romney's mouth to make a political counter-point to a silly remark Obama said in a debate. However, if Romney is really planning on having a lot of 'cheap but numerous' designs, then Romney is an utter fool and is nothing like Reagan.