Having the most advanced fighter system in the world, and continuing to develop the technology, isn't so we can bomb stuff now. It is so we can fight China in 25 years (or whatever the threat may be). We should have learned our lesson. At the end of the cold war, America basically started dismantling one of the best "on the ground" intelligence agencies in the world. We basically didn't have enough spies. This led us being very unprepared for later confilicts, such as the war on terror. After 9/11, we basically had to build our networks back up to cold war levels, and it has taken, and will continue to take years. If you stop spending on cutting edge defense, you are going to get caught with your pants down. Not next year, but maybe 20 years from now.
Aren't nukes better and cheaper at blowing up anything in 20 years than a plane that will be 20 years old?
Pearl Harbor is an example of how we could live without a ridiculous military, if anything. In 1941, we had the 17th largest military in the world, right behind Romania. Four years later, we had defeated one of the world's great superpowers and helped to defeat another. I don't think we should go to that level of unpreparedness, but a huge, expensive military is not necessary for strength. Ability to raise a huge, expensive military is.
I don't know guys, I saw a show about the F-22 on the History Channel and it seems like a pretty cool plane.
We spend all this money on this **** and we could never get the Superconducting Super Collider built.
It's not Kansas in 1941 anymore Toto. China has the greater industrial potential. And nukes are useless except as nuke deterrents. When they go off anywhere, lots and lots of people all across the Northern Hemisphere die regardless of their country. Forget the blast, the heat, the gamma rays, the nuclear winter, just the radiation that becomes airborne alone can cause cancers from minute amounts for thousands of years.
I don't see the Chinese invading us, because to invade a country of our size and our population would be almost impossible, we can barely hold southern afghanistan, how would China hold the whole country, especially when they would have to go against all of NATO as well.
How so? We still out-produce them by over 30%, and our manufacturing industries are much easier to convert to military manufacturing than theirs are.
The problem is that clearly we are not allocating our resources efficiently. The F-22 was introduced in 2005 at a cost of around $60 billion, at the time it was hailed as the best air superiority fighter in the world (as it should be). But in just 6 years it needs a $7billion upgrade? Even if you take out the F-22 and F-35 out of the equation, our air force is still much more advanced then those of China and Russia. I think we should have just research and develop these weapons, only make a few for testing/training purposes, and maintain the knowhow to quickly mass produce these should a war start.
Yeah because it's so easy for millions of uneducated people to switch from making shoes and cheap toys with their hands to building a stealth fighter...
Maybe not us, unless they sign a pact with Russia, but we have allies over there that they could crush.
We're not going to get anywhere as a country with this kind of crap going on. Exhibit A of stuff for the chopping block. Polishing a gun that we've never fired, and likely will never need to fire, and if we do fire it, it will be to fight an imaginary enemy. All in the name of making some contractors happy. The profit motive mixed with the military is a toxic brew. Much like with education and health care.
The real goal is to control the small countries who might go close to China. That was also the idea of the cold war. It was all business. My definition of your cold war: scare the hell out of Americans and other countries, then rob them.
