BoatBanter.com - View Single Post

Harryk

wrote:
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:10:13 -0400, wrote:

In ,
says...
On Wed, 13 Apr 2011 13:38:16 -0400, John
wrote:

On Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:41:51 -0400, wrote:

On Wed, 13 Apr 2011 09:36:48 -0400, wrote:

Are you saying that military budget is a waste?

Most of it. We spend more than the whole rest of the planet put
together.
I think the Chinese would like to see us cut it by about 90%.

Keeping China, the Russians and any real "state" at bay is pretty
cheap. A few "boomers" can provide a credible deterrent to a nuclear
attack. We spend most of our money building things we will never use
like the F22 and having counter insurgent wars with guys in sandals.

DoD is a big jobs program, enriching the districts of powerful
congressmen and building products that they do not need to have a
market to sell. We build them, we maintain them for 20-30 years and
we throw them away, virtually unused.

Eisenhower tried to warn us ... but we ignored him.
Keeping the boomers armed, manned, maintained and replaced over time is
the problem. When we finally got to see the Soviet fleet at their berths
in their home ports we found out the sad state they were in.

Our intel and pentagon people have consistently overestimated Soviet
capability for the last 50 years. It was certainly good for the people
who built our weapons systems tho.

I remember all the hype about the MIG25 until we finally got one and
found out it was pretty mediocre. I know the Soviets had a lot of subs
but they were so loud and so slow we could chase them in a Coast Guard
cutter.
I was always nervous because we were outfitted with a doomsday weapon,
autonomous torpedoes that would go get a sub after it sunk us.

The military always overestimates the "enemy" in peacetime, so as to
keep more of them in uniform and create more billets.