This is a report that was just issued by one of our USAF Generals :(

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040623/ap_on_re_us/us_air_force

The article makes no mention of Ground Forces, Tanks, Missle Technology, Naval Capability, or Strategic War Experience. All it talked about was some friendly combat exercise that we participated in and that I doubt our boys took that seriously.

There's more to fighting wars than air combat. If your gonna take on the United States...you better be bringing more than that.

My $.02 anyway.

You're worse than the writers that publish that stuff!! At least quote the article correctly!! It's talking about air combat superiority not world power dominance!!

We are using 70's tech aircraft and the best of the rest combined showed some fight... My guess is we have stuff in the back room that will blow our minds, it's just very expensive. Articles like that are designed to bolster support for military spending. Americans like to be the best, so someone in power says we are lagging behind and we rally behind additional spending.

Umm....are you talking to me or him? :confused:

Quote from US National; "General: U.S. Dominance of Skies May Wane"

Do I see the word May in there? C'mon Garfield, you can do better than this with your National Enquirer type topics.
Looks to me like DJD paid attention in writing class about subliminal messages. I do think that we need to pursue a new modern fighter and as stated above, I'm sure that we have been.

Ask the Indian pilots if they would like to get into a shooting war against current USAF equipment manned by USAF pilots.

Naw, that's not fun to report.

The general want F22's. Lot's of pro's and con's concerning this aircraft, but that's another topic.

Originally posted by Infamous:
Umm....are you talking to me or him? :confused: Look at the posting times, you just beat me to the punch... I got a phone call or my reply would have been before yours.

We, ( U.S.) have world class equipment and world class personnel to operate it effectively.

Nuff' said from me.

Oops...sorry about that Dennis. graemlins/clonk.gif

I flew F/A-18'S in the Navy... I would not give much credence to that article's premise, because it is the COMMAND AND CONTROL that the US possesses which is so frightening in the arena of both air to air, air to ground, ground to air, every friggin' where... if you know what I mean. Basically, the Russians put out the BEST fighter ever produced for 1V1 combat almost 2 decades ago... BUT, they basically couldn't DO anything with it, for a myriad of reasons.

I figure we are spending a large fortune on the military! It's just that not all that much of the money is actually trickling down to them after it is all said and done..

Ask yourself who is actually getting the money AND I bet it is the Industrial half of the M/I complex we have right now..

pdq67

Originally posted by jethro:
I flew F/A-18'S in the Navy... You flew Hornets? A Camaro must seem tame (any car actually.)

Very, very cool.

I am sure that if needed our US military would pull out stuff that was not supposed to exist !! we have stuff that will beat anything in the news all to heck !!! remember the stealth bomber ?? and that is just one instance ,,,

I know I said Nuff' said, but this is too interesting...

A couple of questions.
Jethro, what was the fighter the Russians had called, and what was it flying against back then?
And would it be as effective today?

I'm not military, but follow our progress.
I agree that we have command and control superiority, and do an outstanding job with what we have, but is there any other country TODAY, that has the technology, and arsenal of equipment that we have? (not considering our allies with whom we've shared our leftovers ).

I also agree with pdq67, in that the private sector seems to get a lot of the military budget. But if they are doing most of the R&D, then it seems to be going to the right place.

And what do we have that we (the masses), don't yet know about?
I don't wish to stray the thread, but what is up with Groom Lake/Area 51?
There must be some major R&D going on to warrant a 22 mile long runway. Can someone tell me where the 117 and B2 originated?

Area 51 is where Charlie and Steve hide cars they don't want us to know about yet!! :D tongue.gif

Well put Dennis,

I'm from Canada and even I could read that article and understand that this was one generals plug at supporting his friends with military contracts.

Here is what I think of the Middle East and India's air force. (lol)

Admin Note: The link below may be found offensive in a work enviroment or around small children ;)

http://www.x33d80.com/images/middle_east.jpg

[ 06-24-2004, 07:29 AM: Message edited by: DjD ]

Originally posted by garfield:
This is a report that was just issued by one of our USAF Generals :(

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040623/ap_on_re_us/us_air_force I'm no Nay Sayer or SchlephRock type of guy, but the only reason I bought this to everyones attention is because I figure that since this guy is a General ( Rank of General is a 4-star) and is Chief of Air Combat Command which oversees many US Fighter and Bomber Wings, I would think that he would know more about these things than either myself or anyone else here in the civilian world. If this were coming from some Joe Schmo from some reality show I would have simply cut this report up and tossed it on the lawn with the rest of the manure. But again, this man is in Military comand of a very large number of both Fighter and Bomber Squadrons and this is why I took this report so seriously. I figure that Congress would not have placed those stars on his shoulder if he didn't know what he was either doing or talking about. But overall (for all of our sake) I hope you guys are right!!!

NOTE: For the younger crowd out there, Schlephrock was a somewhat comical 70's era cartoon character from the Pebbles and Bamm Bamm Show that constantly predicted doom and spread misery everywhere he went :D

Look here http://www.topthat.net/webrock/spinoffs/pebbles1.htm

Schleprock is the guy in the middle of the page with the storm cloud over his head :D

[ 06-23-2004, 11:26 PM: Message edited by: garfield ]

The F15 was developed in the 60's and is obsolete but very capable. The reason it is obsolete is aircraft like the newer SU's and the Mirage 2000's and MIGs, which have been produced in far fewer numbers as one may expect. The problem is that the refined aircraft that can be built by the US need to be produced. Unfortunately it cost more per copy because lets face it...our cost of living is so inflated. Sure more money is needed on these projects but they can’t get to where they need to go with out support. We can’t do it with tankers built in the mid 50's. We need this KC-767 that has been proposed to congress and has been put on hold because of hurt feelings in the aerospace market. We also need the F22 more than ever. Lets face it, tankers that are 50+ years old and fighters that were the big hope for Vietnam are not what the strongest nation in the world needs right now or any time in the near or distant future. I have been in the Air Force for almost 18 years and work with these planes and support systems on a daily basis. What do I say? It’s like comparing a 68 Nova to a 2004 Corvette or the Queen Mary 1 to the QM II. For your info the QM I is a museum in Long Beach, California now. And another thing since I am on my rant, the reason we are getting kidded in Iraq is because we (the services) are not a police force. An army is designed to take objectives, to kill and conquer not to maintain peace between diverse civilian populations. We are doing well despite the news reports. We are a volunteer force and believe in the mission that we support. We lost how many thousands in Vietnam...how many in Korea? 56000? How about WWII? Over 1 million? As sad as it is to say, the lives that are sacrificed over in Iraq are not for nothing. We have a mission over there, we have an objective, we have a goal. We want to make sure the people in Iraq are allowed to live their lives to the fullest, to not be afraid that they will be gassed in the middle of the night and put in mass graves where the bones of thousands will make it almost imposable for DNA identification. To be able to go to a store for a simple loaf of bread to feed your 5 children.
We are a dominant world power because of the people that are ambassadors representing the US in just about every country in the world. The government still talks about closing bases, cutting the budget, forcing people out of the services, but rest assure that our folks in the military are doing twice the mission that we were doing 10-15 years ago with almost half the people. Lets double your workload and cut your staff in half....how would your office do? Rest assured we are still kicking ass and passing gas as we say in my career field. (POL)
Sorry all just got going. The General was trying to make a point to justify the need for newer weapon systems and may be just as frustrated as 3/4 of the service members I talk to.

Well hell,if it is published in a Yahoo article on the internet, it must be true.. :rolleyes:

The military traditionally never releases any information on top shelf (secret) weapons until they have something better or different to replace it with. The public is always 1 step behind...on purpose.

Jethro,

That's cool that you flew F/A-18's, awesome aircraft. I'm envious, I just fly Cessna 172's around occasionally. :D Anywho, were you referring to the Russian SU-27 as the best 1 on 1 fighter? I would agree, an SU-27 in the hands of a capable fighter pilot is a very formidable opponent...

But aircraft (and guns for that matter) are just instruments. It's nice to have a very capable aircraft or gun, but if you can't operate it effectively, they're pretty much useless...

And effective operation of those weapons is one area that US forces have always excelled at. smile.gif

God Bless our Troops and our Country!

- Mark P.

Originally posted by CrossRamZ11:
Well hell,if it is published in a Yahoo article on the internet, it must be true.. :rolleyes: Here it is again from another angle...This time from CNN :(

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/06/23/airforce.supremacy.reut/index.html

You're going to see more and more of this, as already said many times, it's a sales pitch. We already have the replacements for out 30 year old tech air defenses. There just isn't any budget for building them. If your wife told you she needed $1000 for a new stove and you asked what's wrong with the old one and she served you a hot bowl of soup and said "nothing, I just want a new one", would you run out and go in debt for the new one? Now if she did the same but served you a cold bowl of soup and said "it's not working very well dear" Well you'll more than likely run right out and get the new one. Well, unless you want sushi for dinner!!

Right now the US is still getting hot meals with respect to our air defenses, Gen Hornburg is just letting us know the stove could use to be replaced in the near future, even though it's still working today...

We definately have higher tech jets being developed. My older brother was a jet mechanic in the USAF. He never told me about this until the Stealth Fighter was announced but he worked on them. He said that when he went to the top secret base he didn't drive to it. They flew him in. There were no roads to it. Cool huh?

:cool:

Originally posted by DjD:
You're going to see more and more of this, as already said many times, it's a sales pitch. We already have the replacements for out 30 year old tech air defenses. There just isn't any budget for building them. If your wife told you she needed $1000 for a new stove and you asked what's wrong with the old one and she served you a hot bowl of soup and said "nothing, I just want a new one", would you run out and go in debt for the new one? Now if she did the same but served you a cold bowl of soup and said "it's not working very well dear" Well you'll more than likely run right out and get the new one. Well, unless you want sushi for dinner!!

Right now the US is still getting hot meals with respect to our air defenses, Gen Hornburg is just letting us know the stove could use to be replaced in the near future, even though it's still working today... I hope so...Makes sense to me smile.gif

Both the MIG-25 AND the SU-27 Flanker were superb Russian aircraft... VERY much developed for both 1V1 air superiority and also long range force projection, but once again, it is the U.S. that possesses the ENTIRE battlefield C&C to make such platforms "work". And no, I LOVE driving my Camaro... and I get a thrill/kick in the pants draggin too. I mean, lets face it, don't all of you just groove big time on a well designed, integrated, and strong running machine... isn't that why most of us are in this money pit... LOL.

This is this is why we have Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. they are the first strike weapon used in all recent conflicts. Why? It's unmanned, highly accurate and most of all effective at wiping out the enemy's comand and control centers. We can then send in the 117's then the fighters in the daylight to get the mobile targets.

The enemy is effectivly grounded because they are blind to most incoming aircraft and missiles because radar and command and control systems have been taken out. They would have to stay flying around the clock to try and intercept our planes in the air. At this point they are sitting ducks to our pilots. Lets see the outcome in a real world war game and see what happens. Anyone can get a lucky shot though.

Tomahawk also has the ability to release bomblets to destroy runways, aircraft and fuel depot's using one missile for multipal targets. After completing above type missions it can then be used to hit a building,control tower or some other unhardened target. Pretty effective weapon and mind you I have only talked about 1 variant of this missile, there are more than 10 that have been produced over the last 25 years. The cool thing is they all look the same from 20 feet away.