Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyles
You want to talk about wastes of money, what about the F-22 (which they're finally getting rid of)? Yeah, it's the most capable fighter aircraft ever made. It's also the most expensive. The F-15 and new F/A-18s are already superior to or at least competetive with anything they're likely to come up against, and the F-35 is more than good enough for a next step and alot cheaper.
|
Yeah, I personally didn't shed a tear when Obama's administration announced they weren't going to fund any more F-22s. Obama may be a liberal who thinks the DoD's budget is better used in his bullshit stimulus and healthcare plans, but he's basically right about the F-22 - even if it's for the wrong reasons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyles
Or the gas turbine engine on the Abrams. Makes it pretty much the worst gas guzzler ever made, and hard as hell for infantry to operate with for fear of getting cooked by the exhaust. Add to that the fact that the thing is basically useless inside narrow city streets, and whats the point? Sure, it's probably the most effective tank around for armor-on-armor engagement, and the most effective enemy tank its ever engaged were Iraqi T-72 knock-offs. That's why the vehicle of the future is the Striker (which has its own issues, but that's another story).
|
The Abrams is an excellent tank. But driving it into urban areas (where it moves much slower due to the inherent obstacles) is the dumbest thing you can do. The Russians learned the hard way in Chechnya that bringing tanks into cities makes them vulnerable to RPG gunners hiding on rooftops, and that's why our Abrams tanks became RPG magnets early in the war.
Anyway, U.S. military thinking has improved a LOT in the past five years, since Rumsfeld's tenure (which I thought was disastrous). But unfortunately for those of us who are big into hardware, it's not quite the same as the Cold War. The kind of wars we fight nowadays are wars where it doesn't matter if an M1-A2 is better than a T-90, or if the SCAR is a better choice than an M4. Today's wars are more about ground-level intelligence than weaponry.