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Originally Posted by cincibuck
When the enemy has aircraft, yes. My concern is that the proportion of money in the military budget spent on air superiority may leave us with clear skies and no money for the ground task. Could we retain air superiority with more aircraft and fewer bells and whistles? I don't know..
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Well, its my understanding, and, I may be wrong... but.. I think that this has been addressed to some degree in the fact that there are going to be many fewer F-22's ordered than originally planned and many more F-35's. My understanding is that the unit cost is much less, but also its a more flexoble platform... but... I'm not an expert.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cincibuck
If we think of the Chinese or the Arabs in Ronald reagan terms it may be that the way to defeat America is to push her to spend more money than she has on weapons. It worked against Russia and given the amount of American capital now in the hands of Beijing, it could happen again.
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What possible motive would the Chinese have to "defeat" America? Who would buy their lead ridden toys? I'm sure they like getting their hands on American Capital... bankrupting the US.... or whatever it is you're worried about would kind of [censored] such Chinese plan up... you know?
Quips-- even if there is some truth to it-- aside.... yeah, if you're talking missile defense systems and antisubmarine warfare measures... sure we could spend a lot of cash on such a threat... but that's not so much what you're talking about...
As for the Arabs... if they are following the "Afganistan" portion of the plan... and... for all intents and purposes, they are... it didn't work out very well for the Afghans... so...
Finally, Reagan was "fighting" a basically ideologically corrupt political/economic system... who, in conjunction with their policies destroyed themselves... but.. it was a "now or later" scenario.
Now, you may not like the US "policy" but... at least that can, and likely will change at some point. But, yeah, you get down to the basis of things and the Chinese would have to use our money to "defeat" us... then, no more money, then back to the beginning.
We didn't exactly fund the cold war with Blue Jean sales to the Soviets.