…from Frank J.:
While continuing to trust science, let’s make sure the scientists we’re getting it from aren’t douche nozzles.
I like science — we all like science — but if we’re going to throw a huge wrench into our economy, let’s make sure it’s not on the advice of scientists who treat data like a used-car salesman treats an old Chevy.
Next time we pick a leader, let’s make sure he has more qualifications than a bunch of empty slogans of the sort you’d use to sell carbonated beverages.
Yeah, we won’t get a chance in the next year, but let’s try and do that at least once this next decade. It’s hard, but we can do it. Yes we can.
If we have another economic crisis, let’s not hand a blank checkbook to a bunch of Democrats.
Politicians love spending money — Democrats especially. If we had a problem of having way too much money and needed to get rid of it quickly, you’d be a fool to elect anyone other than Democrats. But if the problem is that we’re running out of money, it may be a bad idea to put Democrats in charge, because their solution to having too little money will inevitably be to spend more money.
He has more.
Unfortunately the Republicans are not any better. Even when they talk about Reagan, I often hear the argument that he was a genius by outspending the Soviet Union on defense procurement. Can you think of a single task where the B-1 and B-2 bombers were actually useful?
On the other hand there has been a persistent failure to upgrade strategic weapon delivery systems. There were also several proposals to upgrade B-52 engines to provide truly global range without refueling which never happened.
But hey, the US can outspend China right?
“Can you think of a single task where the B-1 and B-2 bombers were actually useful?”
In the Balkans in the 1990s, and in Afghanistan and Iraq in this century.
Upgrading “strategic weapons [read: nukes] delivery systems” only makes sense if there is a need to do so.
The need for upgrades was for PGM delivery — and that has been done, and has been quite successful.
Outspending the Russian Empire was essential for undoing (part of) Stalin’s post-WWII empire building. Fortunately, the most difficult part was retaining sufficient national self-confidence in the face of ideological assaults to sustain our efforts over the two generations required to bankrupt the Russian Empire.
PS: If you refer to an American Empire, then you have lost track of what “empire” means.
‘Zilla, arms systems are useful on multiple levels. To the extent they win wars, they’re successful on only a secondary level.
The primary level is when they deter one’s enemies from getting into a war with you in the first place. B-1s and B-2s do a better job of that than B-52s.
But hey, the US can outspend China right?
US GDP: $14.2 Trillion
China GDP: $4.33 Trillion
Do the friggin math!
June 1989 – Reagan asks, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”
July 1989 – B2 Spirit makes its first flight
August 1989 – Berlin Wall is torn down
I’m woe to disagree on whether Republicans are any better than Democrats right now. But claiming the B2 wasn’t useful, I do not agree.
ack, Reagan made his speech June 1987, a few months after the B2 rollout.
Leland:
That sounds like a severe case of non-sequituritis to me. The Soviet Union collapsed yes, but B-2 had as much to do with it as Michael Jackson.
Akatsukami:
Considering the air force, and air defense, Afghanistan and Iraq had no B-2 was necessary. Iraq had a more credible air force at the time of Desert Storm and B-2 was not used for it.
Sure, it could have been useful over Serbia. However the US has a doctrine of air supremacy. This means you are supposed to destroy the enemy air defenses before bringing your expensive gadgets in. First you do SEAD missions, then you bring the heavy hitters. If you cannot do that there are always standoff weapons. B-52 were used in Operation Allied Force for both roles.
B-2 is a notorious hangar queen.
Those people who now insist that it was only a matter of time before the Soviet Union imploded were the same people who before 1989 were insisting that we had to accommodate it in all its evil because it was never going away. So which is it?
I’ll tell you: the people who now insist it was inevitable are for the most part Socialists, Leftists and other self-proclaimed Progressive types who find that whole Leninist-Stalinist episode such an embarrassment to their cause that they think they are going to erase if they just keep repeating the same lies enough time. Sort of like how the Democrats have managed to get us to forget their past as the party of slavery and segregation and secession and eugenics and union violence and the KKK.
Yes Raul, it was only a matter of time until the Soviet Union collapsed. All empires die. Even the Roman Empire “only” lasted 1000 years. Being generous and discounting the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Because if you are not generous it “only” lasted 500 years.
Lord knows I even preferred those atheistic totalitarian communists to these backwards tribalistic muslim, or the nitwit envirowackos of today. Thankfully China seems to be working itself up to fill the power vacuum, and even Russia did not collapse entirely.
Never asked for accommodation. Stagnation is death. Never got the fascination some people have with evilness, like it is a binary condition either.
Reagan was the right man at the right place and time. He didn’t make the Soviets collapse by will (or spending) alone — anyone up on their Strauss and Howe knows that ~75 years after its bloody creation the “evil empire” was due an existential crisis. Reagan just helped to nudge it in a certain direction.
One factor to ponder…the Soviets sent tanks to quell Marxist heresies in 1956 (Hungary) and 1968 (Czechoslovakia). They could get away with something like that back then, esp. the latter – the American public would tolerate no European intervention while we were engaged in Indochinese intervention. Also, at those times only one Warsaw Pact nation was veering at one time – not half of ’em simultaneously. (And in ’68 Brezhnev got military assistance from Hungary.)
Is it possible Gorby feared a US retaliation – but not necessarily a military one? Maybe some kind of economic retribution that would have had some kind of repercussions that would increase unrest among Soviet citizens? Something tough and daring that a Carter or Mondale woudl never dream of doing?
Sure, it could have been useful over Serbia.
The B-2 was useful over Serbia. B-2’s bombed the shit out of lots of stuff in Serbia including (oopsy!) the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
I’m assuming your obvious ignorance of matters that were well-covered in the media of the day are due to your being a wet-behind-the-ears kid with no personal recollection of these events to fall back on.
That’s not an excuse, mind you, but it’s at least a reason.
Geez, Zilla, you talk about outspending on military, and you don’t understand the impact the B2 existence had on USSR’s standing air defense network. Consider for a moment how much effort the Soviets put into taking down a U-2, and then later, the SR-71. Those just took pictures.
The B2 made obsolete the USSR’s air defense network. That’s the straw that broke their economic back. It meant the last decade of defense spending by the USSR was useless. They couldn’t afford to catch back up.
Certainly, there were many other factors that brought down the Berlin Wall. But again, to claim the B2 was useless in that effort is simplistic.
Certainly, there were many other factors that brought down the Berlin Wall.
Apropos to a space discussion, there was also the billions the Soviets wasted on Buran (and the other shuttle program they had whose name escapes me right now) to counter the perceived strategic threat from the Space Shuttle.
IIRC, the B-1B (the B-1A was indeed not very useful) was instrumental in the mountains of Afghanistan. There’s a long list of military expenditures initiated by Reagan and the Republicans which contributed to putting so much pressure on the crumbling Soviet Empire that it finally fell. Whether the ROI was proportional to the expenditures sort of depends on where you stand ideologically.
Considering the air force, and air defense, Afghanistan and Iraq had no B-2 was necessary. Iraq had a more credible air force at the time of Desert Storm and B-2 was not used for it.
The B-2 wasn’t used in Desert Storm because:
1. It was still in flight test and no where near operational at the time.
2. It wasn’t configured for conventional bombing until later.
The B-1 wasn’t used for Desert Storm because it was on nuclear alert and wasn’t yet configured for conventional bombing.
Both were equipped for a wide range of conventional bombs in the 1990s and were subsequently used in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The B-1 is flying a lot over Afghanistan, carrying a range of bombs and waiting for ground forces to call for air strikes. The B-2 is a more special purpose weapons system and a very limited resource so it isn’t used as much.
B-52s are great bomb trucks but the increasing sophistication of air defenses made them unsuitable to penetrating defended airspace long ago.
B-52s are great bomb trucks but the increasing sophistication of air defenses made them unsuitable to penetrating defended airspace long ago.
Afghanistan had no air defense to speak of. Neither did Iraq, since it was destroyed in Desert Storm (without needing to use B-1 or B-2). Your main enemy in a place like Afghanistan are either MANPADS, or turbulence when overflying high altitude mountainous terrain. High altitude carpet bombing works fine. Low altitude bombing is better done by more agile fighter bombers, dedicated CAS planes such as the A-10, or even UCAVs.
B-1 was designed for low-altitude penetration, by flying below enemy radar, at an altitude where there are a lot of echoes from objects on the ground. Modern radar does signal processing to remove noise from static objects on the ground. If your enemy does not have a radar network, there is no point in using that tactic to begin with. B-1 is not significantly faster than a B-52 and has a worse range. There is no point in using a B-1 in todays battlefield.
B-2 requires expensive maintenance and special hangars to keep the skin of the aircraft in proper condition, otherwise you may just not be stealthy anymore. The engines do not have an afterburner, because it increases IR emissions. So it is subsonic. Known range and altitude are no better than B-52 either, despite B-52 using utterly obsolete engines and airframe.
Serbia was much more sophisticated than Afghanistan… They had Iraqi Desert Storm like air defense hardware. Albeit better manned I suppose. So was B-2 really necessary for bombing the embassy, or was it just to convince congresscritters they were getting a return on their investment? Sure it looks cool, but it still is a waste of money.
IMO the USAF should try making a B-52 heavy bomber replacement based on modern civilian airliner technology, a supersonic medium bomber replacement, and hypersonic cruise missiles.
Some of our potential enemies have some pretty sophisticated air defenses — and those who don’t now, probably will before we expect.
‘Zilla, do you not realize what you’re essentially arguing, that since we defeated the Comanche with soldiers on horseback firing single-shot firearms, there’s no conceivable need to have repeating arms to use against the Kaiser.
It sounds like he’s falling into the familiar trap of “preparing to fight the last war.”
You must remember that the B-2 was designed for strategic strikes against the USSR, most specifically against their leadership bunker system. The Soviets knew this, and it is one of the reasons that its existence (and their inability to do anything about it) unnerved them so deeply. The B-2’s primary role was not as a ‘first-day’ penetrator (if you look at SEAD doctrine, stealthy aircraft are never used for that), but rather as a high value target eliminator (C3I nodes, command bunkers, etc.), and thus would have been utterly unnecessary in Iraq (even if it had been ready for service, which it was not at the time), where the F-117 was more than suitable for the job in mind, and could easily operate from the airfields in-theatre. All you need to do is to take a look at how F-117s were used in the first Iraq war to see how the B-2 would have been used, and how it was utterly unnecessary to use them in the context of that conflict.
Using relatively short ranged fighter-bombers for CAS is fine as far as it goes, but carpet-bombing tends to generate lots of collateral damage, which the West works hard to avoid for a variety of reasons that should be obvious. Note that carpet-bombing (or even conventional CAS, for that matter) has an ugly tendency to result in friendly fire casualties, as you really should know. Precision strikes with JDAMs (SDRAMs and Hellfires now, though the latter cannot be used from high-speed platforms) are far more effective, but these were only available in very limited quantities in 1991.
To suggest that the B-1 (a rather mediocre design I agree, but certainly quite useful in its non-nuclear role) and the B-2 were wastes because they didn’t get used for the purpose that they were originally for is simply nonsense. The B-52 was designed for nuclear operations as well, and it was only when Vietnam came around that the aircraft was heavily modified (the D-model ‘Big Belly’ rebuilds) for conventional operations. Does this make that aircraft (or the B-47,for that matter?) a waste of resources? I prefer to think that these aircraft (and there are a host of other examples) are representative of the military’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances, a very healthy thing indeed…
Zilla, you are showing your lack of understanding, and you might be best advised to spend more time listening, and less making a fool of yourself.
Godzilla: “Afghanistan had no air defense to speak of. Neither did Iraq, since it was destroyed in Desert Storm….”
By 2002 Iraq had replenished its AAA/SAM systems to near 1990 levels, numerically at least. The Iraqi air defense command and control network was still degraded however, especially in No Fly Zones. So the Iraqi air defense system was only degraded by the time of the 2003 invasion, not destroyed as you claim.
(The) B-1 was designed for low-altitude penetration, by flying below enemy radar, at an altitude where there are a lot of echoes from objects on the ground. Modern radar does signal processing to remove noise from static objects on the ground. If your enemy does not have a radar network, there is no point in using that tactic to begin with. B-1 is not significantly faster than a B-52 and has a worse range.
Actually no, the greatest threat to the B-1A was the MiG-31, with it’s look-down/shoot down radar. The modifications incorporated into the B-1B mitigated some of that risk, and the development of ALCMs and SRAMs further reduced it.
The B-1B is faster at both high and low altitudes, has a longer (unrefueled) combat range, and can carry more ordnance than the B-52H.
(The B-2’s) (k)nown range and altitude are no better than B-52 either, despite B-52 using utterly obsolete engines and airframe.
Again, no. The B-2’s known (unrefueled) combat range is 6000 nmi, versus the B-52H’s 4500, and they share a 50,000 ft service ceiling. That said, it is slightly slower, but only by 35 knots. It also requires a smaller force of support aircraft to accomplish a mission, eliminating the SEAD, AEW, Fighter support a B-52 would need, along with the tankers they would require.
The Spirit is designed for undetected application of precision weapons, nuclear and non- while the BUFF is a bomb truck, two different functions.
Perhaps I’m too optimistic to expect that these integral cogs of the right-wing media machine will take it upon themselves to change for the better in 2010. I guess I could always blame my New Year’s resolution to hope for the best when confronted with perplexing, stubborn absurdity.