We can keep arguing if you want :) Trumps budget (he released it yesterday) sucks donkey balls.

I stand corrected, I can admit it when I am wrong. I always thought (was told) congress makes it (on advice from POTUS) and he signs it after they fully approve it.

Its like..until it happens I just wont believe it can happen. Just like the battleship of yesteryear. They became an outdated platform. That which you say was forced happened many years ago. If we are trying to intimidate Somalia than its a great idea but Iran and North Korea have access to Chinese and Russians…

Emphasis on 4. Supercarriers can be hospitals, power stations, desalination plants, and air strips.

The timing of the drone deployment is likely coincidence. They needed a new airframe to fill the scout helicopter role vacated by the Kiowa retirement recently.

It’s one big, enduring game of Not Touching You Can’t Get Mad.

The US can knock ballistic missiles out of the air at anytime but doing so would show our defensive capabilities to everyone. Flying armed drones over North Korea’s head gives us the ability to target any of their hardware and have eyes on their movements when and if shit does hit the fan.

Pardon the ignorance here, but what good is a UAV against a ballistic missile? I thought Hellfire were primarily air-to-surface, not air-to-air...

Second the aircraft porn dumps.

Projecting power has nothing to do with ‘policing’ the world and everything with protecting US political and economic interests. The US and US citizens do not benefit from an unstable world or a world where the US is unable to defend its interests.

That may be true of some systems, but the Nimitz class aircraft carrier is one of the primary reasons nobody seriously thinks about fucking with you

The previous administration spent the last 8 yrs taking the US from 9 trillion in debt to nearly 20 trillion and you’re just now getting upset about it? There is more than enough government waste that can be cut before increasing defense spending adds to the debt.

That “World Police nonsense” that you are talking about is part of what NATO is. So NATO isn’t important?

Ding, Ding, Ding - we have a winner

...and if the satellites go out they can be found using radar and air/submarine reconnaissance. They’re not invisible.

One conventional missile is not going to sink a carrier, mission kill maybe.

You mean cleaning up the steaming pile of shit the last GOP administration left for us?

The multi trillion dollars we spent trying to fill in the hole that the Cheney administration swindled us into digging in Iraq?

The war that we’re still fighting?

I agree. The US needs to scale down the scope of missions we expect our military to support. Europe needs to be more responsible for its own defense, same with Israel, Japan, and South Korea. We must continue to work with our international partners and support them, but our level of forward basing and direct aide need…

You may or may not be aware that the total defense budget for the US is $584 Billion. SS, Medicare and Medicaid combined are $1.866 Trillion. these are numbers published by the CBO @ cbo.gov for 2016

The USA hasn’t scored an air-to-air kill since the Iraqi no fly zones; better scrap all the fighter jets.