Yeah, that happens. I grew up in Neptune City, right near Asbury Park (which you did NOT acknowledge until about ten years ago, because Asbury SUCKED). Spending 11+ years in and around Philly would make anyone insane.

The Pine Barrens are definitely South Jersey. Central Jersey stretches from Trenton to Belmar, about 10 miles south of I-195, and about 20 miles north of 195. Point Pleasant is Central. Seaside is South. Toms River is South. Hell, Brick is South. Hazlet is Central, yet Edison is North. New Brunswick is Central.

That’s the fucking truth. I live in Charleston, and it’s terrible here. People crash into everything, and for no damn reason. They drive slow, hog the left lane, wait until the last damn second to merge or move from the left lane to exit, and just generally suck. But they’re very nice.

1 - There are Wawas in Central Jersey.

I used to live in Cherry Hill, and went to college at Drexel, and never went to the damn thing. I’ve been to the USS North Carolina, USS Missouri, USS Yorktown, and a half dozen other ships, but never my state’s namesake, which was a 15 minute drive.

This is the government, you’re talking about. Nothing changes easily, programs take a lot of political will and time to kill, and frankly, they don’t know what they want, ever.

Because funding for long-lead items is approved and spent YEARS before the end-item articles are actually available for use. When you’ve spent untold billions of dollars (BTW, the Ford was awarded in 2008, before President Obama took office, and the F-35 Low Rate Initial Production award was made back in ~2006), you…

As someone currently dealing with Navy procurement in a post-Bush White House world, you’re 100% wrong.

As I said to someone else, to design and procure a new BBG class, which would likely be capped at somewhere between 4 and 6 ships, they’d be horrendously expensive to procure. DDG-1000 ships, even at a full ship class buy, would cost $4b. Procuring a bigger, heavier, more capable ship, with hundreds of more…

No, but DDG-1000, even if it were a full ship class, would have cost $4b for a ship that would be a third of the gross tonnage of a modern BBG. The cost of a BBG would be damn near what a new Ford-class CVN cost! Sure, you could probably get away with the ~400 sailors on a Burke-class DDG, but you’d still spent four…

Hacks are difficult to affect if you can’t get access to the network on which the command and control system run...

With what power?

How cheap is it for DDG-1000 to lob shells? Each of the LRLAP shells for the AGS cost $800,000 because the Navy killed the ship class, then the Navy decided to stop buying them after the 200 or so that were purchased for DDG-1000 DT&OE. A Tomahawk costs $1.4m and is WAAAAYYY more capable.

FINALLY!

Well, no, but I did go to a military high school, learned Naval Science from former Navy Commanders and Captains, and have been supporting the Navy for twelve years. I do read military history books, so I am fairly informed about both current and historical events.

The problem was the Japanese resolve towards unconditional warfare. Their civilians fought tooth and nail. Their military members on various islands had to be rooted out at great expense in terms of men lost. They would have gone on to fight until the absolute, most bitter end. Yeah, you can pose it as a false…

Well, we had to nuke them. There wasn’t a better option. Sure, we could have just forced them back to their island and put them under a months or years long siege. Sure, we could have invaded. Both would have been horrendously costly to in terms of lives lost and money. None of the options were humane, and none…

Should the US have just pushed them back to their mainland, done no damage to their infrastructure or population centers, and just left them to their own devices to re-arm and attack again in ten years?

So, you’re saying that, in war, we should only fight if the other country is playing by the same rules and with the same weaponry? That’s like saying that because Assad used chemical weapons, we should go drop a shit ton of VX on his palace.

They were also working very diligently on a nuclear weapon, and while they hadn’t produced a working atomic pile, it’s unlikely that they would not have, except that the end of the war ended any research efforts.