Nobody has anywhere near the number of commitments that the US does in defense. Some of the spending is indeed to keep us in the “only super-power” position, but the reason we need to be is the number of allies we have with small militaries that the US has agreed to assist.

I am actually quite surprised they don’t already deploy these ships in small groups with ships covering all the bases. I suppose I had imagined that even smaller surface groups would operate like small Carrier Groups with at least one ASW ship, one AAW and one ASuW.

There were a lot of things in Vietnam handled inappropriately because of how things would look politically. If you read up on reports from pilots that were actually there, they will tell you that they frequently flew over SAM sites under construction, weapons caches and other prime targets that they were forbidden…

Without a shot, eh? I seem to remember an airliner shot down by a Russian SAM and a number of Russian artillery rockets hitting in the middle of cities in that area. What are you smoking?

Have you never watched Top Gun? :P

It’s all irrelevant. They could easily defeat a civilian population if they brought in heavy equipment and just started exterminating everyone and blowing everything up. However, that wouldn’t be a good strategy unless all they want is empty land filled with rubble and the condemnation of every other nation on this…

Scary, tin-foil hat version?

Not really. We are the long arm of NATO and the UN. We protect a lot of smaller countries from much larger enemies. If the US Military wasn’t large enough to provide protection for dozens of other countries, those other countries would need much larger militaries to secure themselves.

You are showing complete and utter ignorance on the topic. Iraq was constantly violating the ceasefire agreement from the Gulf war. Firing on and locking onto allied aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones, and violating the no-fly zones.

Now the saddest part... Why not let Russia stabilize the Middle East if they can? Why do we have to control everything? If we can help Russia, and gain better relations with them, couldn’t we have the same kind of relationship with them that we have with Europe? You know, work together instead of having to have our…

While I share your less than idealistic view of society and people in general. I disagree on your label of “hypocrisy” for anyone that condemns these actions today. If everyone took that opinion we would never make any kind of progress, because everyone would be saying “well, my ancestors did this, so I can’t very…

There is so much wrong with this... the reason the Iraqi IADS was a non-issue was because it was mostly destroyed on the first night (in large part thanks to stealth aircraft). They may have had a lot of older Russian tech, but it was tied together with much newer French C&C systems. Their IADS was actually pretty…

Well, right now during peacetime they don’t exactly want to sneak around, for a number of reasons. First, if they can get the extra range with the tanks and they don’t NEED to sneak, why hide? Second, you don’t give the enemy a good look at your real RCS unless you have to. That would just let them test out various…

This reasoning “when was the last time...” is always a farce. Why do you think we haven’t been invaded? Why do you think other countries in Europe haven’t been invaded, or the many many countries are are allied with both in the middle east and Western/Eastern Europe? Russia is only now testing us with Crimea, and they…