Unfortunately this is the problem with being an idealist. Best does not mean perfect. Far from it... You can have state run media, which will not speak ill of the state (and has inherent bias) or you will have corporation-run media, which will play whatever makes money, and apply the slant that will get them the most…

The Harpoon uses a booster as well, despite being launched nearer horizontal. It came out before VLS tubes were being used, so it has several old-style methods for launch, and it has just never been adapted. I am just making the point that launch orientation has nothing to do with the engagement range.

Harpoons use a booster to get moving, then dump the booster and fire their jet engine to maintain speed.

That sounds like something you have just made up... Harpoons are cruise missiles that use a jet engine for longer range engagements. Using them close-in would be risky as they have active seekers that could well engage a friendly if used too close. Their launch angle has nothing at all to do with long vs short range.

Having your bluff called now and then is far better than making no bluffs at all and folding at every turn.

There were. Old ones. They didn’t find any evidence of an active program, but they did find plenty of older Chem warheads buried in the desert.

There’s a whole lot of foreign policy spectrum left between doing nothing and war... And Putin is actually actively demonstrating that. For instance, we could very publicly and visibly say to Turnkey “You are a NATO member, so we will honor our obligations if there are any further incursions into your airspace by…

You can be a great leader but an economic dunce. They aren’t mutually exclusive. Just like someone can be an expert in politics and not be able to manage their own checking account. What you’re saying has nothing to do with his political/foreign policy savvy.

Because the quieter ones go in first followed by the support choppers after the insertion? It’s not like the quiet ones could land without being heard. Once they were directly over the compound they likely woke everyone up. The idea was to not be heard coming from 2-3 minutes away giving them time to get to their…

You’re kidding, right? A single Osprey would wake up the whole city as soon as it transitioned to vertical, and likely would have had trouble fitting into the courtyard at all (not to mention the things flying all over the places from the air moved by those massive props).

I am fairly certain it was more about the fact that a launch from that close could reach its target before we had a chance to launch our own. For example, if you fire from the other side of the planet we’ve got a good 35-45 minutes to get our “birds” in the air. They take time to fuel and launch.

This is what I notice a lot.... when we get involved we get everyone screaming bloody murder.... when we stay out, same result. Apparently we have a perfect record of only getting into the ones that we should not have, and staying out of the ones we should have gotten into.

I don’t believe that was the point being made.... They don’t need to make one of their own. They just put it back together best they can and aim radars at various surfaces. Test the radar-absorbing coating on individual panels against radars of various frequencies, etc.

Quick quiz... Why did Muammar Gaddafi’s “line of death” not last long when he tried to claim waters outside the internationally recognized borders?

You obviously do not know what a war is. Both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq achieved their goals (to defeat those states and replace their regimes). What followed was an occupation after an already-won war.

I would question whether or not Russia has any ELINT capable systems in the area, and the wisdom of giving them a look at the true RCS and LPI radar emissions from the F-22. Could they be crafty enough to be trying to arrange “encounters” with the F-22 for study?

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?