You give Israel way to much credit. What exactly do you think they are going to do? Bomb them? Way to much infrastructure for them to attack, and way to far away to sustain the bombing campaign they would need to do. Nuke em? Yep, I guess they could do that, and then force every other middle-east country to try to get…

Totally agree - However, as i’ve said before - The A-10 is not survivable in a modern battlefield anyway. Places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and places where no significant ground to air threat exists are perfect for the A-10. Put the A-10 up against the Russian army, and it will be mince meat. I suppose the F-35 would be…

Well, i’d say two things to that..

I’m not a total naysayer on the F-35, it seems to me it will be a great war fighter for certain roles. I question the ability for it to be everything to everyone, with the marine version seemingly being the best of the bunch.

True - But still gimmicks, it wasnt going to change the course of the war. I’d argue that if they had stopped doing stupid shit like that, and focused on basic weapons (Germany most of all) they might have been able to win some crucial battles (North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, etc).

Good point - But in early 1942 I dont think anyone would say the war was “lost” for the U.S. (although things looked bleak). 1943 Italy, I would think the leadership would be starting to say “Yep, we’ve got problems, lets not try to attack, but lets try not to die”.

Interesting. It always boggles my mind how the Axis was willing to expend such time, money and effort into plans that had less then clear returns on the investment. One has to wonder if they had just concentrated on the core items, how the war may have turned out.

Any we can fix their shitty beer situation. :)

Are we still responsible for the Air Defense of Iraq?

You are missing the point. Like it or not, its an effective tool to accomplish a specific job. You cant predict any more then I can what the political landscape will be in 10, 20, 50 years (the lifetime of the F-35). If you told someone in 1945 our greatest enemy would be the Russians, and our allies would be the…

I’m speaking from a military viewpoint of getting a job done, not the political consequences. Those cant be predicted as you dont know the circumstances of the political situation leading up to the use of the weapon. That is why I listed allies as potential targets (Israel, India, Pakistan, etc). History has proven…

Their are some areas that cannot be destroyed by conventional weapons. Their are some targets that may *need* to be taken out at all costs to stop a attack. In those instances, it might be the right tool for the job.

Yes - On a lesser power that doesnt have the capacity to retaliate, or only has the ability to retaliate in a local theater. Think Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel, North Korea, etc. I’m not saying we are going to war with any of those countries, but if we did need to use nuclear weapons against them, a air dropped smart…

I wonder how long it would take to fire a full salvo? Are they done sequentially, or can you fire multiples at once? I’d hate to be sitting still unleashing 154 of those things sequentially.

Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Iranians did ‘hack’ it. By Hack, I dont mean hacking into the software, probably more spoofing the GPS signal somehow or jamming it.

We didnt get it back.. Iranians AFAIK still have it. They tried to ‘reverse’ engineer it, and created a cool RC plane version of it, thats about it. I’m sure the Chinese/Russians/Whomever paid them a nice chunk of change to send some technicians over there to take a look.

In another 20 years it will be a common fact that the use of Nuclear weapons against Japan was a act of a belligerent U.S. against a benign Japan. Japan was defeated, and their was no reason to use them. The U.S. just wanted to kill Japanese for the hell of it, and to show how scary we could be.

That was a reply to another message. Message from bdk6017:

Dude - WTF are you reading? You obviously STILL have not gone back and read the thread. I was responding to someone that said sticking a Ohio off the coast of Russia in the Black Sea and opening up the missile tubes was a good idea. Obviously that is dumb for 100 different reasons.

I love it. Your’e the guy in a room who overhears part of a conversation, decides hes the expert, and jumps into the middle of a conversation without knowing context. If you had BOTHERED to read the message I was responding to you would understand what I was saying, apparently you didnt. I suggest you actually read…