That assumes that you can actually locate and target from that huge range.

1) Most of the articles on FA about how stupid and wasteful the Pentagon here is click bait and wrong.

There are a lot of low threat areas where folks still want terminal BMD defense. The older Burkes not getting Baseline 9 will go there.

“Is pretty much the answer, we have become so comfortable with having air superiority since we started using aircraft we don’t think of anything else. We never really put much thought into SAM systems and at best always throw something out that at best works as a mild stop gap”

China needs carriers because without them they have no counter against a far blockade besides subs and subs can’t stop aircraft or land based ASMs. If we control Malacca, Sunda, Lombok, etc China loses access to oil. We can play A2AD as well.

China is currently still in soft power mode with some passive aggressive positioning in the SCS sprinkled in there.

“Yes, it is a little bewildering to think that the Navy is just starting to come to terms with this issue, and the fact that most of the Navy’s ballistic missile defense capable surface combatants can’t look for air breathing and ballistic missile threats at the same time is a well known problem.“

Lol...Obama fucked him hard. A Democratic President allowed Congress to essentially exempt fracking from environmental laws (pissing off all the greens) and also managed to get the Saudis to continue to push oil prices down “in competition” with the US by maintaining production. Even though it’s messing with their own…

This guy fired the head of the guard for being too hardcore. I’m fairly certain that if they let him he’d disband the guards as a symbol for peace.

Sorry your empire is bust but if nothing else the British Empire showed the Chinese that might makes right and it was only a hundred years ago or so that lesson was retaught to a weak China.

So far the territory they want is territory they lost. Some of it is marginally questionable like how far south in the SCS their traditional Imperial territory really stretched. Tibet is also iffy.

There’s no real reason to agree to protocols you’re just going to blow off right away.

Folks here don’t know history so are hell bent on repeating it.

LOL. The “experts” braying for the demise of the F-35 are the same “experts” that called the F-22 “Craptor” and helped fuel the bloodlust for killing that program.

While obviously someone at Boeing likes him enough to send him un-watermarked images they ARE posted on their site:

We had a lot more than dozens of IFVs, nine M1s and assorted artillery. It’s hittable by ISIL, it just would take some effort and time to do so.

When ISIL runs an armored VBIED into the Russian compound then the Russians will realize that putting your dick in a grinder is a bad idea.

Lol...good luck with that. At $40 bbl he doesn’t have billions to squander.

POTUS doesn’t visit every day.

That’s the Vinson but she’s pretty fresh too in this picture...no visible rust...