the PROs and CONs of VLO(stealth) and High speed bombers

Don,

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OTOH, I disagree with your apparent conclusion the Aug. 6 and Aug. 9 bombings of Japan were avoidable at best or unnecessary at worst. 2 reasons. 1, you cannot turn a country “off” and “on” like a light switch. It takes a lot of build-up to reach a national fever pitch. 2, if the public had learned the U.S. had a decisive weapon to quickly end the war painlessly for us, but had failed to use it, the president would have been impeached. Whether our KIAs would have numbered "but 20,000" or even "only 70,000.” Why sustain even 1 KIA otherwise avoidable when we’re at war? Recall what Gen. Sherman said about war.
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Because the war was over regardless. We had their Maru fleet down to nothing and could largely do to them what we threatened to with Cuba. This would have detoothed Japan as an industrial nation within a year at most. If we wished to hasten the process, we could have inflicted the /same levels/ of torment by attacking their food supplies and starving them. Rice Fields are just way to easy to spot.

A starving man can be brought back to health. Or his family compensated for his death. A man or woman whose genes have been disrupted by rads continues contribute to the congenital problems of his entire culture FOREVER. And if you've seen Fat Man & Little Boy, you know that even the individual deaths of many of those who survived the initial T-Pulse and blast was horrific.

Not to mention _Illegal_ for having violated about 4 different Hague convention restrictions on cruel weapons and civillian targets. Which we were, at that very moment, trying German 'war criminals' for.

Something Lemay himself later admitted he would have been subject to "If I lost the war..."

www.pbs.org...

The irony being that there was NO CHANCE of losing the war. None.

Comparitively, Sherman DID NOT condone attacks upon individual home steads or women and children. He raided food stores where they could be used for Confederate purposes. He burned down regional centers (especially those associated with rail). And he made a lot of 'bowties'. But at least in the main columns, his men were largely well supervised and acted responsibly under threat of dire consequences.

And his was an effort that proved to the Confederate people that their armies were not winning. Something that must be taken into account in a period without reliable outside-view communications of any sort not apt to control by the government.

As to the impeachment deal, for any leak of information to have occured would have meant a No Kidding date with a _FIRING SQUAD_. And Truman would have need only play the trump card of "Yes, and this is film footage of the Trinity Site detonation, don't ask me to kill men women and CHILDREN, after we've become signatories to the Hague Convention and are in the process of hanging Germans for what they did in the Death Camps."

Art. 23.
In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden -

To employ poison or poisoned weapons;

To kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;

To kill or wound an enemy who, having laid down his arms, or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;

To declare that no quarter will be given;

To employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering;

To destroy or seize the enemy's property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war;

Art. 25.
The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.

Art. 26.
The officer in command of an attacking force must, before commencing a bombardment, except in cases of assault, do all in his power to warn the authorities.

Art. 27.
In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes.

It is the duty of the besieged to indicate the presence of such buildings or places by distinctive and visible signs, which shall be notified to the enemy beforehand.

Art. 28.
The pillage of a town or place, even when taken by assault, is prohibited.

www.yale.edu...

I'm no innocent sir. What happens in battle happens and you live with victory as much as defeat.

But in relation to the above declarations, the one thing that cannot be avoided is the complicity at ALL LEVELS of the military with a preplanned operation against a largely defenseless civillian target.

When there was no exigent cause or pressure to justify the act.

We killed because we had a bug in our shorts to find out what this thing could do. And because the victims had yellow skin and an epicanthic fold so that 'guilt was optional'.

Which I suppose makes the the ultimate argument to be made here one of 'what goes around...'.

The Emperor's Greatest Power is The Gift Of Mercy. Who he gives it to and who he withholds it from.

We had, without question, that ultimate grace upon us. A chance to show THE WHOLE WORLD _why we led_. And we blew it.

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Superficially, that sounds right on. But on reflection, I don’t see it that way. In ideological war, what targets are chosen depends on the decision of the attacker more so than on the state of preparedness of the enemy.
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We returned to 10-14mpg cars in the 90's. We took trips. We bought our way into 3.6 trillion in private credit debt. And 8.8 trillion in commercial and real estate equivalents. At a time when our economy was contracting.

WHY?

Cheap Oil. Buck Thirty a gallon for gas when all of EU had been paying upwards of 4-7 bucks /per liter/ for the better part of 2 decades. Heating oil and diesel for train and ships. All the things by which a 'commerce' (Consumerist tapeworm) driven economy sustains cheap transport of goods to our shores.

How do you ensure this? By knocking out one of the top 5 PG producers and letting the others cover the production shortfall in exchange for a kickback.

What is the result? That which comes in never leaves. And 300,000 Iraqi's die while honor-challenged idiots like UBL get testy about infidel apostates squatting in their holy dust.

It was thus FAR from a 'rational' thing that was needed. It was /intent/. To find a way through. Do we attack? Do we leave? Do we negotiate? And the U.S. chose none of those things. And so (multiple bowshots later) 9/11 happened.

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Rational considerations - to us - very likely are irrelevant to the attackers. Indeed, the attacker did strike the Pentagon. Whether that was a primary target or a secondary target, I do not know. To me, a hit on the WH or Capitol would have been a much higher priority than to hit the Pentagon. OTOH, we have paid little or no attention to the publicly stated grievances that al Qaeda said prompted the Nine Eleven Event. Anybody remember what he said? Sadly, that is irrelevant to us. Maybe we are also ideologically driven? Act irrationally? Hey, don’t bring up Iraq.
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Iraq is the casepoint for what is wrong with the U.S. armed force structure and in particular linear objectivism as a function of generating airpower models. If you shift to a cellular approach, you can attack a target as it appears TO YOU.

But only if you have the mosaic pattern sensor arrays and CHEAP ($$ per flight hours as much as replacement cost) platforms to mount them on. So that you see the big picture from many perspectives.

It is inherent to this approach that we must acknowledge that there IS a bigger picture. That simply 'unleashing' a singular military capability (like the LRS as a followon bomber) until there is no more threat is no longer a viable enterprise and _has not been_ since WWII judged the Nazis as war criminals.

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Let me add a personal anecdote, albeit old. Military reservations are no more prepared for the unexpected than was NYC or W-DC. Soldiers and airmen do not walk around with cocked pistols. I admit I was discharged from the USAF in March, 1964, at MacDill, by the way. But human nature does not change.
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The problem is that attacks on the Khobar Towers, the Embassies, The Cole and a dozen other "Hey Dummies!" bowshot warnings of intent did not provide the impetus for the u.S. to believe that WE were under attack.

Because THEY had chosen to attack 'military targets' which OUR BOYS were only-too-glad to play popup target for.

Yet in the end, our trust as much as confidence that these military forces knew what they were doing or at least could act as a sacrificial buffer was misplaced.

And now that civillian targets are officially on the menu (thank you /so much/ Colonel Tibbets and Major Sweeney!) we have discovered that 'Our Boys' are no longer over there until it's over over there (or otherwise). They are right here in among us. And the things they must do to 'protect the undefendable' are tantamount to setting up the worlds greatest FREE NATION. To become what the terrorists themselves can only achieve by implication and threat.

THAT IS BAD.

Yet that is implicit to the concept of a bomber playing tag with a target list that looks like it came out of a gradeschool "Things that keep me healthy and happy!" list of utilities, government and transport features.

I'm all for finding UBL. I just don't think it will do any good to search a nation of 647,500 square kilometers (Afghanistan) or 778,720 square kilometers (Pakistan) with a force of 20-100 of them.

And once we have UBL in hand, under trial, and on his way to a needle. I would like to see some SERIOUS reconsideration as to what our armed forces do FOR US. Versus the threat of their existence TO US is likely to entail while acting as the World's Cop.

Unfortunately power is it's own inertia. And MANNED air power is going to be particularly hard to reform because it involves a symbolic image of the 'White Scarf Warrior'. And looks so innocuous in Peace Time.

Yet it is the principal means by which we choose to inject ourselves, 'without intent' (to win or leave). And thus makes us look like bullies because we cannot hit what we cannot find of the singular targets that this _criminal pursuit_ of a terrorist fugitive should truly represent.


KPl.

posted by ch1466: “Don . . the war was over regardless. We had their Maru [inland waterways] fleet down to nothing . . we could do to them what we threatened to do with Cuba. This would have detoothed Japan as an industrial nation within a year. If we wished to hasten the process, we could have attacked their food supplies. Rice fields are easy to spot. A starving man can be brought back to health. Or his family compensated for his death . . if you've seen “Fat Man & Little Boy,” you know the individual deaths of many of those who survived the initial T-Pulse and blast was horrific. [Edited by Don W]

I have learned only recently about the near coup at the Imperial Palace and August 15 end of the war, that attempted to intercept the Emperor’s surrender message. I saw it first on History Channel. Probably high school and college history books include that? The Emperor had 2 copies made, perhaps having been warned of or just suspecting such a possibility. I have been to Tokyo long ago and I have ridden a taxi around the Imperial Palace but never got inside. It is a very large place protected by a moat and a wall.

When I was there (1953) older Japanese women trimmed the grass at the Imperial Palace by hand, on their knees. After a day’s work, they were “paid” with 3 or 4 cigarettes bearing the Imperial seal. I don’t know if that custom continues today or not.

Suicide or death was not the objective of Bushido. Rather, the code of conduct mandated unlimited, undivided loyalty. Our own feudal fealty. Probably a close relative to the driving impulse of early Christian martyrs. And, at that time - 1945 - the Japanese people believed to a man the Emperor was a divine presence on Earth. Not that he was God. Only his word would be sufficient to stop the Japanese from resisting foreign invaders as they had done at Okinawa.

We (barbaric) Occidentals tend to mock (cultured) Orientals who hold their accentors in great esteem. Out of respect of the sacrifices they have already made, we, the living, must live rightly and not dishonor them. We Westerners wrongfully or ignorantly accuse them of ancestor worship while we ourselves worship the Almighty Dollar. We feel impelled to play like we worship a poor man from Galilee. That’s why we build multi-million dollar mega churches. And live in gated communities. That’s why 27,000 children die every day of starvation. Hmm? Oops! I digress.

“ . . Not to mention Illegal for having violated about 4 different Hague convention restrictions on cruel weapons and civillian targets. Which we were, at that very moment, trying German 'war criminals' for something Lemay himself later admitted he would have been subject to "If I lost the war..." The irony being that there was NO CHANCE of losing the war. None.

The US had ramped up its war effort until by July, 1945, we had 13 million men and women under arms. The largest army a free nation had ever assembled. 16 million men and women had served in WW2, but already we had discharged 3 million for having “done their duty.” The draft period of service had been “for the duration and six months.” We used a points system to let the people out early. It just was not going to be a satisfactory end to the war for us to impose a naval blockade and wait for Japan to surrender.

For at least one good reason, the USSR would not wait. The USSR had grievances against Japan from the 1905 Russo-Japanese War they had lost. Korea was an issue, the Japanese had taken Korea in 1910. Manchuria was another issue. The Japanese had taken it in 1931. Formosa was an issue, the Japanese had taken it in 1937. There were other issues, but we could not just say, “OK when you’ve had enough, call us.”

We never joined the League of Nations. I suppose the Hague conventions you refer to would not be binding on Americans. Under the old theory of national sovereignty. The U.N. was not founded until 1946. In San Francisco. Then moved to Lake Placid, NY.

Truman would have need only play the trump card of "Yes, and this is film footage of the Trinity Site detonation, don't ask me to kill men women and CHILDREN, after we've become signatories to the Hague Convention and are in the process of hanging Germans for what they did in the Death Camps."

I do not think that would have worked. Even in 1945, films were susceptible to manipulation. No, a movie would not have gotten the job done, no matter how bad the popcorn or stale the Crackerjacks. We tried the Germans and others under the broad theory of international law - like English Common Law - for “crimes against humanity.” Unwritten but that on which most men of good will can agree. I can’t recall whether we invoked the Hague Conventions or not, but it did not matter, we would have our trials, and we would have our pound of flesh. Too many people had died to deal in technicalities or to exile them to Argentina and Brazil.

I'm no innocent sir. What happens in battle happens and you live with victory as much as defeat. But in relation to the above declarations, the one thing that cannot be avoided is the complicity at ALL LEVELS of the military with a preplanned operation against a largely defenseless civilian target. When there was no exigent cause or pressure to justify the act.

See my post, just above.

We killed because we had a bug in our shorts to find out what this thing could do. And because the victims had yellow skin and an epicanthic fold so that 'guilt was optional'.

You are absolutely wrong, KPl. Although I was only 11 years old on August 6, and August 9, 1945, I was visiting my uncle and aunt on a farm near Fordsville, Ky. They had 4 sons, the oldest was a SeaBee - Construction Battalion - the next was an instructor at Pensacola NAS, the third was a corporal in the Army in France and the 4th and youngest, was a new PFC leaving basic training heading for Fort Ord to be posted into the Pacific. The bombs were called “super” bombs, and we marveled that 1 bomb could take out a whole city. But our joy was in knowing her 4 sons would be alive and well!

There was no conversation that anyone was glad a particular Japanese person was dead, but we were glad the war was ended. America was not into killing for killings sake. Sure, our propaganda painted the Japanese unfavorably, but that was propaganda and everyone knew it. I declare that you are wrong in your assessment of the American attitude in 1945.

Iraq is the case point for what is wrong with the U.S. armed force structure and in particular linear objectivism as a function of generating air power models. If you shift to a cellular approach, you can attack a target as it appears TO YOU.

I can give you the reason our military is wrong in two words, Donald Rumsfeld. Who I call the Oberfuhrer. Please don’t blame the career officers and men (and women) of our Armed Forces for what is caused in the Oval Office and Pentagon. It is the shareholders of General Dynamics, Lockheed-Martin and AMGeneral allied with the revolving door concept in the Pentagon, who are causing this problem. Not the men and women doing what they are told to do.


[edit on 4/21/2006 by donwhite]

To help everyone get a better understanding of Stealth Technology, we now have a thread dedicated to explaining how stealth works and what some of it's limites are. Any one who is intrested might want to have a look:

Stealth Technology Explained!

Tim

I think it is safe to say that the only con of stealth, is $$$$$$$$$$