Unstoppable - Russian next gen stealth hypersonic ramjet/scramjet cruise/anti-ship missiles., page 11

Originally posted by semperfoo
Stellar why not make your point short, sweet, and to the point?

My first post probably was but since do many of my corrections are just ignored or misrepresented things tend to go on a bit.

I qouted you so that I could respond to your points, as soon as I started typing it started deleting your post. So im going to addresse of few of your points.

The entire post would have been about 10 000 words so you can not type any more. Copy to whatever you use and type up a response before you break it up for posting.

Judging by what russian officials

Judging by what SOME Russian officials , now probably working for western/Russian funded disarmament groups, have to say that is certainly a conclusion one might be able to reach if you look no deeper and wish to believe that the US armed forces are in fact properly employing those vast amounts of money. That being said there is good evidence showing that the US armed forces are in a even worse position considering it's global aspirations and intervention policy.

Because of this failure, Wilson concludes, the U.S. military remains "perhaps in peril of losing the 'war,' even after supposedly winning it."

Overall, he grades the U.S. military performance in Iraq as "mediocre."

In his analysis of U.S. military operations in 2003 in northern Iraq, Wilson also touches on another continuing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq -- the number of troops there. "The scarcity of available 'combat power' . . . greatly complicated the situation," he states.

Wilson contends that a lack of sufficient troops was a consequence of the earlier, larger problem of failing to understand that prevailing in Iraq involved more than just removing Hussein. "This overly simplistic conception of the 'war' led to a cascading undercutting of the war effort: too few troops, too little coordination with civilian and governmental/non-governmental agencies . . . and too little allotted time to achieve 'success,' " he writes.

www.washingtonpost.com...

Not something a official US army Historian, of the Iraq campaign, should say be saying according to you but there it is.

"Our ground forces have been stretched nearly to the breaking point," warned the bipartisan Iraq Study Group in its recent report. "The defense budget as a whole is in danger of disarray."

It may seem hard to believe that a country which allocated $168 billion to the Army this year -- more than twice the 2000 budget -- can't cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the two pillars of the Army, personnel and equipment -- both built to wage high-tech, firepower-intensive wars -- are under enormous stress:

Here are just a few of the grim facts from Jaffe's exclusive:

* According to Maj. Gen Stephen Speakes, the Army was sent to war in Iraq $56 billion short of essential equipment.
* Army officials told the White House that it needs at least an additional $24 billion, not in the 2007 budget, just to pay its current bills.
* Cash shortfalls have forced the Army to lay off janitorial staff, close base swimming pools, and even stop mowing lawns on Army bases.
* But cuts have also hit soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army officials had to cut $3 billion for replacement of weapons in heavy use in Iraq, such as armored Humvees, two-way radios, remote control surveillance aircraft and trucks.
* National Guard units now lack 40% of their critical readiness gear because it's been sent to Iraq, and the Army lacks the funds to replace it.

www.post-gazette.com...

Having now killed as many as 700 000 Iraqi's due to this incompetence and mismanagement ( unless one wants to argue that it was their original aim) of funds it's probably time you stop believing vague accusations made by Russian officials who we can show to be lying about the weakness of the Russian armed forces.

had to say after the US quick defeat of saddams conventional army in GW2 I would say the US is in a class of its own, militarily as well as economically speaking.

I don't see what the defeat of the Iraqi army suggest , to even the most ignorant, about the Russian army as it is well documented that the equipment used by the Iraqi army were hopelessly inferior to the Russian army equivalents they are derived from. If one wants to indulge in such superficial analysis one can easily reach the conclusion that the United states are force is incompetent and inferior considering their performance over the past five decades against not much but outdated and stripped down models of Soviet/Russian equipment in their various wars against third world countries who certainly could not operate even those inferior models to their maximum efficiency. If superficial is what your looking for i could make any number of observations about the 'pathetic' US armed forces that can not even subdue a country of 21 million who should have welcomed the American intervention with open arms.

Taking a superficial approach will teach us nothing and do not think that my general respect for the US armed forces ( considering the situations they are dropped into their performance is certainly not bad) may not lead to responding with more superficially accurate claims of US incompetence. Why not rather take my approach and look behind what the Christian science monitor has decided to quote?

The Iraqi Army - which was cloned from the Red Army in the final decades of the Soviet Union - mounted only a feeble defense before falling apart.

The Iraqi army was NOT cloned from the Red army in the final decades of the Soviet Union ( unless you want to provide sources which can prove that to be case) and mounted a relatively spirited defense with it's very limited means, outdated equipment and morale shattered by more than a decade of American bombardment and sanctions and then against

"The key conclusion we must draw from the latest Gulf war is that the obsolete structure of the Russian armed forces has to be urgently changed," says Vladimir Dvorkin,

Since he is 'qualifying' his conclusion based on a something that is simply not true , and he should know if given his position, i don't know what to make of it and must assume it to be misinformation to distract those who are interested in being so. Whatever the tactics or doctrine of the Iraqi armed forces their equipment allowed nothing remotely Russian in thinking and attempting to do so with their obviously inferior models, given terrain, training standards, morale, force numbers and general economic position and the vast volumes of knowledge their enemy gained by two decades of intelligence gathering, it's no surprise that they lose and did so badly. To make generalisations about the Russian armed forces based on these 'qualifications' begs correction in the absence of anything that remotely qualifies it.

head of the Russian Defense Ministry's official think tank on strategic nuclear policy. "The gap between our capabilities and those of the Americans has been revealed, and it is vast.

The gap between the Iraqi army and the invading forces were certainly vast but the connections drawn to the Russian armed forces is non-existent. The Soviet Union is in a far better strategic position than it was in 1941 and even then it managed to survive the Nazi war machine that had few rivals in known history. I don't believe that the USA today has abilities of the then Wehrmacht in either equipment or doctrine and by their exploits in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq i don't see how the Russians have anything to fear from US conventional forces that will probably take years to deploy in numbers suitable for a land invasion of Russia. There is no gap worth calling such in either conventional arms or strategic arms and unless you want to cite the 'knowledge' the author bases this on i believe my sources of the past speaks volumes to this issue.

We are very lucky that Russia has no major enemies at the moment, but the future is impossible to predict, and we must be ready."

Russia has a major enemy in the USA ( take a look at a map and US deployments in recent decades) so even here his is attempting to distract ignorant readers into a false sense of security. The future is hard to predict only if one does not know the workings and plans of those who are attempting to sculpt it and i find it interesting that the author notes this as if in contradiction to his earlier statements.

Unlike you they paint a more realistic picture though grim it is. It goes on..

He ( assuming it's properly translated or not entirely fabricated) paints a picture you would like to believe in but with all such pictures it's rarely has much to do with reality. A more objective look at what people inside and outside their respective former armed forces say will lead you much closer to reality than simply picking the word of a Russian source you would not otherwise believe.

Continued

The swift victory by mobile, high-tech American forces

It was not in fact very swift or very mobile ( largely tanks to the Abrams tanks that can't go anywhere of note without taking a convoy of gas trucks along) 'victory' and considering the state of the opposition it was nothing as spectacular as either early German victories in Europe, Britain's victories in North Africa or the later Soviet campaigns in the East. If that is the best the US armed forces can do against a hopelessly outdated force with no air cover, compromised air defenses and no morale to speak of after two decades of spying and more than a decade of intensive intelligence gathering and suppression/destruction of air defense networks it is a very bad sign indeed. When one looks at the ineffectiveness of the USAF in Kosovo it seems clear that without such preparation all the USAF are able to to is terror bombing and then only due to the lack of any serious and/or high altitude, air defenses.

over heavily armored Iraqi troops dug in to defend large cities like Baghdad has jolted many Russian military planners.

The Iraqi troops where not heavily armored as their tanks lacked reactive armor or even the basic armor packages that like Russian tanks have. When one investigates that absence of night fighting equipment and general lack of proper means ( sighting equipment which are deployed in like Russian tanks) to acquire targets at distance it's not surprise they lost and even more surprising that they did not do so sooner considering their compromised strategic and command capabilities.

The source does not state which Russian military planners/analysts were 'jolted' so i will assume only some were and then not in my opinion the informed one's.

"The Iraqi Army was a replica of the Russian Army, and its defeat was not predicted by our generals," says Vitaly Shlykov, a former deputy defense minister of Russia.

Which generals? The Iraqi Army is certainly not a replica of the Russian army as was abundantly evident by it's conduct and organisation.

Like its Soviet prototype, Iraq's Army was huge but made up mainly of young, poorly trained conscripts.

The Iraqi army was not in fact 'huge' by 2003 and had nowhere near the technical skills to draw or the same conscript base. Since when are/were Russian conscripts so poorly trained that they can not operate their equipment as the Iraqi's failed to do? Can we learn from the Afghanistan and Chechen wars anything that we could not learn from Vietnam, Korea or Iraq? I don't think it's fair to judge the performance of armies when their politicians sells them down the river and sends inexperienced or badly trained and equipped formations into combat situations they are simply not prepared to deal with effectively. The Iraqi resistance is also nowhere near as well armed or trained as the Chechen's the Russians are dealing with and are still managed to inflict a hundred thousand or more casualties on just the US backed and trained Iraqi defense force who are in fact doing the dangerous work. That so many American soldiers are still dying behind their Iraqi army human shields is quite telling about the scale of problem.

Its battle tactics called for broad frontal warfare, with massed armor and artillery, and a highly centralized command structure.

Non of which they had by 2003 and non of which means anything in a desert without a operational air force or massed and very mobile air defenses. If the author mentioned any of these considerations his opinions could be considered worthy but since he is providing absolutely no context as to the vast, vast differences between the forces one wonders what his motives might be.

But those forces were trounced in a few days by relatively small numbers of US and British forces,

And considering the disparities in all the above noted area the result could only have been surprising to those who did not look at all the variables i have noted above. There were certainly nothing 'revolutionary' about it.

who punched holes in the Iraqi front using precision weapons and seized the country's power centers more rapidly than traditional military thinkers could have imagined.

Traditionalist who managed to avoid reading the last few centuries worth of history it seems. To reach the 'power centers' of such a small country taking so long reflects quite poorly on a force that had the initiative and especially so considering the fact that the vast majority of Iraqi military formations never engaged US forces in combat and simply left their units upon the official 'surrender'.. Not so long ago the Germans captured key strategic areas faster while actively seeking out to destroy Russian military formations. Anyone who suggest that there was something revolutionary about that invasion should note the incompetence of the Iraqi high command and just how long it still took the US forces to isolate and capture Baghdad

"The military paradigm has changed, and luckily we didn't have to learn that lesson firsthand," says Yevgeny Pashentsev, author of a book on Russian military reform. "The Americans have rewritten the textbook, and every country had better take note."

It's hard to take the conclusion very seriously when all it's based on have been so completely misrepresented. I think Sun Tzu's maxim holds true in this case and considering how much effort the Russians spends downplaying their strength one should probably be very afraid. The military paradigms have not changed for a long time now ( a couple thousand years imo) and beside for refinements like more speed ( by ever faster damage delivery systems such as ICBMs and RF weapons), more surprise, ( hacking, spy satellites), better morale ( robotics) and the like nothing has in fact changed.

As the US prepared to invade Iraq, many Russian military experts warned that American forces would come to grief in the streets of Iraqi cities.

How many? Would that explain why the US avoided fighting in cities and why it today has little if any control of Baghdad beside the green zone? Why has it not even managed to secure the 20 or thirty mile road linking Baghdad airport to the green zone and uses helicopters for any officials of note? The US is still employing air strikes by the dozen so it's clear that the country were never really secured as is normally assumed under the term.

"Reluctance in even defining the situation . . . is perhaps the most telling indicator of a collective cognitive dissidence on part of the U.S. Army to recognize a war of rebellion, a people's war, even when they were fighting it," he comments.

Because of this failure, Wilson concludes, the U.S. military remains "perhaps in peril of losing the 'war,' even after supposedly winning it."

Overall, he grades the U.S. military performance in Iraq as "mediocre."

www.washingtonpost.com...

Some predicted the battle of Baghdad would resemble the Russian Army's two assaults on the Chechen capital of Grozny - in 1995 and again in 2000 - each of which lasted more than a month and cost hundreds of Russian casualties.

If the US politicians sent in formations with the same readiness levels the results would have been the same. Are we taking into account that more than fifty thousand Iraqi soldiers working for the occupation forces were killed or wounded in just the last 18 months ( as i recall anyways)? The fact that it was not is a reflection on the morale and the training of the Chechen rebels and not on the Russian formations that had to attack them. The difference between Grozny and Fallujah is mainly that the US just bombed it like the Russians later bomber Grozny before risking the casualties that MUST result from the type of street fighting even the most incompetent of defenders can organize given a interest to do so.

Early in the Iraq war, the Russian online newspaper Gazeta.ru reported that two retired Soviet generals may have played a key role in designing Iraq's defenses. The paper published photos of Vladimir Achalov, an expert in urban warfare,

Was he the guy that told Qusay Hussein to keep shifting his main defensive formations around in the days leading up to the success of the 'thunder raids' in capturing key targets? If that was his advice he obviously not trying to help. Playing a 'key' role in a defense so badly organized ( defense is a science that can in fact be done 'by the book') speaks volumes as to the truth of the claim or the intended nature of the 'help'.

and Igor Maltsev, a specialist in air defenses, receiving medals from Iraq's defense minister two weeks before the war began. Russian TV later quoted General Maltsev as saying "the American invaders will be buried in the streets of Baghdad."

What air defenses? What air defenses did Iraq have left after ten years of constant bombardment of their air defense infrastructure? Do you realise that the USAF were staging ONE HUNDRED plane attacks against Iraqi air defenses in September 2002? How much do you think they have left after ten years of consistent interdiction to 'protect' the illegal( meaning no UN or American congressional orders) and arbitrary 'no fly zones'?

Continued

[edit on 2-5-2007 by StellarX]

Some in Russia's military establishment still appear reluctant to accept the sweeping military verdict in Iraq. "I think American dollars won the war, it was not a military victory," says Gen. Makhmut Gareyev, president of the official Academy of Military Sciences in Moscow. "The Americans bought the Iraqi military leadership with dollars. One can only envy a state that is so rich."

Again, 'some' does not tell me how many and it is in fact true that money bought what ten years of bombardment could not destroy. Whatever money was spent to bribe Iraqi generals it would not in the end have changed much beside the number of dead on both sides.

Can you believe that?

As i pointed out not much can in fact be believed for all the various reasons noted.

HAH What a sorry excuse of a country russia has become today. As long as it makes them sleep better.. Just be glad that a war didnt break out before or after the fall of the USSR, alot of pride on the russian side would have been lost.

And considering the fact that half of the American population might not have been survived, and still probably wont be, to laugh at their 'failure' i'm not sure this is something you should laugh about either.

But others are obviously shaken. "Thank God our public has finally begun to discuss the state of the Army," General Vladimir Shamanov, who commanded Russian troops in two Chechnya wars, told a Moscow radio station after the extent of the US-led triumph in Iraq became clear last week. "Maybe our strategic nuclear forces will protect the country for another decade, but then what? A strong Russia is impossible without a strong army."
www.csmonitor.com...

And some of the units he might have had to command might have led him to this conclusion but then official Russian and western documents shows which troops were assigned fo quell the first rebellion. The Russian strategic forces are more than able to protect the USSR for decades more and as long as the number of weapons on both sides declines the Russian ABM defenses in the S-300 becomes will become ever more potent.

And you yourself, know for a fact that it isn't efficiently spent?

Iraq and Afghanistan is a complete waste of money that has cost the US tax payer not only three or four divisions worth of 'trained' men ( in dead wounded and disabled due to disease/DU/Vaccines etc) but tens of thousands of men in prospective recruits that have no interest in fighting such a unjust lost war. When one starts to look at the damage to equipment and destruction of the training cycles Iraq is a disaster of the first order as is most of these scraps against third world nations. I wont get into the money as it's obvious that it's a massive drain on the cash flow that would have otherwise be employed towards new weapons or maintaining currect stocks.

An assessment of the U.S. military situation by JKC de Courcy is sobering (Intelligence Digest 1/30/98, Stoneyhill Centre, Brimpsfield, Gloucester, GL4 8LF, UK, inteligence-net.com...): Since 1991, the American army has been cut 44%, from 18 divisions to 10. One division is committed to Bosnian peacekeeping, with another in reserve, and three are in Korea. Army brigades lack sufficient unit commanders, mechanics, and basic infantry troops. Sub-units are not training with the commanders they would go to war with; these have been pulled away for duty on humanitarian missions. In a 1997 ``leadership assessment,'' officers in 36% of a series of focus groups said their units don't know how to fight; half of those were concerned about the army's growing ``hollow.'' In the air force, the ``mission capable'' rates for some fighter jets are more that 15% lower than in 1989.

Despite budget cuts of 30% (accounting for inflation), U.S. armed forces have been used in 36 foreign missions since 1989, compared with 22 between 1980 and 1989. Pentagon officials complain that frequent ``low intensity'' missions dilute war-fighting capability by disrupting combat training and breaking down unit cohesion.

www.oism.org...

I am not saying it all is. But we are talking about $500B+. I think we can afford a little wiggle room. I doubt Russia itself could achieve what you speak of with such a massive budget.

You would be surprised how little of that 500 billion is left after all salaries are paid and operational costs subtracted. Do you for instance know what it costs to operate a carrier on yearly basis? What do you make of the 'scarcity of combat power'?

In his analysis of U.S. military operations in 2003 in northern Iraq, Wilson also touches on another continuing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq -- the number of troops there. "The scarcity of available 'combat power' . . . greatly complicated the situation," he states.

Wilson contends that a lack of sufficient troops was a consequence of the earlier, larger problem of failing to understand that prevailing in Iraq involved more than just removing Hussein. "This overly simplistic conception of the 'war' led to a cascading undercutting of the war effort: too few troops, too little coordination with civilian and governmental/non-governmental agencies . . . and too little allotted time to achieve 'success,' " he writes.

www.washingtonpost.com...

If that was the position of the US armed forces in 2003 where do they stand today having lost such volumes of combat power? If that power was availble why was it not employed to properly secure the post war Iraq?

And geophysical weapons? The only side that is being accused by the other side for having such weapons is russia whining to the UN that the US has these type of weapons you speak of. HAARP?

I keep posting the link to the secretary of defense claming that 'others' are deploying geophysical weapons yet you keep ignoring it. The Russians are seemingly always complaining but that does seem to work in their efforts to disarm the United States ever more will fooling, or forcing, them into yet more pointless wars

What are you talking about?

The massively wasteful practices of the Pentagon that fails to account for trillions of dollars worth of spending. You might assume that it went into some kind of top secret programs but then that hardly explains their terrible 'excuses' ( the computers can not communicate properly so as to enable good accounting) when asked to explain the absence of the money..

Here are some clues as to just how wasteful the Pentagon seems to be.

But that’s only part of the story. The untold tale is the wastage and overpricing that continue to lard up the Pentagon budget to the tune of perhaps $100 billion, with Congress scarcely paying attention. In some cases, corporate welfare-type programs that were launched in the ’90s—at a time the Clinton administration felt defense contractors needed help because of post-Cold War budget cuts—are still on the books. And today they are feathering the bottom lines of giant companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, even though Big Defense has long since returned to health.''

The FAR Part 12 provision was also well-intended. Enacted in 1994, it was a way of encouraging companies soon to be deprived of contracts because of the “peace dividend” to produce “dual-use” goods, and of pushing the Pentagon to buy better, cheaper commercial items off the shelf rather than building everything, even those infamous $468 hammers, on its own. But the contractors learned to game the system while few people were watching.

A Boeing spokesman, Dan Beck, also denies any company wrongdoing. “We don’t believe Boeing has ever tried to engage in price gouging or lack of accountability,” he said. Last year, however, a Boeing executive who previously had been the Air Force’s chief procurement officer, Darlene Druyun, was imprisoned for favoring Boeing in contracts in exchange for personal favors, including the hiring of her daughter and son-in-law. Mike Sears, Boeing’s former chief financial officer, was also convicted in the scandal. And in a speech last month, Boeing General Counsel Doug Bain warned 250 top Boeing executives that more indictments could be down the road. He also said the company might have to compensate the U.S. government by up to $5 billion to $10 billion.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism, limiting Congress's ability to oversee spending, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released yesterday.

The Defense Department has reported spending $191 billion to fight terrorism from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks through May 2005, with the annual sum ballooning from $11 billion in fiscal 2002 to a projected $71 billion in fiscal 2005. But the GAO investigation found many inaccuracies totaling billions of dollars.

"Neither DOD nor Congress can reliably know how much the war is costing and details of how appropriated funds are being spent," the report to Congress stated. The GAO said the problem is rooted in long-standing weaknesses in the Pentagon's outmoded financial management system, which is designed to handle small-scale contingencies.

www.washingtonpost.com...

Continued

While the committee staffers are neither elected nor open to public input, they remain accessible to program contractors. "The contractors who stand to benefit from the funding decisions," Aftergood says, "are free to lobby the staffers."

According to the Sept-Oct 1995 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by the Educational Foundation of Nuclear Science, all of the top ten defense contractors in the U.S. were convicted of or admitted to fraud during the period from 1980 to 1992.

www.metroactive.com...

Our thinking goes back to the "Government at the Brink" report issued by the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs in June. On its list of the top ten worst examples of federal mismanagement, number three was "Department of Defense Financial Management." It states, "There is widespread agreement that the Department of Defense finances are a shambles. It wastes billions of dollars each year, and can not account for much of what it spends."

One of the hand-outs from the committee was a diagram of the system used by the Defense Department to track contract and vendor payments. It looked like several spider webs superimposed on each other. The Senate report says that officials at DoD are making more than 57,000 purchases a day. "Unfortunately," it adds, "these same officials can't tell us what they bought and whether they even needed what they got.

The General Accounting Office said that DoD could not reconcile a $7 billion difference between its available fund balances and the Treasury's. The Senate report says the Navy wrote off more than $3 billion in inventory as "lost," but much of it was later delivered. However, it was impossible to determine if the Navy really needed the property. In 1999, the Army found it had 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 aircraft guided-missile launchers for which it had not centrally located records. The implications are astounding. This means the Army may not realize when classified and sensitive defense department equipment is missing or stolen. Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, known for arranging pork barrel projects for his state of West Virginia, has been very critical of the Pentagon's bookkeeping practices. He says, "The Defense Department…is talking about needing an additional $50 billion a year to meet readiness requirements. Yet the Defense Department does not know with any certainty how much money it currently has available." But before spending more money, Senator Charles Grassley said Congress "needs to know more" about where the money is going, and that the Pentagon needs "a sound accounting system." This matter goes far beyond expensive toilet seats and hammers — topics that used to be popular with the media. We need some good investigative reporting aimed at the Pentagon.

www.aim.org...

The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending $640 for a toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time because it couldn't account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes.

WHAT HAPPENED TO $1 TRILLION?

Though Defense has long been notorious for waste, recent government reports suggest the Pentagon's money management woes have reached astronomical proportions. A study by the Defense Department's inspector general found that the Pentagon couldn't properly account for more than a trillion dollars in monies spent. A GAO report found Defense inventory systems so lax that the U.S.

"The (Pentagon's) inability to even complete an audit shows just how far they have to go," he said.

"I've been to Wal-Mart," Kutz said. "They were able to tell me how many tubes of toothpaste were in Fairfax, Va., at that given moment. And DOD can't find its chem-bio suits."

www.sfgate.com.../c/a/2003/05/18/MN251738.DTL

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

benfrank.net...

NARRATOR: We're not talking about the military's huge fleet of bombers aircraft or attack helicopters. We're talking only about the multitude of helicopters and executive jets each of the services fly in what is called the Operational Support Airlift fleet the Air Force's 89th Military Airlift Wing. According to the General Accounting Office about 600 aircraft in this Defense Department fleet it has more aircraft than United Continental. Only American Airlines has more aircraft.

"Now when you leave all the mirrors and smoke aside and all the rationale of DoD officials about why this might not be abuse, the bottom line is this fleet is nothing more than the private airline of senior government officials."

Rep. PETER DeFAZIO (D-OR) (Press conference):
"We had, for instance, $650,000 of cost transporting cadets to football games.

NARRATOR: The Air Force flew at least 22 missions between November 1993 and March 1995 flying cadets to sporting events like this football game in Hawaii.

www.cdi.org...

The last article is particularly interesting in showing just how wasteful this organization is. If the Pentagon employed it's funds as it easily could America could in fact be defended against those threats it really faces and not to kill more innocents in Iraq.

Somehow russia was/is more "efficient" with there spending then the US was/is? Do you have proof of this?

I can not say that the USSR used to be more efficient but i we all know that they did deploy tens of thousands more tanks, IFV's, thousands more aircraft, several hundred SAM batteries, three times as many submarines, twice or three times as many ICBMs/SLBM's in excess of what their opposition deployed. Since closer inspection have revealed to me that these systems were not on the whole inferior or greatly so one can but wonder how the Pentagon managed to consume so much funds without achieving anywhere near the force levels and power projection capacity of the old USSR. Many of these truths still holds true to this day.

Ive read biased russian leaders claims in the past too. About how they were smart and we werent. Its propaganda..

It always is propaganda and lies when the other guy says it. Why do you not respond to claims by US defense officials that confirmed the majority of those claims to be accurate by the mid/late 1970's?

If the USSR was so smart then why did the lose the cold war?

I do not believe that they did and i think i have shown as much; it's hard to tell when people like never responds to the details and just keep repeating your disproved opinions.

Why did they collapse letting the US rape and pillage them for all their "goodies" that were later found out to be nothing more then crap?

When and where did the US rape and pillage the USSR for it's 'goodies'? What i have read does not suggest that many if any large formerly state owned enterprises ended up in western hands even if that superficially seemed to be the case.

Vapid lies? I saw this on Larry Kudlow. And it was a study done by a Professor at UPenn. I dont care if you believe it or not. Either way I will still sleep fine at night.

I don't believe you and i frankly you can take it up with the CIA if you do not want to believe me.

American workers have enjoyed the benefits of both strong job growth and rising wages during the Clinton–Gore administration. Wage inequality began to decrease and real wages began to rise during the late 1990s, following two decades of increasing wage inequality and stagnating average wages.

Since the end of World War II, real wages for production workers have risen by more than half. Most of this growth occurred, however, in the 1950s and 1960s. (See chart 2.1.) After reaching a peak in 1973, real hourly earnings for production workers either fell or stagnated for two decades. During 1996–1998, growth in hourly earnings resumed, accelerating to over two percent in 1998.

For many workers, the stagnating wages of the last quarter century were offset in part by growth in expenditures for other employer-provided compensation, such as health care and pension benefits. Dollars spent on benefits grew more rapidly than those spent on wages and salaries during most of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, accounting for 28 percent of total compensation in 1995. Beginning in 1995, the benefit portion of workers’ compensation grew more slowly, as employers increasingly chose to offer less expensive types of health care and pension plans in order to minimize the growth of labor costs.2

Stagnating real wages and cutbacks in other compensation, however, do not necessarily mean stagnating income and living standards. In fact, real family income for most Americans has risen, although slowly, over the past quarter century, reflecting the dramatic rise in two-earner families and the increase in the number of hours many families work.

www.dol.gov...

Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.

cia.gov...

Continued

But in the last dozen years many of the trend lines measuring
American prosperity have flattened out, and some have even
turned downward. For example, average real wages remain today
substantially below their levels of the early 1970s. Despite
the rise in the number of two-income households, median afterinflation
family income has also dropped. Evidence of lower
incomes and living standards is particularly pronounced among
younger workers, indicating that the generation whose economic
prospects once looked so promising is acfually experiencing more
restricted opportunity for good jobs, advancement and income
growth than did their parents’ generation.
At first, many experts advised Americans that these trends were
only temporary. They were said to be products of extraordinary
“jolts” to our economic system, like the oil shortage, or of
demographic aberrations, like the baby boom, which would disappear
with time.
Others argued that declining incomes were caused by excessive
growth of government. In 1980 a new Administration promised
that its program of radical cuts in the civilian government activities
would unleash productive private investment and spark a long
term economic boom.

www.epinet.org...

Since 1967, the median household income in the United States has risen modestly, fluctuating several times. Even though personal income has risen substantially and 42% of all household now have two income earners, the median household income has increased only slightly. According to the US Census Bureau, this paradoxial set of trends is due to the changing structure of American households. For example, while the proportion of wives working year-round in married couple households with children has increased fron 17% in 1967 to 39% in 1996, the proportion of such households among the general population has decreased. Thus, while married couple households with children are the most economically prosperous type of household in the United, their share of the population has been dwindeling in the United States. In 1969, more than 40% of all households consisted of a married couple with children. By 1996 only a rough quater of US households consisted of married couples with children. As a result of these changing household demographics, median household income rose only slighly despite an ever increasing female labor force and a considerable increase in the percentage of college graduates.[26]
“

"From 1969 to 1996, median household income rose a very modest 6.3 percent in constant dollars... The 1969 to 1996 stagnation in median household income may, in fact, be largely a reflection of changes in the size and composition of households rather than a reflection of a stagnating economy."- John McNeil, US Census Bureau
”
Yet, it is important to note that income in the period between 1967 and 1999 grew faster among wealthier households than it did among poorer households. For example the household income for the 80th precentile, the lower threshold for the top quintile, rose from $55,265 in 1967 to $86,867 in 2003, a 57.2% increase. The median household income rose by 30% while the income for the 20th percentile (the lower threshold for the second lowest quitile) rose by only 28% from $14,002 to $17,984. One should note that ht majority of households in the top quintile had two income earners, versus zero for the lowest quintile and that the widening gap between the top and lowest quintile may largely be the reflection of changing household demographics including the addition of women to the workforce.

en.wikipedia.org...

And there are a few others who seems to agree with the CIA conclusions. These people do keep records you know and some hack on late night news cant and wont change history.

And the US GDP per capita is $43,500 (per 2006 say). Compared to russias GDP per capita which is $12,100 which would be considered below the poverty level in the US.

And only someone like you would find these figures relevant in a discussion about Russian strategic dominance.

I assure you the US is better off in these regards then any other nation on the earth other then say Luxembourg which enjoys the highest GDP per capita in the world ($65,900.)

Moving along...

So what? Germans were still doing relatively well until the four engined bombers started arriving; prosperity does nothing but suggest the possibility of strength.

It is if you only look at one side while not looking at the other side properly. Our GDP is growing faster then our debt is.

Actually the two are growing by about the same margins and it seems quite logical to be that the GDP is 'expanding' by means of funds borrowed from the 'lenders' of the world.

The current fiscal crisis is not due to irresponsible spending. Despite Federal spending cuts shifting the burden of social problems onto the states, most states spent prudently in the 1990s, restricting spending increases to education, health, and corrections. A growing school-age population and attempts to improve public schools led to increases in school spending. Health care expenditures rose sharply because the Federal government failed to provide for long-term care or prescription drug coverage for a growing elderly population. Finally, states built more prisons for more prisoners. Despite these increases, state spending rose less in the 1990s than in any other decade since World War II. Rather than spending recklessly, states anticipated future trouble by accumulating nearly $50 billion in reserve funds. After cushioning spending cuts over the last two years, these reserves are now almost exhausted.

Unfortunately, the same governors and legislators that kept a tight rein on spending used temporary revenue growth to finance permanent tax cuts. Tax cuts enacted in the 1990s have lowered current revenue by nearly 10%, equal to the coming fiscal year's anticipated deficit. In addition to their own tax cuts, states have lost revenue when federal cuts reduced revenue from state income, corporate and estate taxes linked to the federal tax code. The largest deficits are found in the states with the biggest tax cuts. By contrast, the few who avoided tax cuts have almost no deficit.

Required to balance their annual budgets, states have responded to declining revenues with spending cuts that have dramatically reduced services to their citizens. Medicaid cuts in 22 states will eliminate coverage for 1.7 million people, especially children and the working poor. Nearly 18 states have cut school spending leading to increased class size, teacher layoffs, and even a shortened school year in some states. Reductions in childcare allowances in 33 states put children at risk and force their parents to quit jobs to return to public assistance. Neglecting the growing terrorist threat, states have cut back on police and other first-responders.

www.fguide.org...

With the 1989 end of the Cold War, many proclaimed the "triumph of global capitalism," and by the late-1990s, the American people were enjoying what The Economist of London called the "longest-ever . . . economic expansion." Unemployment (about 4 percent) was the lowest in almost thirty years, wages were up for most American workers, and inflation was low; this was indeed an economic achievement. The performance of the stock market was extraordinary as the Dow Jones index broke through the 10,000 mark in the spring of 1999; the "wealth effect" of the high stock market, which encouraged Americans to spend freely, draw down their personal savings, and go deeply into debt, fueled rapid economic growth. With the rest of the world in recession or other dire economic straits, many Americans believed that the United States in the 1990s had fashioned a new type of capitalist economy and had escaped forever from ills historically associated with the capitalist system.

Enthusiastic supporters of the NAE even proclaimed that the American economy had transcended the "boom and bust" of the business cycle that has historically plagued capitalist economies. It seemed that the economic boom could continue forever. Most academic economists, on the other hand, were skeptical of such claims and warned that the American economy was experiencing a "speculative bubble." Like the Japanese bubble of the late 1980s and similar bubbles of the past, the American bubble would also necessarily burst one day.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, America's trade/payments deficits reached record highs. Since the early 1980s, in fact, Americans have borrowed approximately $5 trillion from the savers of the world, especially the Japanese, to finance their consumption and investment. In the mid-1980s, the United States went from its post-World War I position as the world's largest creditor nation to become its largest debtor. If one discounts American investment overseas, the net American international debt in the late 1990s stood at approximately $1 trillion; as a consequence, a sizable portion of the federal budget must be devoted to interest payments on this huge and increasing debt. Furthermore, throughout the 1990s, Americans had emptied their personal savings accounts to fuel "seven years of good times," leaving too little for the "seven years of bad times" that many and perhaps most economists believe loom ahead; the spending spree left 20 percent of American households net debtors. And the "good times" of the 1990s left many behind as the income of the least skilled lagged.1 Americans appeared to be unaware that one day the nation's huge accumulated debt will have to be repaid and serious adjustments in the American standard of living will be necessary.

press.princeton.edu...

Continued

In six years, the boomer vanguard
will start collecting Medicare. Our nation
has done nothing to prepare for this onslaught of
obligation. Instead, it has continued to focus on
a completely meaningless fiscal metric—“the”
federal deficit—censored and studiously ignored
long-term fiscal analyses that are scientifically
coherent, and dramatically expanded the benefit
levels being explicitly or implicitly promised to
the baby boomers.
Countries can and do go bankrupt. The United
States, with its $65.9 trillion fiscal gap, seems
clearly headed down that path. The country needs
to stop shooting itself in the foot. It needs to adopt
generational accounting as its standard method
of budgeting and fiscal analysis, and it needs to
adopt fundamental tax, Social Security, and
healthcare reforms that will redeem our children’s
future.

research.stlouisfed.org...

So i wont read too much into that GDP growth.

Our debt is manageable, though we need to get a handle on our spending.

The debt is not in fact 'manageable' and while it might have been had anyone cared to try there seems to be little or no interest in congress to reign in president.

And the US GDP is actually $13.5 trillion and growing. As for the nations deficit, it is shrinking regardless of what you say.

The US deficit is NOT shrinking and you should not confuse the slowing of the deficit growth with the size of the deficit itself; the US congress is just borrowing a little slower than it used to.

[quote[Psst, the Deficit’s Shrinking
www.nationalreview.com...
US deficit shrinking for now
www.csmonitor.com...

And the fact that you could arrive at your stated conclusion based on this source material speaks volumes as to how badly you want to believe what you do.

Sorry If I have offended you with anything Ive said. Seriously though, you take yourself entirely way to serous on here.

If you took it a bit more seriously maybe i could lay off but since your all about making wild accusations based on misrepresentations, misunderstandings or lies it's becoming ever harder to have sympathy with you.

There is plenty of material in this post for you to cross reference against 'official' us government sources and i suggest that you start doing so.

Stellar

reply to post by James R. Hawkwood

---

If i said 'deficit debt' somewhere that would be confusing as deficit spending means that more goes 'out' than comes 'in' while debt is just something that may come as result. National governments for instance can for instance be forced to spend what they should on their people , by the people, but enrich their corporate backers by simply spend more money than the nation generates by it's economic activity. The deficit is how much more and the public debt is what results unless they can find someone to make very generous donations.

Hope that helps?

What's up with spamming lamb?

Stellar

reply to post by Bugman82

---

Vladimir Mikhailov claims its PAK FA fifth-generation fighter prototype will fly in 2007..........

Did I miss its flight in the news? Have I missed its body design photos? All I've seen is concept drawings........

Actually Mikhailov made that statement back in June of 2005, but he did not specify if the flight testing was going to be public or not, or if any other information is going to be released to the public.

Was there a statement that the test flight did not occur? How do we know if it did or not?

We don’t, we only know what he said back in 2005, all there’s to it, and considering how far behind F-35 is, none of this is relevant, because budget overruns and broken deadlines is to be expected from MIC.

I'm sorry guys but we can trust the claims of Iskander and Stellar about as much as we can trust the word of a top Russian military official named Vladimir Mikhailov.

Come on, these are not “claims”, they are FACTs, so feel free to go to page 1 and check the sources.

As to erroneous reference to Mikhailov and trust issues if I only had a penny for every time our programs are late or canceled.

It took us over 25 years and 15 BILLION to make the Bradley, so “trust” is the last thing that comes to mind.

We won't know until we see the missiles in action.

What does that mean? Are you implying that unless something is used it does not exist?

The word "Unstoppable" is a nationalistic word plain and simple when used in reference to a military or military tool.

Nationalistic? It’s a matter of FACT, not nationalism. Currently US simply does not offer a weapon system capable of intercepting hypersonic cruise/anti-ship missiles.

Are you aware of any? If so, please let us all know.

As far as I know, so far the only system which is capable of intercepting everything down to supersonic ATGMs flying at 5 meters from the ground is Kashtan-M/Tunguzka.

Hypersonic? No.

I’ll put it very simply, trying to engage a hypersonic target with a bullet is like trying to catch up to a car on a skateboard.

It’s just not happening, do the math.

It is a word of complete ignorance and lack of understanding. It is a word that proves to those of rational thought that those who use the word are quite possibly of irrational thought.

Nope;

Unstoppable - Difficult or impossible to preclude or stop.

For other then the actual definition of the word it self, please visit fallacyfiles.org and identify the fallacy in the statement presented above.

See section “logical fallacies”.

When done, please come back and contribute something tangible to the topic.

Cheers.

reply to post by iskander

---

I don't know if these two articles have been posted yet but you did ask me to contribute.......I'm contributing to your speculation that RAM won't cut it by posting a couple articles that show it possibly will.........note I say possibly........I don't think I've ever seen you use that word Iskander.

209.157.64.200...
www.raytheon.com...

And the Mk 110. It has ten times the range of phalanx and double the range of RAM.
www.deagel.com...

Also, Rail Gun advancements have already been mentioned numerous times throughout this thread.

It looks like the USA is producing some nice anti-ship missiles as well. The GQM-163A "Coyote"
www.spacewar.com...

I haven't even gone into the electronic countermeasures and jamming abilities that are absolutely massive in the present US ships.

Sorry, new to this so I'm not sure if all this old junk or not.

[edit on 15-3-2008 by Bugman82]

reply to post by Bugman82

---

I don't know if these two articles have been posted yet but you did ask me to contribute.......

Yep, its all been covered in this thread before.

SeaRam is panic stopgap measure slapped on as a political band aid.
It operates at supersonic speeds, not HYPERsonic.

Mk 110 Mod 0 - As I recommended earlier, do the math on the ballistics.
Those missiles fly faster the bullets, by a factor of (insert calculated number here)

GQM-163A "Coyote" IS the Kh-41 Sunburn, which is supersonic, not hypersonic.

To make it clear again, hypersonic means a minimum sustained speed of Mach 5.

SeaRams maximum speed at its peak burn is Mach 2.5

That’s just the speed deferential, not to mention deceptive evasive maneuvers in terminal phase, and all kinds of onboard ECM gear.

reply to post by iskander

---

What do you think about the advances in Railgun technology Iskander? Do you believe it has the possibility of ever being a threat to missiles such as these? I believe its projectile can be fired well beyond hypersonic speeds.

[edit on 16-3-2008 by Bugman82]

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