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Originally posted by semperfoo
Stellar why not make your point short, sweet, and to the point?
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.
Judging by what russian officials
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...
"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...
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.
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 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,
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.
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."
Unlike you they paint a more realistic picture though grim it is. It goes on..
The swift victory by mobile, high-tech American forces
over heavily armored Iraqi troops dug in to defend large cities like Baghdad has jolted many Russian military planners.
"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.
Like its Soviet prototype, Iraq's Army was huge but made up mainly of young, poorly trained conscripts.
Its battle tactics called for broad frontal warfare, with massed armor and artillery, and a highly centralized command structure.
But those forces were trounced in a few days by relatively small numbers of US and British forces,
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.
"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."
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.
"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.
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,
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."
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."
Can you believe that?
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.
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 you yourself, know for a fact that it isn't efficiently spent?
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.
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...
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?
What are you talking about?
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...
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...
Somehow russia was/is more "efficient" with there spending then the US was/is? Do you have proof of this?
Ive read biased russian leaders claims in the past too. About how they were smart and we werent. Its propaganda..
If the USSR was so smart then why did the lose the cold war?
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?
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.
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...
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 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.
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...
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.
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...
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...
Our debt is manageable, though we need to get a handle on our spending.
And the US GDP is actually $13.5 trillion and growing. As for the nations deficit, it is shrinking regardless of what you say.
Sorry If I have offended you with anything Ive said. Seriously though, you take yourself entirely way to serous on here.
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........
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.
We won't know until we see the missiles in action.
The word "Unstoppable" is a nationalistic word plain and simple when used in reference to a military or military tool.
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.
Originally posted by quarkchop
A next generation Russian anti ship cruise missle would represent a credible threat if possesed by the former Soviet Navy , what's left of this once great blue water Navy is only a shadow of its former self. Clearly if the Russsians wish to produce a force capable of threatenning the US Navy in any form they will need to do allot more then field 1 or 2 new generations of weapons as the US Navy is constatantly doing the same and in addition has a force several magnitudes larger.
In 2015/25 Russia will get 6 carriers and its ships that belong to a CBG.
Originally posted by iskander
If they cam manage half that by 2020 it would be a major achievement, but 6 super carriers is a bit much for two decades.
[edit on 15-3-2008 by iskander]
I don't know if these two articles have been posted yet but you did ask me to contribute.......