Malum:
HAHA YOU WIN, INCLUDING PROTECTING ALASKA AND HAWAII...

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS!?

Yeah, just one.... You stated that keeping enough force to merely protect the country in case of an attack on our soil is a good idea in your opinion. If you recall, we pulled an isolationist move like that after WWI. I think everyone knows how well that worked. What makes you think that it would work now? Other nations still need the resources that we have and if we don't have the force to protect our interests abroad, then what is there to keep them from walking in and taking those interests from us? Whether we say it or not, the US is an empire. Not in the sense of colonial occupation, but in the sense that our companies hold so many foreign interests and properties that the East India Company would foam at the mouth if they could see the US and our acquisitions today. As with any empire, you need to protect your trade routes and your resources. Anyone who has ever played any of the Civilization games could see that! If you look (and you don't even have to look closely) at the mutterings of the media and those yelling the loudest in congress and the internet, they are all calling for us to become an isolationist state yet again. Every time we've done so, we have had to go out and spend millions of American lives (because death isn't the only expenditure of human life, long lasting wounds and psychological problems are equally as life shattering) to resolve conflicts that we are ultimately dragged into. I'd rather see TRILLIONS of US dollars go into future tech and small scale conflicts that drag out over years but don't cost a half-million US deaths than win a large war like WWI or WWII again.

Author would like us to be armed with muskets and roundshot (after all, no R&D spending!). Author is a friggin' moran.

"an unofficial 2004 Army study found that one in four casualties in Iraq was the result of inadequate protective gear)" (from article)

Unoffical studies also show that, while you can dress a soldier in medieval plate armor, that doesn't mean you should. Many of our troops in Iraq don't WANT to wear the full body armor because it's not flexible enough, slows them down, and is exceedingly hot.

"Somewhere in there it is implied that this plane (the F-35) launches missiles that kill people, but it is very deeply embedded." (from article)

Um... it's a warplane. That's what they do. That's also what the term "combat air support" means, y'know.

That's just two idiotic comments from the author, out of many. I do hope she has a job worthy of her talent level... like crash-test dummy.

archichris: A liberal says.....poor poor baby, let me swaddle you in civil rights and bring you home so i can call you baby killer and talk about how you lost the war.

You can do better than that.

Big boys Baitchin.
Boys with toys.
How about a US Department of Peace?
Can we get some farking funding for that?

Wow, space-based Hypervelocity Rod Bundles (nicknamed "rods from God")

Rod approves!

opkoad

From TFA:
"The plane itself is technologically awe-inspiring, reportedly having a twice-the-speed-of-sound cruising speed of Mach 2. (The Pentagon jealously guards its maximum speed as top secret.)"

How exactly is the Pentagon jealous?

Jealous (pops) doesn't simply mean coveting someone else's possessions. If the Pentagon is doing its job, it is by definition jealous.

The military-industrial-congressional complex is a large, bloated, and rather wasteful system. However, we must realize that it developed into such an absurdity not through the pre-meditated deceit or malice of shady character, but through men and women with the best of intentions hampered by the limits of human capacity (and weakness). Any large system will be corrupted by its human component, since humans are fickle and easily influenced creatures. We could smash all the machines, but the new ones we build will develop the same problems, in time.

That being said, we should always be aware of the military-industrial complex and mitigate the risks it presents to our society as best we can. Such and effort will also be rather uneconomical and convoluted, but such systems have always seemed to be so (unless of course you'd like to cede your franchise to one decision maker, but even the most benevolent dictator is perilous).

Our rampant military expenditures have caused unbelievable heartache and bloodshed. They have also done their part to explore space, advance medicine, revolutionize communications to bring us closer to the world around us. Maybe we have to take the good with the bad, and admit our mere humanity even as we shake our fist at the gods in our Promethean quest for greater power and greater enlightenment.

I don't know.

If only the gummit had invented this 100 years ago, we could have stopped the march to Birmingham, the labor movement, all that hippie protest crap, etc.

You ain't kiddin'.

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace".
~George Washington

He's right. Its just too bad he said that before Eisenhower pointed out that whole military industrial complex thingy.

"All through the war the great armament firms were supplied from the enemy countries. The French and the British sold war materials to the Germans through Switzerland, Holland and the Baltic neutrals, and the Germans supplied optical sights for the British Admiralty. The armament industry, which had helped stimulate the war, made millions out of it."

C.J. Pennethorne Hughesz, British historian, 1935
WWI

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, president of the United States, supreme commander of allied forces in europe in WWII
1961

/History channel UP YO AZZZZ BEEATCH!

Ugh! Maybe I should learn to proofread my rants. I apologize for the horrible writing in my previous post.

I had to stop reading the article once they complained about developing solderless battlefields. Come the fark on. What better way to keep our troops safe than to let machines do the fighting, and controlling those machines from a safe place back home?

F-35

vs.


Chinese J-10

-----


F-22

vs.


Chinese J-11 (aka Su-27)

whammer

In the rear areas, the "queen of battle", the artillery, still causes the vast majority of casualties.

AAACK!!!

Artillery = King of Battle
Infantry = Queen of Battle

:)

Asimina: Oh, I thought this was going to be about the "active denial system", AKA "the crowd cooker":

Don't worry, it will only burn your skin off if you are wearing a zipper or metal buttons. Or if it is on the wrong setting. Or if it is pointed at you for more than 15 seconds.

If only the gummit had invented this 100 years ago, we could have stopped the march to Birmingham, the labor movement, all that hippie protest crap, etc.

You have a better suggestion for how to deal with an angry mob?

picturescrazy,

While using remotely controlled drones to do our fighting for us seems like a great idea, I would be hesitant to trust any concept like that for a couple of reasons.

First, no matter what fancy weapons you use to capture an objective or take ground, that ground can only be secured and held by living troops on the ground. I sincerely doubt we will ever field a robot with the versatility, awareness, flexibility, morality, or empathy to do the job like a human being.

Second, if you remove the greatest obstacle to our use of armed force, the sacrifice of our own people as soldiers in harm's way, then you open up the ability for less scrupulous or more easily influenced Americans in the future to sign off on misadventures and downright atrocities, since the suffering of abstract others is never as real as the suffering of our own and so never as good a control on human desire to do violence upon others.

/also, there's poor Sarah Conner to consider.

whammer
If that is not "nightmarish" enough for you, imagine a conflict between America and China, where a junior American officer may be asked to kill half a million or more Chinese.

Well then, it's a good thing the Pentagon is researching more efficient ways to kill people, isn't it?

tallen702
Other nations still need the resources that we have and if we don't have the force to protect our interests abroad, then what is there to keep them from walking in and taking those interests from us?

This is a B.S. argument. I say the U.S. military exists to protect us, the American people--not our interests abroad. First of all, a relatively small number of Americans even HAVE "interests abroad". The CEO of Exxon or Nike might have "interests abroad" but the average working American tax payer does not. If Exxon wants to protect its "interests abroad" with guns and bombs, let Exxon pay for their own military. Why should I fund Exxon's profit-ensuring security force?

The military, as it is deployed overseas today, is acting as nothing more than a mercenary force, ensuring profits for a few already rich multinational companies. I'm paying for it as a tax payer, and unfortunately thousands are bravely paying for it with their lives.

Billy-Bob Kenobi,

I would assert that while most crowd control measures will be inhumane, we Americans can remember (and be ashamed of) the effectiveness of water cannons, CS gas, dogs, and riot police on controlling crowds.

Of course, the best way to control a crowd is ensure it never gets formed in the first place. I can't remember a riot where the people involved weren't already assembled for some purpose. Control or supervise gatherings and monitor mass communications to inhibit the ability of instigators to ignite mob action in a gathering.

If only the gummit had invented this 100 years ago, we could have stopped the march to Birmingham, the labor movement, all that hippie protest crap, etc.

You have a better suggestion for how to deal with an angry mob?

Have you tried asking them what they're angry about?

NineInchNader,

While that is the best answer to the problem (I'm ashamed I didn't post that first), I think any organization in a position of power (left, right or indifferent) will at some time be forced to deal with an angry mob whose concerns cannot be justly addressed and who will not disperse for more reasonable negotiation. In some cases (civil rights protestors, some union pickets) the crowd would be in the right, while in others (a fascist putsch, soccer riots) the crowd is wrong and needs to be dispersed.

mongbiohazard
charicatures which more resemble demons mixed with a gun that just killed a baby.
Assuming you mean caricatures... does that one have a newsletter? He sounds cool.

NineInchNader
Have you tried asking them what they're angry about?
Yes. That's when they detonated their vest-bombs.

To sum up this thread:
Dems/Libs/Hippies/Leftists/What the fark republicans call them: "Be careful of war"/"Maybe there's better places to be spending our tax money."
Ex-Military/Current Military/Chicken Hawks: "WHAT THE FARK IS WRONG WITH YOU CANADIAN DO YOU WANT AMERICA TO LOSE ALL OF OUR WARS THAT WE SET UP."/"OMG LOOK HOW COOL THESE GUNS ARE, I WISH I HAD ONE TO KILL THE FRENCH HA HA HA.

R&D is unquestionably a vital element of sound military doctrine, and it has to be a big part of any defense budget. However, from what personal research that I have conducted and the anecdotal information that I have encountered, it seems that our ability to provide for the basic needs of the men and women who serve leaves much to be desired. And I'm being polite in my characterization of it.

I hope (sooner rather than later) someone with enough authority is willing to challenge our military spending priorities and to ensure that the funds being spent are appropriate to need and well managed. By appropriate to need, I mean ensuring that all bases have access to drinking water, appropriate housing and shelter, and so on; and that soldiers are fully equipped with armor, equipment, supplies, etc. before (so to speak) the money is spent on R&D. And by well managed I mean that the money spent, regardless of the purpose, is transparently accounted for, that obscene price inflation ($1000 hammers or whatever) is avoided, and that suppliers are held appropriately accountable for their time, labor, and materials, and final products.

It's a little dream I have.

Aesc2525 and NineInchNader:

I would agree that the best answer to the situation is never letting it escalate to the point where there's a riot to deal with in the first place.

It does not, however, address the problem of what one is to do when there is an angry mob out breaking shiat and hurting people. I would argue that the most humane method of dispersing the crowd is preferable, rather than wading in with truncheons, water cannons, CS gas, rubber bullets, or (FSM forbid) *real* bullets.

Have you tried asking them what they're angry about?
Yes. That's when they detonated their vest-bombs.

I'll respond to that statement in two parts... the first being a pertinent quote from The Simpsons:

"What KIND of man wears Armor Hotdogs?"


And the second being the image of the cover of a book:



Interesting and educational read, assuming it hasn't been completely debunked since I last had it read to me.

BrotherAlpha: I personally think it is the core of conservatism. 'You're either with us, or against us' mentality that Bush spouts and his supporters eat up

That isn't a conservative idea, even though some conservatives have adopted it. It is neocons and other revolutionaries who love to deal in absolutes.


cbecker333: Artillery = King of Battle
Infantry = Queen of Battle

Why, because the artilley farks the infantry?

Billy-Bob Kenobi,

I guess the point of contention is whether or not this new microwave weapon is more or less humane than tear gas. I'm no expert on the weapon, so any point I'd make there would be speculative, subjective, and really just worthless.

From what I know, tear gas (CS) isn't remarkably dangerous to healthy human beings, unless they're trapped in it for an extended period (or have respiratory impairments). This microwave weapon would seem to be similar.

reaganomics

Suck it, libs.

Aesc2525: From what I know, tear gas (CS) isn't remarkably dangerous to healthy human beings, unless they're trapped in it for an extended period (or have respiratory impairments). This microwave weapon would seem to be similar.

I've had the displeasure of being exposed to that stuff, and I could barely breathe for about 15 minutes afterwards. That was in a relatively open area (the college university union) and I wasn't even sprayed directly (someone at the next table was screwing around with her keychain o' mace and accidently sprayed some.) I can't imagine actually being stuck in a huge cloud of the shiat. Other people didn't seem to be as badly affected... I guess I'm one of the "lucky" ones.

/Yeah, I know, anecdotes aren't evidence, etc.

The nightmare weaponry of your future is hunger and disorder and depression. These gee-whiz gizmos will be distant memories soon enough, and every gummint in the world pursuing high tech weaponry is wasting money that would be better spent fixing the railroads, encouraging local agriculture, and investing in basic public health infrastructure.

Civilization will not be maintained in trying times by jerk-off sci-fi warrior fantasies. The only intelligent (but sociopathic) people pushing this crap are those who will personally benefit. No greater good will come from stealth fighters, missile defense, and aircraft carrier battle groups. In thirty years, all of that shiat will be salvage material, like what we'll find in landfills.

in all honesty, this article is just a reverse image of the fawning, flying-car style article on this stuff in popular mechanics. "oh no, a bunch of new weapons" vs. "yay, a bunch of new weapons". if anyone can point me towards a sober assessment of these technologies, that'd be great.

Every other nation on earth is composed of people who accept that their nation is not the dominant military power on earth.

Yet, somehow, many of them manage to conduct their lives without constat fear of invasion or destruction by outside forces.

Some will argue they are able to do so because America is protecting them. I think that's bullcrap.

I think the US having by far the most dominant military, leads us into terrible habits internationally: arrogance, willful defiance of sovrignety, a position at every international bargianing table that we are there only to humor our adversaries, but if they piss us off, we all know they can be obliterated.

If we were to cut 50% of our Pentagon military R&D dollars, we'd still be by far the most militarily capable nation for the next 20 years... but for some, I guess, even the small risk that someday another (much larger, much more populous) nation such as China might overtake us in sheer military power, is too frightening to even consider. As if all Chinese people want to do is kill Americans. As if China's leaders actually think they would profit by open war with the US.

I'm disgusted as well by those in this thread who essentially say "What, so we should just stop all R&D then?" as if that were the only other option. As if there are only two choices; our current profligate and immensely wasteful spending, or nothing at all. As if there were no possible middle ground, in which projects were undertaken without regard to whose state will get the best pork, in which projects are evaluated not merely on "would this be great to have or what?" but also "is this cost-efficient? Could we achieve better things for the American people for a lower pricetag?".

Our congress spends our tax money on these things as if it belonged to them. I've never understood how conservatives can rail against high taxes and government spending, while at the same time being in lockstep-support for any and every concievable military expenditure, no matter how dubious, inefficient, or fanciful. Congress persons routinely create and fund military projects which the Pentagon didn't even ask for! Just because it means dollars spent in their states.

At some point it would be more efficient to beat our enemies at war by burying them in money.

Z_since_1516: Theres about 150 countries in the world.

Some should tell the UN!
"Following is the list of the 192 Member States of the United Nations" (pops)

/Although whether, or not a "country" is considered a country can, and does vary

clancifer

ass hole, I care enough to NOT WANT THEM DEAD for no reason at all except your stupid president's know nothingness.

FARK off.

Cerebral Ballsy

infie Don't be dumb......I used to make $5,000 electric cables and connectors. I was paid $7 an hour

Well, how thoughtless of me to not consult the $7/hour expert at my fingertips..

*rolls eyes*

Prank Call of Cthulhu

But the problem is, did anyone do the analysis to see if the $4 WalMart hammer would work just as well as the $500 hammer?

I agree. I'm not denying there is bloat and quid pro quo. There is for sure. Whenever someone does an independent audit of these kinds of things they uncover that kind of stuff.

What I'm against is using "$5,000 TOILET SEAT!!" as the political club du jour whenever someone wants to get elected, or someone wants to call a certain politician a monkey.

Sometimes, just sometimes, there's a legit reason that seat had to cost $5,000.

The hammers and toilet seats are poor examples of this.

Agreed. Should say "widget" or something like that... Just using those as examples to make it more real. However, it gives me a small measure of comfort to believe that someone actually sat (snicker) and thought out a toilet seat on a submarine.

the problem is that analysis cost 450$, plus 46$ worth of destruction tested hammers.

I am all for making sure we have the best weapons for our troops, but seriously is there any reason why we are defending South Korea, Japan, Taiwan or Germany?

"seriously is there any reason why we are defending South Korea, Japan, Taiwan or Germany?"

Welfare program for defense contractors and their stockholders. And jobs program for anti-tax nitwits in flyover-red states, sucked from (oh, I'm sorry, fundeded by) the working people in blue states.

"seriously is there any reason why we are defending South Korea, Japan, Taiwan or Germany?"

Electronics, baby.

tallen702
Other nations still need the resources that we have and if we don't have the force to protect our interests abroad, then what is there to keep them from walking in and taking those interests from us?


stiletto_the_wise
This is a B.S. argument. I say the U.S. military exists to protect us, the American people--not our interests abroad. First of all, a relatively small number of Americans even HAVE "interests abroad". The CEO of Exxon or Nike might have "interests abroad" but the average working American tax payer does not. If Exxon wants to protect its "interests abroad" with guns and bombs, let Exxon pay for their own military. Why should I fund Exxon's profit-ensuring security force?

The military, as it is deployed overseas today, is acting as nothing more than a mercenary force, ensuring profits for a few already rich multinational companies. I'm paying for it as a tax payer, and unfortunately thousands are bravely paying for it with their lives.

So, your reasonable, well thought out solution is corporate armed forces. Yeah that sounds like a good idea. I could maybe see demanding they pay more of the military budget (accepting the fact that they already pay a lot of course) but this is just riddiculous. Think before you post there Lofwyr. Why is it not good for a bunch of corporations to have an army?

"You owe so much in taxes"
"We have to provide our own armed forces, I don't feel like paying your taxes, and now I have a bunch of tanks. Wanna try and make me?"

"You need to respect these human rights issues or you'll be in trouble!"
"Pfft, yeah okay. How bout instead I just force all these indigenous people into slavery and you don't do anything cause I prop up your economy and now I have a shiatload of missles?"

picturescrazy

I had to stop reading the article once they complained about developing solderless battlefields. Come the fark on. What better way to keep our troops safe than to let machines do the fighting, and controlling those machines from a safe place back home?

I think a complaint could be made for soldierless battlefields from a psychological standpoint. If no soldiers are being put in harms way then one of the key points against it happening goes away. The loss of human life is one of the biggest reasons why unnecessary and unwarranted wars are protested against on such a large scale. Without this loss then war would become clean enough to keep it out of the headlines, and, as I'm you've noticed, with humans it's "Out of sight, out of mind".

If you're looking for a historic example of how obsessive fascination with exotic 'weapons to end all weapons,' look at Nazi Germany during all of WWII. They had dozens of neato projects in the works, including several guided missiles, a peroxide-powered sub that would do bursts of 26 knots, a stratospheric flying-wing bomber with enough range to reach America, and their own atomic bomb project. It wasn't enough to stop our own advanced yet conventional technology, and wasn't enough to save Germany from some dumbass military mistakes. Check out the Luft '46 website for a view of some of the plans they had (site concentrates on the Luftwaffe, remember that there were many more projects than this.) Mind you, most were plans only, only a few even reached the prototype stage.

Of course, they produced some awesome projects that DID come to fruition, but it still didn't save them. Who profited from all this? The US and the USSR, for the most part. Our collective space programs would be a decade or so behind if it wasn't for the rocketry research, for instance.

Of course, our own massive experimental program worked out. In a way, the Manhattan Project wasn't much different than the Nazi fascination with far-fetched weapon systems, only we put our eggs in one basket, and Germany had dozens. Heck, when Heisenberg was told of the bomb after the war, it floored him. We didn't know if it would work, but we sunk the funds into it anyway.

So I suppose investing massive chunks of money into experimental research is a double-edged sword. On one hand, there's no guarantee it will give the military an advantage. On the other, you never know when it will give results.

Collossal idea, verbaltoxin!

QUOTE:

"And India and China wont fight. Ever. "

Wrong. They frequently DO fight up in their common mountainous regions. They have fought befor,e and will again. within the last yeah 15 people have died in those mountains.