How feasible is it for someone (say Russia/Europe) to disable USA satellites? What impact would this have on surveilance and communications?
You guys are forgetting something…if the situation in Europe got to the point where Americans were hated so universally that the Euro countries would band together to invade us, every base we have on their soil would already have been dismantled and returned here. When I was in the Army in Germany back in the 80’s, that was one hell of a lot of troops and planes and whatnot. Now add up all of our bases from all of the Euro countries and you have just that many more combat and support troops back here able to beat off any invasion short of a nuclear strike.
But ChaosGod, how well will your Urgan Assault Cows stand up to America’s well-known and battle-tested Stealth Ninja Monkey Corps? 
What if the “Euros” seized all the bases and all the weapons and personnel in them, in coordinated blitz operation?
How about this:
[Continental Europe + Russia + China + Japan] vs [U.S.A + Canada + Uk + Australia]
“Anglos” vs “rest of the 1st world” … how would that turn out?
I forgot to mention that the cows are only the main infantry. At first, special ultra-elite commando chicken units will penetrate u.s territory in platoons of 10 to 15, seeking and destroying remaining military personnel, such as your stealth ninja monkeys of which we have been aware of for some time. Their main weakness being related to a craving for brazilian bananas, that we’ve stockpiled strategically.
:o
Cows with guns… scary…
I call a point of order!
I first referred to Australia’s Platypus Class of subs a few pages ago but NOBODY picked up the ball and ran with THAT one, and now we’re talking about Bovine SAS Troops!
Not fair! (heh heh heh)
PSI Cop? Fear not, I’ve been reading your posts - they’re good, don’t worry.
Kitoo,
Actually, the new carrier probably won’t be ready until the teens at normal production schedule. If global tensions increased rapidly, it would probably be available by 2010. As for the new destroyer class, DDX, they won’t be ready for a while, I’m afraid. We’re still working with Flight IIA Arleigh Burke class ships. On the other hand, even if they aren’t the newest, Flight IIA is a slightly bigger sub-class in terms of length and displacement, they have more vertical launch capability, and other refinements. We have several of this “sub-class” already, with four more under construction at this moment, and another eight already planned (even down to what they’ll be named).
Eh… well, I’m not so sure. A lot of Europe’s money also goes to resolving social problems. To increase their military, they might need to drop universal health care or some worker’s benefits. I’m not entirely sure how their budget is sub-divided, though, so I may be wrong. That’s only a guess on my part. Besides, the US could funnel plenty more into the military if necessary. Foreign Aid is the first thing that comes to mind <grin>. They’re all at war with us! Besides, we paid for World War II with bonds (and we’re still paying for it). No reason we couldn’t start issuing war bonds again.
Gorsnak…
All right, first of all, sorry for the snide comment. I was irritable last night. Now…
To have the same capability of forces, it would take them far more money or far more than a decade – or both. A large chunk of our navy is 20-30 years old, after all. In addition, that’s only the hardware. Training the people takes years, as does getting everything down to a rhythm. US battle group commanders are well experienced from decades of working at every level. You’d have a number of fresh commanders commanding large European battle groups without the same experience.
Yeah, I know you did… and on second thought, I should have added Russia into my other five. But even though I didn’t, I still made it clear exactly which countries I was using.
Just for anyone who doesn’t know… the CIA World Factbook cited above is where I got the 1/5 figure. There’s a “world” category with a total GDP of 47 trillion dollars. Gorsnak, I have no reason not to believe an official government website that has a purpose of reporting facts and statistics. But if you want a few examples… nearly all airliners flying today are Boeing… an American company. Major computer software companies (Microsoft, Apple) are American. We’ve got more major car companies than any other single country. A lot of military equipment produced by people like Boeing and Lockheed Martin is sold overseas to others. The midwest is a gigantic food basket. I have no problem believing we produce 1/5 of the world’s goods and services… why do you find it dubious?
Shade,
To the best of my knowledge, killing satellites is not currently possible, even for the United States. The only thing that I can really think of is launching a few nukes into orbit and using the electromagnetic pulse to fry satellite circuitry. That would also disable all other satellites up there, though, so it’s sort of a last-resort weapon.
ChaosGod,
Again, you’re assuming that the US would have no foreknowledge of this. Hardly fair, given our intellignce capabilities, and every other country in the world is theoretically involved…
-Psi Cop
It isn’t a matter of questioning the source. I don’t think the Factbook is trying to mislead anyone. However, a dollar in one place isn’t the equivalent of a dollar in another place. To keep this vaguely on topic, consider the value that an M-16 adds to the GDP of the US. Now consider the value that an AK-74 adds to the GDP of Russia. The M-16 is “worth” a lot more, but the two rifles pretty much functionally equivalent. So, hypothetically, if the US and Russia each produce the same number of rifles, the American GDP will benefit far more than the Russian, even though in this specific regard the countries are equivalent.
Now, the Factbook does state that GDP’s are quoted at “purchasing power parity”, which I take to mean that they attempt to compensate for this sort of thing. However, I am extremely unconvinced that the formula they use goes far enough.
You guys are amazing!
I know I haven’t posted in this thread lately, but I’ve been reading it. I usually have to lay down with an ice pack on my head afterwards, but still, it’s worth it.
How do you pack so much technical knowledge into your heads? I can’t remember what I had for breakfast! My hat is off to you.
What I said was this:
No matter what you may think, our intel is very good in Europe and I don’t believe that our government would be clueless for such a long enough time that the Euros would be able to execute some secret blitzkrieg against EVERY ONE of our overseas bases. As I stated above, by the time that scenario even became remotely feasible, our bases and personnel would have already been relocated back to the states.
Yes, if everyone in the world decided to start a war against the United States next month, and we didn’t hear a word about it, or notice half a billion guys with guns shipping out from every damned place on Earth, they could kick our ass.
They would not eliminate our entire nuclear response, though. And we probably would use it. And most of them know it. And half our last strike capability is enough to end the world, in the sense of any real civilization.
Personally, I still think Canada has our back.
Tris
Probably not, but it’d be nice to see them eat humble pie…(well, if no one got hurt)
lol.Peace man
I agree with I,Brian and others that you would have to anniliate the civilian population first.
Other than that, a successful invasion of the United States is just not possible.
There are 100 million armed americans.
If each American shot just once, an invading army would have to be bigger than 100 million troops before our army would get a chance to do anything.
I just dont see how any country could get more than 100 million troops over here. If they did, then we could shoot twice.
Susanann: The idea that armed civilians would hold off an attack by trained soldiers is hopeful to say the least. Virtualy every army that has invaded another country has had to face armed civilians to some degree. Out of the 100 million armed people, how many do you think would actually fight? there are a great many armchair warriors who talk a good fight but dont fancy it when it comes to the crunch. Also remember that any invading army would be using armour and choppers to move around most of the time, hunting weopons are not a match for them, the most many could hope for is small resistance groups, harrasing more than straight face to face stuff.
rogue
Susanann
History has shown believing yourself to be invincible is one of the greatest mistakes you can make.
As for the US population being armed, I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Not all of the population is armed, and not all of those that are would be willing to take their chances against highly trained, well equiped professional soldiers.
If we ignore that, there is still the small matter that a neither a shotgun nor handgun is going to make a dent against a fighter/bomber, nor any kind of mechanised armor.
And then couple with that the fact that any opposing force could starve the population into submission. You would need a vast organised resistance for the population to be any significant thorn in the side of the agressor - somehow I doubt that there would be any organisation 
Invading armies do not live in fighter/bombers 24 hours of the day.
They walk around, eat, sleep, go to restaurants, they are completely vulnerable to snipers any time they are not in that fighter.
There are more guns in America than people, and they would be quickly hidden - anybody that wanted to shoot a soldier, would be able to get a gun. If 5 million wanted to shoot a soldier, then 5 million would die.
America would be a hundred times more dangerous to occupy than Switzerland.
I agree that armed civilians would not stop an invading army head on, but once the initial battle(s) is over, the occupying forces would be slaughtered, day by day, week by week, from houses, buildings, streets, highways and byways, etc.
There is no place an invading soldier would be safe from sniper fire - he could be, and would be, killed anytime he was not in his fighter plane.
I just remembered that funky Canary Island strategy. Terrorists might not consider this tactic because they only know which end of the the camel to kiss but any nation with a few nuclear bombs to spare can also afford geologists to correctly map the volcano found in the canary Islands and properly place the nukes so that the whole shlf slides off. This is theoretically the way to create a landslide large enuf to make a fast moving tsunami that could wipe out the entire Eastern Seaboard of the USA. I dont think even the USA can recover from a devastation that large.
Of course you would have to find a nation with nuclear weapons that have modern scientific knowledge of the Canary Islands and the leader evil enuf to actually kill all of those people.
Collateral damage to Brazil, France, and Africa.
The entire topic is ludicrous, IMHO. There are so many political, language, logistical, economic, geographic, and other obstacles which would have to be hurdled that the entire scenario is laughable.
-
Aside from the US, no other nation has significant ability to conduct amphibious warfare, or to conduct amphibious resupply and reinforcement.
-
There is no way for combatants to assemble without being detected WAY ahead of time in any geographically contiguous area to the US (ie Mexico or Canada)
-
There is no way on earth to even imagine how the alliance which would be required to conduct the attack could form and how it would be organized and would function without prior warning to the U.S.
-
Even if one were to assemble the warplanes of every other nation on earth, concoct some means of coordinating this mishmash of aircraft, find some means of arming and supplying them, even then the U.S. would dominate the skies - there simply is no way to attack the U.S. without achieving air superiority, and at the moment there IS no way to achieve air superiority over the U.S.
-
Virtually all of the advanced military forces are NATO forces. As such, even if our NATO allies turned against us, they still wouldn’t be able to marshall their forces in a cohesive way. Why, you ask? Because essentially ALL of NATO’s war plans call for the U.S. to coordination the war conduct. NATO simply could not exist in a militarily significant manner without the U.S.'s cooperation and full participation.
-
Economically, a concerted attack upon the U.S., succesful or not, would be entirely devastating to the world’s economy. The world needs the U.S. for a trading partner - period. There simply isn’t a way one could convince enough world leaders to commit their nations to a suicidal course for no reason whatsoever.
There are scads of other reasons, but you get the point. It’s just not ever going to happen unless and until the world geopolitical, economic and military balance of powers shift dramatically.
Eddie the Dane,
Good points. Sounds like we ordinary citizens would not be able to get a shot off at those guys.
Forgive a slight hi-jack here, but this great post above which I just quoted, is SINGULARLY the biggest fear I have for Western troops within Iraq’s borders after a war there. I imagine hundreds of thousands of militant Arabs flooding the borders from all directions armed with shoulder missiles and sniper rifles just itching to inflict some pain on the Western troops there.
The imagery painted above could sooooooooooooo easily be applied to Iraq in 3 months from now.
[/end of hijack]