To steal a line from Calvin Trillin, “Now that we’ve all had a good laugh, let’s disband the Navy.”
Your tax dollars at work. The Navy has just launched the first of a new class of submarine. From the MSNBC story about it:
First image that comes to mind: the scene in Operation Petticoat in which the submarine manages to torpedo a truck that’s on shore.
Who are the cretins who come up with this kind of crap?
Smart people came up with that crap. Cretins required them to.
Well, the easiest way to get a nuclear device into the united states would be on a ship, detonanting it before it cleared customs. So maritime security is essential to fighting terrorism.
But yeah, I can’t for the life of me see why a sub is necessary for this. I mean, I might even argue that this is a job for the Coast Guard, rather than the Navy. And if terrorists have access to such a dreadnaught that it can’t be taken down by surface ships or air strikes (both would seem to be more easily availiable than special shallow-water subs), then we’re screwed anyway.
Maybe I’m approaching it in the wrong way. Maybe it’s supposed to sneak into foreign ports and hit terrorist ships there. Again, that sounds like job for air strikes. I’m stumped.
That’s not to say that the submarine fleet should be disbanded or not updated (the other new additions to the sub, such as the elimination of an optical periscope, and autopilot sound pretty cool), they just shouldn’t try to justify them under a war on terror paradigm. We still need them to hold off other conventional forces, such as China.
It probably makes it a lot easier to clandestinely launch SEAL teams close to shore, so they can run up the beach and blow terrorists up, then leave.
Or something.
Submarines are cool, in any event.
But we all know that Terroristan is a land-locked country!
True, but give me the $2.2 billion, and I’ll happily suffer the loss of “cool.” 
That’s what I was thinking. I’d like to see a lot more SEAL teams (guerillas vs. guerillas) and a lot fewer conventional forces (clubs vs. bees – if I may steal from another thread). For major wars we can always lean more heavily on robotics to blow stuff up by remote control. To combat small groups, you need a small, better group. And submarines are cool.
You might reconsider posting crap like this until you actually read up a little on the Navy and the new submarine. You do realize that it’s actually possible for submarines to do more than torpedo shit right? In the USS Virginia’s case it’s built for a variety of tasks, from electronic intelligence gathering (it can sit a few hundred yards offshore of the enemy undetected), shore bombardment (via tomahawk missiles) and special ops (it has a pressurized chamber that can allow a team of 9 in and out while submerged and room to berth 50 additional men). This is in addition to it’s traditional role in anti-ballistic missile submarine warfare and fleet protection. It’s certainly a better and more multi-faceted platform than the Los Angeles class it replaces (which has legacy '80s hardware) and that’s a good thing for the future.
I have no problem with this, although, the use of terrorism to justify it is lame.
Expanding the capability and versatility of a weapon/vehicle is never a bad thing. I also happen to think that the Navy and Air Force are our two most important branches of the military right now (leaving out Special Forces).
Believe it or not, even with a screenname like mine and the cocksure interservice rivalries I foster, I think it would be a stretch to call the Navy and the Air Force the two most important services. I think they’re all equally important. Wars aren’t won on the sea, and they aren’t won from the air. They’re won by having boots on the ground. Period. Unoccupied land is contested land, and as long as it’s contested there can be no victory.
The Virginia class has all the appearances of being an exceptional submarine, sort of the JSF equivalent compared to the F-22 Seawolf class, which was canceled after only three submarines, one of which is the soon-to-be-commissioned Jimmy Carter. Don’t let MSNBC and the like categorize military stuff for you, because those guys always get it wrong. It’s not like they designed the submarines for combatting terrorism, that wasn’t even a consideration 10-15 years ago when they were doing the design. That it will end up being good for that purpose is a testament to its flexibility, not to any particular anti-terrorism abilities that MSNBC would attribute to it.
I don’t think we should be occupying land.
The Air Force and Navy are what will prevent invasions of the US (not that it’s particularly likely that we’ll be invaded), the Air Force and Navy will be more of a deterrent to China attacking Taiwan.
Of course, that’s not meant to imply that the Army is unimportant and should be scrapped, of course. Or that research for upgrading their equipment should be slashed.
You do realize, don’t you, that Calvin Trillin is a humorist, that Operation Petticoat is a comedy, and that it’s not absolutely necessary to use smilies to indicate that something is being said in jest?
Sheesh.
MSNBC isn’t making the anti-terrorism claim - the Navy is.
There actually is a serious point lurking in all of this, I suppose. Kerry gets beat up for suggesting that combatting terrorism is a law enforcement problem, not a military one. But except in cases where the terrorism is truly state-supported (Afghanistan being the prime example in recent times), the military is very poorly equipped to deal with terrorism. If there are terror cells in Hamburg, are we going to call in an air strike?
Let’s face it, a $2.2 billion submarine may be a fine piece of military equipment, with many useful functions, but going after terrorists isn’t very high on the list. Combatting terrorism requires good intelligence and good police work, not heavy metal.
Would you rather arrest terrorists on US soil after they’ve had a while to prepare for their evil deeds or send some commandos to verify and address the root of the problem abroad?
I don’t think sending commandos into Germany, or Spain, or Saudi Arabia is a very practical alternative, do you? What we need are good allies, whose own law enforcement people will work with ours to ferret out the bad guys.
After 9/11, we had enough good will around the world to make that approach work. Almost no other nation would have turned down a request from the U.S. for cooperation, with the noteworthy exception of Afghanistan. We squandered a lot of that good will when we told many of our allies to go fuck themselves, because we had a hard-on to get Saddam.
I can’t go into details, but believe me, “lame” just barely scratches the surface. It seems like just about every military-defense system (active and proposed) at every aerospace-defense firm is being recast as “an essential new tool in the war on terrorism.” It’s all marketing, of course – everyone’s working with the belief that terrorism-oriented projects are more likely to get approval and/or funding.
It’s use against terrorists was included to try and explain the submarines multiple uses to military experts like Early Out. Some people are incapable or unwilling to educate themselves on the military. And it’s too much work to try to do it for them.
You’d be much more comfortable without that stick up your ass.
And how correct are they in that belief?
Plus, by saying everything has a link to terrorist fighting, anytime one of them hippie Democrats votes against funding $200 billion research into magic bullets, Republicans say they are voting against giving our troops the weapons they need to fight terror.
I sub for fighting terrorism? Now I’ve heard it all.
Well, Denmark did send a submarine to Iraq.*
*Which has shit to do with TWAT (thanks Eve).
Your serious?
Bwhahaha, the coalition of the bizarre. Wtf is it going to do?