Sam (or should we call you Dr. Stonelove?), you’ve made it quite clear to us all that you would eagerly seek out any way to praise, say, thermonuclear handgun ammo if Reagan or some other arch-conservative nut bag wanted them!
Ah. To paraphrase Arthur Dent, that is obviously some strange usage of the phrase “not idiots” of which we were previously unaware.
Of course they were idiots! They stupidly lusted after a shiny, idealized, hideously over-complex solution to a simple problem, just like any of us boys would secretly desire to do if given a virtually unlimited budget. They were idiots because they ignored by far the most powerful, effective, and successful engineering concept in all of human history: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Look at the history of the Bradley troop carrier, for example. The initial design was excellent: simple, fast, safe and effective. It would transport 11 troops quickly to or from the battlefield. But the frustrated Tom Swifts (am I dating myself?) at the Pentagon almost immediately glamor-fucked the hell out of it. For Bob’s sake, they actually put a friggin’ tank turret on top, guaranteeing that these troop carriers would become primary targets! Troop carriers! They quickly “evolved” from simple, fast troop carriers into huge, slow, hulking death traps. (The full story is shockingly insane and perverse and is almost impossible to believe, even though it’s all too horribly true. Again, see Burton’s book.)
Sam, if your vigorous defense of the indefensible was any less an obscene joke, I probably wouldn’t be crying so hard…
Stop quoting Burtons book as if though it were the bible of all things American Military. Many of us here have read several (to say the least) books about the American armed forces, and have more sources to draw upon than you and your single book. Visit a library.
The original concept for the M2 Bradley was as a Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The Soviets already had one out (BMP-series), as did the Germans (Marder-series) and the French (AMX-10P). American mechanized infantry were hampered by having a old-style ‘battle wagon’, the M113, which was at a significant firepower disadvantage to comparable Soviet formations.
The decision was made to design our own IFV. The M2 Bradley was the result. A " friggin’ tank turret" was not added as an afterthought, as you seem to be implying. It was a requirement from day one that that it have the capability to engage enemy tanks (TOW missles), IFVs/soft targets (M242 cannon) and infantry (M240C MG).
And, if I may…
IT IS NOT A GODDAMNED TANK TURRET!
Also, it takes more than a bit of ignorance and/or naivete to believe that a IFV makes our mechanized forces ‘more of a target’ than they would be if they trundled about in APCs. It’s not like comrade Ivan, sitting in his T-72, would have decided, nah, lets not shoot the M113. It’s so harmless looking! :rolleyes:
You have no idea what you are talking about. I am bowing out of this particular fight against ignorance, even though it regards a topic near and dear to my heart. You need to seriously broaden your knowledge on these topics.
Ambushed: Your last message did not respond to a single point I made. Instead, you just fired a personal attack at me, and tried to change the subject.
Brutus is right. You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, and your last message indicates that you aren’t willing to have a reasonable debate. I don’t see much point in continuing this.
Brutus, your apparent eagerness to felch out any and all anti-reform Pentagon propagandists is manifest to us all.
Hilarious! Need I point out that it was you who asked me to discuss these aircraft?!
In any case, during my stint at Edwards AFB (I worked for NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center) I encountered a great many Air Force and NASA pilots, aerodynamicists and engineers debating the relative merits of the F-15 and F-16 too many times to count. Comparing the two aircraft was an active and vital debate for many of the best pilots and aircraft engineers in the world. You’d have had your ass handed to you several times over if you made such an ignorant pronouncement in their presence.
I didn’t have any dog in that race, so I just listened. But every time the argument would go to the F-16 advocates, hands down. Pretty much all the Eagle backers could ever come up with was that it had a better radar (which it desperately needed, being such a huge and obvious target) and a higher top end speed, which nearly all the other pilots and all the engineers considered a disadvantage because of the much too high aerodynamic, engineering, maintenance, support, and monetary costs involved. The aerodynamicists at NASA all marveled at the F-16’s brilliant and cost-effective design and scoffed outright at the inept, relatively clumsy, over-muscled, and over-built F-15 with it’s enormous RCS.
Let’s look a what an actual pilot had to say on the matter:
And did you know that the F-16 program actually gave back money to our national coffers because the reformers designed the aircraft as well as the acquisition and production systems so competently and economically? In stark contrast, did you know the F-15 program managers and top Pentagon brass actually despicably conspired and executed an operation to FAKE an entirely bogus production facade at McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis so that they could continue to illegally and corruptly LIE to Congress and the program auditors that the program was not so hideously over-budget and hadn’t even come anywhere near production long after they had officially and repeatedly claimed to be?
More disingenuous propaganda! But your ignominious deceptions have been found out. The official claims about even the early stealth aircraft was that they would have RCS signatures no bigger than a basketball. Those were complete and total lies! They were not just seen, they were easily seen on radar for exactly what they were 40 miles away! They were as easily spotted and able to be shot down as any non-stealth aircraft. Stealth is a virtually worthless technology, but it’s cost us an ungodly number of billions of dollars anyway! Why should we not consider that effectively (effectively, mind you) treasonous?
And as for the laughable claims made by you and many others that stealth aircraft “evaded” Iraqi radar during the Gulf War – of “flying with impunity” no less – here are the facts, again quoting Air Force Colonel James Burton:
So much for your ignorantly vaunted taxpayer-thieving F-117s and B2s!
I may have written a bit clumsily, but I never intended to make such an absolute, flat assertion and I’m not convinced I actually did. What I meant to say – and what is the truth – is that in even moderately dirty-air environments such as a windy desert presents, the air filters usually needed to be replaced about every fifteen minutes. And that’s exactly what often happened in actual practice during the Gulf War. About every fifteen minutes in windy areas the filters got so hopelessly clogged that the engines out-and-out quit! Don’t try to give us more shit about how “double filters” made the tanks immune to this intractable problem that could only be a problem with these stupid jet-engine-like turbines in the first place!
Clearly the M4 is better considering the criterion in question: exactly 14 times better!
“Only one thing”?? Okay, now I’m sure you’re a Pentagon lackey. Your assertions are so full of the stench of Official Bullshit they can only have come from either a currently bidding defense contractor or a Pentagon senior aide whose tongue is so far up the generals’ asses you taste their food before they do!
NONE of the other aircraft came anywhere close to the effectiveness of the A-10! And your bald-faced lie about them only being good at “low-threat” environments is just another ignorantly pathetic slander: during the Gulf War the A-10s came under intense enemy fire and they survived extremely well because the A-10 is the first and ONLY aircraft EVER specifically designed for Close Air Support! It’s made to take intense ground fire, Pentagon boy!
Your beloved anti-soldier propaganda ministers at the Pentagon have obviously instructed you to mindlessly recite their Official Rhetoric about such stupid plans as modifying fighter aircraft to serve in a CAS role, as if fighters flying at 10,000 feet at high speed with none of the A-10s low-altitude maneuverability could somehow actually support troops on the ground! You and Sam are plainly convinced we’re idiots.
You’re talking about someone else, I guess. In any event, one of those more dangerous things is reading a lot of Pentagon propaganda and falling for it hook, line, and sinker. Especially when the facts are so utterly against you!
And damned examples I gave you. Damned examples indeed.
I’m sure you’re popular at Pentagon group gropes, but it’d be better if you tried to sell your propagandistic bullshit somewhere else. We’re not so easily fooled here.
Sam, you and Brutus have merely mindlessly parroted Official Pentagon Propaganda like good little high-tech Über-hawks. Whether knowingly or not, you two rely on deception, disinformation and dogma, while I provided facts from professional experience in actual battle.
I’m happy to let the readers decide who’s telling the truth.
Just about everyone still posting to this thread needs to take a deep breath, step back, and CALM DOWN. If y’all want to debate about the technical merits and drawbacks of different sorts of tank engines, or any other really specific spin-offs from this thread, y’all might want to start a new thread or two. For the purposes of reasoned debate, that is.
Well, I can’t think of a more appropriate debate to have in a Reagan thread than a technical discussion about defense, unless it’s a technical discussion about finance.
Anyway, ambush, I’m proud to have praised your initial post so highly, as your follow-ups show you to be the real deal. Just tone down the personal stuff some, as I really, really, don’t want to see you get banned.
Ambushed is the real deal? Hmnn… You say you worked at Dryden. What did you do there? What are your technical qualifications? Normally, I don’t ask for personal qualifications, but since you’ve brought it up as an appeal to authority, I think it’s only fair to ask what it is that you did.
And before I go any further with you, I’d like you to address the points I made earlier, rather than just ignoring them and going on to your next attack. Specifically:
[ul]
[li]How did the M1A1 prevent the U.S. from destroying the Republican Guard? [/li][li]How was the M60 better than the M1A1? [/li][li]Why did the Marines refuse to use their own M60s, instead borrowing the M1A1 from the Army? [/li][li]If the M1A1 was inferior to the M60, and if it was such a horrible design, how do you explain the fact that it destroyed the Republican Guard’s tanks while suffering no KIA losses of a single crewmember?[/li][li]Why do you not list any of the numerous advantages of the M1A1, such as its thermal sight, ability to fire accurately while moving, NBC overpressure system, low profile, lower maintenance, higher speed, ability to climb higher grades (and climb lower grades faster), active armor, and the numerous other ways in which the M1A1 is superior to the M60?[/li][/ul]
Your aircraft comparison between the F-15 and F-16 is laughable. You failed to acknowledge the big difference I pointed out, which is that one has two engines.
I don’t care whether your NASA buddies would say the F-16 was better - if they were approaching the matter as fighter pilots, that makes sense. The F-16 is a better dogfighter than the F-15, no question. What you have failed to acknowledge is that the F-15 does many, many other things very well. As I said before, you need to evaluate the whole weapons system, and not just the airframe. Why didn’t you compare the F-16 to the F-14? Or the F-18? Why did you pick the F-15?
Look, guys, I’m no Reagan fan, but I’m thinkin’ about a problem they had in the space program. They had trouble with ballpoint pens not working in zero gravity. So they invested bazillions in a program to develop ballpoint pens that would work normally in zero gravity.
The Soviets solved the same problem by simply using a pencil.
I daresay that the Neocons aren’t the first big important people to go a little crazy over neato shiny gadgets once they got their hands on all that rich green tax money, you know?
