Ergo, here is what the Chinese and Russians will do:
Invest in jamming equipment, EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse weaponry) and anti-satellite technology, to take out GPS. Attempt to make us as blind as they are.
Yup. That sounds about right. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that China is working on an advanced space capability?
Still, modern equipment is very difficult to destroy or jam. Although taking out the GPS system would certainly go a long way towards equalizing the technological gap.
China wants ICBMs, because its a VERY cold world to live in when you are playing with the big dogs, and you dont have a spiked collar on…
I wouldn’t be surprised if they did use the Carbon filled Cruise Missiles, because they did use them in the First Gulf War against the power plants. The ‘EMP’ missiles are still experimental though… I highly doubt they were actually used, granted that the Iraqis had little electronics after 12 years of sanctions…
Only way you can ‘Jam’ the GPS is to take out the satellites, and the only way you are going to do that is to detonate a nuclear warhead in space… not a good idea… Besides, arent all military electronics shielded for EMP??
Unmanned drones are not far off… and autonomous drones within 20 years…
Yes, but a sub or a B-52 cant quell rioting on the streets or someone dumping sugar into fuel tanks. While nobody is disputing the US’s power to WAGE war, the ability to PACIFY is still something very hard to do. I dont doubt that the US might knock over several medium sountries quite easily but keeping them in US hands would be extremely taxing on their resources.
I’m getting a mental image of a soldier ordering up a bomb strike like it’s a pizza. “Yeah, I need two medium payload smart bombs with IR tracking delivered two miles north of my position and can I get an order of crazy bread to go with that?”
Highly debatable. Although true in the no-fly zones, Saddam did have a robust AA system in the mid region. There is a reason why not one single Iraqi airplane was reported to have taken off during the entire war. In '91 the life expectancy of an Iraqi plane from liftoff was 4 seconds average.
And then you have 10+ years of the USAF modernizing their forces and strategies to handle the AA sysytems. Wich they handled pretty well. Remember all of the tracers the first night of the bombing. The second noght was reduced by half in my estimates. Then degraded to nothing within a week. Not to shabby, even for a numerical inferior air force.
I have always had high confidence in our abilities to project power and fight a “clean” war. But I was dumbfounded on how they actually made it look so easy. The Iraqi military wasn’t as degraded or incompetent as the war made them out to be. It was the tactics, etc; or the coalition that made them seem that way. If you can look up the size of world militaries , and compare the '02 iraqi military with the rest of thw world, you can see while it was never first rate, or maybe even second, it was nowhere near third world.
Highly debatable. Although true in the no-fly zones, Saddam did have a robust AA system in the mid region. There is a reason why not one single Iraqi airplane was reported to have taken off during the entire war. In '91 the life expectancy of an Iraqi plane from liftoff was 4 seconds average.
And then you have 10+ years of the USAF modernizing their forces and strategies to handle the AA sysytems. Wich they handled pretty well. Remember all of the tracers the first night of the bombing. The second night was reduced by half in my estimates. Then degraded to nothing within a week. Not to shabby, even for a numerical inferior air force.
I have always had high confidence in our abilities to project power and fight a “clean” war. But I was dumbfounded on how they actually made it look so easy. The Iraqi military wasn’t as degraded or incompetent as the war made them out to be. It was the tactics, etc; or the coalition that made them seem that way. If you can look up the size of world militaries , and compare the '02 iraqi military with the rest of thw world, you can see while it was never first rate, or maybe even second, it was nowhere near third world.
Highly debatable. Although true in the no-fly zones, Saddam did have a robust AA system in the mid region. There is a reason why not one single Iraqi airplane was reported to have taken off during the entire war. In '91 the life expectancy of an Iraqi plane from liftoff was 4 seconds average.
And then you have 10+ years of the USAF modernizing their forces and strategies to handle the AA sysytems. Wich they handled pretty well. Remember all of the tracers the first night of the bombing. The second night was reduced by half in my estimates. Then degraded to nothing within a week. Not to shabby, even for a numerical inferior air force.
I have always had high confidence in our abilities to project power and fight a “clean” war. But I was dumbfounded on how they actually made it look so easy. The Iraqi military wasn’t as degraded or incompetent as the war made them out to be. It was the tactics, etc; or the coalition that made them seem that way. If you can look up the size of world militaries , and compare the '02 iraqi military with the rest of thw world, you can see while it was never first rate, or maybe even second, it was nowhere near third world.
damn. Sorry bout the tripple post. wasn’t trying to bump, just hit refresh on a “The page cannot be displayed” hamster coffee break. Can a mod delete 2 of em?
Iraq’s anti-aircraft defenses were useless, because the U.S. has very advanced antiradiation missiles and ‘wild weasel’ aircraft that will quickly destroy any radar that has the temerity to be turned on.
Apparently, the Iraqis were firing completely unguided, leaving their radars off. The odds of hitting anything that way are close to zero. But they didn’t really have a choice.
The existence of the no-fly zones had absolutely nothing to do with the U.S.'s ability to maintain air superiority. After all, the U.S. rapidly achieved air superiority in the first Gulf war, despite the fact that the Iraqis were more capable then, and the U.S. less so.
Regarding China: they have a HUGE military, but largely equipped with 1960-era weapons. Such a force would be decimated within hours of an outbreak of war.
The era of the foot-slogging infantryman is LONG over-future conflicts are likely to last days, not weeks or months. The whole idea of mobilizing a huge army makes no sense today.
Perhaps this will evolve to a “STAR TREK” situation, in which wars are fought by computer!
But that’s hardly the point unless, as leftists allege, the military now exists primarily to help America become an Empire, spreading its might all over the world. A standing military was originally created supposed to exist to defend our country, not to create or pacify other nations. So we’re not talking about occupying China or Russia, we’re talking about whether they are any convntional threat to us at all. And the reality is, they aren’t. No one is. That’s why the military, by it’s own decisive victory in the arms race, has made it’s original purpose of defending our borders in a direct way (or even defending our territorial interests abroad) all but obsolete. Nowadays, it has to be on the lookout for some more fun things to do with its free time if it wants to see any action at all. Preventative strikes like Iraq are one answer to this problem, as the major threats from other countries today are not from any sort of conventional military attack, but rather from WMD that can turn even a few people into mass murderers. This isn’t something the military really can do anything about when it happens: but they can do something about it prior to people getting their hands on these weapons.