Forum: General F-35 Forum

The Perry-class ships are limited to torpedo, gun, and CIWS weapons systems after their Mk 13 launcher was removed. They are of limited utility- I daresay the rather terrible LCS is better.

As for tactical airlift, most equipment is carried by ship or heavier aircraft a la C-17 and C-5. Retiring C-130Hs and Es would be a decent cost-cutter.

Other targets include MQ-1, C-27J, and GCV.

Things to protect include F-35, B-2, F-22, the Ford-class CVNs, F-15E, ABMs, and SM-3.

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southernphantom wrote:

The Perry-class ships are limited to torpedo, gun, and CIWS weapons systems after their Mk 13 launcher was removed. They are of limited utility- I daresay the rather terrible LCS is better.

As for tactical airlift, most equipment is carried by ship or heavier aircraft a la C-17 and C-5. Retiring C-130Hs and Es would be a decent cost-cutter.

Other targets include MQ-1, C-27J, and GCV.

Things to protect include F-35, B-2, F-22, the Ford-class CVNs, F-15E, ABMs, and SM-3.

I hadn't really looked into the condition of the Perry class frigates, but that is a rather sorry state. They seem even less armed than the LCS's -- which are basically intended to be ultralight aircraft carriers and drone platforms, rather than true combat vessels. The Independence class does have a space for a VLS cell, though I don't think it is being delivered to the US with one.

How about the Air Force One fleet. Flying both jets to the
same place so there is a spare near by? Of course the C-17
and everything else they drag along. And when the President is
not traveling, all the other flying hours they are ringing up...
Anyone remember the NY City photo op?

Italy and Spain also have very good chances of an F-35B buy, in addition to occasional whisperings from other nations. Cutting the F-35 buy is frankly a horrible idea. The F-16s need to be replaced yesterday, and legacy Hornets are rather short-legged with little payload.

As the countdown to sequestration heats up, expect more articles from the mainstream press about military programs that will be targets. The article was published yesterday in the New York Times. Surprisingly, it presents a fairly balanced review of the JSF program to date, and is quite long.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/us/in ... mp;src=xps

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maus92 wrote:

As the countdown to sequestration heats up, expect more articles from the mainstream press about military programs that will be targets. The article was published yesterday in the New York Times. Surprisingly, it presents a fairly balanced review of the JSF program to date, and is quite long.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/us/in ... mp;src=xps

.

Fairly balanced in Maus' mind: 25+ paragraphs of criticism and 2 paragraphs of slightly positive comments (really more factual statements.)

Quote:

Another thing that really gets my goat is the fact that every service now has different utility uniforms. This started when the USMC came up with their version of the Canadian Army's camouflage. I don't care about dress uniforms, but in the field ALL branches should use the same type of tactical gear and wear the same freakin uniforms.

Whoa there. What did the Marines do? Put in a superior piece of gear by adjusting something already in service with Canada. In any other world that would be smart. And the rest of military would be smart to adopt their own version of the USMC or CADPAT pattern with minimal fuss. Instead everyone decided to do the opposite and create their special version just to "be different" and ironically "stand out" In short, It wasn't the Marines that made the other services not follow in their footsteps. Army could have adopted MARPAT, changed the little EGAs to Army Of One Stars and moved right along... instead they created a disaster in DCU, and then double down on it but coloring all the tactical gear in the same manner.

The army has gone from DCU, to MULTICAM, and now are testing yet a 3rd option, while the USMC happily continues with Digital.

Blaming the Marines for all that is like blaming your parents for having you in the first place when you kill a hooker. At some point, the responsibility became yours.

Quote:

All fat motherf@ckers in the military need to be discharged if they cannot drastically drop their weight in six to eight months. In general (not always) fat troops are a liability in more ways than one.

I agree with this but we better take a good hard look at what a "fat motherf@cker" is exactly because what the military considers a fat MF and what I consider a fat MF is a huge difference.

I have a friend who played linebacker in high school he is big and strong and suffers mightily at the hands of military weight guidelines which I pass easily because I'm a little, muscled shrimp. I ace the PFT, He struggles. He aces Ruck marches, I struggle. When we go into combat, fat f@cks like him carry 100 lbs of gear, I don't get to go to war in a tennis, a t shirt, and shorty shorts. So who is fat? The guy who aces peacetime tests? or the guy passes wartime tests? And for the record he isn't even fat! But what he is a nonconformist to ht. vs wt. chart that declares someone "fat" The chart says it, so he must be.

Luckily for me the military PFTs are made by runners. How else could you honestly call running a few miles in a t shirt and shorts a measure of psychical preparation for the purpose of combat?

However, I do salute you in the fact that you are looking at personnel issues. Personnel issues are a huge problem. When some 19 year old E-2 Marries a chain smoking 31 year old whale who has 2 kids (one from each divorce) and gets them on the government health plan, and their stupid problems along with other ad hoc families take up 85 percent of the Officers time that could be better spent elsewhere. Its a problem. 1st term marriage ban, solves a lot of those problems.

Speaking of fat! Everyone wants to cut programs, this is like loosing weight but cutting off fingers. You are still plenty fat, and slowly losing the digits you could be using to get fit and unfat. (Ever try doing a no finger pull up? or a no toe run?)

Clean up the procurement process and you save billions right off the bat. Billions more in the future. Thats the fattest of the fat right now. Thats also the fat that grabs the headlines. Everyone wants to write about the pentagons biggest defense project hurting. No one want to write about the trillions of dollars in men and material that has to be expended to keep 40 year old sickly aircraft viable.

hb_pencil wrote:

maus92 wrote:

As the countdown to sequestration heats up, expect more articles from the mainstream press about military programs that will be targets. The article was published yesterday in the New York Times. Surprisingly, it presents a fairly balanced review of the JSF program to date, and is quite long.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/us/in ... mp;src=xps

.

Fairly balanced in Maus' mind: 25+ paragraphs of criticism and 2 paragraphs of slightly positive comments (really more factual statements.)

That was the "surprisingly" part

Stuff like this is amazing:

Quote:

relatively short flight range

relative to what?

my favorite paragraph from featured article:

Quote:

The Navy is developing a stealthy unmanned fighter that could fly from carriers and go two or three times as far as the F-35. The Air Force is studying concepts for the bomber, which could fly much farther and carry more firepower than the F-35.

They felt no need to put that into context or offer any perspective?

The Army is also developing a tank with more armor than the F-35, And the Marines A helicopter with a bigger gun than the F-35. Laughing

bigjku wrote:

I would suggest the following. The cuts need to be in the Army first. The US should not have a large standing army and frankly we would get into far less trouble without it around. I think you are also way overestimating cuts at that number. Obama is not stupid on foreign policy. The Army is going to be chopped down but I think the other services largely get spared. Chop the Army down and get out of Afghanistan and you can save plenty.

Right now the Army is 10 divisions and 5 independent brigades (2 are Cav Regiments which are basically brigades). Total this is about 40-41 brigades for argument sake. Just by bringing home the European and Korean based troops you could cut down 6 brigades which is 15% of the force. Spread that across the budget and figure you can cut 10% from the budget rolling forward since you won't get 100% efficiency from that.

That is about $24 billion dollars a year or so.

Figure that absent Iraq and Afghanistan you could cut another 100,000 men from the Army. That lets you cut out 3 more divisions so lets toss the 3rd, 4th and 10th Infantry divisions out. That would cut another 12 brigades assuming we send some to 2nd infantry which has 2 in Korea which is 29% of the force. Now we have cut 44% of the standing Army.

It would leave the US with the following.

1st Armored
1st Cavalry
1st Infantry
2nd Infantry
25th Infantry
82nd Airborne
101st Airborne
3rd Armored Cav
11th Armored Cav

You can reshuffle equipment so that the 1st Armored and 1st Cav are equipped identically as heavy armored divisions. 1st Infantry and 2nd Infantry are heavy infantry divisions. 25th Infantry is your Stryker based force. 82nd and 101st are air mobile.

This is using only 56% of the current active force. Still this is sufficient force to make anyone think twice about really provoking the US. Your average US Armored division is worth several Soviet pattern divisions or more. In the event of a major war deploying just the first 4 divisions would likely mean we had on the ground the most dominant armored force on earth.

Let's say that by all these cuts you only manage to trim 30% from the Army budget, we are leaving special forces and missile defense totally untouched. That still gets me around $730 billion dollars over 10 years in savings, which comes really close to hitting this guys target of $1 trillion. One could probably do a bit better than that simply because you could simplify the army mission to being one of fighting major wars period. You could do away with the rapid deployment and counter-terror stuff that has driven a lot of R&D for lighter weapons systems and accept that the army, at least the first 5 divisions I listed, is only moving in a major crisis.

You have the Marines, the 82nd, the 101st and the 25th to deal with minor conflicts and all should be more than sufficient to that end. You could deploy the Cav Regiments to supplement any of the lighter divisions as well fairly simply.

BUT, I think you will end up paying anyway for all these people that get cut through unemployment and all the other services they will go after if they are separated. I think hardware is a better area to look at for cuts.

Quote:

BUT, I think you will end up paying anyway for all these people that get cut through unemployment and all the other services they will go after if they are separated. I think hardware is a better area to look at for cuts.

I don't disagree with you, but thats not how the federal budget "works."

The other part of the equation is that the military is not supposed to be a charity or a "make work" project so unemployment can be countered. It is supposed to fight and win wars. It needs weaponry. Id rather have a smaller, higher standard force, with great equipment.

Last edited by maus92 on Dec 02, 2012 - 03:56 AM; edited 1 time in total

A compendium of think tank analysts, Hill staffers and other wonks teamed up with recommendations of how to retool the military in austere times:

The "Crown Jewels:"

Special operations forces: All teams protected special operations forces (SOF) even as they made significant reductions to active component ground forces.

Cyberspace capabilities: All teams chose to protect investments in offensive and defensive cyber capabilities to preserve the integrity of U.S. networks and maintain the capability to degrade the battle networks of future adversaries.

Next generation long-range penetrating surveillance and strike: All teams chose to maintain or accelerate development of the next generation Long Range Strike-Bomber. Teams also increased the planned procurement of stealthy, multi-role Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) rather than maintain the current UAS force, which is optimized for operations in permissive airspace.

Survivable undersea warfare systems: All teams cut surface ships relatively more than submarines, indicating a strategic choice to prioritize submarines and unmanned undersea vehicles better suited for operating in an A2/AD [anti-access, area denial] environment.

And things on the table [for cuts]:

The Army, nuclear weapons, the fledging F-35 tri-service fighter program, missile defense

Read more: http://nation.time.com/2012/11/28/the-c ... z2DrH9lmQh

The actual report:

http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/ ... austerity/

Does the term 'bankers' (fudged) apply to this lot: "...A compendium of think tank analysts, Hill staffers and other wonks team..."?

A reaction about the possible sequestration from a historical figure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zCDDYVT ... r_embedded

Check out the JSF mention at ~2:50 mark

maus92 wrote:

A compendium of think tank analysts, Hill staffers and other wonks teamed up with recommendations of how to retool the military in austere times:

*groan* This is nothing new. Periodically, a bunch of goobers come along with a bundle of old-granny ideas about how the military should be structured as an international police/surveillance force.

Always the same:

1. More drones

2. More spec-ops

3. More TLAMs/Prompt Global Strike (or something along those lines)

Always Ignoring the same realities:

1. Drones won't work without at least basic air-superiority... something said drones can't provide unless they become every bit as expensive as manned platforms.

2. Spec-ops are useless without heavy support from regular forces.

3. Missiles (global strike or otherwise) are a poor substitute for real power-projection. Your war-fighting capability will only last long as it takes to shoot your wad of Tomahawks.

Sounds like a recipe for ceding the world to the next crop of dictators and maniacs.

Forum: General F-35 Forum

Budget Woes - What should get cut?