Which leads us to EW/EA. Which I assume is a topic as closely guarded as stealth. You haven’t mentioned them. Are you confident in ruling them out?

I wouldn’t rule them out, but when you combine them with VLO, then they’re even more effective.

American public has so far demonstrated incredibly poor level of even the most basic knowledge about anything further than 20 miles off their coast.. Letting Fox News watchers decide about Iraq is like letting a chimp decide about allowable volume of amethocaine for spinal anesthesia.

As opposed to which credible alternative news source? You may take issue with the pundit shows and the opinions expressed therein, but can you point to eggregious examples of bad info being put out on the news updates?

OK, but why should I support Americans benefiting from this?

The whole world benefits from a more stable mid east, not just Americans. Does something that benefits America automatically affect your lifestyle one iota?

Easy solution: aid Iran in building nuclear arms. Then you have access to their Uranium or Plutonium stocks and can use that data to match the signature of any detonated weapon to the source. That solves the Iran nuke issue and guarantees no Iranian weapon would ever be used against the US as retaliation would be forthcoming.

You’re assuming the regime is rational, and not wanting to bring about the returen of the 12th Imam. I’d rather Iran NOT have nukes(or any other WMD, or any long range weapons of any kind). Same goes for Syria, and North Korea.
There is absolutely nothing beneficial to the rest of the world, by these regimes having weapons like that.

That’s the impression I got from the presentation. He looked at why fighters are needed at all, and then which kind of fighter best fits current and expected strategic requirements. Part of that, it seemed to me, was wondering whether the cost increase by going with the F-35 (versus upgrading or purchasing a 4.5th gen fleet) provided enough increase in critical capability to justify the purchase, additionally viewed under the light of potential technological developments that could decrease LO’s advantages, which would leave the plane with the expensive, but then potentially useless, remnants of its stealth technology.

Now, before you start attacking that, keep in mind that this is my summary of what I thought he wanted to do in this presentation.

Personally, I’m an advocate of the F-35, but I do think that Mr. Sweetman’s stance on this (or his personal take) is valid and shows concerns that aren’t completely unfounded. Whether they will become true is another discussion, and whether his exact presentation of the circumstances has a personal slant or presentational deficiencies not exactly serving his point yet another.

As with pretty much anything, I’m not claiming to give answers. All I do at most is trying to add another perspective. 🙂

The problem with Mr. Sweetman’s desire to upgrade 4th gen aircraft, because stealth may someday be less effective, is that these aircraft are vulnerable right now. Any nation with S-300/400 or equivalent level of SAM, is going to inflict high losses against legacy aircraft, or prevent them from operating freely in a given battlespace. Additionally, they wouldn’t provide overwhelming superiority against the emerging fighter threat aircraft either.

You’re preaching to the choir here. It’s also hyporcitical when we want to force one nation to not pursue nuclear arms yet are fine with another hoarding them. Why does Israel need them anyway? No Arab military has ever been much of a problem for them. And they still have their Great Protectors on speed dial if there ever is a major conflict.

I think the reason that a lot of the regimes in the ME haven’t behaved worse than they have, is knowing that they’d be annihilated if they stepped too far over the line. When you have a number of groups/countries/regimes whose goal is the destruction of Israel, it provides strategic deterrence. If these groups/countries/regimes got their hands on nukes, it would only serve for offensive, or nuclear blackmail purposes.

Frankly, yes. Iran having nuclear weapons is an excuse to remove them from the planet should they do something untoward with one of them.

I prefer to be proactive rather than reactive though. It only takes Iran doing something untoward once, to kill hundreds of thousands(or even millions) of people, if they have intercontinental range nukes. I’m also not convinced that some terror group might not be supplied with nukes, so they could detonate it without a POO to retaliate against.

The bulk of the Raptors began to be produced in 2004. Prior to that the jets were primarily EMD birds or slated for test units at Nellis or Edwards. Langley’s first jet arrived in 2005, so the operational fleet won’t see problems until 2025 at the earliest. Plus, this is based on an 8,000 hour life, which was estimated to equate to about 20 years. That’s the theoretical life, they were supposed to have tested a jet to 16,000 hours. If that worked out alright then they should be fine for 40 years and not 20.

Airframe hour limits if nothing else, should be considered when you know you’re going to need an X size force for 30-40yrs(and not wanting every bird to have flight restrictions due to age, before you have a replacement aircraft design coming online).

Actually USA has in contrast to the rest of the world kept the same military spending at the same level as it was at the end of the cold war.

You have to look at how that budget has been spent though. The procurement budget hasn’t remained the same percentage of total spending.

:p:p:diablo::D:D
It would be suicidal for EU economies! If EU forbids US to enter its miltary market (worth maybe 3% of the GDP), than the US will forbid EU to enter with all its exports (CIVILIAN&MILTARY) in US!

This is true, not to mention how many subsystems(even on US equipment) of European origin would lose out. Isolationism never gets the customer the best product or the best price.