I think the Gotland class has a lot to look at for usefulness. Yes we do deep water with nuke attack subs. However, I think there could be a case made for us having a few of these. Where any Burke class could be a “sub tender” of sorts and meet it for provisioning when needed. 120 + crew in a Virginia “littorial” :rolleyes: vs. a 20 crew ship like the Gotland. I think we could use them effectively for some missions, not just for the reason of a nice happy face “saving money” type of thing. I think there are a few mission sets for the USN that would justify having some of these. To say they are dangerous, is an understatement. They could be very very useful. Also…. would you rather beach an almost 2 billion dollar, 120+ crew Virginia by mistake in a high threat littorial environ or a 20+ crew Gotland which would look a little less embarassing as some trophy after it was captured?

Ok ..you end up with the ultimate Military in the world…So what?

doesn’t really address my point..its hard if not impossible to defeat a belief or an idea.

You mean the belief or idea that it is OK to underfund and ruin excellent U.K. military forces? I agree. It has been going on for years, and not much has been able to stop it.

Not that it matters much if both sides have new-Gen HOBS-Heaters and a trick helmet.

Yup. The military GPS setup and the various military end user receivers, have enough anti-spoof and anti-jam appliances to get the job done. Especially considering that the INS kits in the JDAM being dropped from 40k or so where they have a bit over a minute of fly time, the INS only margin of error isn’t enough to worry about.

But can a B-1 hang around and loiter in a battlefield?

If an A-10 is already hanging around in a battlefield, I bet you its going to take far less than 15 minutes for it to respond to any attack before a B-1B or F-16C with JDAMs arrive. And it usually takes F-16s longer than 15 minutes I bet, because they have to fly off the airfield from a neighboring country, and B-1Bs even longer because there are only two bases in the world outside of the US that can base these planes—Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean and Guam near the middle of Pacific. Believe me if you have a North Korean situation, the B-1Bs won’t respond until 2 to 3 hours at best.

Yup, and that’s why grunts on the ground swear by the Warthog.

Depends on the scenario. Most fast movers in the case of Afghanistan sign in to the JSTARS stack and loiter. An A-10 is better if the op is known and preplanned. It is slow on response times in emergencys. There is usually a few B-1s over Afghanistan at any given time.

Swearing by the Warthog isn’t any good if there is weather that comes down to near ground level or you are waiting on it in an unplanned emergency. Don’t know if the Marines think much of it either considering some of the frats. A-10 is very good but it has it’s limits. As the C model ( P.E. package ) gets into the field it will be even more useful as it can drop near all weather PGMs and have more useful conversations with GFACs.

As for Korea, well the NKs aren’t going to just leap over the fence. SK by itself is enough to stop them. Pushing the A-10 into the forward edge of the battlefield with NK and over the red line on to the NK side, just means you will end up with a lot of shot down A-10s. A scenero there …anyway would be known where you already have our high altitude fast movers in action in some way shape or form, ready to plink things. NK can’t suprise us in conventional ops.

Oh dear… will this include myspace also ? :dev2: 😀 That will have all the kiddies up in arms. Revolt. 😀

It’s not even classified information.
It’s not even confidential. What that really means is there is so many ways PLA could obtain the info without using spys.

The stolen DOD Laptops and the classified files they would contain are much more valuable than unclassified info which almost everyone can get their hands on. sign… when are people going to be less paranoid?

A lot of info that should be classified, isn’t, simply so a project can move faster. That still ignores the problem that we have poor security on our miltiary programs. Walking off with computer disks with project info and flying home to the good old PRC is still illegal.