No, not the best. The critical problem is locating him. Like other insecure dictators, from Hitler onwards, he made a point of changing his schedule without warning. There were attempts to kill him during the 2003 war, & they all failed.

The only times it could have been done were while he was making a public speech during a time when there were no overt hostilities or apparent prospect of them (because whenever there seemed a risk of attack he took care to stay out of sight), assuming you had the UAV already on station, undetected by Iraqi air defences. In other words, a complete surprise attack, which you’d prepared for & managed to keep completely secret for an indefinite period while waiting for an opportunity. Tricky . . .

This raises a very good point, the firepower that SDB equipped B2s, JSF’s and UCAV’s offer is huge, but actually locating targets for it to all be aimed at is the hard part.

Gordie isn’t the sort of bloke to order something in July, then cancel it in October. He tends to be somewhat inflexible, unlike his predecessor. Orders for long-lead items have been signed in the last couple of weeks.

No, I think the carriers are safe. But I can’t say the same for anything that hasn’t yet been ordered.

Exactly my opinion, but that seems to be how cuts are made to the Navy at the moment, new unordered units are cancelled and the ships they are supposed to replace are just removed from service. I think the carriers are too big to cancel.

I don’t see much serious discussion going on here, just the usual doom-and-gloom bull.

For some reason so many people here seem to be bipolar, one minute jumping for joy (CVF announcement) and the next predicting the sky is going to fall in on their heads (news of cuts).

Ridiculous………

I think that you will find that the two are linked, people jump for joy because of the glaring contrast with the persistent cutting. Whether you like it or not UK defence cuts are a serious discussion topic.

The operative term is “stand alone”. The way the Brits are going, they will give up that capability. Once that capability vanishes (and those skills are perishable), they will be forced to tag along with someone who can provide the capabilities they cannot (US or French)

The British are not sacrificing those capabilities compared to France though.

So… what does separate a dictator from a leader that manipulates information to allow them to force their own decision through anyway?

That would be the accountability of democracy, the reason why the next president will likely be Democrat.:rolleyes:

I think your interpretation of freedom and liberty in Western countries is somewhat exaggerated.

Apart from wealth (which is not a factor of either freedom or liberty), the only real difference between NK and USA I see is freedom of speech. In USA you can freely walk with a poster stating that GWB is an idiot (well, I have some doubts that you could do that everywhere in the US without any law enforcement intervention but let us assume that this rule generally applies) while in the NK you would do yourself some terrible mess. But if you seriously made an attempt for an uprising to undermine the authority of American administration, you would be treated exactly the same way as in Northern Korea, Iran or anywhere else – as a traitor. That makes all countries pretty similar – if you do your job, live your life and do not stick your nose into political matters, they will let you be, even in Northern Korea.

To make the long story short – the freedom you really have is freedom to do trashing and empty talking about politics openly. While that might sound great to those who do not have this exclusivity, in reality it helps you exactly as much as a survival blanket to a dead man – the chance to really change something in American politics according to your will is exactly as small as the chance of an average NoKo to do something about Kim Chong Il.

Do the words, election or democracy mean anything to you?:rolleyes:

While still being underdog to the SU-30…..

but by a significantly smaller margin and cheaper to operate.

For $55mil a piece you won’t get any of those. A decent APG-68 with AMRAAMs and some A-G goodies, yes, that makes it a nice platform, but not against Su-30MKA.

Figures? Take a second hand C model and give it RANGR and it would probably come out alot cheaper than you think. Bare in mind that RANGR is basically the Shornets radar resized for whatever platform you choose so most of the development work is already done. Sure they wont get new build block-60s cheap but it should not be too expensive to do very well upgraded used C/D’s.