I see what you mean, The F in the designation stands for fighter, the primary role is fighter, that can also do some ground attack. The A is for ground attack, helicopters, UAV, and the obsolete A-10 that saved my butt are for ground attack. To protect the ground attack planes you need a fighter cover above. It is called combined arms team. Just like infantry and tanks are part of the combined arms team. YOu can't assult with tanks alone or infantry alone, you need infantry to hold the ground, tanks in support ground attack planes above and fighter cover. For missiles you need a layered defence, you seem to think that one missile system will do it all. That is not how it works. We are working to take out missiles in three phases. The boost phase, we can take out a quarter to half the missiles launched. in flight we take out a bunch more and then in the terminal phase we take out what is left. the systems Mr. Obama just ended was for the flight stage. This means we have to do more in the terminal phase which is the hardest phase to take out. Don't think that one system is the be all and end all, it is only a part of an intergrated system.

BTW F-22's never have to turn on their radar to engage. AWACS (an other aircraft, including other F-22s) can supply targeting data hundreds of miles away (Just imagine if you knew this aircrafts classified abilities). Remember layered defense/offense.

Very well. Please do explain to me how I was incorrect about the Battleship vs. Carrier debate, or the Maginot line. Or, tell me why I'm wrong about the French pre-WW2 belief about tanks and infantry. Or please, explain to me why the A-10 is such a terrible close air support aircraft, and show me another aircraft that has a better record (again, emphasis on close air support, NOT dropping bombs on buildings)

Or, explain to me why I'm so incredibly stupid when the ABM shield has yet to succesfully be tested against an actual, valid ICBM, any flavor will do.

What do I mean by this? Every single test, every.single.test. has been done with the deck stacked very heavily in favor of the interceptor.

The operators know the launch time and location of the missile

The operators know ahead of time the missile's target, it's course, what trajectory it will take.

The missile follows a plain jane arc, no evasive maneuvers or course deviations.

Even then, the interceptor can't hit the missile everytime.

Throw in instances in which the interceptor never even left the ground because of various software problems (those officially don't count in the tally though, so don't worry) and things aint looking so hot.

If they were really serious about this program, a great test would be if an independent team was brought in to launch a dummy warhead at, say Alaska (cause folks would get antsy over anything flying over the mainland) and to see what would really happen if there was no prior warning.

Would the launch be detected properly? How effective would they be at actually pinpointing the target of the strike? And of course, if the missile made a course deviation, would the interceptor actually still be able to hit it?

Because NONE of the above has ever been accurately tested, no one can say. And the above test will never happen because companies like Boeing have too much dough on the line!

And I've never disputed this. However, you have current weapons systems in the works, like the F-35, that will supposedly be able to do everything in it's "multi-role"

But, don't listen to me. I'm just a know-nothing. Instead, listen to Pierre Sprey, one of the fellows behind both the F-16 and the A-10:

"Even without new problems, the F-35 is a “dog.” If one accepts every performance promise the DoD currently makes for the aircraft, the F-35 will be:

Overweight and underpowered: at 49,500 lb (22,450kg) air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 lb of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight ratio for a new fighter.

 At that weight and with just 460 sq ft (43 m2) of wing area for the air force and Marine Corps variants, it will have a wing-loading of 108 lb per square foot. Fighters need large wings relative to their weight to enable them to manoeuvre and survive. The F-35 is actually less manoeuvrable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 “Lead Sled” that got wiped out over North Vietnam in the Indochina War.

 With a payload of only two 2,000 lb bombs in its bomb bay – far less than US Vietnam-era fighters – the F-35 is hardly a first-class bomber either. With more bombs carried under its wings, the F-35 instantly becomes non-stealthy and the DoD does not plan to seriously test it in this configuration for years.

 As a close air support attack aircraft to help US troops engaged in combat, the F-35 is a nonstarter. It is too fast to see the tactical targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire; and it lacks the payload and especially the endurance to loiter usefully over US forces for sustained periods as they manoeuvre on the ground. Specialised for this role, the air force’s existing A-10s are far superior."

http://www.counterpunch.org/sprey09092008.html

And of course, the unit cost. You're going to be paying at least 250 Billion for these puppies, or more. You certainly payed a lot of moolah for the F-22, over 350 milion for each single fighter-

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/feature/105059/op_ed:-putting-lipstick-on-the-f_35%3F.html

This is easy, are you sure you want me to do this?

Battleships were around before the aircraft carrier. The state of the art weapon at the time was the battleship. Poorer nations could not afford a capitol ship and found a cheaper way to do war. Carrier warfare was in its infancy while battleships were a proven weapon and only the brightest in military strategy could see the usefulness of the new weapon to exploit the weakness of the capitol ships. The treaty of WWI limited the number and size of capitol ships but there was no restriction on aircraft carriers. You are looking at things in 20/20 hind sight. It is like blaming the dead passengers of the titanic for not knowing it would sink the first time at sea. By your logic as soon as an aircraft carrier was built the world powers should have scrapped the battleships and made the untried carrier the new capitol ship. When war broke out there was no time for anyone to make the change over. In fact we did not finish the change over until the Korean conflict 4 years later.

This one is fun. The strategy was sound and the system was well designed, the problem was they did not extend the line around its entire border. Being friends with Belgium the French did not want to offend its friend so it only put up the line on the border with Germany. Poor execution of a good strategy. Germany seeing the weakness exploited it by taking Belgium first then entered France through that border. You may not have heard of this word, it is called innovation. Each time you build a weapon it is generally believed to be worthless until it is tried in battle. The radar invisible aircraft were untried and we worried all the way until they came back a few times unhurt.

I am not saying you are totally wrong just ignorant of the facts. Tanks were new just like aircraft carriers. In WWI when they were first used they were not that much help because they only traveled at a top speed on flat ground at 3 miles an hour, had to be completely still before they could fire and without infantry support they were in danger. It was not until the 70’s did anyone come up with an integrated strategy that worked using tanks and infantry, During the 6 day war Israel sent out tanks without infantry and the tanks were slaughtered with a new anti-tank weapon. After that was seen then Israel put troops with the tanks and things changed rapidly. The same with air defense, Israel sent out planes without support of troops and ground attack aircraft and ran into the SA-6 and got their butts handed to them. Once the Egyptian strategy was seen for what it was Israel adjusted and the advantage was lost. Germany did the same thing, they did not build a heavy tank till almost the end of the war and paid a heavy price for it. The light tanks that were used in the beginning of the war worked so well because it was a new strategy. Once the strategy was figured out, countermeasures were created and Germany lost.

It is a great weapon, without it I would not be here to argue with you. It is at the end of its life and has been replaced. We could use it in Iraq and Afghanistan because they had Soviet weapons that are easy to defeat as long as we had control of the air. The Apache is the replacement for the Warthog. The A-10 was designed to do one thing and one thing only, cut Soviet tanks in half. We called it the Fairchild can opener. The apache does the same thing only different. It can hit a target without the target knowing it is being attacked until just before they die. The Apache is a better weapon but was untried until the gulf war.

Okay, the data as I pointed out before is old data that has been out for decades. Like the CIA you only hear about the failures not the successes. To further confuse things you are getting data from 25 different weapons systems that make up the ABM shield.

This is partially true. In the beginning the tests were don’t to see if it could be done. Once it was proven to be practical then they give it harder and harder tests. I is called “TESTING”.

Yes, so we don’t accidentally launch against Russia or China, or anyone else we have to set up a test window. It does not prove anything if they have the system in New York and they launch on Florida.

This is not true, they knew the target and approximate time of the launch window. The two submarine launches were free fired. The system was set on auto and acquired and destroyed both of them.

Another test was done on an old satellite, it was a success. This was done to prove that the anti-satellite weapons of the USSR that are still in orbit could be taken out when we need to do them. Two launches from missile silos were done and one was hit the other was not. Well not destroyed, it hit the missile but not hard enough to take it out. Those were launched from California over Hawaii.

Again, you are looking at 1980’s data. Lets just say it has been refined.

Yeah, been there done that only instead of Alaska we chose Hawaii because you can program the missile to miss the islands and hit the sea so people don’t get hurt.

May I suggest you watch American news media, all the above that I wrote is unclassified and has been released to the public. Some of it is on the military channel if you can get our cable stations.

Arty, as I pointed out before the F-35 has been designed differently than the F-4 Phantom There are three or four F-35’s the one for the Marines has different capabilities than the one designed for the Air force .The savings come in by the commonality of the general parts. Engines and tires and the like are all interchangeable between branches. The Marines version can’t fill the role of and air superiority fighter as well as the Air Force variant. We are just using the same frame and basic parts, the branch specific parts are what makes them different. The Air force variant does not have VTOL capabilities the Marines do. All have the proven ability to super-cruise. That is to fly supersonic without using afterburners which fixes the problem with the Harrier as like the A-10 is a subsonic platform. It has a radar cross section of the F-117 stealth fighter, making it very hard to spot and or hit. There are other things that you don’t need to know but it is not near the lead sled.

Funny the Marine variant is able to hover over the battle field like a helicopter that means it is not too fast for ground support. The article you linked was flawed heavily either by ignorance or design to prove their points. As I pointed out the A-10 was replaced by the Apache. Payload is a problem because when they go out fully loaded they are easy to spot on radar. Usually we wait till we have control of the air before we do that.

Back to the point at hand, the removal of the missile shield from Europe was a bad idea because it makes us look weak and when we look weak we get attacked. The system works well, as I have stated and is only one part of a three part system.

You seemed to be arguing that the US are deploying a known useless system in a way that would threaten Russia, despite the fact that the system used to threaten Russia was known to be useless.

And by undoing that commitment Obama has improved the US' international standing?

Well, Pierre Sprey was one of McNamara's "whiz kids" who was instrumental in the design and  creation of the F-16 and A-10. He was also a member of the defense reform movement in the 1970's which took on large bureaucratic arms developers and took them to task for spending  more and more money to develop fewer and often ineffective weapons. So, when he speaks, I listen!

But will we actually get anything from it?

Arty, nothing wrong with the A-10 at all, it's a fine (probably the finest) ground support aircraft in the world. But (and here seems to be the disconnect you can't grasp) it needs to operate in Allied controlled airspace. It is basically the Stuka of modern air warfare. The Stuka worked great until the Germans sent it over the English Channel. The Brits had air superiority and slaughtered the Stuka's. The Stuka still preformed moderately well in other theaters (Especially the Eastern front) throughout the war, but its reputation as a "war winning" weapon was ruined. The A-10 works in the environment it's in now because the US controls the skies. It would most likely have a higher attrition rate if flown in combat against some nation like Russia.

You speak of comparing apples (missiles) and oranges (battleships). Here's the problem with your battleship theory. They have been pulled out in every major conflict the US has had up until the 1st Gulf War. Why? They are obsolete right? The fact is NOTHING can give support to beach landings or near-shore operations like the guns of a battle ship (25 miles). The Iraqis in Kuwait literally shit their pants when the guns fired on the day of the invasion. Aircraft cannot provide close to that kind of fire power sustained over hours or even days (and Marines love battleships). I agree the main purpose of the ship is history (as you point out), which was to sink other battleships. Sucks being the last. It's not worth the cost to build something with a limited reach (even if it has cruise missiles), manpower intensive, lot of up keep, little path to upgrade, and in which smaller platforms can carry missiles. The explosion in Iowa's gun torrent signaled the end of this 60 year old weapons system, but even now we have nothing comparable (in bombardment efficiency). Now if you want to pull any other weapon out of history, start another thread, we can talk about spears vs. arrows there.

Back to the article (again). You have some pretty tough standards for an ABM in its infancy. The "rigged" test you speak of would be like shooting a needle, from your front yard to the backyard, through the eye of another needle. Oh, and that target is moving at 100mph to boot. Reeks of failure wouldn't you say? There is this little word called telemetry that must be considered. When an ICBM is launched, radars determine it's speed, trajectory and course- feed this into the missiles computer to make the interception. Missile technology itself is pretty constant (we can make a fast rocket easy enough), it's guidance that is improving quickly, much of it in software code. The missiles that were put to be put in Poland would have been continuously upgraded over their life. Now, your reasoning again why this are ineffective or obsolete were??? I forget since so much unrelated BS has filtered through.

You'll get the effect of Obama's foreign policy when Iran's Ahmadinejad. I'm sure he will be unable to hide his joy. Of course anything to make people happy right?

Yes, widely known but not accepted by the people that mattered. Yes, we built carriers but it was the Jananese that exploited the weakness after the UK proved that naval avation could sink battleships. Also proven by General Mitchel who was forced out of the army for proving it. Japan broke the treaty and built more than allowed and no one did anything about it. Germany with all thier inovations did not build any that I remember because they were afraid of the British navy.

No one said it was not a disaster, the error was not completing the wall around the nation. It worked well in China only because there were no holes in it. The line was designed to hold off an army long enough to bring up troops from around the country. The line was a delaying tactic not the be all and end all to the nations defence. Your arguments made my point thanks.

When the Air force announced they were getting rid of the warthog and not replacing it, the army came up with the apache. The cobra was not an anti-tank weapon till close to the end of its life. CONTEXT will help.

That is an assumption on your part, if you can find an obsucre article about Admaril Sims written 30 years after his death to prove your point you can find the rest if you want to. I am internet challenged and don't surf much excpt when working on my books. It took me an hour just to find out about Sims.

McNamara, the man credited with the loss of Vietnam, the distruction of our military that lasted for decades. You listen to people like that? THey had to come up with something to replace the failed F-4 that Mac forced into all branches of the military, yup he would know about wasting money and getting things wrong.

You just proved my point

YOUR point was that Obama made the wrong decision?

I thought it was mine.