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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tekboy who wrote (19856)	2/24/2002 10:33:33 AM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

we'll have a chance to discuss the subject in relation to other specific suggestions then. But I'm curious--if you had a free hand to devise current and future defense budgets, would you really spend $300 billion on three new tactical fighter aircraft? And would you really go forward with the Crusader? i look forward to reading it...can't wait to see page one. :o) tactical fighter aircraft is a bit of a misnomer...these are aircraft not only capable of fighting enemy aircraft but also of providing close and extremely accurate support to ground forces. after seeing the results of our new weaponry in afghani...i doubt anyone will object to spending that money. remember this is to be spent over many many years...it is not a sudden expense...we spent over 3.2 trillion on defense in the 90s....we are likely to spend 4.5 trillion or more in the 00s....300 billion of that for air support does not seem out of line to me. re...crusader i guess you don't mean the old fighter aircraft the F8 Crusader. if you mean the new army artillery system being developed. think about this...we do not have a really accurate long or medium range artillery gun...in fact we do not have a long range gun at all. aircraft are fine for supporting a few A teams...as long as USAF is not getting simultaneous calls from the regular army and USMC as in afghani. but when you put large numbers of infantry troops on the ground anywhere, they need supporting artillery...and the bigger and better and more accurate, the more lives will be saved and the better the odds of winning the battle. even A teams can do much more damage if batteries of artillery can be called for fire missions. presently our main artillery piece is the 155...it has been around since korea. even the new 198 uses the 155 tube...the range is about 20+ kilometers. the MLRS...multiple launch rocket system is range limited to 32 kilometers right now. i believe that is a little less than the 175 it replaced...it is more mobile than the 175 but equally inaccurate. neither is suitable for supporting long range recon or hatchet forces. SF teams are seldom (almost never) in range to get support from these pieces. regular units do not like them for real close support because of accuracy..."Danger Close" for the 155 is still 500 meters...it is 1,000 meters for the MLRS...that is pretty far away for troops needing close artillery support during a firefight. the crusader has one major problem that i know of right now...it is too big for the platform...it needs to shed about 8 tons. otherwise it has much much longer range, is more accurate and can be reloaded more than 2x faster than the 155. the infantry needs a high volume, very accurate, medium/long range, artillery fire support system for ground warfare. it is long overdue...and is one of the programs that fell during budget cuts...the crusader may fill that slot...if not, we will have to develop something else. uw