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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (159883)	2/7/2009 6:54:41 AM
From: cirrus	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 361955

It saddens me greatly that we such enormous sums on weapons - yet I am not prepared to say we don't need them. The cost of the F22 including the billions in R&D is closer to $200 million. The R&D is a sunk cost so it's not relevant to the current $138 million cost of production. Nevertheless, when one thinks of all the hospitals, schools, bridges, that $2 billion per year to keep the F22 line open could buy... The expensive, high tech stuff is needed, I think, but so is low tech. High tech won the initial rounds in Iraq and Afghanistan but it's the low tech, boots on the ground relationships with the local populations that will determine success or failure. We need relationships as much as weapons...

To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (159883)	2/7/2009 7:07:18 AM
From: cirrus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361955

We need high middle and low tech weapons. Just as F1 auto racing is the proving ground for sophisticated technologies like traction control, anti-lock brakes and advanced engine management controls that eventually find their way into the family sedan, so to are the ways of the military. However, as with everything else, the devil is in the details. How much, how soon and how many. What we have and need now may or may not be what's needed in the future, so preparedness and flexibility are the key. The one consolation in an era of $2 billion per copy bombers and $150 million dollar fighters and so forth is that someday, perhaps, war will be simply be too expensive... The F-22 v. other seems complex. I'm unsure of it. But it gets into the capibilities of the fighter jets and the current needs.