Boeing had the better solution for the next generation fighter, but LM had the greater need and its interests prevailed.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”
The narrative needs to be switched around to highlight defense spending as "entitlements" to defense contractors and numerous local economies that depend on them.
You can't make an absolute statement that every gun comes at the expense of the poor, because if we hadn't had guns, I can assure you we all (including the poor) would have been worse off under a Nazi or Russian Communist regime.
You can't tell me that if the entire US fleet was sunk, every tank blown up, that the US couldn't rebuild in a year or two if the public was all-in on support.
Instead the US has this enormous force that, by virtue of merely existing, it feels compelled to use now and then.
It doesn't seem wise to rely on that always being true. The U.S. has not been involved in wars for very long (considering the history of war) and war has changed so much recently that assuming things won't change in the future seems like a bad plan.
The closest to a symmetrical war was in Korea, after China sent troops. And that war has never really been resolved.
Never mind never having had to operate the industry under 24/7 bombardment.
The US military, which is ridiculous, couldn't even keep a lid on Iraq and it's not even as big as Texas. There's no adversary that could possibly mount a bombing campaign that big, not even the US itself.
The Soviet Union's ideology originally included the long term goal of promulgating the dictatorship of the proletariat worldwide. However, even Lenin's ideology changed a lot when faced with the actual challenges of ruling a country.
Not sure I agree with you there. It's no secret that the Air Force is already developing solutions for unmanned aerial superiority platforms. Being as kind as possible to programs like the F-35, I'd have to say that they will be, at best, "transitional". No way they will have the service life of, say, the F-16 or even 18.
You have to wonder, if you know you have to go unmanned anyway, why not just upgrade the F-18 and your existing stealth platforms to get you through?
The answer to that question was likely given to us a long time ago by General Butler and Ike.
The F-18 has been upgraded to a limited extent, however the basic shape of the airframe means it will always have a large radar cross section and IR signature no matter what they do. The concern is that it's just no longer survivable against modern air defense systems. So at some point they have to start over with a new airframe.
AI technology might allow for totally autonomous tactical aircraft someday. But the technology doesn't actually exist yet, and probably won't for a long time.
They replace (iirc) 30% of the plane and it's much bigger.
https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-2f54130dd50490fcfd1ad0...
The Super Hornet is a bigger airframe. You can think of it as "what would happen if we scaled up a Hornet by about 15%?" New wing. New intake design. It required a development program and a flight test program of a kind that you do when you make a new airplane, not upgrade an old one.
The Super Hornet is much more capable. Greater endurance, can have an AESA radar, better ESM suite, better communications.
You got that backwards, QE prevented (at least temporarily) a Depression, which would have impacted mainstreet businesses and households far more than whatever benefits they’ve gained from the F-35 have (nothing imho).
The jury is still out whether the Fed can unwind QE with a soft landing or not, but so far it’s been far more beneficial to Main Street than the F-35.
Most importantly, the quantitative easing arguably prevented the next Great Depression, so how's that for benefiting main street businesses and households? The economy is built on debt, which is a good thing because that means cash ends up with people who are spending it instead of sitting idly. If banks deem it too risky to lend out money, the world's economy would grind to a halt.
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/37745n/boeing_x32/?s...
Pretty strange to be bitching about monetary policy then in the same breath praise pseudo-weaponized Keyensianism that doesn't even yield anything useful. Who do you work for, friend?