Ron Paul: "We Spent a Billion Dollars Fighting the Houthis…and Lost'
(ronpaulinstitute.org)
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a sm2 (standard missile 2) is I think right around $1mil a shot.
we just can't afford to really do anything about it. we're bleeding into Ukraine and Israel now. we really can't afford either, let alone another in addition.
our navy isn't really all that great. we ordered a bunch of mostly useless and fragile ships in the early 2000s. they were supposed to be modular but none of that actually worked out. it's taken us over 10 years to build and commission our last aircraft carrier. we just sold another USA shipyard to SK just this week. our logistic support ships are like at 55%. that was the result of the last war gaming. supposed to be at 85%+.
everything is fucked. we have faggots, jews, and women running things. nothing works. everything is breaking.
I keep hearing this from various professionals. Perhaps giving up gunnery in favor of high tech ballistics was a mistake?
How dare you question the high priests of the Military-Industrial Complex? Shun the unbeliever, shun. Next you'll be wanting an effective infantry rifle and a tank made this side of the Ford presidency.
Our tank is still the best in the world, it's fine as is. No need to make a new fuck up if the current thing works great.
Main battle tanks have the specific role of fighting other main battle tanks.
Air superiority of a modern air force makes a MBT redundant. They are slow, hot targets and very vulnerable to missile strike.
The advantage of a MBT is that they are a lot cheaper to field than an aircraft. That said, a modern mobile howitzer with the right support (scouts for fire control) is much more effective when used correctly. Check out the Archer Artillery System. Longer range and much better at hiding from hostile aircraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer_Artillery_System
Always found that odd, shouldn't computers make aiming guns easier than ever?
Pretty sure guided missiles require more expensive (and expendable) resources than most ballistics alternatives.
Not only do you have the fuel and payload, but also the circuitry, computer bits, sensors/guidance systems, communications, etc etc.
Especially when considering the ranges that naval vessels are usually firing from compared to say, tanks or infantry. Likely has to reach a moderately higher quality threshold than your average computer-controlled setup.
it just seems like a completely retarded waste to put a computer in a bomb. it's not like all that shit grows on trees.
A tool is only as good as its operator.
There are literally pre-made tools to make it extremely easy to lock on to a target and click. I don’t see how anyone could fuck that up
Like the atomic bomb, missiles trump guns when your enemy doesn't have them. You can hit them while they can't hit you.
Our peers have it too, so it's not great.
There's a whole very technical conversation to be had here. The Navy developed and then abandoned a class of "littoral" combat vessels in the mid aughts. These ships would have been designed to handle exactly what is happening in the Red Sea. The problem is that these vessels would have to be "fighting" ships. They would have had to rely on a combination classic naval guns for offence and CIWS guns for defense. Its a workable system but not perfect. They would not have been "superior" and I think thats why they were abandoned in favor of more "modern" fleet solutions.
That's what the Iowa class battleships were before they were mothballed. Had the big guns and Tomahawks
...meaning the politicians in the top brass found a petty flaw to give them plausible deniability when they killed the project so their arms dealer buddies could keep raking in money on one-size-fits-a-few solutions, right?
Seems like that's how it usually goes...
Actually no. Gunnery shouldn't be eliminated, but the key here is range and stealth. If you can't have stealth, then you need raw numbers.
Our anti-ship missiles are fucking terrifying for their range, for their stealth, and their cost isn't terrible. The Chinese don't have the stealth for their missiles, so they went with raw numbers on the cheap (like most chinese goods). So far, we have the advantage in that fight.
Gunnery, however, just can't get around range. You can't reasonably shoot a gun 200 miles, even a battleship sized rail gun. You can't win a dog-fight with a Gen 5 fighter if you can't get to it, let alone see it. These are insurmountable problems.
Missiles are the current king. There's no way around it. The issue is that some idiots think that means that guns are irrelevant. They're not, they're just not as useful as they once were.
Just hand out TOWs to merchant ships. Or let them install some automatic deck guns. Might fix the "refugee" boat problem while we're at it.
This is why Article 1 of the Constitution allows congress to give private ship owners Letters of Marque.
I wonder, is it not still technically legal anyways? (ignoring NFA restrictions for the moment...) What is the exact law here? A company can have armed security at their port terminal, and at the docks. Can they not have an armed boat?
On the other hand there's a big difference between "it's ok to use lethal force in self defense" and "you can shoot at dangerous looking ships at your discretion and maybe proactively sink them if they keep harassing you."
Its why russia isnt intercepting all missiles and drones that is shot at russia. They determine if the incoming thing is hostile or not, what it is and its trajectory to see if its worth firing a 2 million dollar anti-ballistic missile to intercept the incoming thing.
The navy is in better shape than you give it credit for, and we are well ahead of everyone else, so much that even if we were in as bad of a state that you describe, we'd still be ahead.
Frankly, I think that's exactly the reason we are fighting these wars. China is looking for a Taiwanese invasion; and causing American attrition in Israel, Ukraine, and Yemen helps a lot. Lucky for us, the Chinese are more retarded than we are.