Rumsfeld's "Light" Doctrine Worthwhile?

Axis Kast · Post by **Axis Kast** » 2003-04-27 03:27am

I don't advocate cutting anymore of the military's strength. I was just acknowledging the need for force-cuts after the Cold War. If anything, I think we need more active troops at this point in time.

As regards the F-14, I suppose it's clearly unnecessary. But as was said, it will probably reemerge that we need a similar interceptor in the future.

Rubberanvil · Post by **Rubberanvil** » 2003-04-27 03:55am

Axis Kast wrote:As regards the F-14, I suppose it's clearly unnecessary. But as was said, it will probably reemerge that we need a similar interceptor in the future.

IIRC the F-14 have proven to be a better multi-role fighter. If Cheney hadn't ordered the machinery destroyed, it probably be more cost effective to continue making new advance models of the venerable fighter.

Axis Kast · Post by **Axis Kast** » 2003-04-27 10:37am

That's another problem I don't understand.

Why destroy the moulds and machinery? Who not stockpile them - as we do our aircraft?

Post by **Vympel** » 2003-04-27 10:38am

Axis Kast wrote:That's another problem I don't understand.

Why destroy the moulds and machinery? Who not stockpile them - as we do our aircraft?

Spite. Cheney was angry at Grumman for stuffing up the A-12 Avenger II.

Axis Kast · Post by **Axis Kast** » 2003-04-27 10:41am

Yet machinery for most equipment is regularly destroyed.

Post by **Vympel** » 2003-04-27 10:48am

Axis Kast wrote:Yet machinery for most equipment is regularly destroyed.

However, in the USN this has never been done to an active duty aircraft, which the Tomcat still is.

Axis Kast · Post by **Axis Kast** » 2003-04-27 11:46am

Interesting. Got some links?

Post by **Vympel** » 2003-04-27 12:27pm

Axis Kast wrote:Interesting. Got some links?

Just forum banter. Even my (post 2000) aircraft encylopedias say nothing on the subject.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-04-27 02:37pm

Axis Kast wrote:That's another problem I don't understand.

Why destroy the moulds and machinery? Who not stockpile them - as we do our aircraft?

Storage for the machine tools is a non-trivial task. IIRC, it needs to be in a climate-controlled facility about the size of the original line itself (maybe a bit smaller, but it still needs to be very large).

You can mothball an airplane out in the fields, you can't do that with machine tools.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-04-27 02:43pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:Our carrier defenses are more then sufficient. The Soviets crammed on lots of weapons, but that was because there systems had shit reliability. They also traded away all potential for upgrades and had no multi role launchers.

That, and UNREP was probably a PITA for the Soviet ships with all that crap on the deck.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-04-27 04:12pm

phongn wrote:
That, and UNREP was probably a PITA for the Soviet ships with all that crap on the deck.

The Soviets where doing it completely via over the stern though the 1970s, though they did start to add AOEs from 1971.There AOE fleet never grew that large though the 80's buildup and only one of the vessels was large enough to support a task group, most had very limited cargo stores.

Even once they had some AOEs active, they continued to do the majority of there fueling in ports or stopped over the stern. UNREP really only happened in major exercises, so you can bet they had the crews practicing like hell before hand.

Now that I think about it, I've seen precisely one photo of Soviet UNREP operations, a Kynda fueling from a tanker. They laids the groundwork for a blue water navy surface navy, but really never had one.