Ben that is all well and good, but how is it going to happen? No country on earth could field the force you discuss without being in total ruin economically. And I am sure if we were in that environment we would do something about it quickly.

Besides we still have t finished the threat from the men in black pajamas yet. Last I checked they are still causing havoc.

You'll have to pardon me from pointing out the obvious, but they build 'em a little slow where I'm from in east Tennessee... It's not like a kung-fu movie, the bad guys don't get in line and fight us one at a time. It'd be nice if they did, but they aren't and won't. Which brings us full circle to the original (tangent) discussion that we as a military are not prepared for less than full air superiority yet aren't staffing or training enough to ensure it.

But hey, I just live it everyday and read the classified reports of what's going on with all these other militaries. I've only been doing A/A for the last 15 years so I'm probably missing something...

You'll have to pardon me from pointing out the obvious, but they build 'em a little slow where I'm from in east Tennessee... It's not like a kung-fu movie, the bad guys don't get in line and fight us one at a time. It'd be nice if they did, but they aren't and won't. Which brings us full circle to the original (tangent) discussion that we as a military are not prepared for less than full air superiority yet aren't staffing or training enough to ensure it.

But hey, I just live it everyday and read the classified reports of what's going on with all these other militaries. I've only been doing A/A for the last 15 years so I'm probably missing something...

I can tell you one thing - the CEO equivalent of the company making the AA-X-12B and PL-12's both make about 1/1,000th of what the Raytheon CEO makes (and his product isn't as good). Capitalism has a double edged sword sometimes. Same for the folks building Sukois and Chinese jets; they don't have unions, don't work less than 80 hours, make much less than the US counterparts and there's no bonus money for their bosses.

There's plenty of reasons it costs us so much more - all reasons we've given to ourselves.

**edit: Don't get my wrong, I'm all about capitalism, it's just part of the package.***

Ben if history is any judge we normally make out our enemies to be 10ft tall. If things are as dire as you say I am sure we can put capitalism to work and I guarantee a solution will be found.

Example, that sat shoot down several years ago with Raytheon's Standard 3 onboard that destroyer. And as I recall that was done cheaply.

Nothing more amusing to a Navy guy than watching the Air Force and the Army argue about doctrine. It's borderline delusional to think that doctrine matters a damn after the first missile is loosed.

As usual, we are never going to agree. I'm sure lots of people were saying Japan could never strike US territory on 6 Dec 1941. So much for the history lesson.

The naivety that you approach this is comical. Leave it to you to come up with the old "I'm sure 'we' can put capitalism to work". Somebody must be working on that, right? Someone that has enough power to do something about it but is not swayed by political positioning. That mystery person will put capitalism to work when he/she's that fateful day that the clearly obvious tipping of the scales to certain ruin happens. I must say though, I will sleep much more soundly now with your guarantee... easy to put a personal guarantee on something like that. For instance: I guarantee there'll never be a world war 3. Ahh... I feel better already. See, if either of us are wrong the other one has much bigger fish to fry than coming back to see what we get for that guarantee.

On December 8th I bet the Pacific fleet commander really wished he'd put capitalism to work, spent some of that hard-earned taxpayer money and kept some early warning boats between him and Japan. But he didn't then and we aren't now.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll counterpoint with something, but this is fruitless as all of our discussions so I'm going to sign off of this particular back and forth. Apologies to everyone else on the thread.

How 'bout that new B-21 design eh?

That's a fact! (just the second part - harumpf!)

You are probably right about the Chinese, but I can assure you that Russian folks building Su-35s only work 40 hours and 35 out of those they are drunk off their a$$. Of course, they are only paid $500 a month if that.

With oil prices we see today, there is no way Russia will be able to field a truly competitive air force for a long time. China is a different story - these guys got the money, and they are not afraid to spend it.

"I've worked with the Army in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as all over the US in training exercises. During planning for certain wartime scenarios I've had battalion commanders tell me "well of course we'll have air superiority; that's what you guys are for. Anyway, by two hours into the fight, the Army will be moving here, here and here..."

...you'd have to elaborate on the wartime scenarios the training you reference was replicating...I would say that just looking at one example such as the Army's National Training Center that Air Superiority for the friendly forces is not an assumption in these high intensity scenarios

"In the training I've seen and spoken with where the Army gets the "fast mover" threat it's one or two airplanes max. That is such a small insignificant threat in the grand scheme that it's might as well be nothing. Sure one guy can drop a nuke, but that's not what we're talking about. I've never heard any Army guys talk about a persistent enemy bombing campaign and what they'll do during it. How will they get supplies? How will they communicate? How will they know friend from enemy when jets are fighting above them?

For that matter, how will the usaf get supplies? We're not prepped for that scenario on the logistics front either. Even the Air Force doesn't put enough emphasis on the air superiority fight of the future; how could anyone think that the Army is sufficiently prepared?"

...interesting, and depends on how one would define the Army being sufficiently prepared...of course hard to imagine how one could ever be fully prepared to fight in a high intensity conflict like we would have faced had the WP attacked in the Cold War era...but having said that, what to do? the Army can only train to the best of its ability within the parameters of peace time training restrictions to replicate air parity at best scenarios

...but I think we talking past each other... I am understanding your argument now to be that as a country especially we should never take air superiority for granted and become complacent--which we might have done in this regard....that we must continue to develop and fund in this area--esp. considering what are adversaries are doing....no arguments from me--I'm just looking at this from a narrower perspective in that from my experiences the Army leaders planning for the next high intensity scenarios are not under any allusions that they will go into the fight with air superiority
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"Nothing more amusing to a Navy guy than watching the Air Force and the Army argue about doctrine. It's borderline delusional to think that doctrine matters a damn after the first missile is loosed."

...true, in that history tells us that the most well laid plans go out the window at times once the fighting starts...but on the other hand history also demonstrate that sound doctrine and training pays dividends once the battles commence...

...for instance the U.S. Army has long studied the Israel's military success against its Arab Adversaries in multiple wars and there are valuable lessons learned from Israel's mechanized forces doctrinal approaches to land warfare and deployment of their forces in certain scenarios.....and a lot of that same doctrine interestingly that the US and Israel have shared for decades...

...but on the other hand, history has other examples of doctrine going out the window when the fight starts...Russia in WWII comes to mind--when ever the fighting moved into the cities the Russian's had to adapt from centralized planning/execution to decentralized small unit fighting building to building...

...and the Russians proved adept in the street to street fighting of course against the Germans...interesting in this context to contemplate what would have happened had the WP attacked into West Germany back in the day...most of us stationed in Europe during this time period were skeptical when we heard that the Soviets centralized command and control would be a "weakness" that could be exploited...while that was probably true to a degree--most of us thought that if the balloon ever went up that the fighting would devolve to relatively small unit fighting against each other--esp. in the areas of more restrictive terrain...and most of us believed that this was something the Soviet's junior leadership would be damn good at notwithstanding what their "doctrine" was otherwise
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...I didn't tell you guys--but I'm looking into an online Military History Masters Program...one of the few History Masters programs that you can actually concentrate in Military History...watch out, then I will really know it all