US military budget: How would you change it?

[Hauldren Collider]

Diesel subs go all over the world, not just on the beach...

No, they don't. Not unless you have a logistics train of sub tenders which can be sunk. Also when they raise the snorkels they are seriously noisy and on a clear day you can actually see them through the water from above. So they can only travel surreptitiously for short periods.

[Asher]

No, they don't. Not unless you have a logistics train of sub tenders which can be sunk. Also when they raise the snorkels they are seriously noisy and on a clear day you can actually see them through the water from above. So they can only travel surreptitiously for short periods.

If you're doing a quick strike, none of this matters. Virtually every country with a Navy has snuck up on US carriers within killing distance. All they need to do is pull the trigger.

If it's so easy to just track diesel subs, how come the US has so much difficulty doing so with the Chinese subs?

[Hauldren Collider]

Those are nuclear subs...

[Asher]

Those are nuclear subs...

No. It was a Song class diesel sub that crashed the wargames within striking distance of the USS Kitty Hawk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_039_submarine

They have a newer version, the Type 041 (Yuan) in production now.

[Dinner]

The German navy just launched a new generation of diesel subs recently including one ultra quiet sub which uses an electric fuel cell with almost no moving parts. They're able to fully crew it with something like just 30 people.

[Asher]

I DON'T BELIEVE YOU. It can't be! The US military is the bestest.

[DaShi]

Poland is still working on their solar powered subs. However, they still haven't figured out how to stop the screen door from flooding.

[Hauldren Collider]

an update on libya from the bbc



and all without our aircraft carrier too, who would of ever imagined that was possible...

lonestar, you can come over to my place for dinner. how do you like your crow?

It seems they can do it without an aircraft carrier, but not without the United States providing its tanker fleets for in-air refueling.

So they really are leaving it to us to enable their missions.

[Lonestar]

The German navy just launched a new generation of diesel subs recently including one ultra quiet sub which uses an electric fuel cell with almost no moving parts. They're able to fully crew it with something like just 30 people.

Big, expensive, LOTS of parts, inefficient. The Germans love it.

The Song-class surfaced not to show that it was a badass crashing the party, but it suddenly realized that it had stumbled into an exercise where there was no active use of sonar going on, and so didn't want to run the risk of the CSG CO flipping his **** if the escorts started using their sonar and saw him. Believe it or not, there are rules about when and where and under what conditions USN surface ships can use their sonar in peacetime(DAMN YOU WHALE WARS).

[Asher]

It seems they can do it without an aircraft carrier, but not without the United States providing its tanker fleets for in-air refueling.

So they really are leaving it to us to enable their missions.

The UK air force has air refueling tankers.

Canada does as well (CC-150 Polaris), but I'm not sure if it's worth deploying those to Libya when the US/UK already have tankers in the air.

Here's a CC-150 refueling two CF-18s:


Even if the US is the only one flying tankers, it's probably because it's much simpler logistically to have a single network of refueling tankers rather than every country having their own circling around.

[Hauldren Collider]

Big, expensive, LOTS of parts, inefficient. The Germans love it.

The Song-class surfaced not to show that it was a badass crashing the party, but it suddenly realized that it had stumbled into an exercise where there was no active use of sonar going on, and so didn't want to run the risk of the CSG CO flipping his **** if the escorts started using their sonar and saw him. Believe it or not, there are rules about when and where and under what conditions USN surface ships can use their sonar in peacetime(DAMN YOU WHALE WARS).

Well THAT explains how subs can sneak up on our carriers. If we were using active sonar I doubt they would be able to do anything so brazen as surface near a US fleet.

[Hauldren Collider]

The UK air force has air refueling tankers.

Canada does as well (CC-150 Polaris), but I'm not sure if it's worth deploying those to Libya when the US/UK already have tankers in the air.

Here's a CC-150 refueling two CF-18s:

Neither the UK nor Canada has enough tankers to support large air operations, not nearly.

Even if the US is the only one flying tankers, it's probably because it's much simpler logistically to have a single network of refueling tankers rather than every country having their own circling around.

So what does this do to your theory about free-riding?

[Asher]

Can someone provide a credible link explaining how in each of these war games, no active sonar was being used? That seems alarmingly retarded, even by US military standards.

[Hauldren Collider]

Can someone provide a credible link explaining how in each of these war games, no active sonar was being used? That seems alarmingly retarded, even by US military standards.

You can blame retarded California liberals who don't want to hurt the poor whales.

[Asher]

Neither the UK nor Canada has enough tankers to support large air operations, not nearly.

Huh? They have enough capacity to service their own air fleets just fine.

So what does this do to your theory about free-riding?

It does absolutely nothing. I don't think you comprehend how logistics work, HC. If every country sent their own air refuelers to the area, it crowds the sky and provides more targets when most of them fly idle the vast majority of the time. It just makes no sense. Since the US is most likely coordinating the action (seeing as they're the largest), they've most certainly been the ones dictating who flies what where. That's how it's been historically.

The fact that they choose to let other air forces use their tankers for operational efficiency and simplicity says nothing about "freeloading".