The Altera Centauri collection has been brought up to date by Darsnan. It comprises every decent scenario he's been able to find anywhere on the web, going back over 20 years.
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Call To Power 2 Cradle 3+ mod in progress: https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/call-to-power-2/ctp2-creation/9437883-making-cradle-3-fully-compatible-with-the-apolyton-edition
I don't give a **** about history. Same planes from the same carrier, no need for an entirely ****ing different organization to pilot them.
I just said Marine aviation provides close air support for Marine forces. That's why it exists.
The Marines are a combined-arms force. You know, that whole land, sea, AND air thing?
"Flutie was better than Kelly, Elway, Esiason and Cunningham." - Ben Kenobi
"I have nothing against Wilson, but he's nowhere near the same calibre of QB as Flutie. Flutie threw for 5k+ yards in the CFL." -Ben Kenobi
I just said Marine aviation provides close air support for Marine forces. That's why it exists.
Why the **** can the Navy NOT provide the close air support, given they fly the same planes from the same places?
The Marines are a combined-arms force. You know, that whole land, sea, AND air thing?
All the more reason they're redundant. Everything they do, someone else does...
"The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "
Marines are redundant. That's why we love having them. Who else in the world does what we do? We take the usual stale boring Westernized democracy, and we crank the crazy up to 11. We have an absurd electoral college, we have widespread gun ownership, we play weird sports like football and baseball, and we have a whole separate branch of our military just for storming beaches. How ****ing cool is that?
I'd drastically reduce our nuke forces (keep mostly a few boomer subs).
Lose 1 of the carrier task forces. A powerful navy is fine w/me. I think it's plenty powerful.
Wind down Afghanistan, remove the last troops from Iraq and start pulling out of & closing down most of our overseas bases.
Reduce overall ground forces (Army/Marines) by 25%. Air force by a similar amt.
Take an extremely skeptical view of procurement going forward (and kill anything that looks even a bit dubious now). New contracts will be on a not-to-exceed basis. Contractors will eat cost overruns or not bother bidding.
Obviously, no more no-bid contracts with outside vendors to do things like provide security at embassies or whathaveyou. WTF is that?
Yeah, obviously the Marines don't need any boats or planes.
And no more security contractors.
JM
Jon Miller- I AM.CANADIAN
GENERATION 35: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
I do include ships. And the planes for the ships should allow for 'decent' fighter jets to produced quickly.
You said carriers, there is a lot more to the Navy than carriers. We or anyone else for that matter does not just flip a switch and a modern SSN rolls off an assembly line a year later. Same for destroyers.
I am only taking issue with my impression that you think the cadre approach applies to equipment. Yes, we can have several divisions worth of organizational shells trained up and ready to accept their component forces once trained after a few years (and we do have that), but you are not going to be able to equip them with modern weaponry at the same pace you train the users.
If I am wrong and you get that, got it and I'll drop it.
As far as heavy armor goes, they should be able to be produced quicker and they can start to be designed if there is a threat that seems to require them.
JM[/QUOTE]
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
You said carriers, there is a lot more to the Navy than carriers
Isn't this the problem?
"The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "
How many tank battles are we getting into these days?
Thats why I said "we can debate how much that is needed" but as of right now it is an identified mission area that is covered by the army, and that makes their units more expensive.
As it is armor is not only used for tank battles, as the current two insurgent wars have proven which used/use armor extensively to include tanks. All that stuff like MRAPS and M1s and the like is stuff primarily used by the Army as the Marines try to keep themselves as light as possibe based on their mission profile. The Marines have them, just not as much of them. We need both light infantry and heavier units in any type of conflict, one costs more than the other.
It should also be noted that Marines have far less built in sustainability than the Army. They have their own logistics support (not just Navy provided, but actual Marines), it just isn't as robust. This is again based on the mission profile they are built for.
So given two different missions, both deamed a requirment, one much cheaper than the other and each given out to a different service you can't make a broad statment like "the Marines spend less money per unit and are thus better with their money/more cost efficient." Their mission costs less to equip to, if they were to be relied upon to do other missions too they would be just as expensive if not more so.
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
I'm the dumbass and it's your country that is the #1 target of terrorists and swimming in obscene amounts of debt, in part due to obscene military funding which is largley used to anger people and provoke retaliatory strikes in the form of terrorism.
"The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "
One simple suggestion to cut some defense dollars I think is viable and does not sacrifice any core mission:
Replace half our submarine fleet with modern diesel electric submarines.
The US got away from diesels in the eighties, our last two being decommissioned in the mid nineties. The idea was to standardize the force to all nuclear and by doing so keep the most advanced and capable boats during the drawdown of the same period. There is some merit to this, as by the nineties there weren't any modern diesels to keep around anyway but this also meant we kept the most expensive units and we continue to build to this expensive high end capability.
What I would suggest is that the US purchase and Americanize the German Type 212 submarine. It is just as advanced in all its capabilities it has as a US Virginia-class SSN and all the capabilities it lacks we can add to it for the most part.
The only real hit in capability it will take is sustainability. Sustainability is nice, but can it really be claimed that with our current overseas naval bases and all our allies around the world we really need a sub that can go around the world three times without stopping? And when sustainability beyond the 212s range becomes a problem I am only suggesting making half the force diesels, that still leaves a few dozen SSNs to do that work. We could station 212s at Guam and China and NK would still be in normal deployment range, station them in Bahrain (we already have ships there) and all of 5th Fleet is in deployment range and station a few in Europe for our Med needs if these are required. They are non nuclear so they have more of a range of options as far as operating from allied facilities as well as not needing the extensive facilities required to station a nuclear vessel somewhere. On top of that, forward deployed 212s would not have to waste time and money transiting from the the US proper all the time which is what most of them do now. Additionally, there is a whole lot of savings in not having to provide nuclear trained crews for these subs, which requires at least a year of expensive schools (to include the mainenance of three reactors just for training) between joining and actually hitting the fleet.
There are currently 55 SSNs in the US fleet. A Virginia-class sub costs 1.8 billion, a 212 costs 500 million. Assuming a full production run of both outfitting our Navy with 60 submarines and 30 of each thats a savings of 39 billion over the entire production window over building just Viriginia-class boats for procurement savings alone.
Thats just rough back or the napkin figures, there would be costs for the contracting of the design and modification to US needs and I don't expect the 60 submarine requirement to last but its a place to start.
"The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.
1. Abolish the Navy because coastal patrol boats are good enough and other countries don't like losing wars
2. Abolish the Marine Corps because it's another army
3. America doesn't need an army because Canada is sooooo great!
4. Canadians! yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
5. There have been a few friendly fire incidents in the Afghanistan war, therefore see 4
The only thing that has any merit at all is #2, except that you may as well just cut the number of soldiers in the Army by the number that are in the Marine Corps and accomplish the same thing. Everyone (who is intelligent) is basically in agreement that procurement and such should all be under one agency anyways and that the level of separation between branches is counterproductive. So if you're talking about actual cuts and not just making the place more efficient, you really have no reason to believe that getting rid of infantry in the Marines would be a better idea than getting rid of infantrymen in the Army. So I'm just going to assume that you're trying to troll Alby.
At any rate, I think I can condense Asher's views down to one statement: No one will ever attack the United States if they didn't have a military! Or, alternatively: People hate the USA because it fights wars and wins!
Asher, you have no way to support that. Your thesis of "people only hate you because you fight in wars" is one of those things that can't be proven. Yet you like to back it up with "well it's true because your enemies say so!" I'm not sure what sort of brain damage causes you to take anything terrorists and dictators say at face value but I hope you someday make a full recovery.
To give you an example where your thesis could actually (theoretically) be put to the test, one of the proposals for the North Korean problem is for America to entirely withdraw from the Korean peninsula. North Korea insists that this will only promote peace and reduce tensions. China also thinks an American withdrawal would be a very good thing. If you are in any way consistent in your thinking (you aren't), then you would agree with China and North Korea. Given your past history of completely retarded beliefs, I wouldn't be surprised if you do.
So let's do some critical thinking here. America spends say 40 billion dollars keeping troops in the Korean peninsula. In return we have a country we can basically always depend on to be our ally and has, since the end of the Korean war, prospered into an economic giant with which we have enormously profitable trade. But no, we should take our troops out, because it makes the North Koreans hate us! Never mind that if we pulled out they'd try to conquer the South, thus losing us an ally, a trading partner, and allowing millions of people to die needlessly because we were worried about some crackpot dictator thinking we are meanie-heads.
America has to pick sides. We can't just sit everything out, it isn't possible, not for a country of our size and influence. When you are on top you don't have the luxury of trying to be everyone's best friend, because someone will always be trying to take your place. You really have no ground to stand on when you claim it is more in our interest to be a mega-Switzerland than try to arrange the world in our favor.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers? ){ :|:& };:
People don't hate the USA because it "fights wars and wins". How naive you are.
People hate the USA because it tries to dictate how the rest of the world operates. The hubris is astounding. The USA's own meddling is what's causing most of this mess. Support Saddam; HATE SADDAM!...Support Taliban; HATE TALIBAN!....etc
"The issue is there are still many people out there that use religion as a crutch for bigotry and hate. Like Ben."
Ben Kenobi: "That means I'm doing something right. "
Why don't you read the rest of the post instead of the first two sentences? Or maybe just grabbing one out of the middle and attacking it with precisely the rhetoric I was making fun of.
If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers? ){ :|:& };:
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