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Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat
Building a "cheaper airplane" means continuing the production of current 4th gen planes, but these planes were already obsolescent during the Kosovo op in 99. In Kosovo, the Serbians showed what you could do with smart tactics. They did not shoot down too many planes, but they forced NATO planes to fly at high altitudes and away from suspected SAM/AAA nests. More importantly, the Serbian Army, which was the main target, had almost complete freedom of movement and suffered only light casualties. No doubt the Russians were behind the new tactics. Since then, air defences have only improved.
Russia and China are currently spending billions of dollars to upgrade their air forces and are developping their own 5th generation planes, the Russian PAK FA and the Chinese J-20. I hope no one is still under the impression that the US has a huge technological edge over Russia and China? The gap is narrowing rapidly and could be gone in as little as 5 years if the US stops funding new technology.
The risk is not just a war with Russia and China, but since both are major arms exporter, whatever they build will eventually be sold to other nations. Last month, the IAF destroyed a shipment of SA-17 on their way to Hezbollah. If they are getting the best Russian SAMs on the market, you can be sure every tinpot dictator already has them.
As to saving money, I would think the experiences of the 1920-1930s would show that a strong defence is a lot cheaper in the long run than any war.
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Fear-mongering over drops in your defence budget?
That is hilarious (LINK)
You country has trillions and trillions in explicit debt. It has 800% of that in implicit debt- minimum. Your treasury is a total and utmost mess. Every day you increase your debt burden by dimensions that the human mind cannot imagine.
Your defence budget still has grown from 2011 to 2012. It now is three times as big as that of Russia and China together. It is as big as that of the 16 nations with the next biggest defence budgets wordwide alltogether.
When you have payed your debts, and secured your financial stability in black instead of red numbers, and your implicit debts and obligations of the next 30 years - one generation - are significantly smaller than your yearly GDP - then you can claim that your economy is healthy enough to support the maintenance of such an big military apparatus like yours.
Right now, every dollar you spent, is a dollar you have borrowed - borrowed additionally to the 18 trillions of debts you already have in explicit debts, and the 140+ trillions in implicit debts resulting from your already accumulated inherent obligations. What that means? You are broke. Bancrupt. Insolvent. Burnt. Done. Not one penny your state spends, is yours. You live on tick. You pump up a bubble. Granted, over here we do the same. Just not on that total scale, not reaching that total in red numbers. Still, since we talk about multiple-time overkill debts, these differences do not really matter anymore.
Maybe it is a good idea to invest into the military indeed. We will need it to fight off our children when they have grown up and go after our throats for what we have done to their future.
2011, some politician from either Brazil or India attended a finance conference, and was asked what the rising powers and BRISK states would advise the West to do over the debt crisis. His words were as sober as they were precise (quitong by mind and translatring from the German text I read back then: "You will need to learn to be poor. You will need to learn that you cannot afford what you want to have. You will need to learn to be where we have been. You will need to learn to get along with the little you have, not with the much you dream to have
if only things were different than how they are for you."