Is the F-15SA still being made? Or is that production finished?
Oh, this is the article I had read about procurement:
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But that’s apples to oranges.
Congress wanted more tanks because the congressman from Lima, OH wanted to keep his seat, and closing down the only major employer left was not a way to successfully do that, who cares if the army wanted MRAPs instead. With the depots of them we have, unless we kick off a conventional ground war in Poland against a time traveling Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, a hundred or so Abrams isn’t going to drastically effect the strategic balance of things. (Still shouldn’t have built them).
Congress doesn’t want to fund the F-15 because it is old, and roughly four qajillion dollars have been thrown at the F-35. The difference is The F-15C’s do effect the strategic balance. As Klar pointed out, they’re a credible strategic deterrent and a giant finger to a resurgent Russia that says “We see you, we are not amused”. F-16s don’t have the range, sensors or weapons to do it as effectively (If we shift to the pacific, these problems begin compounding rapidly). As long as it’s feasible to keep them in the air, it doesn’t make sense from a strategic perspective to ground the Eagles, even if it costs a little more to do so.
Speaking of -15 Charlies, the Grim Reapers are here in Portsmouth at KPSM getting ready for their hop back to Lakenheath.
Our ANG unit here at Pease is the 157th refueling wing so the Reapers are setting up their tankers for the hop.
I am going to try to get some photos this week…
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20170404/grim-reaper-fighter-jets-at-pease
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Actually, I’d argue the F-35 is apples to bushels and bushels of apples. You don’t think the F-35 procurement stream isn’t appealing to dozens (hundreds?) of Congressmen due to the distributed procurement system with that platform? Heck, that is an international orchard there!
Well, there is that fear factor that I don’t completely fall for. “Resurgent Russia” in what sense? That they deployed a carrier (that might have had to have been towed home) to bomb targets in Syria at the invitation of the host nation? Their annexation of Crimea and posture along the Baltic states is worrisome for sure, but I don’t know that those moves are wildly popular at home for them (hard to know given the lack of objective reporting there). China seems way more ambitious to me, building those “island carriers” in their claimed territory. But a war with them makes no sense for them - it would crush their economy, and invite internal instability.
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They’re not unpopular enough that stringent western sanctions and whatever domestic opposition that exists have been motivation enough to back off from:
- The Annexation of Crimea
- Occupation of the Donbass
- Deployment of offensive strategic weapons to Kaliningrad
- Expansion of the "Ossetian" zone of control in Georgia by Russian Peacekeepers
- Harassment of the Baltic States & Sweden
- Attacks against Syrian civilian infrastructure
- Breaking the START Treaty by deploying a new IRBM
- Arming insurgent forces in Afghanistan
it’s undeniable Russia has transited from a policy of disagreeing with western foreign policy to actively interfering with or outright impeding it. They want their buffer zone against the west and their international prestiege back, and they don’t seem to care whom they offend in the process of getting it. How many neighbors do they need to kick over before the threat of violence becomes as convincing as violence itself? What has Europe done to deter them? What can it do?
Do I think east is going to come west and Kalinka will echo in the streets of Warsaw? no. But just sitting back and thinking that’s all going to work itself out seems naive.
I’d agree overall China is more worrisome, but our foreign interests are so divergent, and our economies so interlinked that that I can’t talk about it with as much confidence. The operational implications are something for an entirely separate post.
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Pardon the slightly off topic, but are you referring to the 2014 expansion? Or has there been a more recent one.
I hate to break it to you but those are just bog standard actions the USA has been doing for a good 20 years now. I hardly find it fair to go all “resurgent russia” when it’s happening on both sides of the aisle.
It’s a bit sensational to put it all like that, imho.
tl;dr
More recent.
For now, the boundary is, effectively, wherever Russia says it is. Russia claims it is following old Soviet military maps defining the border of South Ossetia, which was considered a province of sorts in Soviet times. But maps defining that territory are unpublished.
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At risk of heading off the reservation, I fail to see where Putin’s aggressive actions since 2012 map directly with our actions since 2001.
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The Standard SM-3 ABM have a nuclear ballistic missile mode I hadn’t heard of?
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With the exception of that AC-130, which was a tragic mistake, whereas Russia has shown a calculated strategy of targeting hospitals, ?
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We’ve armed the democratically elected government of Ukraine, and Syrian Rebels prior to Russian involvement.
Ah, interesting read.
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Isn’t there a counterpoint for nearly all of your bulletpoints though? I mean, it isn’t like our country hasn’t been a fairly clumsy steward of freedom over the past couple decades too right? I’m not disagreeing that Russia has ambitions, but so too does our country. (I think we might have stirred the pot in Ukraine maybe…possibly…)
Not exactly the same thing, but all of those things have been done by the USA upon other countries. It’s hardly fair to blame Russia when the USA said screw you UN and did it anyway.
Beach, I think the EU also has been a bit of a cheeky bugger by meddling a little too much, dangling trade deals and all when it comes to Ukraine.
Resurgent implies the world could be returning to a bi-axial power relationship instead of the NATO-centric one that existed just after the USSR dissolved. Common foreign policy dogma tends to value a singular global power entity because it dramatically reduces the possibility of large-scale warfare. It also lets the stronger military powers focus on peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts (see: List of United Nations peacekeeping missions - Wikipedia).
Definitely not a perfect system, but probably a bit kinder than anything that took place prior to WW1.
The military industrial complex exists for sure, but that’s half the story.
Fact is, presently the United States doesn’t have a very big pool of personnel to draw from to ‘man the battlements’. Fact number two is that the United States is now extremely sensitive to casualties. You can debate whether these are good things and what caused them for as long as you like, but from a strategic perspective you’re still left with the delicate issue of how to get around that and still win a war.
The United States’ solution for a long time has been technology. Also, it’s pretty well acknowledged the combination of extensive training and well-implemented tech is what allows the US to remain globally influential without a draft or horrifying casualty rates.
You’re probably right to vilify the acquisition process, but undercutting the importance of technological superiority to American doctrine might be a little far. There’s more than a few historical examples of a power getting caught flat-footed due to hubris because, “Our guys are too smart / strong / proficient / honorable / experienced, they don’t need that expensive / unreliable / newfangled / dishonorable new stuff!”
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Well, I’d rather avoid (me) taking the conversation into the Current Events type topic (which we generally shy away from) - I think we can all agree that military procurement is a complex affair where the interests of the fighting forces, politicians, private industry, and Joe Citizen don’t always meet where each interested party wishes.
I don’t claim to know anything about anything as far as capability of F-15s, new F-15s, F-22s, and F-35s have.
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I agree. I just think that the bleeding edge doesn’t always necessarily strike the right balance. That from a guy that doesn’t sit in the front end of a fighter, drive a tank, or carry a weapon to work each day - so take that for what it’s worth…(not much)… But I do witness our schools falling apart (at least in my county), bridges crumbling, and a general degradation of infrastructure. So those are the things that are apparent to me. I get that my view isn’t all encompassing.
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So as far as a “resurgent Russia” and “pointing fingers made out F-15’s,” it’s important to remember that this whole thing about “National Interests” is built on bricks made out of Hypocrite. Heck we invented the concept of Spheres of Influence to describe powerful countries doing what they want in areas that other countries can’t or won’t stop them from doing.
Some fun examples -
President Monroe got up, looked around, saw he had Frigates, and told the rest of the world we are now in charge of our hemisphere and if you want to talk to anyone in it, you’re talking to us.
When Serbian agitators assassinated the Arch-Duke, they had already made sure they had Russian backing. When Austria-Hungary declared war in response, they made sure they had German backing first.
England and the U.S. told the Japanese they could have less battleships than us. Caused a fair bit of resentment.
When China wanted Hong Kong back, the crown jewel of the east, Britain negotiated with them and turned it over peaceably. When Argentina tried to take back an island off of their coast, that was occupied during a period of imperial exploitation, with a couple of hundred people and some sheep, they sent a whole task force to reclaim it.
That’s how the game is played. For better or worse, if you are not part of the decision making process, you are being told what to do. So the “Resurgent Russia” is jingoism for sure, but it also refers to what @near_blind is listing, Russia exerting influence again through means not diplomatic. So the F-15 question comes back to this: If another country does something you don’t like, and you tell them you don’t like it, does it mean anything? Can you back your displeasure up?
The strategic portion of this comes down to two questions- If another country takes an action that is not in yours or your allies best interest
- Can you do something about it?
- Do you want to do something about it?
They are based on different calculations, of course, but if you can’t answer the first question the second one is irrelevant. And when making that first calculation it’s really important that its not a fair fight. As @Hangar200 said getting missiles and gas up in the air makes the other side think twice about doing it in first place.
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And the counter point is - despite the bluster, can you afford to have your military destroyed if you miscalculate? Will you and your families in power survive the overthrow of power? Unless of course, you are a megalomaniac, in which case, all options are certainly on the table.
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That’s an interesting observation. We see a lot about Russian fighters and anti-aircraft systems and such…but I wonder what we know and what we feel about the Russian logistics system. Can they move a lot of gas and supplies? Can they support up-tempo operations? The fact that they lost a couple fighters in short order during their carrier operations over Syria makes me wonder about their ability to keep up. How susceptible are their supply chains to disruption? Their refineries? Etc… I would guess there is a whole wing of the Pentagon that studies this stuff. (Hey…they probably want more money for better satellites too! Everyone wants better stuff…LOL…)
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Welp, now we start getting into game theory- if you’re so afraid of your miscalculation being an under-estimate, will you over-compensate to the point that your aggression will actually trigger the conflict you’re trying to avoid?
Semi-related note: There were a few studies generated back when ICBM’s were becoming a thing that proposed the idea of the “big red button” being (very secretly) hooked up to… nothing. From the perspective of humanity surviving, it’s abhorrent to both initiate a massive nuclear strike, but more interestingly, it’s just as abhorrent to retaliate.
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