Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Concur 100%. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
My big arguement is the US needs to at least be able to deter China... which means planning a minimum deterrent capability based on worse case capabilities.

So would you feel comfortable saying, without the F-86, the UN would have lost the Korean War?
I personally think we would have lost the Pusan perimeter without CAS... as for later, the Chinese would have done a lot better had they had air superiority...

That's just the symptom. Not the disease. You have a 187 F22 because the US Air Force over-spec'd the plane and allowed industry to build something grossly over priced. Plus a long history of mismanaging aircraft programs.
You have to remember, the F-22 program was planned for 600+ aircraft... any time you take a major program like that and cut the numbers, it drives the cost up.

The specs were actually cut quite a bit, deleting a lot of extras that were originally in the program.

I would argue that the US military has lost much of its ability to manage complex acquisition programs. When you don't have enough of your own (blue suit) engineers who can actually evaluate what the contractor's engineers are telling you, it's tough to hold their feet to the fire...

V/R,

Cliff