The General US Politics Thread

No keep going, keep shooting yourself in the foot. Come on.

Oh really when?

Because an 80-year-old design won't service the requirements of the mission when one of the requirements is "be better than competing designs".

Who says the F-35 program will produce nothing of value? The program has produced airplanes. They're doing flight testing and training right now. Whether they're worth the cost of the program that produced them is a matter of opinion, but the F-35 is not one of those programs that fails to produce any sort of end product whatsoever.

This is, quite frankly, hyperbolic the-sky-is-falling bullshit. The F-22 had its share of teething problems, but those issues have been ironed out and the plane has been back to full flight status for about a year now. The F-35 has faced delays and cost overruns (which I'm not defending), but it's got design characteristics that none of the designs it's replacing have — notably its stealth performance and advanced avionics and sensors (things which can't simply be backported to earlier designs, as it would entail having to completely redesign the airframe anyway).

If we're going to fight China or Russia, isn't going to be because of their territorial aggression close to (their) home. Things like Russia throwing its weight around in the Ukraine, or China's disputes over territory with Japan — that's the sort of thing that's most likely to put our aircraft against theirs.

You can debate about whether or not we as a country should be sticking our noses into that kind of situation in the first place, but the fact of the matter is that we tend to, and the military would be idiotic not to plan for doing so in the future.

It's not an either/or thing, and attempts to paint it as such are disingenuous. The nation can absolutely afford to spend money on both defense and domestic projects, it just lacks the political will to do so, because the right wing has declared taxation anathema to FREEDOM(tm).

But only if the cost of starting over from scratch is less than the cost of finishing what you've started — which certainly isn't the case with the F-35 program. If you were talking about killing it a decade or two ago, that'd be one thing, but today is something else entirely.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

That would be nice. Honestly though, the Navy is still getting brand-new Super Hornets from Boeing, and every single maintainer does not want anything to do with the F-35 and would rather stick with maybe the Super-Duper Hornet instead.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

If any of those three countries go to war with each other, are planes really going to matter? I'd think the whole thing would be decided via ICB Ms.

Nobody is going to war with the major powers but American planes will be fighting Russian planes at some point by proxy.

Oh really when?

That's a fair point, but you don't have to be fighting Russia or China to be up against Russian/Chinese planes. They export and we don't know who the next enemy might be, North Korea? Iran? Syria? Belarus? One of the Stans? An African state? Now sure right now none of those are looking particularly aggressive/ripe for intervention, but things can change very fast in international politics and because of the lead time on things like new plane types we're not preparing for a conflict that might break out tomorrow, we're preparing for a conflict that might break out 20-30 years from now.

edited 10th Jul '14 5:46:02 PM by Silasw

Well, if things really get out of hand and it turns into all-out war, then people are going to start throwing nukes around and no, planes aren't going to matter. But in a smaller conflict than that — yes, absolutely, planes are going to make a difference. As has been pointed out, US (and by extension NATO) combat doctrine pretty much revolves around having air superiority, which means having highly capable combat aircraft is pretty much our number one military priority.

Also, what and said.

edited 10th Jul '14 5:52:49 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Hell just looking at the list of states that operate the teen series, you've got a good chunk of the Arabian Peninsula there, if we shift to green energy than they might not stay particularly friendly, and it would sure suck in a conflict with them to be flying the same aircraft.

Now this is pure speculation, but (for those old enough) think back thirty years, think who were our enemies back then and who were our friends, who fighting against was unthinkable (because they were to strong/well connected or on our side) and who we were sure the next conflict was going to be against, now compare that to where we are today. The guy working out our airstock now has to work it out not for now, but for whatever the fuck the world is gonna be like 30 years from now, and that could be almost bloddy anything.

edited 10th Jul '14 6:08:56 PM by Silasw

China and Russia would both be at a marked disadvantage in nuclear war now. Russia's got the larger stockpile, but as a stockpile, a smaller amount of active warheads, and running on tech from the 70s. China's arsenal is negligible compared to Russia's, and also likely less accurate than the US counterstrike would be.

I don't think conflict with Russia or China would necessarily have to involve ICB Ms, honestly. If it got to the point of invading those countries proper than yeah, but I'd like to think we as a species aren't quite stupid enough to end the world over of satellite country dispute.

edited 10th Jul '14 7:06:27 PM by Know-age

Florida ruled to have illegally fixed districts to benefit GOP.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

FINALLY, someone, somewhere, rules that gerrymandering is bad. Far from a wide solution, of course, but a step in the right direction. A very small step.

Yeah, it sets a very powerful precedent for future such cases.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

There's an awesome youtube video I saw that talks about gerrymandering; ironically one of the solutions is to specifically hire the people/companies to gerrymander districts to be closer races.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Re: Glenn Beck, way back in the day he said, on more than one occasion, "Do your own research! Come up with your own answers! Don't just listen to us talking heads!" Of course, his job was to be a conservative talking head. But I never believed that he believed half of what he was spouting.

Re: fighters. Can't we just buy Rafales from France? As far as I can tell, the Rafale is the highest-quality general-purpose fighter of its generation. Picking the Rafale for the US would be somewhat embarrassing, but right now the people responsible for the Lightning II could use a slap or two in the face.

On a side note, I wonder if it would be possible to reinstate the Army Air Corps for the purpose of close air support craft, because the Army and Air Force are clearly not operating from the same playbook with regards to what aircraft should be used in that mission. (The Army wants to keep the A-10, the Air Force wants to take it out back and shoot it.)

I notice that that article doesn't cite which law it's based upon. Florida did a while ago add an amendment to its constitution that disallows gerrymandering, although the Republican legislature has been trying hard to circumvent it - is it based upon that amendment?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Worth pointing out that this ruling is only possible because Florida passed amendments to its state constitution in 2010 making gerrymandering districts on both the state and federal level illegal.

edit — also worth noting that one of the two districts in question is held be a Democrat. Gerrymandering is a genuinely bipartisan practice. Here's an article making the connection to the 2010 ammendments explicit. (On a personal note, one of the districts likely to be affected by this ruling is the one I live in, currently held by Alan Grayson, who is generally awesome. We'll have to see if I'm still in his district after the dust settles.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a major fight about district boundaries in 2011, too, in preparation for the 2012 presidential election. Despite the laws on the books, Florida really has yet to actually eliminate gerrymandering — but we're getting there.

edited 10th Jul '14 11:51:05 PM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

also worth noting that one of the two districts in question is held be a Democrat. Gerrymandering is a genuinely bipartisan practice.

True, although your post is implying that the former is evidence for the latter, which I have difficulty corroborating.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Yeah, it's sad how gerrymandering is so routine for both sides. The minority party often collaborates since the individual representatives want safe districts, even when it's against the long term interests of the party.

edited 10th Jul '14 11:52:56 PM by storyyeller

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Huh. You know, I went looking for information about it, and found two articles analyzing the 2012 election results, and both came to the conclusion that Republicans gerrymander more — or at least more effectively — than Democrats. (Upon further inspection, both articles actually have the same author. Oops.) tldr version, by ignoring districts themselves and comparing statewide election results (percentage of votes for Republicans versus percentage of votes for Democrats) to individual race results (number of Republicans elected versus number of Democrats elected), they found that Democrats gained 1.7 seats through gerrymandering, while Republicans gained 13.2 seats.

edit — whoops, that number turned out to be just for the top ten states. A follow-up article gives the number for all fifty: a change of between 26 and 32 seats toward Democrats.

edited 11th Jul '14 12:16:50 AM by NativeJovian

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Are these Democrat districts perchance "sacrificial districts" set up by the Republicans so that they can throw a large number of Democrats into them, so that they'll seize the remaining districts?

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

@ Ramidel: The Americans do suffer a bit from "Not Invented Here" Syndrome.

Anyhow, the Russian stealth fighter program is having a few problems at the moment as well^note  China? We don't know, since the information isn't publicly-available .

Keep Rolling On

I'm not worried about the fires. Lots of our prototype shit caught fire.

Besides, worry more about Russia's Su-35s and Mi G-35s than their fancy prototype

Oh really when?

If Americans fear the French might be as trustworthy as they are, they have a very good reason to NIH it up when it comes to military stuff.

But they shouldn't fear that much from the French government, whose reaction to the various NSA scandals has been bending over for more.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

That's because they no doubt use NSA data, as well as operating their own system.

Keep Rolling On