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04/10/2008

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Mojo

I think you're being far too charitable. He went off to cloud cuckoo land right from the start. A "defensive" posture (presumably meaning less interventionist) would make US participation in CI operations unlikely rather than the norm yet he would completely gut conventional capacity to create forces incapable of any other mission. His complete lack of understanding of the real details of military operations is revealed by things like retention of carriers but elimination of the support ships which allow them to operate and the strike aircraft which are their whole reason for existence. You mentioned the fact that he'd apparently heard that littoral areas are important but seems to have no understanding whatsoever of the mechanics involved. And he prescribes an Air Force whose only combat aircraft would be the A-10, ignoring the fact that it uses exactly the same ordnance (or rather a subset thereof) as the strike aircraft he decries but less accurately and with a much greater delay while it slowly makes it's way into position. The only true advantages of the A-10 over other aircraft (amid a forest of disadvantages) are it's tank-killing gun (close to useless in a CI role) and some improved survivability against certain AAA systems (completely useless in CI). I love the A-10 but it's not the best ground support aircraft when opposing unconventional forces. Finally, he makes the assumption that US soldiers have a combat advantage against other forces despite the "superstructure" (presumably just because they're American) when, in reality, much of their success is because of the support of those people he believes are irrelevant just because they aren't shooting at somebody personally. In the end, it's nothing more than a list of military-related terms he thinks sound cool scattered about at random and spread with a thin veneer of "strategy".

virgil  xenophon

Mojo has mastered a practically lost art--that
of successfully saying in a few words what would take the average person a small tome to
begin to address--even w.o. footnotes.(al-
though some would fault him for style because
of the longish single para.) In the Air Force I was in we would say that he scored a "shack"
(bulls-eye) on the bombing range.

virgil  xenophon

Mojo has mastered a practically lost art--that
of successfully saying in a few words what would take the average person a small tome to
begin to address--even w.o. footnotes.(al-
though some would fault him for style because
of the longish single para.) In the Air Force I was in we would say that he scored a "shack"
(bulls-eye) on the bombing range.

virgil  xenophon

Mojo has mastered a practically lost art--that
of successfully saying in a few words what would take the average person a small tome to
begin to address--even w.o. footnotes.(al-
though some would fault him for style because
of the longish single para.) In the Air Force I was in we would say that he scored a "shack"
(bulls-eye) on the bombing range.

virgil  xenophon

Mojo has mastered a practically lost art--that
of successfully saying in a few words what would take the average person a small tome to
begin to address--even w.o. footnotes.(al-
though some would fault him for style because
of the longish single para.) In the Air Force I was in we would say that he scored a "shack"
(bulls-eye) on the bombing range.

Alexander Clark

Thank you for this post. Unfortunately, many of these recommendations and ideas seem to reflect the current thinking of the British government in its defense spending. The British army for instance, is expected to be deployed in more combat zones than ten years ago with far fewer troops. the number of Infantry battalions have been cut in favour of amalagmating existing units - thus saving costs as well as reducing costs.

The navy, despite the Falklands washaving demonstrated the need for air group strength carriers 25 years ago is only now in the process of acquiring two new aircraft carriers with a complement of 50 eurofighters each.

The UK simply can't sustain military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and goodness knows where else if our military spending does not keep up with our commitments.

Alex
--------------------
www.historyofwarfare.blogspot.com

ling

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