Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site mnetor.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcs!mnetor!clewis From: clewis@mnetor.UUCP (Chris Lewis) Newsgroups: can.politics Subject: Re: Arming our Forces Message-ID: <2053@mnetor.UUCP> Date: Sun, 8-Sep-85 00:58:11 EDT Article-I.D.: mnetor.2053 Posted: Sun Sep 8 00:58:11 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 8-Sep-85 02:40:56 EDT References: <1371@utcsri.UUCP> <2043@mnetor.UUCP> <1373@utcsri.UUCP> Reply-To: clewis@mnetor.UUCP (Chris Lewis) Distribution: can Organization: Computer X (CANADA) Ltd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada Lines: 150 Summary: In article <1373@utcsri.UUCP> hogg@utcsri.UUCP (John hogg) writes: >... As I am a good friend of Chris', I can state that his >head is in a warm but dark place, reachable only by considerable >contortion. Hi John. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that comment. It's suggestive enough that Pat might belt you. >We do not need to be able to take on the rest of the world in >WW III, as he implies. I was *not* trying to imply that. In fact, stated in another way, I firmly believe that we may have more than enough people in our Armed Forces. We would be much better served by striving towards quality, flexibility, and effectiveness than quantity. As Switzerland does. Any conflict that is possible to survive will be conventional, and will probably NOT include the super-powers. And, it may just include us. Situations change - wierd things happen overnight. Iran went, in not very many months, from the US's greatest friend in the middle east, to the US's bitterest enemy. >First, his 1938 analogy is inaccurate in that we are threatened only by the >Soviet Union, and they are held in check by a massively bloated American >Big Stick. If the Americans were to adopt an isolationist policy (!) I >would finance Chalk River in a big way. However, they can't and wouldn't >if they could. They certainly can adopt an isolationist policy on certain things. We weren't threatened by *anybody* in the early 30's. The world was rosy (except for the depression) and the pacifists had free rein (turning rifles into social services and soup lines). Most of the Western world was dismantling their forces. Except for a few people who took Hitler seriously, and fought tooth and nail for the maintaining of an effective force, Britain, France and the rest of Europe would have been a lot worse off in 1938 - eg: probably the UK would have fallen in '39 or '40 and at least all of Western Europe would still be under German control. "Big stick"? There was a "big stick" in '38 that the West firmly believed in - the Royal Navy, the French forces, the Maginot line etc. Besides, according to the Versailles treaty the Germans weren't supposed to have any military to speak of. Germany didn't have an airforce in '35! They had a well equipped airline! The *main* thing I'm worried about is "peace-time-complacency". Where, the primary goal of many is to build-down forces in either the belief that "war is too horrible to contemplate - so why bother preparing" (which they thought it was in '35 - the gas of WW1 was a pretty good stick, and the British had developed some pretty spectacular CBW agents), or "there isn't anybody threatening us" - true for TODAY. Tomorrow? Maybe not. In fact, PROBABLY NOT! >Apart from the USSR, nobody is physically threatening us. AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME! In 1937 nobody was physically threatening us EITHER! And, if we wait until someone DOES physically threaten us, it is FAR TOO LATE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. We won't have anything to shoot with. In fact, this may also bring up another point. What if we decide to help someone else out? As we did in '39. We declared war on Germany to help Britain. Germany did not initially declare war on us. We weren't an enemy (particularly) of Germany. Lot's of our "friends" have enemies even if *we* don't. > We have >no territory equivalent to the Falklands, and statements about Iceland >claiming Newfoundland or St. Pierre claiming PEI merely show how hard it is >to come up with a realistic brush-war danger to this country. World War, >yes. "Incident", yes. But small war? No. What about Korea? We had ships, planes, troops there. It was a full-scale war. How about Cyprus? The Middle East? What about any other major UN peacekeeping operation? >>How is a virtually unarmed PT boat going to be able to keep Soviet >>warships out of our coastline limit? > >WE DON'T HAVE BE BE ABLE TO SLUG IT OUT TOE-TO-TOE WITH ANYBODY! If the >Soviets send a frigate into our waters, we escort them out with an MTB. If I understood that part. I know that they probably wouldn't shoot. Probably - given the current political situation they probably wouldn't. But, naval diplomacy is frequently not with guns, it's with near collisions etc. Not too long ago the US practically sunk a Russian submarine. "Whoops, we didn't see you". The Russians have run over several fishing boats. I just hope our ships are big enough to survive the bow wave. Maybe just maybe, the excuse'll be: "sorry, but with all of the corks flying around, the deck crew ducked and couldn't see where they were going" >I will concede, by the way, that for arctic work we need something more >sophisticated and thus more expensive. Probably a few diesel boats with >icebreaker mother ships strategically located. A "few diesel boats"? Come on John, you're a sailor, you MUST know better than that. Do you have any idea what it takes to operate all-weather in the Arctic ocean? The "Lenin" is at least 15,000 tons, nuclear, and over 7 million Hp! The only way your plan would work is if the number of icebreaker mother ships == the number of "diesel boats". (Provided that we can figure out a way to keep the diesel fuel from freezing!) >The same thing is true for interceptor aircraft: we don't need exceptionally >sophisticated fighters able to pull many G's, and with avionics capable of >tracking and firing (in theory, anyway) at many targets simultaneously. We >need aircraft with, as I said, LITTLE more fighting ability than a Lear >Jet. Sufficient speed to intercept is so obvious as not to need >mentioning. Name one aircraft cheaper than a F-?? capable of reaching Mach 1, let alone Mach 3. How many can you think of that aren't full-blown fighters that can go that fast that are in service? There are only two: Concorde and TU-144 (a little pricy, both). And without the avionics, how do you expect our planes to even find any intruders? You do have sort of a point, considering what our air-force is likely to ever have to do, we could make do with just getting new F101's with somewhat newer electronics. Unfortunately, they aren't made anymore, and getting the lines tooled up again would probably cost more than the F-18's do. >>Only if Uncle is accepting calls from us... > >Like it or no, the US is extremely interested in protecting us from "Soviet >aggression", and will be regardless of what we do. Now yes. 5 years from now? (How long do you think it takes to build a ship?) Maybe not. Maybe it won't be the Russians. I'm sure that Argentina thought just that when they invaded the Falklands, after all, the US had even gone to the extent of promising *in writing* to aid them in case of aggression. It would depend on *who* tried to invade us, and under what conditions. There are situations, not all-together fantasy, where the US might just look the other way ("President X, we won't release these filthy pictures of your daughter to the Washington Post if you let us take Baffin Island" (that was a fantasy one for your amusement)). Read "Fail-Safe" for a plausible one. >What I wanted to argue in my original posting is that we should think about >what our armed forces are supposed to do, and supply them with the >equipment they need. In general, this means more than what they have. >However, it can also be much cheaper than what they'd like. We don't need >to fight foreign wars, and we don't need to win state-of-the-art >ship-on-ship or plane-on-plane duels. We need to be able, in extremis, to >take unanswered potshots at single ships or planes that won't listen to >sweet reason. That's extremis? Unfortunately not. -- Chris Lewis, UUCP: {allegra, linus, ihnp4}!utzoo!mnetor!clewis BELL: (416)-475-8980 ext. 321