Comments on: A Signature Naval Battle

By: sex videos

sex videos — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:41:55 +0000

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By: pfcem

pfcem — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:20:39 +0000

KragCulloden,
In otherwords you don’t know what you are talking about & can’t support any of you incorrect/false statements because the FACTS indicate otherwise.
We are ALREADY focused on the war of today. AND we are WINNING the war today. We DO NOT need to put our ability to fight a MAJOR conflict against a REAL MILITARY threat in the future in order to do any better than we are already doing today against enemies which ARE NOT (never have been & never will be) a significant MILITARY threat.
Hell, we are spending more money buying MRAP vehicles (which more & more people are coming to realize are NOT all that & are of VERY limited utility except for the one thing they do well which isn’t even as much of a threat TODAY as it once was) then we are maintaining & upgrading our MBT fleet. We are not going to lose the current conflict if we don’t get 20,000+ MRAP vehices ASAP but we COULD lose (or at least have a MUCH more difficult time winning & thus suffer MUCH higher loses) a MAJOR conflict against a REAL MILITARY threat in the future if we do not keep our MBT fleet up to date.

By: KragCulloden

KragCulloden — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:47:25 +0000

@pfc — You are long-winded *and* unconvincing. Quite exagerating the counter-argument to make it easier to argue against.
Its just not that complex. Focus on the war of today, *economize* the resources to finish the current threat before wetting your pants about potential wars twenty years in the future.
Real simple.
As for the swipes at my grasp of history and future threats — laughable and extremely weak of you. Grow up.

By: stephen russell

stephen russell — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 03:11:15 +0000

2 much emphisis on D Day Normandy NOT= time to Battle of Midway.
Both major WW2 events.
Must redress some how?
Ideas
Comments.
Have Anniv for D Day & Midway Battles Both estd!.
Long overdue.

By: KragCulloden

KragCulloden — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:18:39 +0000

@Bill Nelson — well said.
We seem to have two camps in this discussion now — the Army and Marines fighting the bad guys this very instant, and the AF and Navy fighing the boogeyman, which might exist, sometime in the future.
One camp wants the focus put on the bad guys of today, the other wants to focus on the boogeyman of the future. I fall in the former camp.
No one said anything about restructuring the entire US military to fight COIN only, or any other stupid exageration that has been stated on the board.
Its a matter of priorities with todays money and todays energy. What we need today (and needed last week) should get priority…the boogeyman stuff gets slowed down dramatically until the current war is over. Period. No radical change of warfighing capabilities, no idiotic blind eye to future threats, but a focus of manpower, money, and energy on the war of today.
That should extend not only to every element of DoD, but every executive branch agency currently shuffling papers and watching “American Idol” instead of working towards victory in Iraq and Afghanistan in their own respective spheres of expertise.

By: pfcem

pfcem — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:58:38 +0000

Bill Nelson,
Your account of history is inaccurate. There were those in the USN who WERE fully appreciative of carrier airpower WELL before the Battle of Midway (even well before the attack on Pearl Harbor). Unfortunately there were international treaties which placed limits on the size (tonnage) of the USN & other navies. For the USN it was allowed 525,000 tons in battleships & only 135,000 tons in carriers. It does not take a genius to figure out what those limits mean in terms of the USN’s battleship vs carrier priorities.
Once said treaties had lapsed, Congress authorized an additional 40,000 tons. In order to save time the 1st carrier to be built with the new tonnage was the USS Hornet (CV-8), a virtual repeat of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) & USS Enterprise (CV-6) [note the gap taken up by the 15,000 ton USS Wasp (CV-7) which was build for the sole purpose of fully utilizing the tonnage allowed by treaty — otherwise Wasp would have most likely been a a virtual repeat of Yorktown & Enterprise] while the design of an “imporved Yorktown” & what eventually became the Essex class was formulated. The 1st three Essex class were authorized in June 1940, followed by a further TEN in July 1940. So no less than 14 carriers amounting to MORE THAN DOUBLE the tonnage previously allowed under treaty had been authorized PRIOR to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
As I said earlier, the USN was one military branch which was NOT neglected during the inter-war years. The PROPER next war-itis correlation with today is what would WWII have been like if during the WWI-WWII inter-war years someone had conviced the US that since there was no realistic possibility of another major war anytime soon that the USN should be neglected for other “more immediate” priorities.
And the flpiside to your “how would you feel if”…
How would you feel if your ENTIRE Platoon had just been wiped out because you & every soldier in it had been trained & equipped to fight insurgents instead of a REAL military force and you you couldn’t call for air support because the USAF didn’t have enough F-22s &/or F-35s to secure air-superiority over your operation & the money that was going to be used to develop a new stealth bomber which could have gotten through & saved your ass with a few well-placed SDB was used for all that “great” counter-insurgency equipment that while somewhat better at defeating insurgents than the equipment your father had “back in the day” didn’t offer the needed firepower against the REAL military force that just wiped out your ENTIRE Platoon…And because of the lack of air-superiority even the now well proven Osprey can’t come & medicav any in you Platoon who may still be alive.
What there should be no excuse for is to not have the resources to fully prepare our combat units for possible MAJOR combat against a REAL military threat, whether on the ground, in the air above and below the sea or, God help we never have to, in space.

By: Bill Nelson

Bill Nelson — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:11:06 +0000

Midway is not a battle that would best support a next war-itis, this was already into the war for us when we were trying to catch up to Japanese military superiority and this was our turning point in gaining an advantage and we focused on more important weapons systems, such as aircraft and aircraft carriers. A better comparison would be the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor, where our Navy was still focused on Battleships and other surface ships and not as much on the aircraft carriers and aircraft that were so vital in the Pacific. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the US Navy never fully embraced the new advantage an aircraft group would have over a battleship group in the large expanse of the Pacific or more carriers would have been made. Likely we had enough foresight in the Navy to keep our carriers anyway from Pearl Harbor just in case. That would be a better battle to promote next war-itis.
My thought on next war-itis is we should try to plan for every conceivable event we may face and make sure we promote weapons systems that can be adaptable in the future, like a carrier is as compared to a battleship. But we have to make sure we can support what is going on now to the best of our resources and ability. How would you feel if you were a soldier in Iraq and you just was hit by an IED, which by the way you could have detected before hand but not all your vehicle had the equipment that was available now, because some money was used to develop a new stealth bomber that can hit targets dead in enemy territory that will be available in 2020. And then your attack from a building but you don’t have the firepower to fight back and you can’t call for air support because no assets are available, manned or unmanned, because the Airforce is spending money on stealth fighters to handle future dogfights. And when you need a medivac, since your firefight is so intense, nothing is available or the slow current helicopters will take twice as long as a new Osprey would. With the level of technology we have, there should be no excuse to not have the resources to fully support our combat units, whether on the ground, in the air above and below the sea or, God help we never have to, in space.

By: Torpedo8

Torpedo8 — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:40:07 +0000

If you want a modern-day tie-in for Midway, look at the political cover provided for the torpedo construction facility on Goat Island. Powerful Congressional delegates from Rhode Island prevented other states from building torpedo facilities while theirs slowly turned out hand-made duds.
After the Japanese destroyed several hundred torpedos stockpiled in the Philipines a terrible shortage ensued. Oh, and did I mention they were all duds?
The Pentagon is still a bureaucracy, with all the waste and over-spending that entails. The different branches don’t appear to come from different countries as much as different planets. Everyone has their little pet projects and home-state pork, which explains why we get 100 copies of something we don’t need while we risk life and limb waiting for stuff we need desperately.
On the occasion of the anniversary I would ask the services, and our major political parties, to remember we’re all Americans. Your alliance is there first — everything else is fluff.
To the brave men of Torpedo 8 and all the young guys who died delivering duds into the teeth of the Japanese Armada, I raise my glass.
Thanks to you, we’re still here!!

By: pfcem

pfcem — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:24:57 +0000

KragCulloden,
Sorry but the US does not have to “gear up” for the current war we are actually fighting today (which we are WINNING). Our current forces can MORE than haddle it. Yes there are changes which can be made to fight the current war better but we are certainly not going to lose this war because we are not “geared” for it. One thing that IS needed is better intel, which IS one of the things which had been neglected.
What Gates & other misguided fools like him want us to do is to not adequitely prepare for possible (some will say likely if not inevitable) major conflicts in the future & “GRAR DOWN” for the current war we are actually fighting today.
As to the tie-in between Midway & Gates, it didn’t connect because the US DIDN’T neglect its navy prior to WWII. What would have been a more accurate tie-in to Gates would be “how differently that desperate time might have unfolded had a ‘then-Gates’ convinced the U.S. to neglect its navy (like it did its army) in the interwar years & the USS Enterprise, USS Yorktown & USS Hornet &/or the F4F Wildcat, SBD Dauntless & TBD Devastator which made up their air groups at the time not been built…”

By: KragCulloden

KragCulloden — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:16:17 +0000

@TB — the ignorant remarks about air power winning everything since the airplane was invented didn’t come from Christian but somebody named Bob Dudney, editor of…an Air Force rag. Big surprise. ;)