Re: F35B further delays


Message posted by Eagle Scout on March 26, 2014 at 21:54:08 PST:

We've gotten way OT here, but:
1. Quality beats quantity -- see 73 Easting, Medina Ridge. It is not accurate to say the first Iraq war was one by sheer force of numbers. We deployed a huge force, but the units who actually saw combat were generally fighting outnumbered. Medina Ridge was the largest tank battle since WWII for the US Army, and we had something like 10 damaged tanks, versus about 300 Iraqi armored vehicles and God knows how many thousands of enemy killed. At 73 Easting, 3 armored cav troops destroyed a Republican Guard armored brigade. And the Iraqi Air Force _became_ quite small during the war, but it certainly didn't start out that way. And they had a large, state-of-the-(Soviet)-art ground-based air defense network. The fact that it did not work against our forces kinda does prove my point.
2. Looking at military defeats that resulted from bad policy, bad leadership, stupid political decisions, etc., does not answer any questions about the validity of the military doctrines of the opposing forces.
3. Granted, the adversaries in WWII were pretty evenly matched in terms of quality, at least once we were fully up to speed. And the numbers were lopsided toward the end of the war. Because the Allies destroyed so much of the enemy's military. The war did not begin that way. And if you think that we had overwhelming numbers deployed against the DPRK & PLA forces in Korea, you need to hit the books.


In Reply to: Re: F35B further delays posted by Mark on March 26, 2014 at 19:29:25 PST:

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