US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
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To be fair, this guy is Army and that explains everything. The US Army is basically useless in the Western Pacific so his job is to downplay it as much as possible. Keep in mind that the main enemy of the Army is the Air Force and Navy while the Navy and Air Force are each other's worst enemies.
Yes and yes. It was posted a couple of pages back.
Story goes GEN Ron Clark is quite popular with a certain iteration or faction of the "West Point Mafia," and was groomed to be a GO since commissioning as a butter bar.
He knows what ought to be communicated and leveraged to advance his own careerist ambitions, and to benefit the forces that propelled him to his current station. Definitely not the easiest guy for Trump and company to push out, even if popular with previous administrations and Democrats in Congress.
Guy is obviously very good at optics management. Just look at that smile:
In this instance, Clark's rhetoric and talking points were most likely intended to secure more funding for the US Army, even if it may come at the expense of its sister services.
Senior USAF and USN officers have exaggerated or otherwise spun PLA capabilities to prioritize funding for their institutions for years, and Clark is doing the opposite to secure more funding for the US Army, which is at risk of becoming a "neglected child" with the effective conclusion of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The DoD and its various subordinate agencies, branches and elements are wholly dependent on Congressional authorizations for funding.
The overwhelming majority of American Congressmen and Senators remain too uninformed and optimistic, if not arrogant, to recognize growing US inability to compete with the PLA in a future conflict over Taiwan and more broadly in the Western Pacific.
As such, it is taboo for DoD officials — lobbying if not begging for funding before Congress — to suggest that it is time to divest from efforts intended to make the US military more competitive against the PLA in the Western Pacific, even if they're willing to acknowledge as much in private and in subtle-ish ways at think tank events.
In this instance, some of these funding cuts are most likely a result of Trump's desire to prioritize CapEx for certain programs that he and his allies prefer like the Golden Dome.
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Story goes GEN Ron Clark is quite popular with a certain iteration or faction of the "West Point Mafia," and was groomed to be a GO since commissioning as a butter bar.
He knows what ought to be communicated and leveraged to advance his own careerist ambitions, and to benefit the forces that propelled him to his current station. Definitely not the easiest guy for Trump and company to push out, even if popular with previous administrations and Democrats in Congress.
Guy is obviously very good at optics management. Just look at that smile:
In this instance, Clark's rhetoric and talking points were most likely intended to secure more funding for the US Army, even if it may come at the expense of its sister services.
Senior USAF and USN officers have exaggerated or otherwise spun PLA capabilities to prioritize funding for their institutions for years, and Clark is doing the opposite to secure more funding for the US Army, which is at risk of becoming a "neglected child" with the effective conclusion of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The DoD and its various subordinate agencies, branches and elements are wholly dependent on Congressional authorizations for funding.
The overwhelming majority of American Congressmen and Senators remain too uninformed and optimistic, if not arrogant, to recognize growing US inability to compete with the PLA in a future conflict over Taiwan and more broadly in the Western Pacific.
As such, it is taboo for DoD officials — lobbying if not begging for funding before Congress — to suggest that it is time to divest from efforts intended to make the US military more competitive against the PLA in the Western Pacific, even if they're willing to acknowledge as much in private and in subtle-ish ways at think tank events.
In this instance, some of these funding cuts are most likely a result of Trump's desire to prioritize CapEx for certain programs that he and his allies prefer like the Golden Dome.
Once the boomers die off things will probably improve a bit.
I think that it's going to need a sea change in American attitudes before it matters. Hegseth isn't a boomer but he's still exemplary of American military stupidity.
Gen X are mostly idiots too.
Do they have any deployed long range weapon other than Tomahawks and JASSMs?
As subsonic cruise missiles, they're hard limited by kinematics. It doesn't matter how stealthy they are if they can be picked up by OTH radar, AWACs viewing from above or forward observers. Then a fighter can be vectored in to shoot it down with an IR missile or to look at it from high return angles like top down. And Tomahawks aren't even meant to be stealthy.
Otherwise it seems the majority of their strike power is just short ranged glide bombs.
As subsonic cruise missiles, they're hard limited by kinematics. It doesn't matter how stealthy they are if they can be picked up by OTH radar, AWACs viewing from above or forward observers. Then a fighter can be vectored in to shoot it down with an IR missile or to look at it from high return angles like top down. And Tomahawks aren't even meant to be stealthy.
Otherwise it seems the majority of their strike power is just short ranged glide bombs.
Someone posted the F-47 (CG) comparing to the J-20, they look quite alike from this angle.
