Robrt Gates - Fool or genius?

[shawn a]

It is with a heavy heart that I report on an article in AW&ST's Oct 18th issue titled "Grim Future for Defense". Although the name Robet Gates does not appear anywhere in the article, the opening paragraph reads "Black predictions about the defense budget and U.S. Airforce spending are coming from the service's chief of staff, Gen. Norton Schwartz."
He sees a coming crisis in ability and directional resolve. He mentions a faster emergence of new threats as well as the need to plan for "higher-end, large-scale conflict". He mentions advanced radars "chipping away at the invisibility of stealth designs", and the need to invest in long-range electronic attack and network invasion to maintain the penetration ability of stealthy aircraft. Also mentioned is developing a set of rules of engagement for electronic attack, directed energy weapons, and cyberinvasion. (Let's take that damn fan out of the "rhino beetle", and use the shaft to generate power for directed energy weapons, and cyberjammers!)
I'd like Mr. Gates to know, that although all of this costs money, I'm willing to pay my share!

[Raptor]

And I was starting to wonder where they were getting the money for the new Obama-medical-plan... (which is supposedly still much less cost-efficient than Singapore's healthcare system)

Doesn't anyone else here think that the Korea conflict may be a bad time to cut military costs?

[Webmaster]

Not because of the Korea thing. But just in general... jobs will be lost, more unemployment, that's bad when the recovery of the economy is still pretty fragile. More unemployment means higher demand on welfare. I don't know exactly, but imho these cuts everywhere are coming too soon. On the other hand, I've never been a big fan of governments having huge deficits... it's all a balance, and when cuts need to be made, defence is the easiest target after foreign (humanitarian) aid.