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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rod Snell" data-source="post: 1434103" data-attributes="member: 796">We are in a quiet cold war with the Chinese, who are building and demonstrating a formidable naval capability to make us impotent in the far east. We will become as unbalanced as in 1940 unless we continually modernize and maintain the infrastructure to build the sophisticated long-lead-time military hardware. A carrier takes 10 years to plan and build, and has a 50-year operational life.If we lose that capability, what are we going to do when we need it in a hurry? Buy it from the Chinese?Saving money by letting military hardware become obsolete is a popular target for the militarily unformed, but history has proven it a very expensive way to save money in  the long run. France had a very lean and cost effective military until the Germans showed what being #2 really means.  In War College, we studied military planning and budgets starting with the Spartans and Athenians, who found that navies and professional soldiers are not something you can obtain in a hurry.  The US Military is underbalanced now, with the Air Force shrinking to the point that air superiorty against a first-class emeny is far from certain. In fact, we have 1/2 the Air Force capability we had when I retired from it. The war plans for the F22s have to consider the fact that our side would run out of ammo in a full-scale air battle before the other side ran out of planes. And you don't have to lose a shooting war before the other side decides you are weak enough to push around and bully. When it comes to military capability, we are getting dangerously close to that point in the coming decade.</blockquote>

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