If You Want Peace, Prepare for Absurd Scenarios

I followed a link from The Weekly Standard's blog to a post by David Axe discussing Air Force Monthly's coverage of an F-22 getting shot down in some simulated combat by an F-16. Lieutenant Colonel Dirk Smith notes that "the beauty of Red Flag is that we were able to go out and practice our tactics in a challenging scenario, make a mistake, learn alesson, and be that much better prepared for actual combat." Axe, in a section the Standard quotes favorably, concurs:

I totally agree: failure is the best way to improve. And if losing one simulated dogfight against other Americans flying F-16s was such a profound experience for our Raptor jockies, imagine what they might take away from a no-holds-barred match with experienced foreign pilots flying a genuinely dissimilar aircraft, say Indian aces in Su-30s or veteran Russian pilots in Su-27s – or even top British aviators in the Royal Air Force’s new Typhoons.

Uh huh. But think about that. Why would the US Air Force be fighting Indian aces in Su-30s? And that's to say nothing of the Royal Air Force. I don't want to say it's inconceivable that the United States would find itself engaged in a struggle for air superiority with a near peer-competitor but it's way, way, way, down on the list of contingencies that any reasonable person would be hedging against. Alien robots seems like an only slightly less plausible adversary.

Robert Farley threatened a little while back to write on the question of whether we ought to have an Air Force at all, and I think it's a topic that needs further exploration. Clearly, the military needs air power, but setting up a separate, coequal, "air" service seems to create very bad institutional incentives to over-invest our resources in the sort of things that would justify the existence of an air force.

Comments

You're going to title your book, "Come Home, America", aren't you?

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Obviously, air power is the essence of American military power, and this is a rather silly conceptual idea unless you want to cut the military budget by 75%, with the associated scale back of strategic ambitions.

The analogy would be the UK institutionally abandoning the British Navy in 1850.

Posted by Petey | July 11, 2007 12:01 PM

c'mon Matt--airplanes are for sale. We aren't likely to fight with the Royal Air Force, but they probably sell Typhoons to other countries.

The guy is talking about fighting the hardware, not fighting the nations that build it.

Posted by Count Cant | July 11, 2007 12:03 PM

The guy is talking about fighting the hardware, not fighting the nations that build it.

err..

or even top British aviators in the Royal Air Force’s new Typhoons.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 11, 2007 12:13 PM

USAF *does* engage in mil-ex against friendly nations; for example, the Cope India exercises regularly pit USAF F-15s against ... well, India's Su-30K Flankers, actually, as well as the rest of India's combat air force. IAF has done very well -- winning 9 out of 10 simulated dogfights in Cope India 04, for example -- though it should be noted that this doesn't really reflect the total dominance the US brings to the air in real combat situations.

Posted by WatchfulBabbler | July 11, 2007 12:18 PM

> Why would the US Air Force be fighting
> Indian aces in Su-30s?

Venezuela has considered buying Su-30s and other advanced Russian fighters. And you just KNOW Cheney and PNAC are itching to have a go with Chavez.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | July 11, 2007 12:24 PM

> IAF has done very well -- winning 9 out
> of 10 simulated dogfights in Cope India 04,
> for example

Of course, those results (against F-15s) were announced publicly just a few days before key Congressional hearings on continued funding for the F-22...

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | July 11, 2007 12:27 PM

But isn't it the case, Petey, that the United States Air Force is so absurdly superior to any other country's Air Force equivalent that we could spend substantially less and still maintain an enormous advantage?

Posted by Freddie | July 11, 2007 12:28 PM

IAF has done very well -- winning 9 out of 10 simulated dogfights in Cope India 04, for example -- though it should be noted that this doesn't really reflect the total dominance the US brings to the air in real combat situations.

(as long as Awacs remain utterly invulnerable, and satnav remains inviolate, and the US has runways and hard shelters and fuel storage and tankers and supply chains for its superfighters...)

Posted by ajay | July 11, 2007 12:28 PM

Where are all the textualists and originalists to explain that the Air Force is unconstitutional? The Constitution expressly allows an army and a navy, but says nothing about an air force. Expressio unis exclusio alterius est.

Posted by rea | July 11, 2007 12:28 PM

"But isn't it the case, Petey, that the United States Air Force is so absurdly superior to any other country's Air Force equivalent that we could spend substantially less and still maintain an enormous advantage?"

For a decade or maybe more, sure. But given that air power is the core of American military power, slowly giving up air dominance would mean a drastic shift in America's strategic capabilities.

There's a case to be made for dramatically reducing America's military budget, but unless you're willing to move in that direction, the Air Force is the last area I'd think about cutting.

Posted by Petey | July 11, 2007 12:39 PM

This is a genuinely silly post. As Count Cant notes: "The guy is talking about fighting the hardware, not fighting the nations that build it." The result is increased institutional and human knowledge on something like dogfighting. Going head to head against nations with fighting equipment nowhere near that of the Raptor only makes the exercises more effective--especially when the Raptors lose.

Posted by neil | July 11, 2007 12:42 PM

I think the real message in the article is that
"while the F-22 was sweeping the skies of F-15's,
and F-4s, they lost an F-22 to an F-16."

F-4s??? those are REALLY old. Maybe they should
see if the F-22 could take on an F-106, how about an FB-111 (one is even older, the other is a
mishmash 'fighter bomber' that got turned into
electronic warfare carrier since it was useless
as a fighter.)

The F-15 is the air power - do everything answer.
The F-16 is a Fighter plane - and nothing more.
I would guess it costs a quarter (possibly much less) of what an F15
costs and 1/20th of the F-22.

The F-22 will be the succesor of the F-15, at great
cost and fewer numbers. The airforce wants to raise the cost per plane so high that they cannot cut numbers during budget negotiations. They are getting there with the F-22.

Posted by catclub | July 11, 2007 12:44 PM

"But isn't it the case, Petey, that the United States Air Force is so absurdly superior to any other country's Air Force equivalent that we could spend substantially less and still maintain an enormous advantage?"

Again, the analogy here is the British Navy in the 18th and 19th centuries. You don't cut the Navy because Britain rules the seas. If anything, the logic argues in the opposite direction.

Posted by Petey | July 11, 2007 12:45 PM

Folding the Air Force back into the Army isn't a bad idea, especially if we could bring the Marines back under tighter control of the Navy. Then, instead of four branches fighting for a share of the Military-Industrial pie, we'd only have two.

But then, I think that except of times of declared war, the standing Army ought to be scaled way, way back. So who cares what I think?

Posted by jlw | July 11, 2007 12:47 PM

We engage in combat against F-16s because we've sold F-16s to every air force we could find, including some that might give us some pushback someday.

Posted by Tom Parmenter | July 11, 2007 12:48 PM

The problem with the military-industrial complex isn't the spending per se. That money doesn't just go down the toilet; it keeps millions of Americans employed in the defense industry, and keeps the economy moving. In fact, since sensitive matters of national defense are less likely to be outsourced overseas than other types of work, military spending correlates pretty efficiently into creating and protecting American jobs.

The problem lies in what Eisenhower initially labeled the problem - the military-industrial-CONGRESSIONAL complex. If you build these toys, people will want to try them out. You'll be more tempted to go to war if you have the army (and the air force) to do it with. There's a school of thought that believes in peace through overwhelming force, but the MIC complex continually provides pushback against the notion of using the military strictly as a deterrent. If you promised me we would never bomb anyone who I didn't think ought to be bombed, I'd have no problem with spending all that money on the planes.

Posted by Steve | July 11, 2007 12:53 PM

Petey -

I could be wrong, but assuming Matt's thoughts on ditching the Air Force (which, for the record, an uncle of mine served in, and I doubt he'd care for this line of argument) are similar to mine, the idea isn't to cut the Air Force full stop, but rather to fold it (or most of it) back into the Army, and in doing so engaging in eliminating some redundancies and examining the mission of the air force. I could see, especially in the Cold War, the logic for SAC being a separate branch of service, but we don't have that distinction anymore.

There's also the argument to be made that next gen air superiority fighters shouldn't be a high priority because we're unlikely to see mission profiles where they're a key component, but I'm the wrong person to have that argument with because I think the US should try and jump ahead on the curve and start preparing to just ditch lots of its planes in favor of more SSMs and SAMs.

Posted by Quarterican | July 11, 2007 12:58 PM

1. actually, Axe was talking about exercises against Indian and Russian pilots in Fourth Generation fighters.

2. the fact of the matter is, the average U.S. Air Force plane is 24 years old. (tankers and transport skew that but even our fighters average around 15-18 years old.)

3. a brand new F-16 wouldn't be much cheaper than an F-22 and is just as expensive (projected) as an F-35....while giving you vastly less capability.

4. I think there's an argument to be made that maybe we should dump the F-35 and just build F-22s (though this would force the Marines to rely upon Navy aviation as their Harriers are about done). for one thing...all the R&D cost is complete on the F-22...which means that every F-22 we build gets cheaper....double the buy and you lower the cost by about 20MM an airframe or more. retrofit our legacy fighters with Link 16 and the F-22 becomes an awesome force multiplier (its not just its own capabilities...it is its ability to make other planes better). furthermore, the radar on the F-22 is powerful enough to allow it to replace the Prowler all by its lonesome. but we need enough of them to do that. or we can just spend far more money to build a Prowler replacement.

so what would I do? buy a 1000 F-22s....chop the F-35, increase the Super-Hornet buy for the Navy and Marines. retrofit our newest F-16s and F-35s with Link 16....
we'd save money and still have almost as much capability as with our current plans.

we could even throw some of the saved cash into R&D for a sixth generation fighter in 20 years...something which might even be unmanned.

you can get away with chopping either the F-22 or the F-35...but we're going to need one of them...in quantity. I'd suggest keeping the one that's already reached IOC.

Posted by Nathan | July 11, 2007 1:06 PM

Matt,

When I was in infantry training at Ft. Benning, GA years ago, someone had nailed a sign to a tree with quote from Plato: "The only men who have seen the end of war are the dead".

This was 1989, by the way. The Cold War was ending, and if someone told you that our air superiority would come in handy in two years when we'd be fighting massive tank battles in the Middle East, you would have considered that an "Absurd Scenario".

Even though you feel burned by your initial support of the Iraq war, a time will come again when you see the need for the use of military force. At that time, it will be helpful for us to have air superiority. That's not assured if we keep flying planes initially flown in the 1970s while other countries (Russia, France, etc.) keep pushing the envelope.

It takes years to develop a next-generation air superiority fighter. If you wait until you need it, it will be too late.

Posted by Fred | July 11, 2007 1:07 PM

As someone else noted - the F-16 is a fighter plane designed by fighter pilots - the F-22 is another sign post on the road leading to the day when the defense department will only be able to buy one plane - which navy and the air will take turns using.

Posted by professor fate | July 11, 2007 1:07 PM

"The problem with the military-industrial complex isn't the spending per se. That money doesn't just go down the toilet; it keeps millions of Americans employed in the defense industry, and keeps the economy moving."

Except deciding who builds what in which particular factory isn't decided by economics, but instead pork and political dealing. Our military hardware is produced much less efficiently than it could be, all paid for by US taxpayers and helping to raise the budget deficit. In addition, military Keynesianism becomes less useful when you move from small bombs like we used in WWII to the huge missiles, planes, etc. we use today. If one of those goes, that's a lot of money down the toilet.

Posted by Reality Man | July 11, 2007 1:09 PM

Interesting, the Air Force is in the middle of a large "force cut" even while the Army and the Marines are struggling for new recruits

http://dailyreport.afa.org/AFA/Features/personnel/box092606brady.htm

Posted by BF | July 11, 2007 1:16 PM

I think the Prowler replacement is in testing, the EA-18 Growler.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EA-18_Growler

Posted by jerry | July 11, 2007 1:57 PM

oh that's right...they're using an F-18 frame for the Prowler replacement.

but that's still a Navy bird...the F-22 gives the air force an organic jamming capability.

Posted by Nathan | July 11, 2007 2:40 PM

An excellent point. In fact, almost all military spending since the seventies on the Pentagon's toys has been and will be worthless in regard to America's real needs. When was the last time a U.S. fighter plane was in a dogfight? Was it over Vietnam? Is there any reason that the same kind of planes wouldn't win a dogfight today? In fact, the U.S. is insanely superior in weaponry we will never use for wars we will never wage, and is being kicked slowly but surely out of Iraq by various forces that are being outspent, what, one hundred to one by the U.S.? When one sees such a gross discrepency between the reality of the possible battlefield landscape and what we are spending for 'defense", you know that the spending is responding to an extra-military need. It is the need of various constituencies, both cultural (Red State testosterone types) and economic (the petro-defense industry) which drives the spending. In other words, the honor crowd and the profit crowd. And the more they spend for absurd weapons systems, the more they waste and the more taxes paid by the average tax payer look like they bring no advantage to said tax payer whatsoever - so the more the tax payer will adhere to the siren call of "small government", the less public investment there will be, the less progress on solving fundamental issues of social welfare. It is a nifty system, forged in D.C., forced down your throat.

Posted by roger | July 11, 2007 2:50 PM

When was the last time a U.S. fighter plane was in a dogfight?

Kosovo, I believe.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 11, 2007 3:04 PM

Kosovo is correct.

but leaving that aside...the fact simply remains that the planes are aging. there's a point where keeping them maintained, in the air, and updated (retrofitting electronics is enormously expensive) actually costs more than building new planes....which can literally be 25-50 times more effective, per unit. how many of you are aware that we're actually retiring the (misnamed) "stealth fighter" F-117?

the lead time to design and build a new plane is in the 10-20 year range. even if we chopped the F-22 and F-35 now...we'd still be spending billions on R&D for a new fighter to replace our current aging ones when they start falling out of the sky.

Pentagon procurement is plenty f___ed up...but some of you act like airframes don't age. they do.

Posted by Nathan | July 11, 2007 3:57 PM

Re "as long as Awacs remain utterly invulnerable"
-------
Actually, it seems to me that the F-22 loses much of its value if it is tied to an airborne radar emitter --either onboard or on another airplane.
Because such an emitter provides a target on which a missile can home.

After all, air-to-air missiles can be stealthed. Plus they are far more maneuverable, faster, and can pull much higher Gs than anything carrying a human pilot.

That's why I've wondered if the F-22 would have a real time downlink from a radar satellite -- too high up to be easily attacked-- and with a moving target detection.

That would allow the F-22 to cruise in stealth mode , to see its opponents from a 100 miles out , to fire missiles at an opportune time then dodge away.

Of course, that suggests that the EU is moronic for giving up its organic fighter plane capability in favor of taking a share of JSF.

Plus, given that we can't secure Microsoft Windows, I have to wonder if the EU can secure the internal electronics/software package on the JSF. I wonder if the US government has installed a "backdoor" into the JSF --one that will allow us to down any hostile JSF forces by transmitting an encrypted "Shut Down Engine" message.

Posted by Don Williams | July 11, 2007 4:06 PM

Re "the idea isn't to cut the Air Force full stop, but rather to fold it (or most of it) back into the Army,"
-------
I suspect that the Army leadership thinks of the Air Force as a hugely expensive and unreliable form of artillery that only an idiot would create.

Actually, a strong argument can be made for that view.

Posted by Don Williams | July 11, 2007 4:11 PM

Re "That money doesn't just go down the toilet; it keeps millions of Americans employed in the defense industry, and keeps the economy moving."
------------
I suspect the Pharoahs made a similar argument for building the Pyramids.

Due to the resulting slow arterial bleeding, Egypt --a nation with huge natural advantages -- became the bitch of the Greeks, the Romans, and various other inferior nations over the past 2500 years.

Posted by Don Williams | July 11, 2007 4:16 PM

From a strategic sense, I think that if I wanted to transfer advanced technology to hostile nations, I could not conceive of a better way than to pack that technology into a fighter platform and send it hundreds of miles behind enemy lines where it will almost certainly be lost due to accidents, visual targeting, malfunctions,etc.

We LOST a stealth F117 in Yugoslavia in 1999. The debris was hauled aways by the Serbs before Wes Clark could extract his prehensile digit from his gluteus maximus and bomb the wreckage. Any college chemistry teacher could analyze that debris and determine it composition.

We now have 3 carriers off Iran -- and I wait to hear that they have been sunk by Iranian cruise missiles that have been stealthed based on knowledge gleaned from the material grabbed in Yugoslavia.

Posted by Don Williams | July 11, 2007 4:25 PM

Don Williams,
The design of the F-117 was based on papers published in a _Soviet_ journal of mathematics but never picked up by the USSR's design bureaus (Lockheed hired the guy post-1990). And it was almost 20 years old in 1999 - not exactly new or super-secret technology.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | July 11, 2007 4:29 PM

Bad news if the F-22 is losing out to F-16s. Hate to think what would happen if it went up against a MIG 1.44 or the Chinese Shenyang J-XX.

Posted by Jose Padilla | July 11, 2007 4:42 PM

"When I was in infantry training at Ft. Benning, GA years ago, someone had nailed a sign to a tree with quote from Plato: "The only men who have seen the end of war are the dead"."

Fred, I don't blame you for repeating this mistake, because greater minds than yours have made it.

However, it still has to be said:

the attribution of this quotation to Plato is totally without basis in fact.

He never said it.

Somebody else made it up. Nobody knows who. The person I asked at the Imperial War Museum in London didn't know where it came from, either.

The only thing certain is: it ain't Plato.

Posted by Count Cant | July 11, 2007 4:45 PM

"I suspect the Pharoahs made a similar argument for building the Pyramids. Due to the resulting slow arterial bleeding, Egypt --a nation with huge natural advantages -- became the bitch of the Greeks..."

The Pyramids were built very early on in a reign of Egyptian strength and independence that continued on almost completely uninterrupted for 2,500 years!

In terms of how things played out, the Pyramids seemed to have paid major dividends for the Egyptian national interest.

Posted by Petey | July 11, 2007 4:52 PM

Ed, I knew that ground to air missiles were used by the Serbs, but I'd forgotten that they sent up fighters. So it does look like between 1973 and 1999, there's a bit of a gap in which the U.S. spent easily more than a trillion dollars on the air force, but we did, at the end of it, have the payoff: some dogfights that knocked out Yugoslavian planes. On the other hand - reading through the news accounts of that time, in which one of the fighter pilots was described as being as happy as "Snoopy" after the fights, suggesting not a high level of respect for the Yugoslavian air force - it appears that EU forces engaged in dogfights with the Yugoslavian air force too. And they won every dogfight. Since EU defense spending, all the nations of Europe combined, is - or was in the nineties - 1/3 to 1/2 the U.S. total, it suggests that we could comfortably spend less and still defeat the Yugoslavian air force.

Posted by roger | July 11, 2007 5:08 PM

> Bad news if the F-22 is losing out to F-16s.

Let's be reality-based here: according to AW&ST the F-22s were winning something like 40:1 against the F-16s of the Red Force Aggressor Squadron which is generally considered the best and sneakiest in the US Air Force. The Aggressors used a very bizarre tactic to get _one_ F-16 in position to take a shot a _one_ F-22. The ability of your typical Elbonian pilot to do that is questionable even if he is flying the latest Russian fighter[1]. And even so an exchange rate of 40:1 is going to destroy the Elbonian air force in a few hours.

Cranky

[1] Note that most of the Russian advanced fighter prototypes are rotting away on the flight line at their factories because the Russian Air Force doesn't have enough money to fund them.

Posted by Cranky Observer | July 11, 2007 5:09 PM

Count Cant:

"the attribution of this quotation to Plato is totally without basis in fact."

Thanks for the heads up. If I'm ever back at Ft. Benning, I'll let them know to scratch off "Plato" on that sign.

BTW, in response the proposal to merge the Air Force back in with the Army: I think you would see a mass exodus from the Air Force if that happened. The Air Force offers its troops much higher quality of life than other services, especially the Army. For example, compare the deployment times for Air Force personnel with Army troops -- last I read, Airmen were spending 4 months in the Iraq theater before being rotated out (could be longer now).

Posted by Fred | July 11, 2007 5:14 PM

I think the comment about "do we really need an air force" was more in the context of whether we need manned aircraft to operate over hostile territory. It seems we could come up with a series of stealth missles that could orbit over enemy airspace looking for targets and controlled from the U.S. much like the Predators. You could have air-to-air and air-to-ground versions that could be called in by ground forces all the while staying hundreds of miles from any enemy interceptors and if you lose one, eh so what?

Posted by Col Bat Guano | July 11, 2007 5:45 PM

For example, compare the deployment times for Air Force personnel with Army troops -- last I read, Airmen were spending 4 months in the Iraq theater before being rotated out (could be longer now).

I once asked my dad, an Air Force veteran, why he never went to Vietnam.

"When they started sending people over for real," he said, "I only had a few months left in my term. So it wasn't worth the trouble to send people like me over there."

"Wow, that's pretty good timing," I said.

"Do you think it's an accident I joined the branch with the shortest enlistments?" he responded.

Yeah, timing does matter. Although, people would always comment on how fortunate my dad was to do his service in Delaware rather than Vietnam, but as he would say, those people had never been to Delaware.

Posted by Steve | July 11, 2007 6:20 PM

The Air Force could still be the biggest mistake this country ever made.

Start at the beginning, the assumption (or wish) that the B-17 could destroy enemy battleships by high-altitude bombing, which never worked, and the assumption that, for example, a country like Germany could be destroyed by air power, which also didn't work.

Pass over in discrete silence the efforts by Curtis LeMay and Douglas MacArthur to involve us in full-scale nuclear war.

Season generously with a strong appeal to the five year old boy in every American man, and the innate appeal to bullying that lies in the belief that the US can do anything to anybody.

Now bake in an Air Force Academy bullying cadets into end-of-times fundamentalist religion, and, hey presto! still a good chance that some AF looney will kill us all.

People who want to be thrilled by the AF should build a plastic model.

Posted by serial catowner | July 11, 2007 7:25 PM

"Only the dead have seen the end of war" -George Santayana.

Posted by WatchfulBabbler | July 11, 2007 11:11 PM

Again, the analogy here is the British Navy in the 18th and 19th centuries. You don't cut the Navy because Britain rules the seas. If anything, the logic argues in the opposite direction.

A history nerd writes: actually, once the Royal Navy started ruling the seas (having destroyed all its opponents during the Napoleonic Wars, at Copenhagen, Trafalgar etc) it was indeed cut back very deeply. Most of the ships were paid off, and the manpower was cut by 80-90%.

Don Williams: Of course, that suggests that the EU is moronic for giving up its organic fighter plane capability in favor of taking a share of JSF.

Er, you're talking through your hat. "Eurofighter". The clue is in the name. The UK - not the EU - has taken a share of JSF, but is buying the Eurofighter Typhoon as well.

Posted by ajay | July 12, 2007 4:53 AM

Seeing as y'already have joint exercises with NATO and the Indians, I can see no good reason not to include F-22 units; train hard, fight easy, as they say.

Posted by Alex | July 12, 2007 5:44 AM

Re "Er, you're talking through your hat. "Eurofighter". The clue is in the name. The UK - not the EU - has taken a share of JSF, but is buying the Eurofighter Typhoon as well"
--------------
Check out http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2003/Jan/Joint_Strike.htm

Some excerpts:
------------
"The United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Norway and Turkey are participating in the System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase of the [JSF] program. "
---------
Italy’s goals for the JSF are quite simple, Ferro said. “We want competition on quality and supplies. We invested one billion dollars. We plan to procure the aircraft. We haven’t decided yet exactly how many, but generally speaking, we are looking at a package of 100. It will very much depend on many factors, including the financial results of the situation by the time we will get into the production phase,” he said.

Italy is also involved in the Eurofighter program. “To our eyes, JSF is not a competitor of Eurofighter. The Eurofighter is mainly replacing the standing air defense fleet, so the main role will be air defense/air superiority,” he said. Ferro also added that cutbacks in the Eurofighter funding profile permanently changed the outlook for the program. “Eurofighter was the step-ahead in European cooperation. But times have changed so much,” he said.

---------

Posted by Don Williams | July 12, 2007 7:56 AM

See also this Dec 2006 EU document re the problems being encountered by European nations participating in JSF:
http://www.assembly-weu.org/en/documents/sessions_ordinaires/rpt/2006/1948.php

Not in particular UK concerns about "operational sovereignty" in section III-2.

Posted by Don Williams | July 12, 2007 7:58 AM

Yes, Don. Eurofighter-Typhoon *and* JSF. You're still talking through the wrong end.

Posted by Alex | July 13, 2007 7:32 AM

Re Petey's "The Pyramids were built very early on in a reign of Egyptian strength and independence that continued on almost completely uninterrupted for 2,500 years!

In terms of how things played out, the Pyramids seemed to have paid major dividends for the Egyptian national interest."
---------
Oh, bullshit.

The Pyramids were build in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Amenemhat III (1860 BC – 1815 BC) bought in Asiatic settlers to work on the Egyptian monuments.

Within a short time, Egypt had broken up and a large chunk of the Delta region was ruled by Hebrew invaders, the Hyksos.

It is true that the Hebrews were eventually driven out circa 1570 BC and the New Kingdom (1570–1070 BC) was established. It is also true that the dynasties of the New Kingdom had some strong rulers --like Ramesses II and III. But this was a last strong effort by a declining giant. Ramesses II got his behind kicked by the Hittites.

Prior to Ramesses rule, Egypt had been shaken to her foundations by the Pharaoh Akhenaten (1352-1334 BC) who had scrapped the Egyptian gods in favor of worship of the One True God. After his death, Akhenaten was written out of the list of Pharaohs but the mystique was gone.

Egypt was pretty much toast after the death of Ramesses III (1155 BC). Splintering into multiple kingdoms she was thereafter ruled by foreigners -- Libyans, Nubians, Assyrian puppets, Persians, Alexander the Great and his Ptolemaic heirs, the Romans, various Arab Caliphs based in Syria and Iraq, Ottoman Turks , and the British.

Posted by Don Williams | July 13, 2007 12:54 PM

I really don't understand why people would think that it's unlikely that the US would be challenged in the air. We're in a war with people whose technology is as good or better than ours, and who are quite clearly able to fight back. Aren't the people who say the US Air Force can't be defeated the same ones who said that the US Army couldn't be destroyed? The very same ones who assumed that the US Army would be victorious in Iraq? People aren't scared of the US any more. They know that the same people who ran the Iraq war are running the Air Force and Navy, and they know that they really aren't that competent. They know now that all that's necessary to defeat the US now is to stand up to it, and hold on.

There's another important point. The US Air Force relies on massive amounts of fuel, ie oil. And a massive storage and transport system to get that fuel to them. Without that it's grounded. And fuel supplies can be rather easily attacked. And note that the US is increasingly reliant on oil supplies from nations that are not our friends. Not a good situation.

Posted by mikep | July 13, 2007 3:22 PM