Originally Posted by
Phantom Driver
Same reason that drove the West to ramp up defence expenditure during the Cold War only to find they had grossly over estimated the numbers /capability of the opposing forces . Money needs to be spent on defence , but please explain what exactly you are going to be doing with 80 million quids worth of F 35 in a typical combat environment these days where the low tech guy in the field with his bog standard AK or SAM could quite easily ruin your day . . Ok , this subject has been beaten to death in other threads , so enough of that .
But as I say , nice toys for the boys ( and I have enjoyed playing with them in bygone times ) ; great technology ( essential for future progress ) . The question now is how to get good value out of those tax payer dollars/pounds.to meet the new threat , which is inevitably going to be high tech cyber .
The problem is, Joe Public want to see fast jets / heavy bombers blasting overhead even though history has shown these assets often do not perform as effectively as advertised .
But they do impress / terrorise the "natives ", even though the cyber hacker can do far more damage . Silently .
Sir, who are Joe public? I thought they wanted to see every last penny spent on the NHS? And the rest spent on Furloughs for everyone. What do you think should happen for the best? Do you think that every F-35 is a waste and has no purpose? How does that explain the current defence planning across NATO and other allies across the planet? Should we be contributing to the defence of Baltic Airspace with Typhoons? And what about the expansion in conventional arms pursued by countries like Russia and China? Don't tell me that it is all for show and not for blow and that the only threat at all that we need concern ourselves with is that one day a Russian cyber hacker will get lucky and shut down the Work & Pensions Department's department dealing with attendance allowance payments. If a serious cyber attack on our software reliant systems is comprehensively successful, then what happens? Does it mean that Russia, for example, will have one the war? If so then what?
FB