Originally Posted by
Finningley Boy
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
I am definitely not arguing for an end to military hardware expenditure . Far from it . My argument is that there should be a balanced approach and value for money in what the military buys. It is my personal opinion that the F 35 is a waste of money for the conventional air war role it may ( or may not ) have to fight . Typhoon , Gripen , Rafael are great aircraft and much cheaper . But politics (for whatever reason ) has dictated that countries fork out exorbitant sums to the USA for the F 35 . So be it .
What I do know , from personal experience , is that , oftentimes , some of the fancy ( and expensive ) kit on board did not perform quite as well as advertised in front line use . There were some times when I felt a WW2 Mosquito could do as good a job putting iron bombs precisely on target ( which of course they did , lobbing stuff through windows to free prisoners in Amiens and Copenhagen).
The term "Joe Public" simply refers to those who are not well informed in the precise nature of military matters . It is not an insult . But information is out there for one to be better informed . " The Limits of Air Power "-(Mark Clodfelter) does a good job of explaining why the greatest military force the world had ever known was still unable to win a conventional war against a basically peasant Vietnamese army . Worth a read .