U.S. Tanks Fail To Place in NATO Tank Competition

I was born in 1964, but yes as knowledge of legacy Air Force is of course important, I have heard of it. The C-135 and C-124 did most of the troop transportation. Air mobility's roots go from the "Hump" routes in the Himalayas to resupply the Chinese fighting the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War and the Berlin airlift in 1948 kept the Red Army from starving out West Berliners to submission. Although no weapons were fired, it was airlift's way to thumb their nose at Stalin.

 

Are you seriously going to argue that integration is the reason we don't win wars? Is this the part where you say "But I'm not racist"?

And to answer your question: Panama 1989 with a fully integrated military with both minorities and females.

- - - Updated - - -

Why would they? The air fields they would be airlifted into in the case of a real war would have been subject to 64 hours of tactical ballistic missile bombardment.

 

Back in the day NATO was suppose to build one main battle Tank for all NATO members to use. But there was a problem, Europe was on the metric system and America is suppose to be America, different from all other countries. The world plays soccer while Americans play football. America drives at 65 MPH while the rest of the world drives at 100 KPH. Americans have one tool box of SAE tools while the rest of the world has a tool box with metric tools and that's why America dropped out on developing one MBT for everyone.

America went it's own way and came up with the M-1 Abrams. Germany, the Brits and the frogs went their own way and Germany came up with the Leopard ll.

Both the M-1 and Leopard ll are considered the best MBT today (The Ruskies new MBT is to new to be considered)

But which one is better, America's M-1 or the Germans Leopard ll ?

The M-1 does uses the German's Leopard ll 120 mm gun.

The M-1 fuel consumption is rated not by MPG but by GPM since it's a gas turbine driven not diesel. The only advantage is in freezing weather, diesel engines are hard to start when it's cold and diesel fuel jells when it gets really cold outside.

The Leopard ll has a diesel engine so it's MPG.

Both look pretty good on paper and on the ranges.

But unlike the Leopard ll, the M-1 MBT is combated tested.

http://www.military-today.com/tanks/leopard_2a7.htm

http://www.military-today.com/tanks/m1a2_abrams.htm

 

You are the one who keeps bringing up race, is that you Obama ?

I think it's Truman's National Security Act of 1947 why we haven't been winning wars.

Glad to see there are some in Congress who just announced that maybe Congress should revisit the NSA of 1947 when Obama is out of the White House.

Truman might have given civilians too much control of the military with the NSA of 1947. Truman made it easy for civilians who had no knowledge of war or the military to run the military and to micromanage the military on the battlefield like we are seeing today with Valerie Jarrett and Susan Rice running the war in Afghanistan and against Al Qaeda and ISIS. How are those wars coming along ?

I'm sure you are aware that before 1948 there was no Department of Defense and only two branches of the military, the U.S. Army under the Department of War and the U.S. Navy under the Department of the Navy. Both under the watch of two executive cabinet members, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy. Each always had military experience or knew the military like the backs of their hands.
There was no U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Marine Corps wasn't a separate branch of the military but part of the U.S. Navy just like the Navy Sea Bees are.

Today the Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force are not executive cabinet positions.

Truman also wanted to go further, he wanted to abolish the U.S. Marine Corps. He didn't like swabbies so you can guess what he wanted to do with the Navy.

Basically Truman had a big huge chip on his shoulder from WW l.

There was a compromise and the only people who supported the NSA of 1947 were the Army generals in the U.S. Army Air Forces, they wanted out of the Army.

 

I keep bringing up race because you keep claiming politicizing the military is bad (which integration was politicizing the military), then you doubled down and said you'd have left whether or not to integrate up to old conservative white men (the majority of them Southerners themselves). We'd still have segregated units today if we we followed your bigotry-facilitating stance.

And again, we won Panama with an Air Force, with an integrated military, with women serving in more than just auxiliary medical positions, and with every other "social engineering" up to that point.

 

Panama.

Let me bring out the big book on wars.

Panama.

Here we go.

"Old Pineapple Face"

Punitive action, coup d' Etat.

Stabilization operation.

Very low intensity combat.

That's the one that Navy SEAL's don't want to be remembered about.

Panama, a PC version of "Crush and Bolt."

 

And now you thrown on qualifiers. Please regale me some more with how forcing whites to serve with brown people is why we don't win wars.

 

Now it's brown people. What's next, yellow people ?

That reminds me, Obama has just signed an executive order that the word "oriental" is illegal to use in the federal government. Some white beard scratching liberal has determined that the word oriental is a really bad word and is derogatory.

The same executive order has also abolished the word "negro."

Political correctness at it's best.

 

Political correctness at its best = "I miss the days when I could call blacks (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s"

 

If you were black you could still call them that. I see it every day.

Funny how political correctness works.

 

Sorry I missed this question until now.

Regarding the term "hotspot." The air mobility rodeo event is an assault landing for C-130 and C-17 team participants. The goal is to land in the center of a 500 foot long area on the runway. After an aircraft lands, as an umpire we then locate the area that is still warm and contains small amounts of burned rubber where the aircraft actually touched down. We then measure, using a surveyor's wheel, from the "hotspot" to the center of the landing area. Teams lose points for every foot they land from the target.

 

From what I read in the OP's links, we've never done well at this competition--which just resumed. It started in 1968 and went to 1991. We've always sucked at it. Doesn't matter, as it's not real--it's a competition.

 

What does political correctness have to do with anything? Does it make a military weaker? Well the US Military, which is majority conservative just got beat by a bunch of PC Europeans.

The competition meant nothing. Lebanese and Palestinian Special Forces beat Canadian Special forces this year in competitions. And we know Canadian spec ops are far superior.

 

The British Challenger I MBTs had a reputation and it wasn't good. Unreliable for starters.

Yet, in Desert Storm, when it mattered most, in actual combat, Challenger tank crews and maintenance teams performed brilliantly. I'm sure many have heard of the Battle of 73 Easting, and the Battle of Medina Ridge... regarded as the largest tank battle in American history...yet not as many know about the Battle of Norfolk. This took place about 6 or 7 kilometers East of the Battle of 73 Easting which had ended a few hours before.

The British 1st Armored Division and their Challenger tanks had captured or destroyed about 200 Iraqi tanks and many other armored personnel carriers, trucks, reconnaissance vehicles during the Battle of Norfolk.

Competitions and exercises are designed to reveal flaws and needed corrections. It's a learning process.

 

Political correctness called for letting the other side to win so they aren't butt hurt.

 

Then the US Military just got beat by a side more politically correct then them......European men defeating the "macho" Americans.

Seriously, the American bipartisanship has gone to insane levels where everything can be blamed on a certain political sector of society.

 

Todays American military isn't the military before Obama's PC military.

The military that President G.W. Bush (43) inherited in 2001 was Clinton's military.

The military that President G.H. Bush (41) inherited was Ronald Reagan's military.

The military that President Reagan inherited was a hollow military he inherited from liberals. Reagan upheld the oath of office of President he took and rebuilt the American military that not even the Soviet Union could challenge on the battlefield, at sea and in the air.

 

Slight correction, the U.S. military that President G. W. Bush (43) sent into Iraq in 2003 was considerably up armed over the previous year than it had been.

The big plant in Oklahoma where the actual explosives for U.S. bombs are packed was working three shifts for over a year. Likewise several U.S. munitions manufacturers making small arms for the military. Finally the companies creating JDAM kits and the ones building Tomahawk cruise missiles were also running non stop.

 

And our troops still ran out of ammunition that they had to turn to Israel for .50 cal ammunition.

We also ran out of batteries, all kinds of batteries.

When Clinton became President in 1993 he started downsizing the U.S. military.

The U.S. Army went from 18 combat divisions to 10 divisions.

The U.S. Air Force went from 36 fighter wings (active and reserve) to 20 fighter wings.

The U.S. Navy went from a 454 ship navy to a 318 ship navy.

The U.S. Marine corps lost an entire rifle regiment from 9 to 8.

FYI: G.W. Bush (43) did reactivate the 9th Marine Regiment but the Obama administration deactivated the 9th Marines.

Get's even better, well maybe for Al Qaeda and our other enemies. Why was the destroyer USS Cole (DDG-67) was in the Yemeni port of Aden being refueled back in 2000 when Al Qaeda blew up the USS Cole ?

Since the late 1930's the U.S. Navy had perfected refueling at sea that it was SOP to refuel our ships at sea so they didn't have to leave their assigned AOR to enter some port to refuel.

The Clinton administration deactivated almost 1/2 of the navy's oilers and replenishment ships. There were no oilers on station to refuel the USS Cole.
Under Clinton the navy's auxiliary fleet went from 128 ships to 46 ships.

Guess what ? President Obama has inflicted more damage to our military than Clinton did.

 

Blame it on the disappearing tax base; the top 1% take home over 20% of U.S. income every month, and yet they pay less in taxes thanks to all the tax cuts that benefit them the most, and it's getting tougher to make up the difference out of the other 99%'s pockets to pay for all the toys. Some 70% of the country has no disposable income.

And no, you can't just snivel bout the Democrats and pretend it's all their fault. The GOP has had control of Congress and the Senate and White House over the last 46 years as much or more, and they have also cut military spending and troop levels as well in their turn. Yeah, I've also heard all the handwaves and magical stories about how 'but theirs wuz different n stuff', and not interested in reading the reruns.

Dick Cheney's goal was 25% cuts, now he's running around sniveling out of the other side of his mouth. Well gee, Uncle Dick, maybe if you and your cronies didn't specialize in looting and plundering defense contracts for a living, there might a little more to go around, ya think?