Obama and the US Military?

Question

http://macsmind.com/wordpress/2008/02/27/obama-plans-to-disarm-america/

Should we cut research for future defense systems?

What are your thoughts on this video?

Answer 1

I think its an indictment against the proponents of the missile defense system if major political candidates are rallying against it as a waste of money.

Many civilians would agree with Mr. Obama in that we've given these loons around 22 years and billions of dollars in research money, and all they've come up with is PR to the tune of "Its a magic shield, made up of pixies, that doesn't quite work yet", with no concrete results or visible progress.

Its not a future defense system, its vaporware, plain and simple.  Why not start dumping tens of millions into a teleporter with the hopes that it will work someday.

We've had what, like 20 recent tests of the system, and only on the ones where the system already knew the destination and launch time of the missile was it able to hit the target with ~5% accuracy... Introduce the real world variables to the system and it fails at least 99% of the time.

If you want to base our defenses on vaporware instead of real hardware that actually works (like upgrades to existing missile and vehicle systems), be my guest... but don't cry when your political exploitation of pragmatic spending decisions as a so-called erosion of overall defense spending comes back to bite you in the form of real threats that must be met with real defense systems - ones we opted not to have because we squandered our money on magic shields that don't work.

I don't think the video is threatening defense research in general, but rather this specific bloatware package which is proving to be costly and ineffective.  

Answer 2

Not new.

But, Iran will love it.

Answer 3

See Russia )AKA USSR)

Answer 4

The question you posed is not honest when provided in the context of the video.

It should not be "Should we cut research for future defense systems?"

It should be "Should we cut wasteful spending on defense systems?"

Senator Obama clearly emphasizes the fact that there is much defense spending that is a wasteful throwing-away of taxpayer money.  This is not only popular with Democrats, reducing the size of government (which really means the government spending and taxing less) is more accurately described as a conservative ideal.

A recent example of waste- the plush office cubicles for top brass and politicians built by the Air Force (source #1).  Mind you this wasn't just wasteful- it was done using anti-terrorism funds.

As vort3xyz pointed out- the missile defense system is a HUGE waste of money.  It has been in development for years and the technology is still useless.

Regarding Senator Obama's remarks about general upgrades, it is indeed quite pointless to continue upgrading our weapon systems when any potential enemy is still several generations behind us.  Why build another two generations of tanks, when nobody in the world can go toe-to-toe with them?  Research will always continue- it's done by academics, but replacing all our tanks and planes every few years is just wasteful.

New technologies, such as anti-IED armor and countermeasures are necessary and he has said nothing about cutting funding to them.