Ballistic missile defense under the Bush Administration incorporated land, air and sea based systems. They included boost, space and reentry interceptors. In addition to conventional type systems, microwave and laser systems were developed.

Air superiority was cemented with the deployment of the F-22 Raptor. the only fifth-generation fighter currently in production.

Construction began on CVN 78 and CVN 79, the first of ten Gerald R Ford Class carriers.

Incredibly, this was accomplished despite Democrat control of congress for four years during President Bush’s two terms.

Please provide the links which prove that President Reagan or President Bush publicly stated ballistic missile defense systems will replace our nuclear arsenal.

WE the People BELIEVED in his protection of US and in so WE felt SAFE and that is something you cannot bargain away now can you! In the age of The Idiot WE do NOT feel safe and OBTW the terrorists worldwide FEARED and RESPECTED President Bush and they MOCK The Idiot and that makes a hell of difference in your FALSE “myth” bullcrap! Sometimes the appearance of Leadership is so much more then the appearance of FEAR!

Go peddle your BDS elsewhere WE don’t respect or like you here!

I’m honestly curious how you could arrive at such wrong-headed conclusions, so must ask what you’re using as source material.

Yes, Bush forced the Pentagon to change the way they were thinking – after 9/11, this was inevitable. That doesn’t mean he was anything other than strong on defense – what it means is Bush saw that the armed forces weren’t able to be strong on defense against terrorism because they were still planning on fighting the Red Army….

Happy New Year.

Mew

First, our current nuclear arsenal is large enough to destroy civilization several times over. I don’t know how many Earths you think we need to be able to destroy, but if it is the Chinese and Russians you are concerned with, we have more than enough to turn those countries into barren wastelands if we so desired.

Second, you can’t measure commitment to defense based solely on spending levels. Believe it or not, there are some weapons systems we do not need. I love airplanes and worked on fighter jets in the Air Force, but even I can admit that buying hundreds of F-22′s at more than $100 million a pop when your enemies are using IED’s isn’t necessarily a wise investment, especially when you already have air superiority over ANY conceivable threat by a long shot.

Finally, as Jaded notes above, the intangibles matter greatly for a Commander in Chief. You could listen to Dubya and see in his eyes and hear in his voice that he was absolutely committed to do whatever it takes to protect America from its enemies. Also, anytime Dubya visited GI’s, you could see the mutual respect the Commander in Chief and his Warriors shared. That goes a long way toward morale, and is sadly lacking under our current President.

Rbdwiggins: you’re wrong. True, Bush did deploy a missile defense, but it was very limited. It could protect the US against North Korea and Iran, but NOT against China nor Russia.

Air superiority was not cemented with F-22 Raptors (they’re decent planes, but there are too few of them). Bush (or rather his SECDEF, Don Rumsfeld) severely reduced the order for F-22s from ca. 350 to 187, an inadequate number which will cause hundreds of F-15s to retire unreplaced.

Similarly, Rumsfeld reduced the order for F-35s from ca. 4000 to 2593.

Construction of the CVN-79 aircraft carrier did not begin – it wasn’t even ordered by the Bush Admin. CVN-78 was, though. But it’s only a replacement for an old carrier (CVN-65) and won’t be commissioned until FY2015.

The modernization of the military’s aircraft fleet was made impossible by Bush, who spent the vast majority of the military’s budget on his two wars of nationbuilding and related projects, rather than on programs that deserved the funding. The USAF still flies a hopelessly obsolete fleet of tankers (KC-135s and KC-10s). It still flies obsolete C-130E/H aircraft which were produced during the 1960s. It still flies obsolete C-5 aircraft produced during the 1960s. The entire cargoplane fleet of the USAF is way too small, and as a result, the US military is suffering from a cargo logjam. The USN is smaller than it ever was during the last 80 years (except the Clinton era). Even in 1930, during the Great Depression, the USN had more ships than it has now.

The USN’s fleet of F-18s is hopelessly obsolete and unless the DOD orders 402 additional F-35s or F/A-18E/Fs, these aircraft will retire unreplaced. The USN’s fleet of submarines is too small to compete with the sub fleet of the Chinese Navy – which now has an equal number of submarines.

The US Army’s Comanche helicopter program – a revolutionary helicopter program which would’ve produced the Army’s first stealth copters ever – was ended by Rumsfeld.

The carrier fleet of the USN was reduced by 1, to just 11, by Bush in 2005. Thus, Bush established a precedent allowing Obama to irresponsibly reduce the carrier fleet even further, to just 10 carriers (which means a fleet of just 6 employable carriers). This will make the USN unable to execute the 2005 Fleet Response Plan. The carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) was prematurely retired from the Navy on the day Bush retired as president.

JDP – my post pertains to defense policy, not to foreign policy. But if you want to talk about Bush’s record on the GWOT, here it is: Bush did invade Afghanistan and topple the Taleban, but he failed to capture OBL and Ayman al-Zawahiri. He also conducted a policy of appeasement towards NK, Iran and Syria – countries which sponsor terrorist organizations and possess weapons of mass murder. IT WAS DURING BUSH’S TENURE THAT NORTH KOREA BECAME A NUCLEAR-ARMED STATE, DESPITE BUSH’S PLEDGE TO NEVER ALLOW NK TO ACQUIRE NUKES.

So Bush failed abysmally as president. He didn’t just fail. He failed abysmally.

Acat – you are wrong to believe that terrorists are America’s only enemies. They are not. America has many enemies, including China, North Korea (an aggressor which is conspiring to invade South Korea), Iran (which has pledged to wipe out Israel), Syria (an Arab aggressor which committed aggression against Israel twice), Venezuela, and Russia.

And no, the Pentagon was not planning to fight the Red Army. The Red Army didn’t exist by 2001. It was renamed the Soviet Army in 1946.

“Second, you can’t measure commitment to defense based solely on spending levels. Believe it or not, there are some weapons systems we do not need. I love airplanes and worked on fighter jets in the Air Force, but even I can admit that buying hundreds of F-22’s at more than $100 million a pop when your enemies are using IED’s isn’t necessarily a wise investment, especially when you already have air superiority over ANY conceivable threat by a long shot.”

You certainly never worked on any planes. Firstly, terrorists are NOT America’s only enemies. China, Russia, Syria, Iran and North Korea are also America’s enemies. They don’t use IEDs, they use traditional military equipment such as planes, missiles and ships.

Secondly, I didn’t measure “commitment to defense based solely on spending levels”.

Thirdly, your claim that there are some weapon systems that the DOD doesn’t need is ridiculous. I checked the DOD’s budgets for FY2006, FY2007, FY2008, FY2009, and FY2010. In those budgets, there were NO weapon systems that the DOD did not need; in other words, every weapon system funded by these budgets was one that the DOD needed.

Fourthly, your claim that the US military enjoys “air superiority over any conceivable enemy by a long shot”is false. The US military no longer enjoys air superiority over most of its conceivable enemies (which include Russia, China, NK, Iran and Venezuela).

The USAF currently has only 91 F-22s. These are the only planes in America’s arsenal that can defeat any enemy aircraft. (F-35s haven’t been introduced with the USM yet). Other than that, the USAF has only a fleet of pathetically obsolete F-15s and F-16s which date back to the 1970s. They are pathetically obsolete and are falling apart. Just one year ago, the longeron of an obsolete F-15 cracked when the plane was flying over Missouri. The accident caused the USAF to ground ALL of its F-15s; the USAF was forced to ask the Canadian AF to use its F-18s to defend America. This was the first time EVER that America asked someone else to defend her; a total humiliation for the US, courtesy of the Bush Admin. With that kind of airfoce, America is not going to win ANY war.

The most ubiquitous planetype threatening the USAF is the Su-30 Flanker type. It is a popular planetype. Russia’s Airforce has ca. 450 such jets; the Russian Navy has dozens of Flankers; China has almost 500 of them (and yet it plans to buy hundreds of additional Flankers). Venezuela has at least 24 Flankers; Iran has several dozen such planes. A Flanker is decisively superior to all the current fighterplanes of the US military – except F-22s.

Of course, Flankers are not the only planes threatening the USAF. China has a couple of other Generation #4.5 aircraft types, including the JF-17 type and the J-10 type. Russia has Su-35s and MiG-35s and will sell them to anyone able to pay for them. SU-35s and MiG-35s are Generation#4++ fighterplanes, i.e. 5th generation fighterplanes.

Of course enemy aircraft aren’t the only things threatening the USAF. An equally significant threat is the SAM threat. America’s enemies have learned the lesson of Iraq. They’ve produced and deployed extensive networks of 21st century SAMs which can shoot down ANY nonstealthy aircraft, even if it flies at low altitude. China has the most extensive SAM network in the world, composed mostly of S-300 SAMs and HQ-9 SAMs and their variants. These SAMs are on mobile launchers and can be relocated quickly. China has also many 21st century SAMs deployed aboard ships.

Iran and Venezuela have also bought a number of S-300 SAMs. Iran bought them to protect itself against the USAF and the IAF.

Russia’s SAM network is the most dangerous. It’s extensive and modern. S-300 and S-400s are nowadays the standard SAMs of the Air Defense Troops of Russia, but Moscow, as Russia’s capital, is protected by even newer SAMs – S-500 SAMs, whose coverage range is comparable to covering an area from Charlotte (NC) to Buffalo (NY).

So your claim that America enjoys air superiority over its conceivable enemies is ridiculous. America doesn’t enjoy air superiority over anyone. If the PLAAF fought against the USAF, it would’ve been a turkey shoot for the PLAAF.

It is true that American soldiers respected Bush. But respect cannot replace weapons. To win wars you need weapons, not respect.

Clinton, like all Democrat presidents slash and trash any and all defense spending so they can spend the money on their welfare programs, and, feed the outstretched hands of those special interest groups that fund their campaigns. 9/11 happened not long after Bush became president, and, you go to war with what you have, rather than what you wish the last president left you with. The 2006 elections were a statement that the Republicans spent too much money. With Democrat majorities, would you have preferred that Bush call closed door meetings with many of those Dems, and promise them billions in earmarks if they agreed to vote for sufficient war funding, and, additional defense spending?

You can knock Bush for many mistakes, but you have choosen the one area where you are more than wrong. Enjoy your new shovel ready bogus projects, and the possibility of more expensive government funded inadequate medical care. Those wasted monies would go along way with the latest and greatest military equipment and supplies that would put the fear of God in all our enemies.