US admits it can no longer fight two wars at once

[ebxr8240]

Took the U.S this long to find it can't fight two wars..
Well.. ???
It's not news to me...

[Road_Warrior]

Originally Posted by ebxr8240

Took the U.S this long to find it can't fight two wars..
Well.. ???
It's not news to me...

Well, it's been a long time coming, and you can't change the strategic direction of defence just like that. They've been stuck in this "two war" setup since the end of the Cold War and probably had plans in the works at the beginning of the 2000's to change it, but George Bush and his war on terrorism threw a spanner in the works. Now after a cripping recession they have no choice, the US military needs to be a more compact, sustainable force. They are going to go through what Britain did after WW2.

[JG34JA]

In reply to:

Originally Posted by MelsGolf
Someone had to take the initiative i would have thought. You must be new to this fine country then, the reason you have freedom here is because of the combined efforts of the US/Australian and British Armed forces, and dont you forget it.

Originally Posted by ltd_on20s

no. it isnt. japan was screwed by the time it got to australian shores. all it could do was bomb darwin. it didnt even have a supply line to create a beachhead.

thats a fallacy long debunked. the US didnt even enter the war until after the whole peal harbour thing. the US didnt even enter while the UK was being pounded, then after the war ended, forced the UK to pay the US costs, which they only paid the last installment a few years back.

you can't hide the truth. no matter how far you bury it.

What absolute rubbish. I suggest you revise your history of early war Japanese carrier operations. Nagumo's Kido Butai were far from a spent force when they attacked Darwin - it was an aside on the way through securing the Dutch East Indies then out to the Indian ocean to send the British Eastern fleet away to hide, and part of an initial 6 month blitzkrieg. They were at the height of their powers, sweeping all before them. Even in diluted form by operation 'MO' they were still a force to be reckoned with, and it was more their conflicted planning (Yamamoto wishing for his 'decisive battle' at Midway vs others in the Navy who wished to take down the US/Allied fleet around the Solomons; the hostility between the Japanese Army and Navy in planning was legendary as well) and their complicated battle plans which needlessly dispersed force that allowed Allied commanders, learning very quickly and learning the hard way to take very hard won gains. Prior to Pearl Harbour no other Navy concentrated carriers into one awesome, smashing instrument, but the US 3rd/5th fleet was able to mirror this in enormous fashion in reply by 1944. That the Americans could rebound so effectively, checking them at Coral Sea and destroying them at Midway before the grinding attrition of the Solomon campaigns is a testament as to why we should remember our freedoms were hard won by these forces.

That said, your point about the supply lines was valid, the Japanese themselves realised that to take the Hawaiian chain would stretch them to their limits. Successful US Submarine strategy also hampered them enormously, picking their merchant navy to pieces by late war.

[Resurrection]

America wouldn't need to fight so many wars if they didn't **** off so many nations.

[Road_Warrior]

Originally Posted by JG34JA

They were at the height of their powers, sweeping all before them. Even in diluted form by operation 'MO' they were still a force to be reckoned with, and it was more their conflicted planning (Yamamoto wishing for his 'decisive battle' at Midway vs others in the Navy who wished to take down the US/Allied fleet around the Solomons; the hostility between the Japanese Army and Navy in planning was legendary as well) and their complicated battle plans which needlessly dispersed force that allowed Allied commanders, learning very quickly and learning the hard way to take very hard won gains. Prior to Pearl Harbour no other Navy concentrated carriers into one awesome, smashing instrument, but the US 3rd/5th fleet was able to mirror this in enormous fashion in reply by 1944. That the Americans could rebound so effectively, checking them at Coral Sea and destroying them at Midway before the grinding attrition of the Solomon campaigns is a testament as to why we should remember our freedoms were hard won by these forces.

That said, your point about the supply lines was valid, the Japanese themselves realised that to take the Hawaiian chain would stretch them to their limits. Successful US Submarine strategy also hampered them enormously, picking their merchant navy to pieces by late war.

Yamamoto and his general staff had a fanatical belief in the Mahanian doctrine, instead of being a bunch of wierdos hoarding all their battleships for later for some kind of "decisive" battle which never came, they should have deployed them with their carrier groups.

Few appreciate the effect USN submarine operations had on Japanese merchant shipping and cripping their supply chains of raw materials back to the homeland. Although by 1944 it was kind of a moot point because even if they could have gotten all that stuff back to Japan, the home islands were in reach of the B29 bomber groups sho proceeded to cane all of Japan's heavy industry.

[geckoGT]

Again we are off topic, so discussion must be finished. I warned if it went off topic again considering the thread is highly political that I would close it, it was not an idle threat.