>>I just happen to one of the many (possibly a majority) of
>>anti-Bush veterans.
>
>You have no idea what you are talking about. Your facts are
>innuendo and baseless tripe.
Well Col McClain, you are certainly welcome to your opinion but my facts happen to be based on my tenure in the deep dark corridors of the weapons systems acquisition programs for USAF in the '70s and '80s. I was ESD, not ASD but the details/politics of the all the large weapons programs were equally well known.
I haven't criticized your professional experience and you are certainly entitled to your opinions. I'd appreciate your respect for my views. Carter did indeed cancel production of the B-1A. He did not "kill" the program. As I mentioned, the R&D funding was kept alive and led to the further development of LO technologies such as those employed by several of our subsequent systems. In fact, when the B-1 production was resurrected by Reagan, the B-1B was far more stealthy than the B-1A Carter cancelled. One of my servicemates was on the B-1B program so I'm afraid I do have 2nd hand knowledge of the immense problems with even the "improved" version. Due to the amount of time he spent in Alamagordo, I'd say there were indeed some pretty serious problems with the aircraft.
>I was active duty Air Force
>when the funds for the B-2 were supposed to be appropriated.
> The original buy was 132. The Democratic controlled
>Congress stepped in and cut it to 60, then 40 and then to
>the present 21. The Air Force never asked for the program
>to be cut.
>
>Reagan brought the B-1 back from the grave.
There are many of us who felt it should have been left there. Yes, it's a very impressive noise maker at airshows but it took a major redirection to alter it's mission from a purely nuclear one. If you remember, it sat on the sidelines during PGW-1.
>Carter had effectively killed it and only left funds for the 4
>preproduction test birds to fly at Edwards. The production
>tooling was nearly destroyed, but for President Reagan's
>intervention.
The B-1B was an vastly different bird than the B-1A.
>President Carter was inept and nearly tipped the military
>balance in favor of the Soviet Union when he pronounced the
>justification for the B-1 cancellation as the advent of the
>Stealth Bomber, which the Soviets had no idea we were
>building.
The Soviets at that time were never seriously in a position to challenge us militarily. Their systems were poorly integrated and their command structure was largely corrupt. Take the vaunted MiG-25 Lt. Belinko defected with to Japan. Was that example a deliberate "plant" or was that airplane actually as crude as we found it to be? It's avionics still had vacuum tube components! Here was an aircraft designed purely to counter our B-70. After we cancelled that program, the Soviets had themselves a high speed, high altitude interceptor - with absolutely nothing at that altitude left to fight. Only their arrogance pushed ahead for that system. Said arrogance was what largely caused them to reach fiscal meltdown.
Besides, Carter was forced to disclose work on the stealth bomber since it was the Republican pols who were incessantly criticizing him for not paying enough attention to strategic defense systems.
I wouldn't call Carter inept. He wasn't a brilliant politician but he was indeed a very bright person. I was commissioned under the Carter administration and was immediately involved in the massive overhaul of our command and control infrastructure. Had we not focused on modernizing our C3I systems, we would have been as badly off as the Soviets were.
>No, you are not a majority, only a very vocal and misguided
>minority.
There you go again. I think you'll agree opinions regarding this upcoming election are varied and diverse. With polling data showing 60% of the voters UNHAPPY with the direction of the country, my views are hardly a "misguided minority". As a taxpayer who has a couple of kids approaching both military service age and college, I have some very strong views about our national priorities and current role in world affairs. I've yet to hear anyone substantiate Saddam's link to al Qaeda or 9-11.
And I think it's about time to close this particular discussion. After all, I've got some balsa to glue. 
