HistoricalDavid

Search for M21Sniper and SAM.

Basically his analysis shows that SAMs are at best cheapo subsitutes for a good fleet of air superiority fighters. Too easily taken out by good S/DEAD tactics. A fleet of air superiority fighters can do other things as well, e.g. escorting troublemakers in your airspace.

How are you going to deliver them? Simply coastal batteries? Then you've restricted yourself to a short engagement range when you could mount them on aircraft and hit them far out.

This ignores the old adage "The best form of defence is attack." A practical application of this is destroying your opponent before he has a chance to launch his ammunition, instead of destroying the ammunition mid-flight or having thick armour to stop it.

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gunnut

To quote OoE on this defense vs. offense subject: do you want to stop your enemy while wrecking your homeland or do you want to wreck his homeland before he has a chance to wreck yours? (wtte)

You want to keep at least some offensive measures to make others think twice about invading you.

As far as air defense system and anti-ship missiles are concerned, HistoricalDavid already visited that. Restricting yourself to defense is another way to signal that you don't want to fight. Any defensive measure, no matter how impregnable, can be defeated. The Maginot line was a great example. It was very effective, both to keep the Germans out and also telling them the French don't want to fight back. As a result Germans don't need to worry about defending the fatherland while at the same time they went around the line and defeated France in 6 weeks.

Don't get me wrong, defense is very important. But defense is only part of the solution. A complete package is more effective than each of the parts alone. As they say, the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

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"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

HistoricalDavid

Exactly, this is redundancy and when militaries have the money - i.e. the American military - it's everywhere. Your land-based ICBMs taken out? Go to the bombers? Shot down? Go to the SSBNs. Sunk? (as in, to the bottom) Go to your nuke arty. Nuke cruise missiles, so on forth. You must have multiple layers of defence.

As another example, the US will most likely shoot down any threat to its carriers before it launches; however, they still spend a hell of a lot of money finding ways - ESSM, SM-2, AEGIS, ECM, RAM - to shoot down these hypothetical anti-ship missiles. And if that doesn't work, they say the Nimitz-class has the firefighting capacity of a small town as well as armour.

Of course, the real incentive is to take the fight away from your shores and this is graphically demonstrated in the United States, which did that in WWII and thus laid one of the foundations for superpowerdom.

BMF12

The best defence IS a good offence.............Take Israel for example. How could she still be alive and kicking? One reason...............Her spear is sharpened everyday...
Also, it helps when you have 'friends in high places'....(US)