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Japanese Ministry of Defense executives have outright admitted that despite the Japanese government's past denials that the Izumo class "helicopter destroyers" were not designed to accommodate fixed-wing short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) tactical jets, they actually were designed with exactly that in mind.
The Asahi Shimbun quoted Maritime Self Defense Force sources stating the following:
"It is only reasonable to design (the Izumo) with the prospect of possible changes of the circumstances in the decades ahead... We viewed that whether the Izumo should be actually refitted could be decided by the government."
When the Izumo first entered service, the vessels' ominous profile and massive proportions led many, including the author, to allege that these vessels were intended to one day carry fixed-wing tactical jets. It also wasn't really clear why the country would need larger vessels than the Hyuga class helicopter destroyers already in production if they weren't going to gain more offensive capabilities. Although they have amphibious capabilities, Japan's helicopter carriers are traditionally more focused on anti-submarine warfare.
Asahi Shimbun's sources went on to say that a consensus was privately reached among the service's leadership that the Izumo class would be designed for conversion into a fixed-wing capable aircraft carrier in the future but the Japanese government would deny this due to the issues surrounding violating Article Nine of the Japanese constitution.
[...] The justification of Japan's military posture, and the weaponry that supports it, all comes down to how one interprets "self defense" as per the Japanese constitution, but really, things have been rapidly changing for Japan when it comes to morphing its military into a far-reaching force with substantial offensive punch.
[...] Considering that Japan is looking to arm itself with long-range cruise missiles and more capable fighters in the near term, a fixed-wing capable Izumo and her sister ship Kaga won't be far behind, ushering in a new era of power projection for Japan the likes of which the world has not seen since the end of World War II.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by driverless on Monday March 05 2018, @04:25AM (4 children)
However, Germany's military was run on a deficit almost from the day Hitler started rearming, and relied on continued expansion and plundering of surrounding countries to continue running (read e.g. Tooze's Wages of Destruction for an economic analysis). The easiest way to "win" the war, with perfect hindsight, would have been to blockade Germany as much as possible and wait for the balance-of-everything deficit to cause a total collapse.
Which seems to be where the US is heading at the moment, they're propping up a vast military with a government that's massively, monstrously indebted (makes 1930s Germany seem trivial in comparison) and that seems determined to isolate itself from the rest of the world. At some point the debt, decreasing revenue-generating trade with the rest of the world, and massive overexpenditure on the military will hit hard. Like it did the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @06:34AM
Y'know what happened instead?
GHW Bush's daddy and Dubya's granddaddy, Prescott Bush, financed them. [google.com]
Whenever you see a Bush running for office, it's blood money that got them that far.
...and Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were pro-Fascist.
IBM notoriously sold the Nazis machines and kept them in top condition so that the profitability of the death camps could be accurately calculated.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday March 05 2018, @06:36AM
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Monday March 05 2018, @08:33AM (1 child)
God help us in the times an army will be run at a profit!!!
(haven't happened since dark ages and I'm not sure I want to see times like those)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Monday March 05 2018, @03:54PM
Germany's armies were actually run as profit centres. For example the Hague Convention allowed costs of occupation to be charged to the occupied nation, so France, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc all paid for the Wehrmacht. Then Germany fiddled the exchange rates to overvalue the reichsmark while requiring payment in the local currency, so the Dutch paid in guilders at an artificially low exchange rate, in effect paying far more than required. Then troops were also allowed by the convention to requisition items from the civilian population provided that receipts were issued (to allow later reconciliation), the Reichskreditkasse fiddled this by printing pseudo- Reichsmark for occupied countries that functioned as, uh, "receipts" and that were required to be exchanged at the fiddled exchange rate by the country's banks. So troops in e.g. France were paid in RKK notes that the Banque de France was required to accept as if they were francs, and could go on a shopping spree in France paid for by the French taxpayer (this was separate to the occupation costs the French were already paying).
Now repeat this, and much more, for every occupied country.
The comment about being run at a deficit was that they were so short of everything that they manufactured e.g. millions of shells in the mid 1930s without the copper driving bands they needed to fire them, because they had so little copper. It wasn't until Molotov-Ribbentrop that they could get their shells into a state where they could be fired. The fact that Hitler started so-and-so battle with only X weeks' fuel is well-known. etc.