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Should we be sending F16 fighter planes to Egypt?

Should we be sending F16 fighter planes to Egypt?


  • Total voters
    41
No, I don't think it's such a great idea. We really shouldn't be selling military hardware to countries who aren't very staunch allies. And even with those I'd hesitate to sell them our best stuff.

never sell the best stuff, just the trailing edge technology...
 
To be fair, their military operates autonomously of the gov't. They have seperate leadership chains. I still disagree with giving them the birds. Just sayin.

I know they don't agree. I think the military wanted to hold on to power partly because Morsi was all ready to attack Israel immediately. An obvious stupid move. Luckily, the military nixed that idea. But who's to say the current military leadership will stay in power. Someone might have an "accident." So yeah, lets hold onto the birds for now and see how things play out.

Fuel pumps are simple things. It would be hard to hide a switch or anything in that system. Better to embed it in the fly-by-wire system. That way there would be a plausible reason to have a wire linking it somewhere to the outside (to connect an antenna). The F-16 is an entirely fly-by-wire jet, no mechanical linkages, so you could have it disable that system and the plane drops out of the sky. It's what they call "negative stability," which makes the plane more maneuverable because it doesn't have to overcome it's own stability in order to move. But this requires a quadplex system to make thousands of computer controlled corrections per second. To demonstrate, grab a piece of paper and pull it through the air; it will follow behind you in a relatively flat line. Now, try to "push" the paper through the air from the back, and see what happens.

I wouldn't give Israel the code though. They could easily disable any jets within their range, or hell, any jet on any ramp anywhere if they smuggled a radio in. It would look like "an accident."

Yeah, I'm familiar with fly-by-wire. And that would be a good place to hide an RF Receiver. A lot of the maintenance in modern planes involves replacing "modules" which contain many components. Rather than fixing broken modules, you simply replace them, and that's how an extra component could remain hidden. But we would only place this "add-on" in Egyptian F-16s, so they are only ones that could be disabled in this manner.
 
I know they don't agree. I think the military wanted to hold on to power partly because Morsi was all ready to attack Israel immediately. An obvious stupid move. Luckily, the military nixed that idea. But who's to say the current military leadership will stay in power. Someone might have an "accident." So yeah, lets hold onto the birds for now and see how things play out.
Oh yeah, I agree with you. Just pointing it out for those that didn't know that.
 
What do you think?

No, Hell no, no way, not in this lifetime.

In other words, I don't think it's a good idea.

When the president of Egypt says:
“Dear brothers, we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them," he said. "They must be nursed on hatred. The hatred must continue.”

Read more: U.S. gift of F-16 fighters headed to Egypt, despite Morsi's harsh rhetoric | Fox News

we shouldn't be sending him so much as a BB gun.
 
We should continue to fulfill our end of agreements to which we have already committed. But we should certainly be more cautious about making any such arrangements in the future.

Screw that, they are not keeping their end of the agreement why should we?
 
Screw that, they are not keeping their end of the agreement why should we?

What have they done that implies that they "are not keeping their end of the agreement"?
 
Screw that, they are not keeping their end of the agreement why should we?

What conditions of the agreement have they violated? I have no idea what the conditions were in this particular case, I'm guessing you don't either.

Look, NP. It's like this. You can't take a loan out from a bank, and then later decide you're not going to make payments any more just because you don't like the bank's policies. If the US government made an agreement, we need to honor that agreement.

It's important that the United States of America keeps its reputation of standing by its word, don't you think?
 
What conditions of the agreement have they violated? I have no idea what the conditions were in this particular case, I'm guessing you don't either.

Look, NP. It's like this. You can't take a loan out from a bank, and then later decide you're not going to make payments any more just because you don't like the bank's policies. If the US government made an agreement, we need to honor that agreement.

It's important that the United States of America keeps its reputation of standing by its word, don't you think?

It's more like Egypt requesting a loan from the bank, and before the bank actually gives the money out, Egypt makes it clear the money is intended for use against the interests of the bank (USA). If we don't give them the F-16s, then they don't owe us the money for the sale. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone," is a well understood concept. It should be employed here, just as is possible in any other business arrangement.
 
It's more like Egypt requesting a loan from the bank, and before the bank actually gives the money out, Egypt makes it clear the money is intended for use against the interests of the bank (USA). If we don't give them the F-16s, then they don't owe us the money for the sale. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone," is a well understood concept. It should be employed here, just as is possible in any other business arrangement.

Actually, no it is not. International trade agreements don't operate like 7-Elevens. When you sign a contract, you cannot simply terminate that contract however you want - you can only terminate the contract under terms specified in the contract. Ever rented an apartment before? You can't just move out and stop paying rent. You are bound by the terms of the contract to pay rent until the end of the time period specified.

No one here is privy to the terms under which we are delivering F-16s to the Egyptians. Likely, it's not simple matter of saying "we don't want to give you F-16s anymore because we don't feel like it".

Destroying our reputation by not abiding to terms of agreements we make would be very damaging to us - equivalent to ****ing your credit score by not paying back your loans - no one will want to sign future agreements with you anymore if they don't trust you to hold up your end of the bargain.
 
Send them to Egypt so they will be nice to Israel....even though Israel is the only country they would use them against.

Stupid, expensive thinking by our government.
 
I could care less who they are we should not sell or give our weapons to any country.Allies can turn into enemies and they could use those against our own troops and civilians.

Not selling outdated military equipment is economic and political suicide.

no. we should be sending food and medicine. that should be our new foreign policy.

The US sends more food and medicine around the world, in aid, than any other country. And no one is stopping you personally, be the change.
 
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The US sends more food and medicine around the world, in aid, than any other country. And no one is stopping you personally, be the change.

i try to spread peace and kindness where i can.
 
i try to spread peace and kindness where i can.

Ok but expecting the government to take care of things when you don't personally, and ignoring that the US is doing so better than any country in the world, is kinda meh. It's a hollow objection.

And it's not like we can magically turn those f16s, and the R&D that went into them, into food. Egypt is free to sell them, to approved countries, and buy food. Why is it our bad?
 
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Ok but expecting the government to take care of things when you don't personally, and ignoring that the US is doing so better than any country in the world, is kinda meh. It's a hollow objection.

And it's not like we can magically turn those f16s, and the R&D that went into them, into food.

there's nothing magic about it. it's about a crafting new global mission statement, and slowly transitioning into implementation of that mission.

it's my opinion that military interventionism has passed the point of diminishing returns, and that our next global mission should be humanitarian.
 
it's my opinion that military interventionism has passed the point of diminishing returns, and that our next global mission should be humanitarian.

I find world freedom humanitarian and ecobeneficial. I'm not gonna stop advocating war until all of my brothers and sisters are free.
 
Considering it is our FA that's paying for them? eh, no. Let's end corporate subsidies.
 
Actually, no it is not. International trade agreements don't operate like 7-Elevens. When you sign a contract, you cannot simply terminate that contract however you want - you can only terminate the contract under terms specified in the contract. Ever rented an apartment before? You can't just move out and stop paying rent. You are bound by the terms of the contract to pay rent until the end of the time period specified.

No one here is privy to the terms under which we are delivering F-16s to the Egyptians. Likely, it's not simple matter of saying "we don't want to give you F-16s anymore because we don't feel like it".

Destroying our reputation by not abiding to terms of agreements we make would be very damaging to us - equivalent to ****ing your credit score by not paying back your loans - no one will want to sign future agreements with you anymore if they don't trust you to hold up your end of the bargain.

You make a good point that we don't know the details of the agreement. Contracts can be nullified for many reasons. It's highly possible that the agreement is nullified if the government the agreement was made with, it replaced entirely. It's also highly likely that the US demands as part of the agreement, that a government formerly hostile to a US regional ally, promise to never use the weapons or treaten to use these weapons against the US or it's allies. If such a clause were not present it would constitute one of the greatest foreign policy errors ever. Without knowing all the specifics we cannot be certain the US is violating anything. Lastly, if our allies realize we are so unbelievably naive as to sell advanced weapons to nations openly hostile to our allies, then our equivalent credit score would be the very least of our worries.
 
Not selling outdated military equipment is economic and political suicide.

I could care less if it economic suicide,besides that our elected officials do not seem to care about our finances except for when its politically convenient. It will be politacal suicide anyways when those people we sold that equipment to are using them against our troops.
 
I don't think its about Egypt at all.

It is about ourselves.

Why are we giving money to other countries while ours is in a lot of debt? Anyone wanna venture a guess into that?

Foreign aid should be drastically cut (if not completely) until we get out of this deficit. We cannot continue to do this for very long, but people don't seem to understand. We have to cut back on expenses. It is a matter of economic survival, but nobody wants to tighten the belt and get serious about the issue.

We have a lot to deal with here at home....we should not be catering to any other country for any other purpose until we fix our own home.
 
Ok but expecting the government to take care of things when you don't personally, and ignoring that the US is doing so better than any country in the world, is kinda meh. It's a hollow objection.

And it's not like we can magically turn those f16s, and the R&D that went into them, into food. Egypt is free to sell them, to approved countries, and buy food. Why is it our bad?

or, use them to put down that pesky uprising against a totalitarian regime. Once we give them to our buddy, Hosni, he can do whatever he wants with them.
 
or, use them to put down that pesky uprising against a totalitarian regime. Once we give them to our buddy, Hosni, he can do whatever he wants with them.

Stripped of context, no consideration for how things coulda gone worse, no history or priorities, no consideration that things have changed... yeah... typical Che-t-shirt level analysis. USA baaaaaad.
 
Stripped of context, no consideration for how things coulda gone worse, no history or priorities, no consideration that things have changed... yeah... typical Che-t-shirt level analysis. USA baaaaaad.

In the context of the uprising in Egypt, and of how things actually are worse in that country, given the history of totalitarian regimes around the world, the priorities that include... what? supporting dictatorships? considering that things have changed in Egypt, no, USA not baaaaad, just doing stupid things as a foreign policy.

Did you parrot the slogan "my country right or wrong" during the Vietnam era as well?
 
Sure, why not? We could use the $$$ and jobs. If not, they will just buy similar aircraft from France and Russia. Its not about the aircraft anyway. It is about the armaments and electronics.
 
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