America's military is the greatest in the world.

At times, it can be frustrating dealing with my opponent's apparent ignorance of my argument, logic, and crucial issues pertaining to this debate. A recurring flaw is his attempts to scrutinize on a single unit/equipment/etc. And then make generalizing claims from this - an obvious failure on his part. I've accused him of failing to take a holistic approach, and in response he claims so have I (which I will show to be false in this round)." Wow, look at all that ad homiem. "If you read my first round, I remarked that though just discussing the technology and inventory of a nation doesn't encompass it's entire military might (i.e. Ingenuity of it's military commanders), it is still a crucial and indeed major reason why a nation could win a war." Which conveniently fails to take into account the fact that every large scale war dating back to the days of the British Empire has included an immense arms race as new weapons and technology are developed. America is developing expensive tech designed to be used in very limited circumstances, nations with smaller military budgets (like say for example, everyone) have to make do with tech that can be applied in greater numbers of situations with comparable effectiveness, the entire situation can probably be summed up with a story that's as fictitious as the war we're supposedly talking about: http://www.truthorfiction.com... War is expensive not only to run but to keep updated. "It's amusing to see you and many others abuse logical fallacies - an ad homiem applies if I attempt to link the truth of a premise to a person's characteristic; I did no such thing." Actually Ad Homiem is criticism of the person, not the point, any criticism in a debate that doesn't actually answer for the point is Ad Homiem, you know, like calling me illogical and ignorant. "Yes, I recognize that we aren't entirely clueless to China's military might " That's a damn sight different from "First of all, he has absolutely no stable way of depicting or tracking the progress of China's military given their secrecy" "it'd be foolish to ignore that AMERICA IS DOING THE SAME" This is entirely my point, for the whole debate your central argument has been "America is constantly updating it's military" while ignoring the point that the ambition is mutual, and one disadvantage that China doesn't have is the potential to waste as much on programs that simply aren't cost-effective (I would like to draw another parallel and state that Nazi Germany made this mistake too with a few of it's planes, tanks and artillery systems) "For you to claim that because I believe we can't know all of China's military might I'm rationally prevented from speculating the progress of America is ridiculous. " Attempting to draw accurate comparison is rationally impossible. The very fact that you do not know means by default that you cannot gauge how well America would do in an all-out war against China. "So while you can off-handedly remark that China is improving their equipment, and thus they are somehow on par or greater than America" Liar, I never said that. "I can't reference a SPECIFIC US military program with outlined objectives, methods, changes, etc. And thus propose to show how it will improve combat potential? That is a double standard in it's finest." It's a bureaucratic system, not some improved piece of armour or a new gunship or a new kind of troop transport. You think a soldier on the front line is going to care how quickly form B-186 gets through to postal while he's being shot at? "And so is America. You ignore my fact about conscription." Actually no I didn't, I said straight up that China beats America in terms of numbers and to imply otherwise is lying, go back and read again. " The M4 rifle isn't the most overall effective weapon in the world - I agree. But my argument is that even now, it's capable enough to be operationally significant. Let's look at the test you reference, and laugh as it backfires on you[1]:" I'd like to state that the posting of the links wasn't a point unto itself, you asked me for evidence of the M4's weaknesses and I provided, also I notice how your article failed to take into account the gas piston and how that wears the rifle down over time. So even if it was a point, it still stands due to that alone. It's interesting to note that in dusty environments (like, you know, the desert, like Iraq and Afghanistan) can cause a gun to jam, but the M4 is particularly hard to un-jam because according to the wikipedia article on the weapon ( http://en.wikipedia.org... ) unjamming the gun requires it's disassembly. Hardly practical in a firefight. "Your link on operational tactics is from the US Marine Crops, NOT SPECIAL FORCES. " You do realise that the term "special forces" doesn't mean what it used to, right? The term "Special Forces" can pretty much be attributed to any unit designed to do a specific job in specific environments with greater effectiveness than your average grunt. Also: According to the American Special Ops website ( http://www.americanspecialops.com...) SOCOM is a Special Ops branch, and I quote: "SOCOM is a US military command that oversees the Special Operations components of the US Army, Navy, Air Force and MARINE CORPS." (http://www.americanspecialops.com...) "spec ops" Which would make complete sense if it weren't for the fact that in these enlightened times you can just type in the name of a special force into Google and add "tactics" or "weapons" or something and hit gold. "they simply show America has better guns to bring." "The Thomas Barnett video" Which is entirely my point, his proposal is just that, but his proposal is also the only thing stopping the US military from expecting every soldier to be able to do every job, the "handing out aid, shooting back" argument. This is the core of my overtraining point, a soldier is not equipped psychologically to do everything, this is why we have humanitarian workers and specialist soldiers for medical purposes (amongst other things but those two are probably most battlefield-relevant) "they stretched out their supply lines and couldn't successfully incorporate their blitzkrieg tactic[" Yes of course, that was the single thing that lost them the war, it had absolutely nothing to do with anything else like the development of Russian tanks capable of deflecting anti-tank rounds (the T-34 and it's successors, look it up) it had nothing to do with the introduction of a few million American and Canadian soldiers that weren't as battle weary or demoralised as it's own men, it had absolutely nothing to do with anything else, nope, the war was lost at Bastogne and Arnhem and Stalingrad because that crap all happened simultaneously, didn't it? "England was able to survive because of their channels, allowing them to stall and put a stake into the German's capability of sending in troops." Please stop insulting my country. While Geography certainly played a part, do you honestly think we did so little damage to Germany that the only thing stopping them was water? I notice you didn't mention the RAF, something Hitler said had to be destroyed in order for an invasion of England to work, nor did you mention our invention of airborne radar or our development of tanks and weapons in the period between Dunkirk and D-day, had Hitler invaded, he'd have faced a weakened but re-armed and ever-determined nation with the home turf advantage. "foreign policy issues such as this don't matter." Strawman, you're the one that brought politics into the wars and that doesn't debunk the over-reliance on air power shown throughout both wars, which is my point. "I AGREE, but I respond that no military could possibly be non-holistic and be effective" This is my point, you know, "overtraining" and all that Oh, also you never showed how my ac