Whose head will explode first? Tea Party calls for defense cuts...

I'm sorry, what does retcon mean?

It means you're arguing politics with a Star Trek writer.

As opposed to all us other politicians here.

I'm no politician. I'm the uncontested sovereign dictator of Albertistan.

I think I'm as qualified a anyone on WF to comment on military spending.
Right now we are the most effective, well trained, physically capable force ever assembled.....so let's keep up the momentum!

Yes, we could be even better by switching to a completely US based defensive force that trains for rapid effective lethal deployment without the resource drain of actually staying overseas.

It would greatly reduce "burnout" on the troops, and the money saved could be used to pay them even more (so long as it doesn't cancel out the savings of staying at home more).

Instead of deploying to Fubaristan for years on end, we can deploy to a similar (yet friendly) country more often but for shorter periods and with ever increasing standards of speed, safety and efficiency.

Some things just cannot be realistically simulated by staying at home, but most can - so there wil be a few exceptions to staying at home.

I believe that "practice makes perfect." Deploying your forces more frequently but for shorther periods hones you to a razor's edge. It seems like a pain in the ass, but it pays off and actually costs less money and gives more soldiers the opportunity to hone their skills.

You learn nothing in a year-long deployment that can't be learned in a three month deployment (or simulated deployment if done properly).

I can imagine a group of super-conditioned, high morale, ultra motivated, not combat injured soldiers capable of incredibly worldwide efficiency and lethality.

Oh, and we need more inter-services training exercises. Despite the different branches, we all fight together. We are already combining Army + AF bases when practical - let's continue this trend and keep training together more often. Just my two cents!

Yeah, well, we knew that.

Hey, that's not fair. Dayton might not fight on the front lines but he contributes in other ways!*








* Specifically, voting Republican, defending Republicans on the internet, and encouraging his students to enlist and get their limbs blown off.

And you.

The US can easily afford to spend $400 billion per year on the military. That gives you one hell of a military.

It also cuts about $200 billion off the budget per year.

I'd prefer that the R&D money was spent directly on developing things that are useful, rather than on warfare with the hope that something will spin off as has been the case until now, a very inefficient way of doing things.

But yeah, cutting without regard for the consequence is foolish, and that goes for the "defense" budget as much as any other.

close but not quite - haven't you been told there are no brown people in the TP?

And I'd prefer to live in a world where everything is peace and love, and everyone is nice to everyone else. While we're in fantasy-land, I'd also prefer to have cars run on non-polluting unicorn farts. And all the girls should be pretty and friendly, too.

You do not seem willing to recognize that there are bad people out there, and it requires a serious, well-trained and well-equipped military force to deal with them. If you don't spend R&D money on defense, you end up being run over by those who do (unless you are protected by someone who is more powerful and is doing the spending--the way western Europe avoided becoming Soviet territory in the 50s and 60s). I am no pacifist, and I think it is very important to keep up the development of the most advanced possible military weapons and defense mechanisms. Within a few years, that technology will spill over into the rest of the world, but it is already well spent because serious defense is necessary. The advantages for everyone else that come along a few years later (like the GPS, for example) are just a bonus along the way.

That's why your concerns about major cuts in the military budget are unfounded. We need the R&D because we need the defense. But there are very good ways of keeping a highly-qualified defense force (Oldfella outlined them pretty well in his post) without having to maintain a standing army anywhere near the size of what we now have and without keeping them overseas all the time, in places like Germany where there aren't any threats and haven't been since the Iron Curtain rusted apart 20 years ago.

I am very aware that "bad people" exist and that defense is necessary. Yet there remains no justification, particularly as its share of the worlds economy declines, for the US to spend as much as the rest of the world combined on its military.

My point here is that the military-industrial complex has been, and continues to be used as a way to pay for development of things whose primary function is civilian, the spending justified by "national security". Those things are more than a mere bonus, economincally speaking. They are an engine of economic growth.

On balance, I'm pleasantly surprised that this discussion is happening at all. I know that it is unlikely to go anywhere, but still.

Really?

Just curious but just what size of a U.S. military do you think the U.S. could afford on $400 billion dollars a year?

How many in the Army, Navy, Air Force, & Marines?

How many combat aircraft?

How many Army divisions?

How many combat ships?

How many carrier air groups?

What committments that the United States already has do you plan to abandon?

Loyal follower of right wing propaganda?

Dayton, nobody is saying get rid of the necessary advanced weaponry.
How we manage everything else (logistics, procurement procedures, training troops, etc) can be vastly improved without cutting into our war-fighting agenda/capability.

Just the dog-and-pony redundant wasteful morale-busting bullshit I see on a daily basis (and I'm sure every military member sees) could be eliminated and everyone would benefit. Basically the way we do business needs to be tweaked. We do a lot of things because "that's the way the system has always been" without buckling down and changing things.

On a local level they have "sensing sessions" where all soldiers (private thru field grade officers) come up with awesome workable ideas for cost saving changes....but little ever actually changes.

The military has the most highly educated force in history - both "book smart" and "hands on" but when it comes to money saving policy changes nobody wants their input anyway.

Many with green hair?

For example?

Seriously? I could literally write a book about the surreal mind numbing insanity I have experienced (and now continue to witness) in my 27+ years of laboring in + around the military.

I hereby declare this thread "boring."

I'm not asking for a book.

I'm for one good verifiable example of what you maintain.

How about pouring millions into renovating old buildings that are already earmarked to be bulldozed? I'm talking renovations on a street of buildings while the buildings a few blocks down are being destroyed and the destruction is heading your way. The renovation crew is barely ahead of the destroying crew.

Why you ask? That's just the way the contracts are written.

Are these the types of examples you are looking for?

Well it's getting late now. I'm going to watch UFC and relax then hit the hay for tonight.

The one that always got me was how wasteful the ammunition situation was during training. As any veteran here can tell you, it's more of a hassle to turn in unused rounds than it is to just shoot them up or otherwise get rid of them. If you don't use as many rounds as you signed out, turning them back in shouldn't be such a pain in the ass.

And it's not just live rounds, either. They used to issue us loads of .50 and 7.62mm blanks for ARTEP (wargame) situations. Nobody liked firing blanks in the machine guns because they dirty up the weapons so much more than actual rounds do. As a result, we always ended those excercises with almost as much blank ammo as we'd been issued.

Because it was such a pain in the ass to turn the stuff back in, though, on the way back to the assembly area we'd toss the unused rounds in the brush alongside the tank trail. I remember my loader handing me belt after belt after belt of ammo that I threw into the bushes. All the tanks and PCs in front of me were doing the same thing, and so were the ones following behind. Imagine how much money was wasted that day...

And that's just one area of waste and inefficiency. There are thousands of similar things like that across all branches of the military.

According to some of the senior NCOs I served with, back in the late 70s/early 80s the Army instituted a program to solicit "money saving" ideas from the troops themselves. If your selection got picked, you'd get a bonus that was supposedly a percentage of however much money your suggestion saved the Army.

A buddy of one of those NCOs sent in a suggestion that the Army get rid of the watch pocket on the BDU pants (or maybe the pickle suits if it was late 70s) because nobody used watch pockets. He got something like $20K for it.

I understand these kinds of things.

But two questions:

1) Can you eliminate these kinds of practices and inefficiencies and be cost effective doing it?

2) Can you really save 200 billion dollars a year by doing these things?

I don't see why not.

I doubt that you could save anywhere near that amount, but any kind of savings on chickenshit stuff like that would be better than nothing.

The military could operate much more leanly and efficiently than it does.

I won't speak for the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Coast Guard, but I'd chop the Marines down to 175,000 men (including women and fags) if I could have: The MTVR (7 ton), the M777 (howitzer), the Osprey, the STO/VL F35, and the EFV. We've got the MTVR, M777, and Osprey and it looks like maybe even odds that the STO/VL F35 will get built, but I dunno that we'll ever get the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.

There was an interesting article in Proceedings this month about an off-the-shelf commercial hovercraft which would yield a 500 NM OTH delivery capability and allow the Marines to land ground fighting vehicles versus a tracked amphib. More bang for everyone's buck and the Marines could use a true ground fighting vehicle versus some amphibian hybrid.