Armed to the teeth

[faded glory]

Gentlemen, your Hegemon is going no-where. Please resume your regularly scheduled ass-kissing and one sided economic deals



Thanks,

Uncle Sam

[MichaeltheGreat]

The reality - even before the latest proposed increases in military spending - is that America could beat the rest of the world at war with one hand tied behind its back. The requirement that US armed forces be able to fight two fully fledged wars with two separate adversaries simultaneously may recently have been dropped, but only because it would be hard pushed to find two such equal foes to fight.

Bull****. Win-hold-win was abandoned because it was not militarily viable with the Clinton era force structure.

A lot of US equipment, like those B-52's, are older than the crews who use them, and most fixed-wing combat aircraft in the US inventory have more than 100% of their structural design limit flying hours. The A-6 Intruders had their lives extended for a while by replacing main wing spars, when many of the aircraft had over 300% of their structural design limit flying hours.

For the US to redevelop a meaningful anything, anytime, anywhere warfighting capability, it's going to take a lot of bucks. Unfortunately, particularly with a USAF chairman of the JCS and a mostly air-based war in Afghanistan, a lot of those spending priorities are skewed. That doesn't mean that the overall spending levels are incorrect, though.

BTW, the article is full of inaccuracies.

[Dis]

one thing bothers me about that article.

It says that we couldn't fight the war in afghanistan without help. while this is true, It seemed to me they implied that we couldn't have done it without help from Europe. The only help we needed was opposition forces within afghanistan. Yeah it was nice to have England use some of their subs to fire missles. But all that really did was save us money.

[ZoboZeWarrior]

You forget the UK men send on the ground for information...
Have you send men on the Afghan soil before talibans fall ?

Don't sh*t on UK soldiers.

[Sandman]

Very disturbing.

The tapeworm just keeps growing.

[Kaak]

Zobo: we had special forces units on the ground from the very beginning....

[Dis]

I wasn't sh*tting on British soldiers. They sent special forces there, I forgot. Their special forces units are very good.

As to what exactly they did, remains unclear. All of that information is classified for good reason.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Bull****. Win-hold-win was abandoned because it was not militarily viable with the Clinton era force structure.

A lot of US equipment, like those B-52's, are older than the crews who use them, and most fixed-wing combat aircraft in the US inventory have more than 100% of their structural design limit flying hours. The A-6 Intruders had their lives extended for a while by replacing main wing spars, when many of the aircraft had over 300% of their structural design limit flying hours.

For the US to redevelop a meaningful anything, anytime, anywhere warfighting capability, it's going to take a lot of bucks. Unfortunately, particularly with a USAF chairman of the JCS and a mostly air-based war in Afghanistan, a lot of those spending priorities are skewed. That doesn't mean that the overall spending levels are incorrect, though.

BTW, the article is full of inaccuracies.

So are the spending levels quoted in the article wrong?

If you are spending that much money and the US military is still as ****e as you seem to claim, then your boys are doing something wrong.....

I would ask for my money back if I were you....

[Kaak]

I could be wrong, but I think that a good percentage of that money actually goes to people who sign up. The armed forces give away a ton of money just to join or for scholarships. I got a letter offering me $50k now as a sign on bonus, and $35k bonus for 2 years on top of regular salary if I would sign up. and i wouldn't even have to go until after I graduate!

[DanS]

I think the point missing is that as a %-age of GDP, the $400 billion figure is not that large (less than 4% of GDP). $400 billions seems like a large number, but if you have to obtain people/technology/munitions in the US market, then you're going to be paying a pretty penny. You can't exactly import this stuff from China...

The overall objective is to always be prepared with overwhelming force (Powell Doctine), whether there is an identifiable enemy or not (Rumsfeld Corrollary). This is actually quite persuasive for most Americans and the price tag for that preparedness is secondary.

If you have to ask how much it costs, you probably can't afford it anyway...

btw, I agree with MtG that the article is filled with inaccuracies and half-truths.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The spending levels are not wrong, but the significance of them is not addressed. I was referring to inaccuracies such as the reason for abandoning win-hold-win, and the relative power of the US. That speaks to a pretty casual (at best, and being polite) level of understanding.

As far as getting money back goes, yeah, a lot of it could come back - there is a huge amount of BS spending to put some jobs in some Senator's state or Representative's district, even when the military doesn't want the hardware.

The need for the funding level is there - IF the money is spent in the right places. Since the US emphasizes technology and standoff capability to minimize casualties, everything from ordnance to the weapons platforms that deliver it are high priced.

A good example of what goes wrong (besides the porkbarrel spending) is the last stages of the A-6 Intruder, which was the Navy's only all-weather strike aircraft from the Vietnam war on. After the last version, the A-6E had been out for a while, the Navy decided it needed a new all-weather strike aircraft. After a few years of dicking around and typical procurement meddling, the A-12 Abortion (shoulda been called that) seemed to be the way to go.

Well, there were some delays, partly because the civilian expert weenies decided that even though the Navy, Air Force and Marines all have different fundamental missions, they should all have the same plane. Never mind that that's always failed.

Since the A-12 wasn't gonna be ready, and A-6E is out of date, let's do an A-6F, with new engines, new digital avionics. limited self-defense capability, and a few other tweaks. After a couple of years of playing with the A-6 idea, somebody figures out it's gonna cost X for Y years before the A-12 comes out, so it's not cost effective, since we're spending for both the A-6F and the A-12 development at the same time.

So the A-6F dies, the A-12 is back on schedule, but next time, the Clinton budget weenies decide to **** around with the A-12 development budget because the price keeps going up. (hint: if you change the ****ing specs every five minutes, the price goes up)

The net result over several years is we end up with no A-6F, no A-12, a bandaid fix on the A-6E at extra cost, and the whole thing gets replaced by some more F/A-18s and a degradation in the Navy's all-weather strike capability. Not to mention several billion pissed away in vacillation.

That's the sickness in the procurement cycle. The money gets spent, but the needs don't get met. At least if this funding level holds, programs will get built, instead of developed and aborted.

[David Floyd]

Kaak,

I could be wrong, but I think that a good percentage of that money actually goes to people who sign up. The armed forces give away a ton of money just to join or for scholarships. I got a letter offering me $50k now as a sign on bonus, and $35k bonus for 2 years on top of regular salary if I would sign up. and i wouldn't even have to go until after I graduate!

DAMN! If I got a letter like that I'd sign up in a heartbeat - seriously. That's basically $120,000, over less than 3 years, almost half of it immediately, plus additional salary you get for signing up for, what, is it 2 or 3 years now? That would totally be worth it to me.

And regarding military spending:

I'll agree that the following issues need to be addressed in the US military:
-the pay of enlisted men
-maintenance of equipment
-modernization/replacement of equipment
-spare parts inventory
-training regimen

I do NOT think that the US military needs more men, more equipment, more units, or more bases. We have plenty as it is. We don't NEED to prepare for a win-hold-win scenario - which was always bull****, by the way. We NEVER had the capability for that. I think the necessary money for the things I listed above should come from closing military bases, especially those overseas and ones in the US that are basically just "pork", reducing operational tempo to 0, and reducing foreign deployments to 0. It would also be great to cut back the Army a good deal (but increase funding for the National Guard, and possibly Reserve formations), as well as the Navy. Oh, and the article is wrong - we don't have 7 carriers, we have 12, or will have 12 when the USS Reagan is completed

[Dis]

actually we have 12 carriers right now. We have had 12 or more carriers since I can remember.

[David Floyd]

The Independence was put into mothballs recently, are you counting that one?

[MichaeltheGreat]

They're talking nucs - 7, but I thought there were more.

IIRC, Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Kennedy and America are still operational convent fuel carriers.

The Enterprise, and the Nimitz class ships for the nucs.