US military budget: How would you change it?

[Dinner]

Honestly, there isn't a whole lot of commerce that comes through San Diego's port. The navy has first dibs on most of the real estate and that doesn't leave a lot left for civilian cargo ships. I seem to recall Honda uses the port to off load some cars made in Japan but they're probably the only big company most of us have heard of which uses this port. Long Beach, Oakland, and Seattle are all going to be much larger ports for trade purposes.

[Lonestar]

Are you retarded? I was asking a rhetorical question.

Sure thing killer.

By the way lonestar, would you agree or disagree with my whole slash the army, slightly buff the national guard plan?

Make the army a glorified air defense corps and the NG something to be used for internal disaster relief/cadre in the off chance we need a draft.

[C0ckney]

Nope, you're right. You guys are asking us to police your backyard because you don't have the political will to do so yourselves. You(the EU) COULD do an intervention on your own, but instead you chose to wait awhile hoping that we would loan out the Enterprise to do most of the grunt work. Now we're going to see a slaughter that'll have death tolls around that of the Japanese earthquake in the next month or so because, again, the EU cannot police their own ****ing backyard without us holding their hand.

this is a hilariously naive view of the situation.

i've bolded the key phrase in your post, which implicitly recognises that it's a political issue rather than a military one. nice one for destroying your argument in the same post though.

[Hauldren Collider]

So if you have an army/navy but you just aren't willing to use it, it still falls on us to actually handle the ****ing somali pirates and other crap that happens that requires military ships.

[Dinner]

I still see no reason to intervine in the Libyan civil war. Yes, the dictator for life is a clown and a crook but I'm unwilling to risk the life of one American G.I. to solve a dispute between Berber tribal groups.

[Lonestar]

this is a hilariously naive view of the situation.

i've bolded the key phrase in your post, which implicitly recognises that it's a political issue rather than a military one. nice one for destroying your argument in the same post though.

Nonsense. If HMG really wanted to intervene they could have done so even a year ago. Instead your PM decided to burn down the RN and make their ability to intervene overseas entirely reliant on being a part of a sum. I've had a German on another board inform me that his country is Constitutionally obligated to block the EU from trying to intervene militarily unless there has been a formal blessing from the UN. While IN THEORY you all(the EU) could do this on your own, the whole crisis has shown that the EU is a poor vehicle to get anything done militarily, because no one wants to be the guy doing the hard work.


And by the way, it all supports my original statement about how your PM sure as **** didn't know what he was doing when he killed RN fixed wing aviation over the recommendation of the service chief.

[Hauldren Collider]

Why the **** would you ever constrain yourself to a judgement by the UN? The UN is a complete joke.

[Lonestar]

So if you have an army/navy but you just aren't willing to use it, it still falls on us to actually handle the ****ing somali pirates and other crap that happens that requires military ships.

The French, Dutch, and Chinese are pretty good about helping with piracy.

The Dutch are simply limited by the size of their nation, and the overseas possessions they still have in the Western Hemisphere. They can't be at all places at once, and neither can the French(who have a higher deployment rate for USN vessels to the Indian sea, I might add).

[Lonestar]

Why the **** would you ever constrain yourself to a judgement by the UN? The UN is a complete joke.

From the German on the other board:

It is not quite that easy. Unless the UN sanctions an invasion, Germany for one is constitutionally prohibited from intervening. And if Germany does not go along or is even legally obligated to block it, then the EU is unable to act as a whole. And France has no intention of going it alone, Britain has not the capability.

[Perfection]

I'd squander it on selfish pursuits.

[C0ckney]

Nonsense. If HMG really wanted to intervene they could have done so even a year ago. Instead your PM decided to burn down the RN and make their ability to intervene overseas entirely reliant on being a part of a sum

the entire point i was making is that the UK, like other EU countries believes only in military action when there is an international consensus. the reasons for this should be quite obvious given the last joint british and french military adventure in north africa, as well as more recent history involving 'coalitions of the willing'. if you want to pretend that it's because we got rid of an aircraft carrier, then i guess i can't stop you deluding yourself.

you seem to think that intervention is a given, that it's the right thing to do and that anyone opposing it must do so because their country is incapable of doing something. i can't believe i'm having to point out that intervention is far from uncontroversial.

[Wezil]

And thanks for conceding that the CF didn't get involved in "the dirty work on the ground" until Harper changed the nature of your contribution.

Paul Martin.

Blame where blame is due please.

[Asher]

So if you have an army/navy but you just aren't willing to use it, it still falls on us to actually handle the ****ing somali pirates and other crap that happens that requires military ships.

You've no idea what the **** is going on outside the bubble of the USA...

There's an international group of ships patrolling near Somalia. Including Canadian frigates. Which have rescued ships, BTW.

European countries are also patrolling over there.

Random example from the top of Google:

http://www.thestar.com/article/620572

Canada makes waves battling Somali pirates

OTTAWA – She is just one big fish in a pond the size of Ontario, but HMCS Winnipeg, the Canadian navy frigate posted off the coast of Somalia, has made its own ripples in the fight against modern-day pirates.

Where the United States has crack Navy SEAL snipers and French commandos storm hijacked boats with guns blazing, Canada's contribution to the small NATO anti-piracy force carries a handmade stop sign, written in Somali and affixed to its helicopter's machine gun, to warn legitimate fishermen and make ransom-hungry pirates think twice.

"Before we start killing people, or shooting people, we want to make sure that we've given them an opportunity to stop what they're doing, if they haven't actually done an attack yet," Cmdr. Craig Baines told the Star in one of several interviews from the Gulf of Aden.

Though there has been quite a bit of shooting and killing in the last week, it's not all pirate hunting in the world's most important international shipping route.

The Winnipeg departed last night on a risky mission to escort a slow-moving, defenceless ship, belonging to the United Nations World Food Program, to the Somali coast. In the pirates' lair, the Canadian show-of-force is essential to make sure regions of the country affected by drought and ballooning food prices receive vital assistance.

"Whenever you transit closer to the shoreline the risk does go up a little bit because of the proximity to Somalia itself," Baines said, just before the mission got underway.

Overall, success for the Winnipeg and the four other NATO ships involved in Operation Allied Protector has been varied, and they have been up against ambitious pirate foes who have attacked without regard to a ship's flag, cargo or final destination.

Baines' crew of 240 navy sailors had barely settled into the routine of escorting valuable freighters through the Gulf of Aden when the first distress call came over the radio.

On April 4, the Winnipeg dispatched its Sea King helicopter to warn off suspected pirates, effectively repelling a possible attack with its Somali stop sign. Five days later it responded to a merchant ship that had been fired on.

The crew followed the pirates to a mother ship by moonlight and saw passengers tossing suspected packages of arms and ammunition to the bottom of the sea.

An armed navy boarding team searched the mother ship at first light, but found nothing and had to let it go free.

On Tuesday, the Winnipeg was called on for help again, but it was too far away and pirates made off with a Greek vessel, the MV Irene EM.

The action and the attention have all made Baines "a bit of a national celeb" in the words of one British NATO official. In a period where Afghanistan dominates the headlines, the attention afforded the Winnipeg is remarkable, though Baines said it is justified.

Insurance rates for ships to sail through the Gulf of Aden, a shortcut to the Suez Canal and European and North American markets, have jumped to $20,000 from $500 for a single passage. Several firms want to detour along the southern tip of Africa, through the Cape of Good Hope, to avoid hijackings and ransoms of up to $3 million.

But military and diplomatic officials say the warships will never solve the brigand scourge. All Baines and his crew can do is protect the most valuable shipments – oil tankers headed to the United States, food aid, military equipment and supplies for troops in Afghanistan – and hope to be close by when future incidents arise.

"If I was being brutally honest with you, the pirates are adaptable and if they see a warship they will go somewhere else," Baines said.

Even if pirate ships are captured or interrupted, how to deal with them is a jurisdictional nightmare, experts say.

A Somali donors' conference next week will discuss how to get past the short-term military response and build the capacity for the ineffective national government to police its ports with a mix of aid and expert assistance.

France will help train a Somali security force to hunt and take down the pirate networks.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for more drastic action against pirates, including tracking and freezing their assets, as is now done to combat drug cartels and terrorist groups.

"They're clearly using their ransom money for their benefit ... and we think we can begin to try to track and prevent that from happening," she said.

[Asher]

I still see no reason to intervine in the Libyan civil war. Yes, the dictator for life is a clown and a crook but I'm unwilling to risk the life of one American G.I. to solve a dispute between Berber tribal groups.

And yes, the US/EU/NATO/UN has no business being involved in Libya unless there's evidence of genocide, etc.

[notyoueither]

Obviously if someone else builds a super fighter jet, we will need one too. But we don't need any more effort put into that right now.

The problem with this is you cannot go from zero to sixty in a hurry, if history is a guide.

In the last big one, you had years to overcome the design superiority of the oppo, and the lives of your ground pounders were cheap.

In the next one, you could lose in six months, and you'll have CNN embedded with private Ryan.