Starving the beast: the U.S. Military

[regexcellent]

The usefulness of flattops was demonstrated in the Falklands War. I have no idea if we need as many as the navy says we need though.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Well duh, that's because they are relying on American military expenditures to protect their sorry asses. Canada the *********ing leader in that bull****.

Protect from who? Who would invade Canada? The US benefits from force projection. We egotistically pretend it's for "freedom" and "democracy" and all that horse****, but it's really just geopolitics of an empire.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The usefulness of flattops was demonstrated in the Falklands War. I have no idea if we need as many as the navy says we need though.

The Falklands war was 30 years ago against a third rate third world set of morons who had nothing better to do than give each other medals the size of ****in' pie plates for not getting the clap, or for how many supposed commie grannies they could make disappear. Once they saw footage of the Royal Marine band playing "Don't cry for me, Argentina" they should have just hung it up.

The navy needs 11 CVs to keep all those O6 to O9 slots filled, plus to keep their pet Congressmen happy with all the pork that flows into the relevant states and districts. In reality, they have cut the air groups to about 66% strength and cut the escort groups in half to keep the number of CVs constant - because that generates the money for the contractors and the career paths for the Canoe U. crowd. We couldn't deploy all of them into combat at once because we'd run out of ordnance. It's more of a joke, really, at this point.

[regexcellent]

The biggest reform the US military needs is to have all of the different branches merged with redundent MOSes combined between branches. Then special branch folks like JAGs, Chaplains, and medical/dental can be mostly privatized. Cutting carriers and such should come after that's done (unless it's easier I guess).

The MSG in my ROTC bn told us this joke: "What do you call a doctor who graduated in the bottom 5% of his med school class? Captain."

[SlowwHand]

EDIT: Originally at MtG, but now it includes you, too.

[regexcellent]

Does it really make sense to you that the Marines have their own pilots and ground crew that could just as easily be part of either the air force or navy? And when the Marines reduce their air wing strength but the Air Force expands, those marine crews just get fired and the Air Force hires new ones.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The biggest reform the US military needs is to have all of the different branches merged with redundent MOSes combined between branches. Then special branch folks like JAGs, Chaplains, and medical/dental can be mostly privatized. Cutting carriers and such should come after that's done (unless it's easier I guess).

The MSG in my ROTC bn told us this joke: "What do you call a doctor who graduated in the bottom 5% of his med school class? Captain."

That's like McNamara's wet dream. It won't work. There are too significant doctrinal differences for a merger to happen without gutting the combat effectiveness of the force.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Does it really make sense to you that the Marines have their own pilots and ground crew that could just as easily be part of either the air force or navy? And when the Marines reduce their air wing strength but the Air Force expands, those marine crews just get fired and the Air Force hires new ones.

Absolutely. Marine aviation has one and only one purpose in life - supporting Marine ground combat operations. That's not true for USN or USAF. The C2 integration as well as the training and doctrinal consistency makes for superior results. USAF doesn't mind, nor does USN, because they (rightly) believe they have other purposes in life than to be mud movers and the jarheads' *****es.

(They can be the Army's *****es too, we'll share. )

[regexcellent]

You could avoid merging certain combat arms MOSes I suppose.

[regexcellent]

Absolutely. Marine aviation has one and only one purpose in life - supporting Marine ground combat operations. That's not the true for USN or USAF. The C2 integration as well as the training and doctrinal consistency makes for superior results. USAF doesn't mind, nor does USN, because they (rightly) believe they have other purposes in life than to be mud movers and jarhead's *****es.

That integration would exist if we merged branches.

[MichaeltheGreat]

That integration would exist if we merged branches.

It wouldn't. That's why we had the Key West Agreement after the experience of WW2. The downside of it is that the Army was prohibited from having fixed wing armed aircraft, but the Army has evolved around that and rotary wing aviation is adequate. There's enough difference in missions that separation benefits all parties. The Nazis tried some of that merged branch crap due to Goring's ego - hence all paratroopers were Luftwaffe, and you had a Luftwaffe Panzer division. There are distinct specialized skill sets. The MOS/ASI/SQI where merger would make sense (or at least not be detrimental) are pretty few and pretty specialized. FACs, Pathfinders, etc. Otherwise, you have such a degree of specialization that merger would just increase administrative burden and decrease combat effectiveness, without any real savings.

[Dr Strangelove]

The biggest reform the US military needs is to have all of the different branches merged with redundent MOSes combined between branches. Then special branch folks like JAGs, Chaplains, and medical/dental can be mostly privatized. Cutting carriers and such should come after that's done (unless it's easier I guess).

The MSG in my ROTC bn told us this joke: "What do you call a doctor who graduated in the bottom 5% of his med school class? Captain."

Do they have that many psychiatrists in the armed forces?

[DinoDoc]

Do they have that many psychiatrists in the armed forces?

1 less as of November 5, 2009.

[Guynemer]

1 less as of November 5, 2009.

See, I want to say "too soon," but I suppose it actually isn't.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Dude, it is not false. I know numerous Americans who simply cannot afford to visit a doctor, and when they get sick they spend as much time worrying how they can afford to miss work/pay for treatments/pay for transport to get to medical facilities etc as they do actually getting better. Over here an unemployed person can get full treatment for any illness for free, no bills, no fear of getting fired etc etc. When it comes to healthcare its a different world.

Spoken like a true rich person. Here you can pay for private care too, but we ensure that EVERYBODY has a decent rate of care. It's called humanity.

It's because he's had to want for nothing. FWIW, I personally know of folks who have full time jobs who are not getting needed treatment because its going to cost too much.