Big cuts coming to US military
 

...and why not? Wars in Iraq and A-Stan are over. Simply redirect funding to satellites and drones, who needs an army?

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2014/0...ize/?hpt=hp_t1

We do in the UK so send some of those budget savings across the pond...a few spare Harriers would be appreciated too.

America can now pay off it debt mountain.

Nahhh, drink beer and eat ribs. :03:

History is cyclical, and the wheel in the sky keeps on turning.


edit:
Dollar will collapse before that happens. (Seriously, we are well and truly screwed. )

And always think that the benefits of this decision (if it really comes forward) will be gained by the president after the next president.

On the other hand, there's Venezuela. But i don't think the CIA needs a whole army, for that. And the money will come from drug deals, of course. :03::O:



Seriously, it is clear that the US cannot just go on spending such amounts for decades, but since they are used to play globally, the upkeep of the infrastructure will be hard to maintain.
A smaller, but excellent military with superior equipment will be better, but still costly..

Better the US Army than the US Navy ... perhaps they should consider joining the US Army back with the US Air Force like t was in the forties.

One things for sure the US Army is not going to go down without fighting ... pun :D

I don't see the problem myself. The Cold War is over, the Iraq War is over, and you're about to pull out of Afghanistan. Why spend money on a military that has no war to fight? :hmmm:

I hope nobody tries to refloat the farcical term "peace dividend" from the early nineties. If there was ever a single distribution from that one, it got swallowed up in an instant.

But .. but .. the TERRORISTS ! They are EVERYWHERE, even in Jemen.
And if there are none left, we have to invent them.

'Proud Mary keep on burning'.. :D

Hitler rightly said.. "Armies are meant for war".
If there is no war.. you don't need an army, or at least a beeeeg one.

This can be the problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militar...strial_complex

There will be no belly aching, until they start closing bases here at home.:huh:

There will be great wailing and gnashing of teeth in congress then.:haha:

Different group, different song.

But was Proud M. a stern, or a side wheeler ?

I always tried to find that out .. :hmm2:

Yup.

In any event, I have a hunch that downsizing our military will have little to no effect on our national debt at this point.

EDIT:
I should probably say that I do feel many budget cuts are necessary, like big fancy stealth jets for example and similarly grotesquely bloated projects; even some personnel cuts, however cutting personnel too much, I think unwise.

EDIT 2:
If they really want to reduce the cost of the military, the politiicans in washington need to reduce our global foot print first. They should close bases overseas first before closing them at home. Seems to me, we did this song and dance under the Clinton administration.

So now that there will be cuts, we will see how these "smaller government" members of congress will fight this.

Smaller government spending is not so good when it is in your state. :yep:

The MIC is a hungry mistress.

I am sure we can come up with something. There will be some "emergency" that will "force" the United States to up the funding for the military... for national security, you understand.

Hmm... it loos like the US Army has been selling their services to the civilian population of America under the name 'Life Alert': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tdWx2txXHw

Absolutely disgusting. Civilians shouldn't have to pay their military, that's the government's job.

Close bases, cut jobs, then what do the people do? Return to local manufacturing? :hmmm:

I agree with cutting waste, and as previously mentioned by Ducimus a good place to start is some great white technological elephant, and not personnel.

Having less grunts to pay monthly fees, means not so much, financially.

The real cost saver would be to reduce the influence of the defence industry on the policy makers.

The quality of competitors' defence quality, namely China, becomes better ands better,m the Americna lead is shrinking both in quantity and quality, and due to the technology race the ability to compensate numerical inferiority by technical superiority is declining: the higher the level is already is, the smaller the improvments that can be gained by the higher investements for them needed. Oh dear, can one say it that way or did I just mess up the language?

Needless to say, the more specialised and higher in quality one's own forces are, the more precious they become and the more costly and potentially war-decisive even small losses become, because for the same money you then can maintain only smaller forces: loosing for example one destroyer when you have two hundred, is one thing. Loosing one destroyer when you only have ten, is something very different.

What I disagree with is to phase out the A-10s. Not because of sentimental reasons, but because of what these planes can do - and the F35 cannot. For many CAS type of missions, I think the A10 is the - sometimes much - better aircraft, still. And last time I read about it, many ground commanders agreed with that assessment.