Obama: With Coming Cuts To Defense, New Military Will Be Leaner, Still Superior | Fox News Not looking like it. I am fine with cuts in the military as long as cuts are shared accross the board, however, this does not seem the case.......
All politics aside, I think the cuts are probably well timed given that we are getting out of two wars that spanned a decade. Further, I feel like our strategic mission has been altered significantly since 9/11. If nothing else we've learned that it is easier to fight small groups of terrorists with small groups of special forces rather than 100,000 soldier army. For the larger powers like China, etc. they have a ways to go to catch up with us technology-wise and will never be a threat to invade us as long as we have the worlds largest nuclear arsenal. As to your other point, I suppose time will tell. Given that this is an election year I am afraid that cuts to other sectors will not happen until 2013, regardless of who wins. At some point we are going to have to pass a budget and implement a plan for cuts to a lot of programs as well as a revision of our tax code that is likely to implement a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans to some degree or another. How to best accomplish this is a whole other thread but nevertheless I believe the cooler heads see the writing on the wall that doing nothing will serve no good purpose. Good thread!
Cuts need to be made to Congress. How is it that we are supposed to take Congress seriously when they are some of the richest in America? It just stinks of corruption.
I must disagree. The cuts must be smart and based on the realities of the 21st century. The chances of a major ground war in Europe is minimal. The chances of one in Korea or the Middle east are small. The chances of brushfire wars are high. It makes a lot of sense to cut unneeded heavy armored army and marine units and save as many air power, sea power, and special ops assets as possible.
here is the problem, and I did this for about 8 years and I know. The law will say cut x dollars The military will cut x dollars worth of capability The congress will screw around with the military's cuts to minimize hurt to individual districts. The more powerful the representative, the less the cut. At the end we will not have military envisioned by the President/military, but a military hodge podged together to get the number, while preserving as much in the congressional districts as well. The cuts will NOT be smart and they will NOT be cogent and they will lead to some really screwed up stuff. Remember this, hardware, in military terms, procurement, gets lobbyists dollars. Manpower does not. Geaux Tigers HWR
Red it seems to me that the technology of our top-shelf crew-served weaponry; aircraft, naval vessels, etc. is vastly superior to anything our enemies can field. Moreover, the state of the world economy is such that no one can afford the r&d to catch up to us any time soon. That would seem to be a major area where we can cut spending, at least for a time. We don't need to be cutting human assets, either in terms of personnel or training dollars for said personnel. Opinion?
China can and they are increasing the quantity and quality of their technology all of the time. There are some deep pockets in the middle east, too. Technology has been and continues to be our main edge. For what it costs, it is a poor place to cut. Particle beams, anti-gravity vehicles, cloaking technologies will be developed. They need to be fielded here, first. The main defenses costs are veterans benefits. They are lavish and well deserved by combat veterans, especially those who are disabled by war service. But we may have to ask ourselves if undeployed national guardsmen should rate the same 20-year retirement with full medical. A million Cold War vets who served one hitch as a draftee and never fired a shot in anger get full VA medical.
Sounds reasonable, but it also sounds like a third rail issue. I can't imagine that either party will be willing to touch it.
You must not know how benefits work do you? National guard doesn't get near the retirement as a full time active duty member for 20. As guard, you have to wait until 60 or so to pull from it and it isn't even 50% of the pay....... In any event, a stronger case can be made for more reserves and less active duty. Active duty cost far more then reserves. Reserves pay for health care btw and as I speak from experience, it is close in price to a plan I pull from my company......
Yeah, I know, I was generalizing. There are a lot of full-time, active duty National Guardsmen these days. A good friend of mine just retired after 24 in the guard as an E-8 with very good benefits. He had a lot of active duty time. But they have far more bang for the buck. There is a lot of waste in the national guard, a lot of undeployable people, a lot of unneeded armories, a lot of females. I don't think the DoD can neglect the national guard when making substantial cuts.
