T + 1 min

[OhioArcher]

^^^

Whose military are you talking about? Ours, do to the changing threat scenario, and gutting by our so-called "leaders", is not what it was during the Cold War. We were facing a widescale European invasion by Russia back then. Then came the "small" wars...Panama, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan. The government used them to cut forces to save money and fight smaller tactical fights. We were supposed to be able to fight 3 small wars vs 1 big one. But even then then made more cuts. Now Obama wants to cut the Army to below pre-WWII levels. Right now the USAF is struggling to keep its fleet in the air due to less manpower, over-budget weapon systems and many, many broken airplanes (Air Force Times reporting). While I have nothing but good things to say about our military members and the different branches, we are quickly becoming a hollow force due to the tightening of purse strings (gotta pay for Obamacare somehow). Our military members may be ready and willing but their political leaders have let them down (as they have time and time again over the course of history). If Russia pushed it, and had N Korea do the same, we would be in dire straights militarily. There is no way we could send a large enough force to the Balkans, Turkey or elsewhere that would be able to do anything to push Putin and Russia out of the Ukraine.

 

[zagmp03]

I'm not arguing that our force is the right size to do all those things you have listed. It isn't. It's not designed to be. Military leaders have made decisions and recommendations through the NMS and QDR to the president, who, for several decades has then made decisions about force size, structure and mission. Just because the force was bigger in the Cold War and up to Desert Storm doesn't mean that it was necessarily more effective, just that we had more forces. If all things kicked off at once, 1M soldiers in the Army wouldn't be enough. 20 carrier groups wouldn't be enough. Double our Air Force and Marine structure right now wouldn't be enough. And that's just for a conflict with Russia. But we aren't "fully" involved militarily in any of those situations, but we are fully involved diplomatically and politically in an attempt to prevent military involvement, or at least minimize it.

I would also argue that the announcement to go down to 440k is a political, budget ploy. It's a message to Congress to fix sequestration before what they are saying is going to happen (440k) happens. And that is not expected to happen until FY19, which is light years away in Congress-time. But, that number and the resulting outrage will be used to politically influence leaders to fix their budgetary woes enough that we don't go there, because it will be very costly to those congressional members districts in terms of forces stationed and consequently, money into the local economy.

And your point about the less manpower, over budget procurement and lapses in maintenance are spot on, but also heavily reported on. Why? Political pressure. The amount of pressure those congressional folks are under to fix the military is huge and growing. But at the same time, we don't hold them accountable for disasters like the F-35, which has parts built in 48 states. So it has full congressional support. And the contractors planned building it across every state, because it becomes invincible in the budget battle. Same with many other procurement processes. But hard looks are being taken, because there is a need for money now, which is why there are all the studies on retirement, procurement, personnel, compensation, etc. DoD is the only real place to look in the budget, because they are the largest part of discretionary spending. Entitlements make up over half our budget, but no one can even discussion modifying them without being publicly disgraced.

I am not saying that the current political wrangling is good for the country. It's very disruptive. It reduces the ability to think about the future and plan where the force should go in the next decades because we focus so much energy on the next ten days. And, the only thing we have been perfect at as a government and military is that we have consistently and perfectly not been able to predict the future and its crises and then shape the force accordingly.