Posted on 03/05/2014 3:32:19 PM PST by SkyPilot
The nation’s top military commander painted a dark picture Tuesday of future U.S. defense capabilities clouded by shrinking Pentagon budgets and adversaries’ technological advances that he said would erode American battlefield superiority.
Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided his sobering views as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated evaluation of U.S. military strength issued every four years.
Dempsey predicted that it would become increasingly difficult to balance the competing demands of protecting allies abroad, securing Americans at home and deterring future wars.
“The smaller and less capable military outlined in the QDR makes meeting these obligations more difficult,” he said. “Most of our platforms and equipment will be older, and our advantages in some domains will have eroded. Our loss of depth across the force could reduce our ability to intimidate opponents from escalating conflicts.”
Dempsey added: “Moreover, many of our most capable allies will lose key capabilities. The situation will be exacerbated given our current readiness concerns, which will worsen over the next three or four years.”
Dempsey’s perspective was more pessimistic than that of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
“As we move off the longest continuous war footing in our nation’s history, this QDR explains how we will adapt, reshape and rebalance our military for the challenges and opportunities of the future,” Hagel said in a statement.
Dempsey issued his warnings as President Barack Obama sent Congress a 2015 budget for the entire government on Tuesday that provides the Pentagon just over $600 billion.
That’s $13 billion less than current funding, but $26 billion more than provided in a budget deal that Congress approved in December by large bipartisan majorities.
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
The general is first and foremost a bureaucrat and the first rule of bureaucracy is that your budget must always get bigger.
Think for a second: He can’t figure out how to spend $600B to defend our country adequately.
That’s not a General officer, that’s a budget-guarding bureaucrat.
He’s got a point on closing bases and obsolete weapons systems
A smaller weaker standing Federal Army makes secession a much easier prospect.
Laws rocket?
Here you go again. ANY chart that displays “percentage” on the left axis is designed to mislead.
Deterrence to protect others, not against us. We're spending hundreds of billions of our dollars so other countries don't have to.
Is it? Or will it force other countries to step up and spend their own money to defend themselves?
Dempsey is one of the military pansies who is responsible for this disasterous situation. He was more concerned with gays in the military than the rise of the Communist nations and radical Islam.
I’m surprised that his lips are not bleeding from kissing Comrade Obama’s ass so much.
To think that I knew men like Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer and Maxwell Taylor, and now we have cowards like Dempsey. We have falled so far so fast. That’s what you get when you elect a marxist as president and those who are supposed to protect our country from men like Obama, now bow down to him.
LAWS are complicated and not reload-able. RPGs can take out tanks armor and helos and can also be used as poor mans artillery if massed.
I actually like the percentage increase better than I like “dollars” because that doesn’t mean anything when they pay a private $1000 a year and we pay a private a package that probably totals 35,000 a year (counting all benefits actually used). Of course their dollar costs are lower than ours, but they get a lot more bang for their buck.
Probably the same with operations and training. Something tells me they don’t pay a dime for “maneuver damage” and that field rats consist of rice, sometimes served with pepper and sometimes not.
Yes, that’s why I posted a chart with percentage change since 2011 in the title at the top of the chart, to mislead.
Amen. It is horrific that the Pentagon’s focus was diverting millions to housing and health care benefits for “same sex” playthings while the rest of the force was manipulated like a kite. But that is the price we pay for very poor choices by the American voter.
“Yes, that’s why I posted a chart with percentage change since 2011 in the title at the top of the chart, to mislead.”
That’s exactly what that chart does - mislead. If you posted one of absolute budgets, it would look very different, it wouldn’t give the appearance of “we’ve got to catch up” that bureaucrats such as yourself like to portray.
It's a conspiracy, but we are not supposed to tell you.
China Significantly Boosts Military Spending
Yeah understand and its helpful for what you stated. But that’s a different analysis and has nothing to do with comparing our strength vs china.
A lot of times it takes a war to determine how effective different weapons systems are and how well trained and led an army might be.
With a smaller military maybe we’ll mind our own business. And hope like hell we don’t get attacked here. We’re broke yet going around bailing other countries out of their mess. Why is it always us that has to do something? Plus, I’m tired of Americans dieing in wars that they fight with at least one hand tied behind their backs.
“Yes, everyone is “misleading” you.”
As you know charting percentage changes is designed to mislead the reader by depriving them of context from which to judge the overall picture.
It creates hysteria where there should be none.
The US military budget exceeds $600B. How much bigger does it need to be? $700B $1T?
I submit that $600B ought to be enough to fund our nations defense for a year. If it’s not enough, why not?
Will you give a straight answer, or will you post more pictures?
It’s way past time for Europe, Israel, Japan and S. Korea to man up and defend themselves.
You have all the answers, you tell me. $100 billion? $0.5 billion? $300 billion. What’s that? Oh, it’s a pretty complex question? You bet it is. That is why we have budgets, hearings, and expert testimony. I’ll give you my opinion: DoD spending should never fall below 5% GDP.
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