Posted on 07/25/2014 7:10:34 AM PDT by US Navy Vet
Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that he would like to “turn the Pentagon into a triangle.”
“I always tell people I’m a hawk,” Gingrich said. “But I’m a cheap hawk.”
Gingrich honored the 20th anniversary of his “Contract with America” by pointing conservatives back to a key point in his Republican blueprint, arguing that federal bureaucracy cannot simply be “fixed” but must be overhauled and replaced.
The Pentagon, Gingrich stressed, must be included in this overhaul.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
He had his time, now he is just a has-been politician trying to say something relevant and failing. We need to strengthen our military, not gut it. I guess he thinks he is brilliant with his pentagon to triangle comparison.
A day late and a dollar short.
I spent quite a few thousand days in uniform, am not a Gingrich fan by any means, and I still agree with him here.
The DOD upper echelon is fat with pork, waste, and redundancy.
Don’t rock the boat?
To Gingrich, this “paper-based” bureaucracy creates too many levels of hierarchy, slows the process down and increases the overall cost of running the Pentagon. His solution is to cut this bureaucracy down and appropriate the saved money to combat troops and combat equipment, thus transforming the Pentagon into a “triangle.”
What, exactly, is wrong with that?
Had his chance. Blew it. Now go away.
He’s just angling for a cabinet post in a future Republican administration.
“What, exactly, is wrong with that?”
What is wrong is that it is meaningless. ANYONE can say, “Cut waste and spend money efficiently”, but HOW? What specific proposals does Newt want that would make the Pentagon a Triangle?
FWIW, I spent 25 years in the military and I think the military made good use of modern technology compared to many business companies. It certainly made better use of technology than most non-defense government agencies. I sure didn’t need to worry that all my emails would disappear if my hard drive crashed, and I retired in 2008...
People complain about the bureaucracy and then they complain about all the things the bureaucracy was put there to prevent. Cost overruns, planning shortages and so on.
They are bloated but gutting it isnt the answer.
He’s not talking about gutting. He’s talking about starting over again completely. Time to replace the coal-fired steam engine with a gas turbine.
Sometimes the old ways are the best. DoD has bloat, any organization its size does, but it also does some things really well.
If you think rebuilding will not effect the good things as well as the bad things you are mistaken.
No one knows what he is talking about:
” In the spirit of the Reinventing Government initiative, Gingrich told the House GOP, “I believe we can overhaul the mid-level bureaucracy of the Pentagon and that our goal should be to turn the Pentagon into a triangle by reducing at least 40 percent of the unnecessary duplication and waste that’s in the system.”
Really? What 40% “unnecessary duplication and waste”? Why not 38%, or 50%? Where did he get 40%? Oh, that’s right - 2 sides of a pentagon are 40%, so his number matches his slogan. Great!
And what is waste? Obama and others consider the F-22 waste. In the 70s, many democrats argued the F-15 was waste. What waste is he talking about, and how does he plan to eliminate waste and not good stuff?
Its not like our very freedom and lives depend on it.
Just make it a cicle, complete with the jerks in the White House.
Stop subsidizing European security through NATO for starters.
Near the end of my career, I worked operational test. I got to see the acquisition process, and it certainly has waste - mostly directed in the form of Congressional set-asides and contracts written to favor the manufacturer because that is what the politicians wanted.
However, there is no way to reduce that waste without reducing the number of congressmen. And while tempting, I’m not convinced that LESS local control of politicians would be a good thing.
What Newt is really saying is cut programs. IMHO, we are already underfunding needed upgrades in weapons.
I lost all respect from him when he sat down on the sofa with Nancy.
Its time for him to shut up.
Just a reminder that Gingrich actually CUT the budget deficit and debt while in office. This is what’s wrong with America today, everybody bitches but won’t vote for the ones to fix it. As it is, I will vote for Cruz, but if Newt runs again, he will get a strong look from me. Almost anyone will tell you he always the smartest guy in the room, but for some reason we vote for a guy we want to have a beer with. Well, I’m trying to get the country fixed, not drink with politicians.
As a military retiree, here’s my take: there is room to trim the Pentagon budget, but (invariably) the cuts come from the “tooth” and not the “tail.”
A few examples: the Army is getting rid of 10 combat brigades. Why? The brass will claim that “advances in technology” will allow us to get by with fewer trigger-pullers, but Iraq and Afghanistan debunked that myth again. We got rid of 10 brigades because Obama and Co. mandated the cuts (can’t touch social programs)and combat units are manpower and resource intensive. Cut a brigade and there is a huge ripple effect in the support area as well. So, the reductions go even deeper, and so does the decrease in our combat power.
The Navy plans to “sideline” almost two dozen cruisers and destroyers for a few years, before modernizing them and bringing those ships back into the fleet. Does anyone with half a brain actually believe those vessels will ever return to service once they’ve been mothballed? And once again, the cuts are aimed at manpower-intensive systems (and combat capabilities). So far, the carriers have escaped the cuts, but if you reduce your cruiser and destroyer squadrons, it becomes a risker proposition to send the carriers into harm’s way.
A similar scenario is unfolding in the Air Force. To fund the F-35, large numbers of older aircraft will be retired. The A-10 dodged that bullet this year, but it’s a sure bet the same proposal will be made in 2016 (and every year beyond) until the Hawg is retired.
Never mind that the platform is more capable than ever, and the F-35 can carry only a fraction of the payload (but it is stealthy). And never mind the A-10 is optimal for the types of conflicts we will fight in the years ahead. The Air Force is so cash-strapped they will have to sideline the A-10 (along with significant numbers of F-15s and F-16s) to pay for the JSF—and hope there are no MRCs until the F-35 begins arriving in significant numbers.
The Marine Corps plan is similar to the Army’s; cut manpower-intensive units to preserve big-ticket items like the F-35. Some estimates show the Corps’ end strength dropping as low as 150,000 by the end of this decade; if that happens, it means one out of four active duty Marines will be pushed out.
All of this is lost on Mr. Gingrich. He thinks a clever speech line is a substitute for an effective national security strategy. Like a lot of his “ideas,” it’s very short of specifics.
“Stop subsidizing European security through NATO for starters. “
When Iraq invaded Kuwait, I landed on the ramp in Incirlik Turkey a few days later. Why? Because our forward deployment with NATO meant we had the manpower and logistical supplies in position, so all we had to do was fly the planes from England and land there.
Most of the European bases have been closed. RAF Upper Heyford is now used to store cars. We’ve already cut back big time.
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