Posted on 04/20/2006 4:32:49 PM PDT by neverdem
--snip--
Budgets reflected this love affair with aerial killing. Since Gen. Huba's first exposition in the early 1990s, 70 percent of defense investments, more than $1.3 trillion, have gone into shock and awe, delivered by Air Force and Navy aircraft and missiles.
The Army got 16 percent. Thus, we come today to an amazingly perverse strategic circumstance. We have more first-line fighter aircraft costing $50 million to $400 million per copy than we have Army and Marine infantry squads, costing less than $100,000 each.
Since Gen. Huba's experiments began, we have achieved a "kill ratio" in aerial combat of 257 to one over enemy air...
--snip--
So here we are trying to find a way to rid Iran of its nuclear weapons and the only warfighting tool in the tool box is shock and awe. Simply put, there is no ground option. We have too few soldiers to fight the wars we have, much less take on another enemy. Even if we had the ground forces, without an aerial maneuver option we could never hope to reach Iran's nuclear facilities by a ground invasion. So we'll blow them all up with bombs. Right.
I'm quite sure that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prays daily for a dose of shock and awe. It would be a badge of honor to have survived a fruitless aerial killing campaign only to resume serious work on building a bomb with the full support of the morally aggrieved Iranian people.
In time, of course, we could add an aerial maneuver tool to the toolbox, a capability that would give the president at least one option for the future other than aerial assault. But the plan now is to reduce, not increase, the size of the Army and Marine Corps.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
That makes two of us!
That makes no sense. The salaries of the squad alone will put you over $100,000. Benefits, equipment, training costs, food, supplies, etc. dwarf the salaries.
How on Earth does a former commander of the Army War College come up with the staement "Army and Marine infantry squads, costing less than $100,000 each"?
Maybe that's the value of all their equipment, rations and basic load of all ammo, rockets, guided anti-tank missiles, etc.
He has to be excluding personnel and training costs. I guess you could arm a squad for less than 100K. I've seen single "black boxes" on an aircraft that go for $180K.
Then again what does a humvee or a striker cost?
Exactly. I don't think it should be viewed as a zero-sum game between advanced aircraft and ships vs. infantry squads. Yes, budgeting can require hard choices, but in this case the real problem is that our Army and Marine forces have been cut too much and we need more defense budget, period, to support them. We need more ground troops, better equiped, but that need not come at the expense of Air Force and Naval forces that are essential to dominating the battle space. If we had not had such utter domination in both Gulf Wars our losses among Army and Marines could have been much higher.
"Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics, Congressmen talk pork"
Sure. the author thinks he can make a point with BS statistics.
"Congress hates to raise military pay and benefits and is not particularly fond of an extremely large number of active U.S. Army divisions"
I agree about inserting pork into the defense budget. However, since 2001 the payraises have been very good.
Bush never gets credit for it.
Of course he rarely takes credit for anything ether.
Well im sure his troopers can ride around in horses, WWII was ended with bombs,the army did not invade the big island.
In every major conflict the Air Force goes in first to scratch targets prior to the Army coming in and living large.
The Army as a service needs to fix it's own problems and come up with a way to fight wars without thousands of field artillery pieces and tanks.
Are they still tooling around in Iraq in M1 tanks? I dont think so.
They are using airlift and helicopters, not riding around in tanks. The logistics is almost all contracted out and the Air Force is riding shotgun on the Army's logistical convoys. The Army is dependent upon the USAF and the Navy to get it's stuff in theater - up to 6-8 months to 1 1/2 years after the USAF and Navy and Marines have already been in place and bombing the bejesus out of the target country.
You complain about conventional munitions, I would bet you would not want to be on the recieving end of the Air Force's power.
Having said that-you can't win a war without an Army, despite what the RMA types seem to think.
Hey! Don't forget about Naval Aviation.
Do you think conventional munitions will have much effect on installations buried 100 feet or more underground? Do you think centrifuges will be on the surface?
Sorry. Unlike the Army, the USAF has been testing Bunker Busters since the end of Gulf War 1.
You still want to be in one of those bunkers?
I had a little experience fighting the manpower beancounters when they wanted to cut one of my units. Essentially, the beancounters formula is that an active duty enlisted costs about $100K a year whether they are handing out basket balls at the gym or they are a UDT Seal. The cost comes from salary, medical, the gym, the chow hall, the barracks and all the support infrastructure costs.
The Pentagon weenies claim every 10,000 personnel cost One $Billion annually. It's understandable they don't want to increase end strength if they don't have to.
Personally, I believe Clinton and Murtha cut too deeply back in 93.
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