Posted on 07/18/2011 6:01:45 AM PDT by moshiach
Army to shrink to smallest size since Boer war while reservists' role bolstered • Regulars to fall from 100,000 to 84,000 after 2014
Under reforms to the Ministry of Defence published last month, senior members of the military will lose their jobs if they let costs get out of control and fail to manage budgets. The heads of the army, Royal Navy and RAF will be held accountable as never before, and responsible for cutting the number of officers.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Preferably with an active army of 100,000 that can be rapidly deployed. Boots on the ground to hold that front line.
One thing that (joke) of a rebel war in Libya has made me aware of is, it does not take that many boots on the ground to hold ground and advance. When you have sea superiority to launch 24/7 air attacks to establish air superiority.
Well, they don’t have the Boers to kick around anymore.
Yes, we can still go in quickly, in a small way, to do small jobs.
Other than that, unfortunately, if you annoy us, we'll have to nuke you.
So don't p*ss us off.
“One thing that (joke) of a rebel war in Libya has made me aware of is, it does not take that many boots on the ground to hold ground and advance. When you have sea superiority to launch 24/7 air attacks to establish air superiority.”
I believe they’re giving up sea superiority and air superiority as well. They’re bowing out of the international arena so they can service their failing socialist agendas at home. It’s guns or butter. Or, in this case, guns or free education, food, lodging and whathaveyou for Muslims.
No, the US shouldn't follow the UK's lead in this. They have a different situation than we do, starting with the fact that one of the very few things that our Constitution actually explicitly names as being a responsibility of Congress to fund is the military. I know that you're a single issue voter with the debt being your main concern, but cutting the military is not the way to go about reducing the debt.
Bluntly put, if you want to cut the debt, start with Social Security and Medicare. Neither are Constitutional and both are draining us dry. I feel for those people, like myself, who have paid into these two systems all of their working life, but they were a scam to begin with and they remain a scam so why should these people expect to get their money back when a scam is finally ended? We did fine without them for years, so why can't we do without them now? Cut them, along with everything else that isn't named in the Constitution, out of the budget.
If the people want these kinds of things, then let them vote on it at the State level and implement it there. I shouldn't have to pay for some yahoo in New York or California to be able to live without working at anything when I live and work in West Virginia.
Having a military is like having an insurance policy—its a costly burden when things are fine, but worth every penny when you really need it. Most of Europe has concluded they don’t need a military given nearly 70 years of relative peace + the demise of the Soviet threat. But, when militaries get small enough and societies are defenseless, oportunistic threats may start to come out of the woodwork.
The way the UK is going, pretty soon their “military” is going to be capable of ceremonial duties only.
Any remember when ALL of Europe could stop two/three small balkin counties from killing each other? And came crying to America?
Paper Tigers. But at least they will now have more money for free health care and housing for illegal immigrants...
Have been told that 1/3 of U.S. Marines have been retired. Anybody else heard this?
It's always bothered me when citizens of this country crow about defense spending. One clearly and definitively spelled out role of the Federal government in the United States is "to provide for the common defense."
Unless DC is going to remove every gun-ban and anti-Second Amendment law on the books and allow the citizenry to provide for the full common defense, then they only reasonable role for the Federal government is to defend this country. If that means stockpiling weapons and upgrading our arsenals, then Dammit, that's what we do! Dominance through overwhelming strength!
The US Federal government is a bloated, pock-marked pig roasted in an Indian summer Mississippi fenwallow. It needs to be cut back to the Constitutionally-appropriated size and the citizenry needs to be less concerned about American Idol and more concerned about their freedom!
This isn't smart; this is crazy (at least when applied to the United States).
Britain may have decided that it doesn't need to protect itself anymore and can rely on the United States for its protection. Considering that most of the rest of NATO has long since decided to mooch off the United States, I can't really blame the British parliament for deciding to follow the lead of the rest of our allies.
However, the only reason NATO members can cut their militaries down to levels below what's necessary to defend themselves is because the United States is doing the defending for them.
Make no mistake: I'm all in favor of quick-strike forces. I strongly support the National Guard and our various Reserve forces. I understand the role of the Air Force and the Marine Corps and of various elite troops within the Army and the Navy in working as force multipliers.
However, a certain amount of critical mass is necessary to occupy and hold territory, as we're finding out the hard way in both Iraq and Afghanistan. There's a limit to how effective local troops are without decades of training, and when we essentially bribe local forces to do work for us, we run the risk of creating well-armed (if not well-trained) troops with only ephemeral loyalty to the goals and mission of the United States.
Some people think large armies are obsolete. Go tell that to the South Koreans who are facing the threat of North Korea, and behind them, China.
My brother-in-law was in the South Korean Special Forces. I may know more than a little bit about the benefit of highly-trained elite troops and of airpower to deter and if necessary to defeat a large traditional army such as that of North Korea. But anyone who thinks that an active duty American Army of 100,000 personnel can work needs to realize that isn't even enough troops to deal with the North Koreans, let alone a concerted attack by China or one of the other second-tier powers in the world which would be greatly emboldened by an evisceration of the United States military.
Some people will say an active duty army of 100,000 could work if coupled with a strong National Guard and reserve units, as well as a smaller but armed-to-the-teeth Air Force and Marine Corps. If we could follow the Israeli model of rapidly mobilizing huge reserve units to supplement a smaller active duty force, it might work. But we'd have to prove it by totally destroying an enemy who decided our smaller active-duty military wasn't an effective deterrent and decided to try their luck. I don't want to see something like that happen if Iran, North Korea, or even some tinpot dictator in Latin America decided the American military was no longer an effective deterrent to their ambitions.
Bluntly put, the military has become an operating subsidy for investors overseas, and a disproportionate burden on the American taxpayer. Put them on the borders to defend this country, thank you. That IS what the Constitution says they are for.
Right now, we're still a major power but if we reduce our military, it wouldn't be long before someone else would come calling with the idea of taking what is ours since we can't defend it any longer. Think that's not the case? Go back and look at what caused the second World War. Hitler sensed weakness in Britain and France and pounced on the chance to expand. That's the best known case of this idea that military weakness, even if it's just a perception, invites war, but it's a well known maxim and has been proven time and time again.
We don't have the guts to use nukes now, so we have to have a large conventional military. That's just the way the world works.
Only if we want to join once mighty Britain as a 3rd rate power.
And cede the Pacific to China among other things.
Would you rather fight our enemies on their soil or ours?
We've had one too many 9/11s. I don't want another one.
Fortress America worked in the days that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were an effective barrier to foreign attack. They no longer are, and haven't been since at least a few years after the end of World War II, and quite probably since 1941. (Granted, we never had a Japanese invasion of California, but if Midway and a few other battles had gone the other way, we could easily have found out whether the Japanese were capable of mounting an invasion. Full Japanese control of Indonesian oil, Philippine food, a network of Pacific island bases, and the resources of Australia could have made an invasion very difficult to repel.)
Today, with asymmetrical warfare capabilities, the only way to stop a serious terrorist attack in the United States is to keep rogue states afraid of mounting such an attack. That requires the ability to project power far beyond our shores. Hopefully that power will rarely be used, but if it's not present, we'll rapidly wish we had it.
I agree completely, bring all of our troops home and let the rest of the world worry about it's own defense for once, but I'll fight against any defense spending cuts tooth and nail if we do that. That kind of action, while correct, would lead to us either standing aside while the rest of the world goes to war (and I don't see us standing aside for long) or we're going to have to finally deal with the fact that all cultures are not equal and some do not deserve to survive. I'd love to see us finally come to grips with this idea again and rid ourselves of this notion that diversity is the same thing as righteousness, but at this point I don't see it happening unless we bleed for it.
Hahaha Like the way you think.
Theirs. Which is why we need to get the Muslims out of the country. That is a domestic problem.
We've had one too many 9/11s. I don't want another one.
Then you have the wrong strategy. Despite spending TRILIONS on our military, they couldn't shoot down two unarmed subsonic planes within US airspace with nearly an hour's notice, something that could have been handled by a couple of guys with Stingers. 9-11 was not due to our lack of foreign intervention, but was due to a failure of emphasis upon the militia-based system our founders intended. Were every American male trained in military service, armed, equipped with communications, and empowered to make an arrest, 9-11 could never have happened. Without the FAA socializing the risk of crappy cockpit doors and unarmed pilots with their approval and disallowing armed citizens as passengers, taking over those planes would have been dicey.
You are dead wrong about 9-11.
I would MUCH rather put my money into Standard missiles, lasers, and other SDI assets than carriers, tanks, and heavy airlift capacity. I would also love to see proper inspection of container ships. Make them build a floating port and offload at sea for all I care. I'm NOT paying to defend the rest of the whole damned planet.
Fully agree. Cut this, cut the EPA, reduce the salaries of all congressmen, senators, the president, state senators etc. by 25% to 50% and we'll save a bundle straight away.
That changes everything..
Acceptible "Tooth to tail" ratio varies, depending on type of operation, and logistical requirements. OTOH, the assumption is that we'll never see another operation like Iraq again.
Just hope the Chicoms read the same manual..
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