Slashing America's Defense: A Suicidal Trajectory

Commentary ^ | January 2012 | Max Boot

[neverdem]

The U.S. armed forces have spent the past decade fighting two of the largest counterinsurgency campaigns in their history. In Iraq, they have dramatically reduced the threat from al-Qaeda and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdist Army, and they are now in the process of doing the same to the Taliban and the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

--snip--

In all, the defense budget could shrink by 31 percent over the next decade, according to Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. That compares with cuts of 53 percent after the Korean War, 26 percent after the Vietnam War, and 34 percent after the Cold War.

--snip--

After our early failures in Iraq, President Bush belatedly expanded the size of the Army and Marine Corps—although not enough to make up for the post–Cold War cuts. (The Army today has 200,000 fewer active-duty troops than in 1991.) Emergency appropriations also provided hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the wars, enabling the purchase of thousands of new armored vehicles, unmanned aircraft, and other important enablers. But there was never enough money to make up for the procurement holiday of the 1990s.

We are still suffering the consequences of the post–Cold War drawdown. The Navy, down from 546 ships in 1990 to 284 today (the lowest level since 1930), is finding it hard to fight Somali pirates, police the Persian Gulf, and deter Chinese expansion in the Western Pacific. The Army and Marine Corps are forced to maintain a punishing operational tempo that drives out too many bright young officers and non-commissioned officers. The Air Force, which has been reduced from 82 fighter squadrons in 1990 to 39 today, has to fly decades-old aircraft until they collapse. The average age of our tanker aircraft is 47 years, of strategic bombers...

[cherry]

its not that we'll spend less on the defense...its that we'll spend less than we were going to...

the military is facing exactly what cities, counties, states and the feds are facing....too many legacy costs....pensions....medical....

its coming to a time now where paying people who don't work and keeping up their health insurance is meaning sacrificing present and future workers...

all of this could be solved easily but they won't do it...

[El Gato]

its not that we'll spend less on the defense...its that we'll spend less than we were going to...

I don't think that was true if you used inflation adjusted dollars rather than "then year" dollars. But even if it was, it won't be true after the second half trillion in cuts.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

There’s no reason to be in western europe. It’s time the socialists carried their own weight.

[KeyLargo]

Posted 1/28/12 10:20 am

WASHINGTON (AP) - The lineup of weapons the Pentagon has picked to fit President Barack Obama’s new forward-looking defense strategy features relics of the past.
There’s the Air Force’s venerable B-52 bomber. The current model entered service shortly before Obama was born.
There’s the even older U-2 spy plane. It began flying in 1955 and burst into the spotlight in May 1960 when Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union.
When Obama announced his new defense strategy early this month, he said that after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. will “get rid of outdated Cold War-era systems.”
But when details of the Pentagon’s 2013 budget were announced days ago, it was clear that some prominent remaining Cold War-era “systems” will live on.

http://www.wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=2382985&spid=

[neverdem]

There’s no reason to be in western europe. It’s time the socialists carried their own weight.

There’s no reason to defend Western Europe. What's the threat? We're there for forward deployment and the support of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.