[RitchieAprile]

there will never be the numbers of ships to justify all
the bases from WW2 that were closed during BRAC nor the
need for 10M man armies. If the war gets to all-out destruction-of-enemy mode, the nukes will fly and Fun City
will look as if from Planet of the Apes.

[cva66snipe]

How many active duty total all services do you think we had at the height of the Reagan years lets say in 1987? It wasn't anywhere 10 million. It was 2,174,000. How many active duty military today? Active Military: 1,477,896 [2011]. A downgrade of almost 700,000. The result of that? For over 20 years the troops we have now have been over deployed and over extended. Troops today in some units are seeing more combat time {5- one year long deployments into Iraq, Afghanastan, wherever} than any time in U.S. military history.

BTW we didn't have 10M active even in WW2. The highest it got in WW2 was 8.7M in 1941. Granted we do not need that many now with todays technology. But we do not have enough manpower now to properly man our military either. The cuts were way too deep.

As for ships? If you want to be able too deploy 100 at any given time you best have 400 ships. That is still below Reagan's 595. Anything less {and we are at 285 now as of 2011} is a disaster in the making. I don't care if it's nuclear propulsion submarines, carriers, cruisers, or destroyers the facts of needed maintenance and training times still apply. No ship can deploy indefinitely not a one. Your aircraft in the air force I'm betting about the same ratio applies for maintenance and training.

Which do you really thinks China wants? To nuke us and be unable to use our labor and resources, or march in and take over the nation and all resources? Only the radical fanatics like rouge Islamic nations now pose the nuke threat.

Our governments number one Constitutional duty is defense. It makes no sense to short defense.