Military readiness?

me

[rey]

I spoke with an acquaintance in the Marine Corps yesterday. He said they hadn't even blanks for field training exercises, that they live fire only to qualify. Crew served weapons hardly ever fire. On a visit to Mirimar he said the vast majority of pilots hardly fly at all and that the majority of squadrons haven't the flight hours required to legally fly let alone be flight/combat ready. Does anyone live near a major air field have comment on the number of flights they see? I noticed that Travis flight numbers seem low, but I only occasionally drive by.

Does anyone have links to news sources on this, particularly from major news outlets? How about Navy/Marine Corps times? Is anyone aware of military news source stories?

It seems to me to be worse than pre WWII levels of readiness.

[Future Snake Eater]

I see some pretty big strategic level budget cuts, but I can’t speak to the tactical level. I do know that we had to nearly cancel a pistol range due to an Army-wide shortage of 9mm ammo.

[USAF80]

They are still wasting money on stupid stuff. They asked for suggestions a few years ago and only implemented a few when all would save a ton of cash.

[Future Snake Eater]

The amount of fraud, waste, and abuse I saw in Afghanistan was appalling. But since practically a hand-wave was all you needed to justify buying anything, there was never any issue with the purchases. Nowadays, at my unit for example, we’re spending a couple of hundred grand to put in a command-wing bathroom (so the command team doesn’t have to walk a few extra feet down the hallway like us regular peasants) while post DPW would only hand out 2 shovel-fulls of salt to prevent our loading dock area from icing over this winter (and you have to provide your own container).

The Army’s motto should be “Penny wise and pound foolish.”