When we ordered the B-52 we ordered 600. The B-1 we had 76 and we just moth- balled half of them in the last six months. When we ordered The B-2 we where going to get 60 I believe, we cancelled half because of cost and ended up with 30. When Regan took office we had about 70 over sea military bases now I believe we are down to just 15.
We use to have an active Army for each section of the country four of them. Now we just have one active and half of it is made up of reserves. Our Navy fleet was reuduced by at least one-third in just 8 years of Clinton. I know we have good technology but most of our military planes are 30 years old and you can only recondition and update the same frames so many times.
Am I saying we are washed up, not hardly we still have the most powerful military in the world. But we are just a shadow of what we where even in the gulf war.The doctrine that we have to be able to fight two seperate wars has been done away with and while we are under a republican president.
When GW took office I expected a big build up and I think so did he. Then I heard we need to wait and do a study and then I heard we need a new type of military that is leaner ,lighter and more mobile. Sure we need to modernize but what I also afraid it means is we can no longer afford a large one. How can we when 2 of those B-2's cost us more than all 600 of the B-52's?
There's a simpler reason for this than decline. Modern airplains are fearsomely expensive and complex creatures to build. The higher tech a system becomes, the longer it takes to build. For a B-29, you basically needed what amounted to a riveter and welder to produce it. For an F-22, you need an electrical engineer and a programmer. It's all about price and the complexity of the thing being produced. It takes longer to produce fewer planes today because the planes being produced are much, much more complex and expensive. I don't know for certain, but I suspect if you were to take a look at the man-hours necessary for the production of a P-51, an F-4, an F-16, and a YF-22, you would see that it steadily increaces. So too would the price of all of the above mentioned systems increase almost logarithmically. It's a necessary evil if you want to have the most advanced combat aircraft in the world.
We use to have an active Army for each section of the country four of them. Now we just have one active and half of it is made up of reserves. Our Navy fleet was reuduced by at least one-third in just 8 years of Clinton. I know we have good technology but most of our military planes are 30 years old and you can only recondition and update the same frames so many times.
Well, one ought remember that our military mission is no longer to stop the Soviet hordes pouring through the Fulda Gap. As such, we really don't need that big a military. The years from 1941-1968-ish (I'm using '68 as the cutoff year since that's about when the Democrats adopted anti-anti-Communism as their policy) were unique in several respects. Yes, there was a huge draftee army and a general bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, but it was due to extraordinary circumstances. Indeed, since we don't really have the threat of fighting a land power in the near future, we don't really face the need that there was to create the huge army that we had during the Cold War.
On the other hand, the area in which we face a real weakness is procurement. By the time a system has gone from the drawing board to being fielded, a young PFC will be a crusty old Sergeant Major. This is an extreme weakness brought about by excessive bureacracy, but it's hardly a harbinger of our decline as a military power.