When you hear the line that our military will be decreased in numbers to pre-WWII levels, bear in mind that the long logistics tail of today's military is quite a bit longer than 70 years ago. In other words, there are fewer rifle barrels on the front lines for any given number of people in the Army.
From what I'm able to determine, of course. AM, you drop by on occasion, or other military voices who stop by, please let me know if I'm wrong!
Ever since the Spanish-American war the united state has been killing foreigners in far off lands.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be nice to save the money, and move closer to a non-interventional government?
OK, I give up. Where do you get that I want to intervene in foreign affairs and go "killing foreigners in far off lands." from what I wrote?
ReplyDeleteI just don't see those words anywhere in there. Or anywhere in the entire four years I've been writing this blog. No matter how hard I try.
It is no accident that Obama is gutting the military. Do we really know who he is? Who placed him schools that your kids will never get into? Who paid for his education? Who brought him together with well connected people? Who placed him on this fence post? Who does he owe? Whose bidding is he doing? We are being set up to fail and for anyone with eyes to see it should be obvious. I think most of those in public life are so afraid of the false racism charge that they refuse to be the one to ask the tough questions. I think others are happy to think that finally America is going to get what it deserves; America's chickens are coming home to roost. Where did I hear that before...
ReplyDeleteDo we really know who he is? Relatively, yes :-D. I saw Dinesh D'Sousa's movie.
ReplyDeleteI forget who it was within the last couple of weeks who said if Obama wasn't black he would have been impeached by now, but everyone is so afraid of the "raaacism" charge, he gets away with murder.
In short, yes, you are getting fewer trigger pullers.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that number is being minimized greatly. The Army is working very hard to change over Brigades from a 5 to 1 battalion to HQ to a 6 to 1 ratio by adding an extra infantry battalion to the remaining brigades.
This means we maximize the number of trigger pullers we still have at our unit of action formations.
However that means we will decrease capabilities in tactical UAV coverage, organic artillery, and rely more intensely on our digitized communications to provide effective command and control for a unit now breaking the "3 to 5" HQ to subordinate rule.
Simply put we are trying to make the best of a bad situation by cutting staff and support positions first.
There's a wise-ass economist's saying that productivity improvements have their place, but it still takes four people to play a string quartet.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure some of what's being done now by multiple people might be subject to productivity improvement, in at least some corners of the logistics trail, but I suspect that some things simply need one on one interaction.
Wasn't this a '90s Pentagon doctrine? Light forces with high tech weapons require fewer fighters?
Well said, Graybeard.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I misunderstood "fewer rifle barrels on the front lines" as a complaint on your part.
Obviously, I understand fewer rifle barrels as an improvement in foreign relations. So how about a little non-interventionism?
Milton - sure. Easy peasy. There are few valid roles for the federal government, but defense is one. Since the purpose of an army is to kill people and break things, the more rifles on the pointy end, the more likely that army is to be effective. Just like street goblins or home invaders don't like to pick on well-armed people, I think bad countries don't want to mess with the strongest countries.
ReplyDeleteNot a molecule of intervention. I just want us to be so strong that nobody wants to f*** with us.
In your original comment you said "wouldn't it be nice to save the money and move toward a more non-interventional government?" The whole point of the cartoon was that the money isn't being saved, it's being funneled into the welfare sector.
Far from win-win, it's lose-lose-lose. We get weaker, we expand the population that votes for a living, and we don't help our desperate financial situation.
I wrote up a longer post that more thoroughly goes into the details of the cuts. It should show up in your links to this post area.
ReplyDelete