Posted on 01/13/2013 7:42:23 PM PST by ducttape45
WASHINGTON (AP) — Air Force leaders will cut flying hours by nearly 20 percent and prepare for a possible end to all noncombat or noncritical flights from late July through September if Congress can't agree on a budget and billions of dollars in automatic cuts are triggered.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
This is the deal:
We must stop outsourcing jobs now.
Bring back US jobs.
The Tyrant will do for the Air Force and military
EXACTLY what he did to NASA.
This whole budget ordeal has a lot of people in civil service scared. Many of the guys in my shop are worried their positions will be cut.
just do it....the military is just as bloated as the rest of the federal govt....
Military spending is going the way of cops and firemen and teachers anyway.
The employment cost is increasing hugely.
I say cut the unconstitutional crap and keep the Constitutional stuff like defense.
/johnny
I’l be more inclined to agree with you when we hear that shrimp treadmill program has finally gotten the axe.
“just do it....the military is just as bloated as the rest of the federal govt....”
No doubt the military is bloated. However, this is NOT getting rid of bloat...it is curtailing training to maintain military readiness. A military that does not train is a military unable to do its job when necessary.
I AM NOT advocating caving in to Obama to save military readiness. However, we need not be naive about what some of this process will produce...a military weak and leaving us vulnerable to attack.
I agree, johnny.
How about we park Airforce 1, and quit shuttling Moochelle
around the globe, so we can scramble a few jets for pilot
training?
Including $50 Million vacations for the First Mooch and her snarling posse?
Congressional "fact-finding" junkets?
I want to keep a strong military.
Spend time at the range, then, and do a little PT every day. When it comes down to it, we, the people, are it.
/johnny
Don’t you know that pointing out how bloated and wasteful the military is on FR is a capital crime? Prepare for lectures on how “out-moded” our aircraft carriers are and how unprepared we are for a massive invasion by Canada or something, and for these reasons and more we should never question military spending.
Teacher’s unions or people protecting their defense jobs—I can hardly tell a difference, the methods and arguments are all the same.
“I AM NOT advocating caving in to Obama to save military readiness. However, we need not be naive about what some of this process will produce...a military weak and leaving us vulnerable to attack.”
I know that my response will grate with you and many reading it, but I think our military [so long as it remains under Obama’s control] should indeed be cut.
Considering how the Obamunnists are trying (and succeeding) in politicizing the armed forces and using them to further their agenda, perhaps the best thing we can do is to give him (and the ‘rat communists) as little to work with as possible. The left would turn the forces at their disposal upon us, if they could.
Time and time again here on FR, I’ve heard the phrase used “starve the beast”. Right now the United States military has been transmogrified into an agent of that beast.
Once Obama is gone, it will be time for a “restoration” of the military to its traditional role. Then we should support it and rebuild it, as did Reagan in his time.
But ‘til then, starve the beast.
(Moderators, if you consider this reply inappropriate for the tenor of FR, please remove it)
Come on, this reminds me of my state cutting back DMV hours when it had a ‘budget crisis’ instead of cutting the superfluous ‘bloat’ in it’s budget.
It worked for my state: they got the tax increase they wanted. I’m suspicious that the Air Force brass is hoping the same strategy will work for them.
Attack from whom? Even defunded, no military on Earth is a match for ours. Terrorists? What good did our aircraft carriers and stealth bombers do on the morning of 9/11?
Cuts like this are showing up in all the agencies and I don’t have a problem with that. Don’t know about DoD but CMS could trim alot of its bloat and still get the work done.
My question is this: my son is studying for the ASVAB right now and planning to test next month. How do these cuts appear in recruiting? Unless I missed it this article doesn’t really touch on that. My son talks to his recruiter regularly and never hears about hiring or recruiting freezes. Yet one of my friend’s son was riffed last year. So it appears to be an ongoing thing. Should he prepare for a plan B?
Spoken like a true libertarian. The Invisible Hand will protect us.
Or if China decides to flex its newfound muscle we will simply hire them to defend us from themselves. Planning ahead is so over-rated.
To #14: OMG! Viper sighted. FLEE!!!
I swear I’ll never look at another woman again!
cut out all the vacation travel on air force one. that’d save probably a hundred million dollars over the next four years.
Aim low in the US CHAir Force...
“...a possible end to all noncombat or noncritical flights.”
I suppose that would include Air Force One.
I'd refine that to retain combat readiness and protect military pay and allowances. There's alot of PC, social engineering unconstitutional crap intertwined into the defense budget.
Lot of comments from people on this thread who are clueless as to the military, its capabilities and requirements, the threats it needs to respond to, the equipment demanded for its mission, and the training demands it requires.
And these same people ridicule the “low information” Obama voters?
Nigga please..they are doing the same old sh!t that city/counties do...act like the world is coming to an end - complain about losing vital services...when all they have to do is cut down on some “non-value-added” beaurocrats.
It’s a standard approach...pretend that you have to cut essential services - when what you really need to do id cut out some fat.
I would suggest that he have a plan B, in case Congress passes something inane, Obama does something by executive order, and/or the sequestration goes through.
huh? this is the deal we must cut spending....not all military spending is sacred.
Being an active duty F-15 Crew Chief I kind of like this idea. Cutting flying hours by 20% could mean more time to actually fix these worn out, 25 year old pieces of junk. No Fly Fridays, sweet. That’s 18,000-24,000 gallons of fuel saved, countless man hours in mx saved, don’t forget. One less day of a Major telling me the landing gear “felt” like they were slow to retract, not sure though.
Don’t forget Canada has 90% of their population massed within 100 miles of the American border, don’tcha know, eh?
The Canadians. They walk among us. William Shatner. Michael J. Fox. Monty Hall. Mike Meyers. Alex Trebek. All of them Canadians. All of them here. They’ve infiltrated our borders. Think of your children pledging allegiance to the maple leaf. Mayonnaise on everything. Winter 11 months of the year. Anne Murray - all day, every day.
From an old weapons troop; "Corrective action; Repaired short between the headsets."
hmmmmm, I guess $600B doesn’t go as far as it used to.
Exactly...
And now the guy responsible for that extortion is a senator and will probably be re-elected because the stoopid party won’t even bring this up...
Sheesh, OK is looking better and better....
China has no incentive to go to war with such a large trading partner. Capitalism brings peace.
Maybe the Air Force can cut those $10 billion satellite programs that never launch and fly airplanes instead.
One less day of a Major telling me the landing gear “felt” like they were slow to retract, not sure though.
FYI… ;)
Apparently, after every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form, called a 'gripe sheet', which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems; document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight.Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humour. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by Qantas' Pilots and the solutions recorded by maintenance engineers.
Pilots: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
Engineers: Almost replaced left inside main tire.Pilots: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
Engineers: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.Pilots: Something loose in cockpit.
Engineers: Something tightened in cockpit.Pilots: Dead bugs on windshield.
Engineers: Live bugs on back-order.Pilots: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
Engineers: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.Pilots: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
Engineers: Evidence removed.Pilots: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
Engineers: That's what they're for.Pilots: Suspected crack in windshield.
Engineers: Suspect you're right.More Exchanges Between Qantas Pilots and Their Engineers
Pilots: Number 3 engine missing.
Engineers: Engine found on right wing after brief search.Pilots: Aircraft handles funny.
Engineers: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.Pilots: Target radar hums
Engineers: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.Pilots: Mouse in cockpit.
Engineers: Cat installed.And perhaps, the best Qantas joke...
Qantas Pilot: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
Engineers: Took hammer away from midget
That’s what I want to know. The military budget isn’t small. It hasn’t gone down. It’s gone up. Where’s all the money going? Why can’t we have a decent fleet of air force and navy ships over 20 years? Why does it take 15, 20, 40 years these days at the incredible rates we pay to get new ships or planes going? It’s a huge scam IMO.
It’s the old “football team” ploy.
When schools are faced with real budget cuts, the first thing they threaten is the football team. Threaten the most popular item and people will get in line for the next tax increase.
Heaven forbid they would actually cut waste and abuse! WHAZZAT??
Why? Because with the new SECDEF and Secretary of State (along with their courageous commander in chief) we will be friends with everybody. After all, we OWN the Chinese because THEY own our debt. We are now best buds with the Muslim Brotherhood, so what could possibly go wrong there? Iran is waa-a-y overrated. Even if they had a nuke, there is NO WAY they could never hit the USA with it. They're too far away! The War On Terror is over. We declared it victory (well, maybe a "draw"), so now everybody happily can go back to what they were doing before.
Besides, it's not like there are any other choices for cuts out there. It doesn't make sense to cut any of the scores of millions of EBT cards, endless unemployment insurance, exploding Social Security Disability, critical things like "school teachers" and "infrastructure', anything useful like HHS, Energy, Homeland Security, EPA, a million pork programs, and plug the horrendous waste, fraud, and abuse that permeates everything to the rotten core.
Nope. No way.
Just cut the "cops and firemen" instead. Yeah. That's the key!
And what is the per plane cost of the F35 now? The F35 project is like NASAs’ Webb space telescope. “The telescope that ate astronomy.” Well the F35 is the (poorly designed) fighter that ate the air force. Shutting down production of the twin engine world class F22 so as to fund the piss poor single engine F35 was a brilliant idea. /s.
And you probably won't be thinking it was bloated when the nuclear missiles start falling because the military was weakened to a point where it wasn't able to function.
Egads dude, can you warn a brother first before posting pictures like that? Had to run my eyes under the faucet for 30 minutes to get rid of the image seared into my corneas.
Have him prepare for Plan B, C and D if he has the ability to do so.
I’m thinking the same thing. Someone called cherry really got my goat a few posts back. I wonder if it’s a liberal troll out to cause dissension in the ranks.
“Where’s all the money going?”
LOL good one.
“China has no incentive to go to war with such a large trading partner. Capitalism brings peace.”
There’s a somewhat famous book that made exactly that argument. It was published around 1914, when Germany was Britain’s largest trading partner. For the historically challenged that means on the eve of an immensely destructive world war that pitted the two trading partners against each other.
And for other slow learners to chew on, the United States managed to embroil itself into an equally destructive civil war despite the existence of the libertarian’s favorite idol, capitalism.
It’s fascinating how libertarians and marxists both view the world through a lens of economic reductionism. Flip sides of a shallow world view that can’t account for world events that aren’t economic, Islam being a current example.
“Attack from whom? Even defunded, no military on Earth is a match for ours. Terrorists? What good did our aircraft carriers and stealth bombers do on the morning of 9/11?”
You are a fool of the highest magnitude if you think “terrorist” are the only threat to this country. China is preparing to attack us in the next 10-20 years. We must stay prepared for that and a resurgent Russia.
As we have seen over the last 50 years via 'asymmetrical wars' we have fought, we can and have been beaten. Today, one or two EMP pulse weapons fired from a damn container ship 100 miles off our coast can send us back to the stone age.
Don't ever think that no one will attack us if they see the opportunity. There are many willing, and increasingly able to do so.
Don't kid yourself that high-tech airplanes and big nuclear powered carriers can protect us from the threats we currently face. Those weapons would be good for projecting force against the threats we faced 20 or 30 years ago. But they are not defensive weapons adequate for the current and future threats we face in an asymetric terrorist war which is the age we live in.
It is nice to be able to project force anywhere and anytime you need to. But it is far better to be able to protect the homeland and if necessary, allow the rest of the world to take care of it's own problems.
I think it is time we retired from the 'world's policeman' job and take better care of our own security and interests.
Ww1sprang out of secret pacts and alliances, free trade between nations was becoming unpopular among the special interests and protectionist policies were on the rise. This doesn’t change that, ceteris paribus, economic interdependence disincentivises nations from attacking each other.
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