Posted on 02/24/2014 5:11:07 AM PST by RetiredArmy
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will reportedly propose a Pentagon budget that will shrink the U.S. Army to its smallest number since 1940 and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets.
The New York Times reported late Sunday that Hagel's proposal, which will be released to lawmakers and the public on Monday, will call for a reduction in size of the military that will leave it capable of waging war, but unable to carry out protracted occupations of foreign territory, as in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Loooooooooooong before cutting any of our military, I suggest they look at all the “waste” in other areas of the gubmint including odumbo’s “zars”, mooooooochelles overfloated “personal staff” (including what they pay their daughters, all the odumbo family vacations, personal flights to hither and yon. I could go on and on and on. This country NEEDS its military, it DOES NOT NEED the odumbos.
So based on your chart, personnel costs in 1980 were $55.4 billion based on a $168 billion defense budget. In 2010 they were $280 billion based on an $847 billion defense budget.
Boom.
Not that I trust Obama or his cronies to do it but I’m sure there is plenty of fat that could be trimmed off the military budget. I know I’ll get a lot of replies from “budget hawks” saying we need to spend trillions more on the military but at some point we have to look at places to cut. We are fighting against a foe that can only attack us if we let them into the country.
“Let me see, our Commanders in Chief are destroying our nuclear capabilities as I write this.”
Paranoia. We have plenty of nukes in silos, subs, and aircraft.
I agree with your points. Interesting that we have to debate the merits of a strong military at a site like Free Republic. Without a strong military and a free country itself then none of the other stuff we discuss at this site even matters. None of it.
I’ve got to disagree. A forward posture is necessary for our security.
Even more, you and I both know that the money spent on defense will not be cut from the budget.
It will then be redirected to entitlements.
And then when a war comes along we’ll have no military budget, an entitlement budget swollen by the former defense budget, and a necessity to recreate a defense budget purely on newly borrowed money. That will make the current debt look like a mole hill.
You really are a paranoid. Seriously, go hide in a cave someplace. The rest of us would prefer to have an adequate military for national defense but then get on with our civilian lives of building a nation and not just living to build a military.
Chicken Little is your new FReeper name in that you believe unless we spend money we don't even have to build a military we cannot afford to fight an enemy you cannot even name means we are all going to die is exactly the parable of Chicken Little.
You really think Hagel is the problem?
I would hope so. Keep the illegal invaders out of here leeching on our tax dollars.
You're spot on right. SOMEONE will step into the void left by our reduced military. Not sure who, but SOMEONE will.
If there is one remaining shred of conservatism left in the House of Representatives, this proposed budget would be DOA.
It will cost billions to build the military back to an effective level. Money we will not have for a long long time thanks to government greed, graft and corruption.
“A forward posture is necessary for our security.”
If it is ‘necessary’ then that means if we don’t do it then we are all doomed. It also means we must force others to take on our military as a necessity to our defense.
I don’t believe for a second that being forward located is a necessity. It is not even great to have.
We placed our forces in Europe and Asia to provide us a quick strike nuclear capability. The F-111s at Lakenheath to the B-52s in Thailand, but we have missiles that can deliver nukes faster and with less risk and cost. The Cold War generals used scare tactics to get any and every nuclear weapon and delivery vehicle they could, with incredible overlap in capabilities. But, we paid for it all. Gotta have the aircraft even though we finally built the missiles that were supposed to replace the aircraft, even though the Navy also built the subs, but, hey, we’ve always had the aircraft so we can’t do without them now. No way, can’t cut the military budget, we might get attacked!
Any ground forces overseas were too few to stop an attack. Hell, every grunt in Germany knew they would be sacrificed only to delay a Soviet ground advance by a few hours or days at best.
Who exactly are these forward bases supposed to be attacking anyway? What enemy is such a threat as to necessitate us maintaining overseas bases? We’ve been in South Korea for 60+ years. Why can’t the South Koreans have built their forces already? 60 years and we are still there. The book 1984, “We’ve always been at war with North Korea.”
We don’t need to waste our money, our labor, our lives on a military past one that can defeat any attacker to our shores.
God forbid the US should maintain global dominance. Everybody knows we’re just a bunch of bullies. /s
“We were “weak” by your standards prior to WWII but we were actually strong because we could assemble to fight and we did.”
We got our butts handed to us in the beginning, and only the grace of God and a lot of US blood got us out of the hole!
I agree with your points. Interesting that we even have to debate the merits of a strong military at a site like Free Republic. Without a strong military and a free country itself then none of the other stuff we discuss at this site even matters.
So, D-Day wasn’t necessary to establish a presence on the European mainland?
A forward base is an already established forward fighting position.
You fight your war without one that you have to establish yourself, and I’ll fight my war with forward troops already established, and we’ll see who gets farther, faster, with less loss of life and less delay.
Don’t you think it was beneficial having Kuwait offer itself as a forward staging area rather than having to fight our way onshore?
whew.. good thing we didn’t elect Romney...
Good. The US is not supposed to have a large peacetime standing army. I don’t want a huge standing army here at home waiting fot the order to enforce martial law. Thanks anyway.
Yeah, why should their pay be relative to today’s budget? I read somewhere that during our Revolution, soldiers were paid less than $20 per month, and they had to buy all their own weapons, gear, supplies, etc. We should find an authoritative source, and pay them based on that. /s
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