Pentagon: We can’t afford a bigger military

Army Times .com ^ | 9/18/03 | Rick Maze

[Libloather]

While conceding that active and reserve forces are straining to meet the potentially lengthy U.S. commitment in Iraq, the Pentagon still strongly opposes attempts to increase the number of people in uniform. As usual, it boils down to money. Even as many analysts predict U.S. forces will be in Iraq for years, defense officials are looking beyond that mission

[Libloather]

I don’t see how we can get the money,”

I vote for dropping the $400 BILLION drug giveaway boondoggle that no one wants...

[CasearianDaoist]

This is just election year manipulation - both in congress and in the military. If Bush wins in '04 I expect by the end of his therm that the military will be 100,000 larger (remember that Clinton stood down aprox. 500,000.) We really need to triple the defence budget - it will take a few years to slip that by Congress. If we can just get another term everything will be alright. The big cost in not personnel but equiptment upgrades.

[demlosers]

An increase of 30,000 active-duty personnel — the number needed to fulfill frequently discussed plans to add two Army divisions to the force structure — would raise defense costs by at least $1.8 billion a year. An increase of 50,000 people spread across all services, an idea being discussed by the House Armed Services Committee, would cost a minimum of $3 billion a year.

Is that all? Seems pretty cheap for today's standards. Apparently, they don't want to expand personnel for reasons unsaid.

I remember reading a report that the destructions to the World Trade Center cost our economy more than 1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) dollars. Moreover, Bush initially got 67 billion for the on-going costs for Iraq and just asked for 87 billion more.

[GaltMeister]

I vote for dropping the $400 BILLION drug giveaway boondoggle that no one wants... I agree - we could also retake the $15 billion that GW pledged to throw down the African aids rathole and apply that somewhere useful as well.

[finnman69]

If General Clark was president, he would cut military spending as well.

[CodeMonkey]

tripling our defense budget would cause taxes to sky rocket. We'd be looking at somwhere between $900B-$1.2T spent on our military.

[Cicero]

Why are we still in Kosovo? We fought on the wrong side and have no reason to be helping France and the Euroweenies.

Why are we still in Germany?

[91B]

Lots of good ideas from freepers here for finding the money to support the increase in personnel that we desperately need. We had few problems funding a force that was significantly larger 12 years ago. Failure to increase the number of troops on duty will result in serious problems in a very short time and could mean the difference between failure and success in the war on terrorism.

[MadeInOhio]

Considering that perhaps $1 trillion of the federal budget is misappropriated when measured by constitutional spending restrictions, I don't think we'd have problems finding the money. I think our problem is finding members of Congress committed to following the law rather than breaking it.

[WOSG]

We spend $400B on defense - that is plenty.

I dont get how 30,000 troops cost only $3B/yr, but we spend $400 billion... we sure dont have 4 million troops in the service.

[rmlew]

Add hardware and maintenance costs.