Featured Reducing the scale of the military pt 2

If we keep following the same interventionist course we have been a million might not be nearly enough.

Better make it 2 million just to be on the safe side.

 

Why not 3-4 million soldiers while we are at it to be extra safe?

 

Okay. Anything for safety.

 

It looks like the personnel reduction amounts to about 50,000 cuts out of 1,500,000 military personnel.

Still can't see panicking over that kind of cut.

 

America’s troops may be returning home from Iraq, but contrary to President Obama’s assertion that “the tide of war is receding,” we’re far from done paying the costs of war. In fact, at the same time that Obama is reducing the number of troops in Iraq, he’s replacing them with military contractors at far greater expense to the taxpayer and redeploying American troops to other parts of the globe, including Africa, Australia and Israel. In this way, the war on terror is privatized, the American economy is bled dry, and the military-security industrial complex makes a killing—literally and figuratively speaking.

The war effort in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan has already cost taxpayers more than $2 trillion and could go as high as $4.4 trillion before it’s all over. At least $31 billion (and as much as $60 billion or more) of that $2 trillion was lost to waste and fraud by military contractors, who do everything from janitorial and food service work to construction, security and intelligence—jobs that used to be handled by the military. That translates to a loss of $12 million a day since the U.S. first invaded Afghanistan. To put it another way, the government is spending more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.

Over the past two decades, America has become increasingly dependent on military contractors in order to carry out military operations abroad (in fact, the government’s extensive use of private security contractors has surged under Obama). According to the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States can no longer conduct large or sustained military operations or respond to major disasters without heavy support from contractors. As a result, the U.S. employs at a minimum one contractor to support every soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq (that number increases dramatically when U.S. troop numbers decrease). For those signing on for contractor work, many of whom are hired by private contracting firms after serving stints in the military, it is a lucrative, albeit dangerous, career path (private contractors are 2.75 times more likely to die than troops). Incredibly, while base pay for an American soldier hovers somewhere around $19,000 per year, contractors are reportedly pulling in between $150,000 - $250,000 per year.

https://www.rutherford.org/publicat...e_war_on_terror_americas_military_contractors

 

Are you now using the 1,500,000 number as total military personnel, or just the number of troops in the army?

There is about 500,000 people serving in the army. A cut of 50,000 would be a 10% cut.

From the original article:

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recommended shrinking American forces from 520,000 active duty troops to between 440,000 and 450,000

Looking at the actual numbers, a cut of 80,000 from 520,000 is a significant cut of over 15%.

 

Another poster suggested the cuts were across the board so I simply got curious about what the total was.

The army cut is somewhere between 10-15%. I think that is acceptable.

In addition to that there are reserves who are battle ready as well.

 

Salty, I think part of the reason the Army is being cut deeper than the Air Force or Navy is that the Pentagon believes the next war will not rely on ground troops as has been required in the past. Technology will play a large part in the next war and the infantryman will not be as needed. The men and women on the ground will have to be very highly trained.

 

That's what the techies in the military believe, and right now their voices are loudest among a throng. There will never come a day that ground-pounders aren't needed. The idea of remote control warfare is a pipe dream that will cost us immensely somewhere down the road.

 

Saw this in today's Bible reading. Not sure how and if it applies, but the timing was great

Psalms 33:16-19
No king is saved by the multitude of an army;
A mighty man is not delivered by great strength.
A horse is a vain hope for safety;
Neither shall it deliver any by its great strength.
Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him,
On those who hope in His mercy,
To deliver their soul from death,
And to keep them alive in famine.

 

It doesn't not in the least.

This is regarding Israel, God's chosen nation. No nation on Earth has since been so chosen, as an example of God's love, mercy, grace, and righteousness. This passage has nothing to do with how nations are to defend themselves today.

 

Apologies, I guess I wasn't clear enough with my smiley face and comment about the timing being great.

I had to chuckle when this was the first thing I read after reading this thread.

It was a light hearted comment, of course it doesn't apply to secular states.

 

So would you have the US try to match the Chinese man for man in the army?

 

You are right, some will always be needed. But not in the numbers we have seen in the past. Frankly, I am glad to see that the Pentagon is trying to plan for the next way and not planning for the last war. You know that has been a big problem in the past, making plans from the last war and not looking forward. I see a real need of small, highly trained, very mobile, very well armed armed units.

If we were to face a foe who put huge numbers of "ground pounders", as you call them, into the field they would be chewed up pretty quickly.

One big worry we had during the cold war was how to stop the hordes of Russian tanks as they came through the Fulda Gap. That would not be as much of a worry now.

Sorry, the troop deployments in 1985 showing the importance of the Fulda Gap left out important information.

Again, don't plan strategy through the last war.

 

We don't need them now in the numbers we've needed in the past. I've often said, even on this board, give me two Apache helicopters and a standard platoon, and I can defeat an enemy regiment. That sounds brash, but it's true. But in a world where we may face a million-man Iranian Army, a two-million man North Korean Army, a 100 million man Chinese Army (the Russians are as down in manpower as we are, so I'm not worried about them) we need a lot of men to create those platoons. A million-man Iranian Army would equal 1,667 regiments. That requires 100,000 U.S. soldiers and over 3,000 helicopters, which also require two crewmen, and a six-man ground support team. Additionally, you need one support trooper for every man in the field. Now we're almost at 250,000, and this is for just one theater of operations.

I'm not even counting Air Force countermeasures and offensive strategies, nor Naval operations. Throw in an additional 200,000 for the USAF and USN in order to bring them up to the task. That's a total of 450,000 in the military to be able to answer aggression by the Iranians.

Now the other scenarios. Face the Koreans? 900,000. Face the Chinese? 45,000,000 (that's impossible, I'm afraid, as we don't have the quality among young people to put that many in the field).

Now do you see why cutting the military is utterly stupid?

 

Can't pacify or protect the population of a defeated nation from radical elements of that population with technology. Takes people.