Max Boot looks at the new defense budget and concludes that although he agrees with particular line item cuts and realignments, that overall it is still an “austerity budget” premised on the calculation that the US will largely fight counterinsurgencies in the near future. But Boot is worried that the future may bring surprises and that the US may leave itself unprotected if other scenarios eventuate.
It still looks like cuts to me. … Wouldn’t any defense secretary want to hedge against a variety of risks? Instead he is taking difficult decisions which, as Kori Schake warns, risk focusing “on counterinsurgency . . . at the expense of other military capabilities. … Bob Gates’s decisions on individual programs are intelligent and defensible within the parameters he is operating in. But in a world where we are still fighting two wars and face growing threats from the likes of Iran and North Korea, even as our economy cries out for stimulus, there is a good case to be made for considerably more defense spending than this budget envisions. What puzzles me is that Gates isn’t making that case, at least not publicly.
Glenn Reynolds notes that the administration is hardly making an effort at cutting the 2010 budget of which the defense component is going to be hit hard by the proposed cuts. So the “reshaping” argument is a better intellectual basis for analyzing the proposed budget, since saving money does not seem to be an administration priority. Speaking of reshaping, Austin Bay looks beyond the shape of the defense budget proper and tries to estimate the defense potential of the Federal Budget, reasoning that the sum total of military, diplomatic intelligence and development resources is a better metric than simply trading off one weapons system against another.
The continuing tragedy is that the United States has yet to comprehensively integrate civilian entities and non-military governmental agencies into this process and thus never achieves “Unified Action” (Pentagonese for the synchronized use of diplomatic, military, information and economic power). The U.S. military is often the only agency on the ground. Infantrymen must act as diplomats in the morning, agricultural experts in the afternoon and cops after dark. Gates’ article noted improvements in inter-agency cooperation, but — with succinct resignation — concluded that “military commanders will not be able to rid themselves of the tasks … .”
Continuing Austin Bay’s argument, there has been little analysis of how the giant stimulus package may shatter the focus of the bureaucracy rather than concentrate it, as agencies inevitably chase the funds which become available. The manner in which one “breaks the rack” in billiards can affect the course of the game. And the stimulus will “break the rack” by creating, through fiscal incentives, new and different places for bureaucracies to go, many of them simply in the service of political patronage or pork. The overall budget, and not just the defense budget to a large extent determines the initial trajectories of a lot of moving parts. But then, that may be what Gate’s cuts are all about in the first place: an attempt to set direction rather than impose cost ceilings.
Still, it is easy even for the best intentioned executives to miscalculate the future. Conventional ground forces were cut after Desert Storm in the belief that large troop numbers would no longer be required. Then came 9/11 and Iraq and Afghanistan and troop numbers were needed as never before. The current conventional wisdom is that the Air Force doesn’t need more F-22s. Some argue that it is wrong to leave the Air Force without the margin to face advanced air threats; or at least wrong in certain kinds of futures.
The financial meltdown is a reminder that managers have yet to find a foolproof way to predict the future. In the end, the shape of a defense budget characterizes the kinds of risk that defense planners are prepared to accept. It is possible to get it right for a long time and yet for it to fail at the crucial moment. Peter Bernstein, writing on risk, described the tension between those who believed it was possible to predict the future from the past and the inevitable tyranny of contingent events.
‘The story that I have to tell is marked all the way through by a persistent tension between those who assert that the best decisions are based on quantification and numbers, determined by the patterns of the past, and those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. This is a controversy that has never been resolved.’
So to the question: has Gates bought the country enough defense insurance the sure answer is ‘wait and see’.
One of the frustrating things about Obama’s far left wing policies is that their is such an enormous disconnect between his actions and his rhetoric. Obama is not a Socialist if by that you mean an advocate for traditional proletarian society. He has done or proposed nothing that would benefit industrial labor. He has worked to advance the interests of other groups who see themselves as antagonistic to traditional capitalism and attendant power structures. The groups that he aligns with, environmentalists, radical lawyers, foreigners, racial and sexual outsiders, may have been historically aligned with the Socialists in opposition to the Conservatives so they can be called a New New Left but that does not mean that their interests are those of American Labor.
If someone who really wanted to focus on strengthening the economy and rapidly benefitting labor had taken office in January 2009 they would have followed policies similar to those that helped lift America out of Depression in 1938-39. The simple answer to deindustrialization is, now wait for the big surprise, industrialization. The one thing the government can rapidly do to employ people and stimulate industrial production is expand the military. If instead of the $2 Trillion porkulus bill that pours money into quicksand like Acorn and Swiss bank accounts we had bought what strengthens the US the economy would already be rebounding.
We should be cutting steel to build ships, tanks, artillery and airplanes. We should be raising at least 10 more army divisions and reversing the BRAC policies that closed bases. We should be building steel mills and shipyards and power plants. We can do it.
We should be building steel mills and shipyards and power plants. We can do it.
Industrially, of course we can do it. Politically, never. All the powers-that-be would align against such a plan.
Based on the patterns of the past, I would say the quantification and numbers are off in at least one crucial respect. This is based on my more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. In fact 243.4 degrees, ah, Calvin, to be exact. We expert believers use degrees Calvin to measure uncertainty more precisely.
And the reason that we won’t take up the industrial torch is that O’s election is simply a symptom of a deeper problem, the loss of self-worth and confidence of the United States. How much more explicit could it have been than the two recent Humiliation Tours by TOTUS? A half century of self-denigration by leftists has created too many hollow men for us to move forward until the detritus is cleared away.
Ironically, the DHS memo is probably correct. Many of us who still believe in free will, individualism, authority, and a cosmic hierarchy are likely to get pretty nasty before this is over.
Thank you Richard for writing about this. I always enjoy your military analysis.
OK, from what I understand so far, Gates wants to:
F-22 Raptor………stop production
USS Enterprise…retire early bringing total aircraft carriers to ten
C-17………………..stop production
USMC advanced amphibious vehicle program…………cancel
Army advanced land systems program ($87 billion)….cancel
missile defense……cut 15%
next gen bomber….cancel
DDG Zumwald (sp?) destroyer….cancel
This is not even a comprehensive list. I think I read something about terminating air refueling as well. What could possibly go wrong??????
This is what he said at the Naval War college:
———
“Gates, addressing an audience at the U.S. Naval War College, said he had directed Pentagon planners to take a “realistic” view of the need for landing large numbers of troops “so we can better gauge our requirements.”
Questions about the capabilities provided by the EFV would be part of a major review of military missions produced every four years, he said.
Gates termed it strategically valuable to have put a flotilla of Marines off Kuwait City during the 1990-1991 Gulf War, forcing then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to keep tabs on the Saudi border and on the coast.
“But we have to take a hard look at where it would be necessary or sensible to launch another major amphibious action again,” Gates said on the last stop of a weeklong tour of the armed services’ war colleges to promote revamped budget priorities. “In the 21st century, how much amphibious capability do we need?”
——-
Did he just say “we have to take a hard look at where it would be necessary or sensible to launch another major amphibious action again,”
All I can say is wow. Can someone please tell me under what rock did Bush find this idiot? Does Gates really believe this or is he taking his marching orders from our fearless CIC? Oh Rummy….how we miss ya.
It really would be so easy to fix. A politician who actually said to the people that a 1980 standard of living was good enough and surplus wealth would not be sent to China for a plasma TV but instead would go to China Lakes to train attack pilots might rally support. Properly done military procurement is even less environmentally destructive than consumer spending. Don’t send Chavez money for oil, send him two Carrier Battle Groups. Don’t send Somalia tribute and visas, send them a dozen Littoral Combat Ships.
John
Regarding Gates’ “In the 21st century, how much amphibious capability do we need?”
We may not need to land a Marine Division across an opposed beach again but we may need to insert a battalion sized force on short notice in a distant location. Grenada was a good example of the continuing viability of the classic amphibious model. What deployed marine expeditionary forces give is presence and a rapid reaction time. The first cannot be done by ground based airpower alone. The ability to have combat ready marines within a day’s sailing time of any likely crisis provides a capability that airborne troops do not replace. The vast majority of humanity live within range of sea based assault.
Sounds good, Life, but to go back to your original point, these aren’t really socialists but garden variety academic leftists. That means, among many other deviations from intact reality testing, that they don’t really believe in evil, therefore don’t understand it, and tend to conflate things like Nazi militarism and the U.S. Navy as a result.
Once you adopt a view that there are no absolutes, that everything is about competing narratives, that the only absolute standard is that everything is relative, and there is no basis in reality to determine that one thing is good and another bad, you’re completely off the grid.
It literally means that you must choose courses of action that push toward failure rather than those which breed success (and which have been used successfully in the past by evil “oppressors” to keep the “victims” down).
The reason our enemies use non-state actors, “shell”-groups, and “plausible deniability” is because America did such a good job of preparing for conventional war. No national force can oppose our military.
It is logical to presume that, the more we tailor our military to fight exclusively “counterinsurgent” wars, our enemies will revert to conventional, state-sponsored warfare.
The Barnettian notion that “core” nations do not war with eachother may be driving Obama’s/Kerry’s/Clinton’s.Gate’s thinking here. I believe that on this point (and many others) Barnett is plain wrong, and that Gate’s gradual disarmament makes a conventional attack more likely, not less.
“The continuing tragedy is that the United States has yet to comprehensively integrate civilian entities and non-military governmental agencies into this process and thus never achieves “Unified Action” (Pentagonese for the synchronized use of diplomatic, military, information and economic power). The U.S. military is often the only agency on the ground.”
The above is a critical point. Fact is the current crop of civilians simply loathe the uniformed military and the associated DOD civilian component. They view any and all money spent there as diversions from their plans for the greater good, as they define it. They truely believe they can better spend the money thru aid (bribes) thus obviating the need for force. This is the same mind set that defangs police departments in US Cities and towns.
It is worth noting that the military gets it, wanting a fully integrated package across the entire spectrum of war fighting. We call this combined arms. We are actually thinking about the problem…but we are such idiots and wear those so unkewl uniforms….sigh
Thank You Lifeofthemind. You explained it much better than I could have. A more recent possible use could have been sending a 40,000 ton LHD with a battalion of Marines aboard to Poti after Russia’s invasion of Georgia. That might have gotten Putin’s attention. But Gates wants to curtail our ability to transport troops and equipment (C-17 termination) and seems to even question our need for our Fleet Marine Force. We are the only Country in the World that can deploy Marine Battalions with accompanying air support, any where in the World in a matter of days. I hope we don’t lose that ability.
Victor Davis Hanson gets it right:
“Fighting a clear war against enemies is dangerous. Clearly not fighting a war against enemies may be more dangerous. But sort of fighting a war while acting as if we are sort of not may be the most dangerous thing of all.”
Like Mr. Boot, I worry that Gate’s budget reflects Obama’s “sort of” approach to world affairs.
One of the more distressing characteristics of DoD is that it inevitably lurches from one extreme to the other. Civilian bureaucrats attempting to show that they are holier than anyone else embrace the newest bold new initiative. Military officers who only know how to “Salute and say Yes Sir” simply follow the latest checklist. You don’t get to be a General officer by being a Yes man, but by being a “Yes, and that also means we have to do this…” man.
So it is High Tech Works and then Maintain Our Magnificent Force and then Hooray the Wars are All Over and then Boots On the Ground Is The Answer and now We Will Engage Verbally With Our Enemies and Cut Stuff to Save The Economy.
And the pace of budget activity in the Pentagon, especially when things are being cut, does not allow anyone the luxury of wondering where all this is heading. Working the budget there is like playing Wolfenstine 3D; things jump out at you and you have to try to handle it without thinking.
The fashion obsessed fairy princesses and girlie men princes of the Left and Democrat Party desperately want us all to live in a fantasy world that they have constructed in their oh so fashionable echo chamber. It is the emotional equivalent to the Prince Charming fantasy that all emotionally adolescent women cling to, and if you have ever tried to dissuade a female of her Prince Charming fantasy you will know how emotionally charged that fantasy is for them.. Deep down the left knows their fantasies are a fragile bunch of crap, so they must viciously attack anyone who tries to deny that fantasy dream just to preserve it.
One of the greatest fantasies in the left’s girlie fantasy world is that if we would just lay down all our arms and make nice to the rest of the world, there will be worldwide peace and love ever after. After all, if we hadn’t been such bullies playing with our guns and other military toys, those fashionably hunky bad boys like Saddam, Osama, Hugo, Che, and Fidel wouldn’t have done what they did. They were just misunderstood after all; it was really all our fault in the end.
So when people on the right propose that we need all these military defenses, what we really are saying is that the Left’s Prince Charming fantasy world view is what it is; a dangerous delusion. To say that we need to defend ourselves against the bullies of the world strikes at the very core of Left’s emotional being.
To preserve the Left’s girlie fantasies is why the girlie men Gates and Obama must cut and undermine our military defenses. To not cut our defenses would mean that the Left was wrong all these years.
‘The story that I [Peter Bernstein] have to tell is marked all the way through by a persistent tension between those who assert that the best decisions are based on quantification and numbers, determined by the patterns of the past, and those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. This is a controversy that has never been resolved.’
Mr. Bernstein, does one Holocaust a trend make?
Which is the preferred national slogan, “Never again”, or “Get back to me on that”?
LifeofTheMind & John:
Indeed, the Marine Expeditionary Unit, or whatever they’re calling it this year is a national treasure. In today’s world of undisputed USN dominance of the high seas, it provides the theater commander an entire range of options open to no one else. The Chinese have similar forces, but tailored to taking Taiwan. There’s no way the PLA could pull off an effective amphibious assault on the other side of the planet. The U.K. could probably stage a one time successful amphibious assault, at great risk, by utilizing basically all their resources. Currently, only Uncle Sam can keep dictators trembling, worried about those devil dogs with the high & tight haircuts, in the Caribbean, Middle East, and Africa, all at the same instant.
The root problem is that Americans (current majority of them) no longer believe in asymmetrical warfare.
Since we are the lone superpower in the world (for how long?), in any fighting, we are no longer allowed to use our advantage to win. We have to tie ourselves up, so that every fight will be ‘fair’ in the minds to rest of the world.
And nothing will ever be fair to rest of the world.
We should be cutting steel to build ships, tanks, artillery and airplanes. We should be raising at least 10 more army divisions and reversing the BRAC policies that closed bases. We should be building steel mills and shipyards and power plants. We can do it.
And do what with them? Unless we have the stomach to kill 85% of men of fighting age in a country we decide to occupy we will never be successful at it.
Anyone else note the absurdity of $2bn worth of warships impotently staring down 4 pirates and a hostage for 4 days? I understand the need to have an array of capabilities to deal with unknown unknowns – but we also have a lot of known knowns out there, that we are not equipped to deal with. Such as the chaos on our border. Something we’ve known about for decades and yet have done nothing about.
Disband NATO – they are worthless. Get our army (but leave the navy and air force) out of Korea. Give them basic equipment – since the Klingon Empire will not be invading us via Mexico anytime soon I am sure humvees and light machine guns will suffice.
Then, use stimulus money to build a border fence – not a pansy one made out of chain link – but something huge, like the great wall of China or the Berlin wall.
At the same time, triple the number of border crossings through that wall. Expand the IHS to connect those ports of entry with the main highways. The wait at the border to get back in is 3 hours, that is absurd.
I am with you on that last bit. For example, we could be building truck portable, thorium molten salt reactors in a factory right now. They are nearly terrorist proof. They are meltdown proof. You can make a bomb out of the fuel but it is a pain in the ass. No one else (except for Japan) has the capability to build them. We’re in the top 5 for thorium reserves, and countries that hate us are nowhere near the top of that list.
#18–greater absurdity: 4-6 men in a small craft taking over a huge vessel with a crew of 20 or so. Surely the ransom paid for these vessels would cover the cost of a security force of perhaps 8 armed men. They could board in Suez or Aden, get off after having left the danger zone, board another vessel going the other way.
Surely folks such as Blackwater or Triple Canopy would have ideas on this.
19.
No, the greater absurdity is that Combined Maritime Forces (a joint effort by 23 nations) thawted two separate Somali pirates hijack attempts, resulted in ‘disrupted the activities of 7 Somali pirates’.
And the CMF don’t want said pirates either, too much international legality, so they were released and free to attempt future hijacks.
The whole news is viewed as a triumph for the good guys.
always right 20:
I hate to remind you, but it’s called asymetric warfare.
We’re losing!
It’s a trend that seems to have kicked into high gear 100 days ago, or there about….
Without a breakthrough in ASW, our carrier groups, submarines, and Marine flotillas are about to become fatally obsolete. We hope there’s something going on in the dark budget, but we cannot know, and ought to have trouble sleeping because of it. There’s room for a few well-placed billion right there.
There is no mode of warfare, futurist or historic, in which the US does not need a core competence. I was ashamed for my country when I learned that AF special forces needed to borrow local wooden saddles for a cavalry mission in Afghanistan.
And–Carthago delenda–the air fleet of USAF is so heartwrenchingly beautiful that it should be funded through the Arts Endowment. Especially now that bake sales are illegal.
comatus 22:
I’ve been hearing folks talking about the coming end of surface naval power for a decade or three. It hasn’t happened yet. Ron R. (peace be upon him) bankrupted the Soviets who were the only ones to provide a real threat. The Chinese could push even more of their GDP into naval development and may eventually give us as much competition at sea as the bear once did, but I don’t know of anything on the horizon that will wipe the sea lanes clear of the USN except an economic catastrophe, like the Soviets experienced, or our leadership just deciding to surrender…. Well hush my mouth!!!
Will you please provide some corroborating evidence?
The larger problem facing the US Navy isn’t so much “how many carrier battle groups”, but they just do not have enough hulls (and sailors) to be everywhere they need to be, without wearing out the ships that we do have too soon.
After the observed success of the Somali pirates, look for increased pirate activity in the Straights of Malacca, where a huge amount of surface tonnage passes every day.
Cancel more C-17′s? Are you kidding me? Our airlift capability is already over stretched. And the air refueling capability is already in trouble with the age of the KC-135′s. Where’s the replacement?
Ballistic missile defense, perhaps the most crucial defense technology emerging right now, reduced by 15%?
Reduce our presence and impact on NATO? Check. Europe just drains us without any tangible compensation.
Draw down the Army in South Korea? Check. South Korea can’t decide whether it wants to confront or befriend their cousins in the North, so let them sort it out on their own nickel.
I was ashamed for my country when I learned that AF special forces needed to borrow local wooden saddles for a cavalry mission in Afghanistan.
I had the opposite reaction. It shows how good ol fashion American Ingenuity™ can trump billions of dollars of wasteful government spending.
Vis-a-vis the pirates I see two low cost solutions.
1) Letters of Marque as suggested by Ron Paul.
2) PT Boats. We can buy 20 speedboats off the damn shelf and slap some 50s on there. Use a supply ship as the ‘mothership.’ Protect it with a destroyer.
How many predator drones would we need to watch the sea lanes? If we don’t have enough, offer to organize any flagged commercial vessel into very loose convoys, overwatched by a predator.
Then you just ambush these clowns at night with the PT boats.
LOTM:
Obama is not a Socialist if by that you mean an advocate for traditional proletarian society.
Have you ever heard of C. Wright Mills? He was a leftist from the 1950′s and early 1960′s who proposed that revolutionaries ignore the proletariat but instead rely upon college students and anybody else the movement could attract.
Among other things, that sociologist promoted Castro’s revolution in Cuba. He was also one of the minds behind “The New Left” that emerged in the 1960′s.
Remember Barney? Now, imagine what would happen if tens of millions of Americans decided to vote for a purple dinosaur…
The gutting of the Defense Budget is simple.
Women don’t work there.
Men do. Moreover, men who are enemies of both Obama, and the SWPL Yuppies and Women coalition that elected him on the margins.
Defense firms are overwhelmingly male, and provide opportunities to not “hip/trendy” Alpha males (the Prince Charming figure) but rather stodgy, unhip engineers who are obsessed with space, time, motion, and fitting things together, not highly verbal testosterone-charged social acumen and manipulation.
Women have zilch stake in Defense, lose politically and economically and culturally when Defense spending goes up, and view the kinds of men involved in Defense as mortal enemies. This applies to SWPL yuppies as well.
Duh Obama is cutting it. Or gutting it.
Obama is not about economic recovery. He’s about total rule by SWPL yuppies and women. Both of which would WELCOME a mass attack ala Spain or Britain, because it would allow them the same sort of repressive measures … aimed against Joe Sixpack, not Islamists, that gave even further ascendancy to women and SWPL pc Yuppies.
In Britain, the first “soft” and feminine police state, women wield “uber-social consensus power” by having the police arrest folks for “racist dolls” in their windows or schoolgirls who want to work with kids who speak English. All of which required active surrender like the Petainist Vichy regime to the enemy.
John: “A more recent possible use could have been sending a 40,000 ton LHD with a battalion of Marines aboard to Poti after Russia’s invasion of Georgia.”
Yikes!
John: “A more recent possible use could have been sending a 40,000 ton LHD with a battalion of Marines aboard to Poti after Russia’s invasion of Georgia.”
Yikes!
Should say good post! Can’t wait to seeing your next post!
Oh c’mon now. Am I the only one who was hoping Bush would do precisely that? I felt fiercely loyal to the Georgians for their Support of Bush while Europe was thumbing their nose at us. It may not have been politically smart, but coming to our true allies defense is -as the young kids might say- thats just how I roll.
If we’re going to cut back like this, more and more, I think that the only choice we’ll be left with is complete and total isolationism. If we will not pay for and can’t project force… What’s left?
America alone and woe be anyone who attempts to invade.
whiskey,
You did just argue that the Defense industry is a refuge of low testosterone men?
We can and should continue to project force to guard our interests. But we cannot be everything to everyone. We can either maintain our ability to steamroller any country OR our ability to occupy a country OR go bankrupt. I opt for #1.
First, some house cleaning.
Sec. Gates recommended reducing the number of aircraft carriers from 11 to 10 by 2040. IMO, by that date, our 10 aircraft carriers will be using their nuclear power plants to provide essential services to selected U.S. coastal cities, not plying the oceans.
we are not terminating the program to acquire future air tankers. Gates has merely said that he is absolutely against acquiring two types of aircraft because of the tremendous cost increase that would mean.
the Zumwalt destroyer program is not being terminated. rather, the projected plan is to build only two of them.
the AAV is over ripe for termination. we have spent tens of billions of dollars to make one and we are back to the beginning. this to fulfill some vision of making division sized amphibious assaults on hostile beaches. this termination has nothing to do with losing the ability to project power ashore. rather it is a realistic determination that we cannot sacrifice the fighting qualities of the Marine Corp for the sake of building an amphibious truck. i presume some of the geniuses here might understand that not all military hardware we have the ability to think up can actually be afforded.
you might want to read what Gates actually said about the Advanced Land Systems. he said that money would be increased to deploy the technology and equipment that the program has developed, and that is deemed worthwhile, to the users, the troops. other than that, he stated that most of the equipment that the ALS system was proposing was technologically counter to what our current land war experience showed to be effective. lets see, vastly expensive, ineffective, robs current operations. is there a problem here?
Gates recommended terminating the “Next Generation Bomber” because the proposals and the technology available did not match. he recommended a continuing research program and refinement of needs and to see how new technology and the evolution of needs and strategy played out in the near future.
Gates said that his recommendations were not merely cost cutting measures, but rather reflected what he saw to be real wastes of money in a time of war. in other words he wants to move emphasis towards supporting current operations and winning the war and the myriad threats we currently face rather than some theats we could think up 10-20 years hence.
this brings up the issue of what that future might look like. what i read here is the future will look pretty much like 1957. personally, i doubt it. devastating energy shortages, the acceleration of certain technologies(submarines, hypersonic cruise missiles, nuclear proliferation, cyber warfare, directed energy weapons, increased infantry weapon systems lethality with threats to armored vehicles, space warfare), failed states(Mexico, Pakistan, even European states), vast changes in demographics, and more, hints at a future that will be make it difficult to confidently invest really vast amounts on weapon systems that look pretty shakey even a decade into the future.
U.S. military technology and the equipment being pushed out to the troops is developing very rapidly. the attitude here seems to be that that is not happening. that is completely wrong. the U.S. military is changing its methods, and equipment in the midst of an important war even faster than we did in WWII. personally, i want that trend to continue and accelerate. what i read, straight from the horse’s mouth, is that Gates wants that also.
Interesting read James. It was a little hard to get through though due to your sticky shift key, or do you only like to capitalize the first letter of sentences you are particularly fond of? And do pray tell how exactly one goes about “reading straight from a horse’s mouth?” And one more tip if I might be so bold James, paragraph’s do wonders for readability on a blog or forum.
You say that gates “wants to move emphasis towards supporting current operations.…..rather than some threats we could think up 10-20 years hence.” I agree James, a Secretary of Defense who looks ahead 10-20 years does not seem like a wise move at this juncture. As we all know we don’t use weapons systems that are 10 or heaven forbid 20 years old. And why a defense budget that “moves emphasis towards…current operations” when the President has said only a few months ago that we will be out of Iraq in 16 months? That seems short sided to the extreme I must say. Oh wait, maybe the plan is to stay in Afghanistan for years and years. Somehow I don’t think so.
On to your little quip about the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle program. You called it an “amphibious truck.” Well, the “truck” the Marines are currently using is the same LVTP7A1 that I rode in back in the day when I was a peace time Marine. It’s purpose is to quickly and safely carry Marines ashore from amphibious assault ships, and carry them across land to the FEBA if need be. Unfortunately it does so neither quickly nor safely. It is a very slow swimmer and it’s thin aluminum armor is not proof against 50 caliber machine guns let alone RPG’s. But that’s no surprise considering the LVTP7A1′s (they now have a different nomenclature) were built in the late sixties early seventies. And to top it off, they carry a a 50 caliber machine gun or 40 mm grenade launcher for self defense, nothing like the powerful 30 mm gun designed for the AAV. I for one remember the video of Marine infantrymen using crow bars to try and re-seat a track that had fallen off an amtrac because they are so old, as they valiantly marched onward to Baghdad. Now seriously, is it too much to ask that our Marines have an amphibious tractor that is not 40 years old? Or maybe you would rather do away with the Marines all together.
You know James, I think I won’t bother debating the merit of individual weapons systems any further as I really think it will be a waste of my time and energy, and I would much rather spend it say, reading the insightful comments from belmont club regulars. I will say in closing however that I think you are arguing from a false either or premise in that we can only fund “current operations” or build for the future. We certainly can and should do both.
And by the way, you conveniently didn’t mention the missile defense cuts or the airborne laser cancellation. They are not applicable to current threats? You do know that Russia is currently deploying it’s most modern mirv’d mobile ICBM right? And Russia claims it’s re-entry vehicles can defeat any missile defense. Taepodong-2, Shahab-6 anyone? No worries there right?
Oh yeah, I just noticed today that the new LPD-17 assault landing ships will be cut as well, surprise surprise. And you said we’re changing equipment faster now than we did in WWII? Puuulease. What equipment exactly? AAV’s perchance? In WWII, we designed and built 50,000 Sherman tanks for example. We designed and built 1,000 tank landing ships. Compare and contrast to today’s what, 300 ship Navy? Thats half cold war size. Oh yeah, conventional army’s are long since dead. Would you please tell China, it seems they haven’t got the memo yet.
All right I really am going to quit now. I did want to thank you though for the laugh I got reading about the warning of failed states of Mexico and in Europe. Mexico, really? Remember the Alamo.
John: “Oh c’mon now. Am I the only one who was hoping Bush would do precisely that? I felt fiercely loyal to the Georgians for their Support of Bush while Europe was thumbing their nose at us. It may not have been politically smart, but coming to our true allies defense is -as the young kids might say- thats just how I roll.”
I don’t think it’s a question of being politically smart. The issue is how militarily smart would it be to send a battalion of Marines to the far end of the Black Sea and engage the Russian military.
Not very.
Sending ANY combatant ship into the Black Sea with a gross displacement over 27,500 tons would be a Montreux Convention violation. While America never signed the treaty, we’ve always obeyed its conventions.
Naval operations in the Black Sea are a complete non-starter, excepting humanitarian assistance. And so, it was done.
Whiskey @27:
As I surface from a long history of lurking here…
Whiskey, I’m aware of your particular focus, but jeez, quit generalizing so much! To say that there are no women working in our military/industrial complex is just WRONG. I’m almost 28 years into an engineering career spanning Peacekeeper/Titan/Atlas with a few forays into NASA and the NRO, and I can testify to the fact that I am not the only woman doing something along those lines. I’d say the percentage of female engineers in aerospace has increased from about 6% back in the day to something approaching parity, slightly better than the percentages at the engineering schools. That’s because aerospace tries to spoon off the cream of the graduates, women engineers tend to be more motivated, and the managers have figured that out. Not all of us with uteruses think we’re fairy princesses, ‘kay?