Budget plan would slash Army by 100,000 soldiers

Either the wording in that report is very strange, or the US wants to have 38,000 total soldiers by 2019.
 
This is part of a new super-top-secret plan to cut costs through a program of specialized outsourcing. Jungle warfare will be outsourced to the Vietnamese, general murderous bludgeoning and pulverization will be handled by the Russians, and parades will be turned over to a consortium of those high-stepping North Koreans and the Rockettes.

Coast Guard functions will be performed by a network of Somali pirates whose low bid of zero absolutely stunned the bid review committee.

Remaining US personnel will be issued rabbits feet.
 
EDelahanty said:
This is part of a new super-top-secret plan to cut costs through a program of specialized outsourcing. Jungle warfare will be outsourced to the Vietnamese, general murderous bludgeoning and pulverization will be handled by the Russians, and parades will be turned over to a consortium of those high-stepping North Koreans and the Rockettes.

Coast Guard functions will be performed by a network of Somali pirates whose low bid of zero absolutely stunned the bid review committee.

Remaining US personnel will be issued rabbits feet.
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Good Possibility or it could just be the Rise of the Machines(Drones & Robots)

They will do the fighting.
 
EDelahanty said:
This is part of a new super-top-secret plan to cut costs through a program of specialized outsourcing. Jungle warfare will be outsourced to the Vietnamese, general murderous bludgeoning and pulverization will be handled by the Russians, and parades will be turned over to a consortium of those high-stepping North Koreans and the Rockettes.

Coast Guard functions will be performed by a network of Somali pirates whose low bid of zero absolutely stunned the bid review committee.

Remaining US personnel will be issued rabbits feet.
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+1!! :shake::shake:
 
NorwichDad said:
No worries our allies will protect us.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...nd-odierno-budget-cuts-sequestration/4595003/
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Protect us from or who or what? I am not smart enough, but not dumb enough to trust "expert" opinion that somehow the difference between 490k vs 420k will make the difference between us speaking English or another language.

Suppose we can keep 490k soldiers, but that means less new toys. Personally, I would keep soldiers and buy less new toys. We did "fine" without the Crusader, Commanche, and etc . . . Yes, without the latest toys, suppose more soldiers will get killed, but my opinion bad decisions and leadership get soldiers more than "old" equipment.
 
MemberLG said:
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Suppose we can keep 490k soldiers, but that means less new toys. Personally, I would keep soldiers and buy less new toys. We did "fine" without the Crusader, Commanche, and etc . . . Yes, without the latest toys, suppose more soldiers will get killed, but my opinion bad decisions and leadership get soldiers more than "old" equipment.
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Did we do fine without the Apache, Abrams, Bradley, Javelin/Hellfire, Palladin, etc? Toys can bring key capabilities. We need to balance the two. With the expected future budget, 420k is the leadership's attempt to achieve that balance. Could they be wrong? Definately, but I am going to give The Chief of Staff the benefit of the doubt.
 
GoArmyBeatNavy said:
Did we do fine without the Apache, Abrams, Bradley, Javelin/Hellfire, Palladin, etc? Toys can bring key capabilities. We need to balance the two. With the expected future budget, 420k is the leadership's attempt to achieve that balance. Could they be wrong? Definately, but I am going to give The Chief of Staff the benefit of the doubt.
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I sure don't give him the benefit of the doubt- he is making a bad tradeoff. They are going to give up that manpower- and then discover they don't get the "toys" either because the Army's equipment needs are going to fare badly when up against the AF and Navy and their mega buck procurement wish lists (wish lists which are in large part requirement baloney but which have big time congressional constituencies behind them because of the lure of "employment"). We are going to be back in 1978 all over again- Hollow, equippped with old (but still servicable) equipment and incapable of doing much of anything because the people won't be there.
 
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^^^^
Agreed. And meanwhile, IMO anyway, the threats are increasing.
 
I think the Pentagon is taking an incorrect lesson from the use of reservists on an ongoing basis during the past decade. It would appear that they think they can keep going back to the reservist well for staffing for any extended action and that the reservists will be as capable as they have been of recent.

This seems to forget the fact that your reservists get very well trained and prepared when they are getting deployed repeatedly over an extended period of time. Give us 5 years without an extended conflict and then see how much the reservists have lost in terms of field experience, especially if you start cutting back equipment and training budgets...

Not knocking reservists, but under "peace times" they can't be kept to the same degree of preparedness as AD personnel. I am hoping the Pentagon is not expecting this...
 
bruno said:
I sure don't give him the benefit of the doubt- he is making a bad tradeoff. They are going to give up that manpower- and then discover they don't get the "toys" either because the Army's equipment needs are going to fare badly when up against the AF and Navy and their mega buck procurement wish lists (wish lists which are in large part requirement baloney but which have big time congressional constituencies behind them because of the lure of "employment"). We are going to be back in 1978 all over again- Hollow, equippped with old (but still servicable) equipment and incapable of doing much of anything because the people won't be there.
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I disagree. 420k will allow us to maintain the state of the art equipment we have now. The M1A2SepV2, the Longbow AH64D/E Apache, the Bradley M2A3 are all equal to or superior to any other military's versions. We don't need new toys right now.

A hollow military is a military with 490k Soldiers and the inability to repair their equipment versus a military with 420k Soldiers and equipment at 10/20 readiness.
 
Yep - just like 480k was the right number in 2000. Of course in 2002, they suddenly discovered that it was a couple of hundred thousand guys too few to actually go to war with, but not to worry- stop loss and unending back to back to back tours took care of that till somebody actually fired the blockhead who was the SecDef and got somebody who could see reality and not just theory and who understand that we were literally killing the Army and losing a war for lack of trained soldiers on the ground. So sure- 420k is enough- in fact why not up the ante and go for 350k? Talk about learning nothing from recent history. But heck- we all "know" that we will never be involved in another ground war-( just like we all knew that on September 10 2001). Interestingly- you don't see the Commandant of the Marine Corps voluntarily giving away his force structure in order to be seen as a team player- do you suppose that he understands exactly where this is going to lead and is not interested in being the guy who sells out his service for a handful of fools gold?
 
bruno said:
Yep - just like 480k was the right number in 2000. Of course in 2002, they suddenly discovered that it was a couple of hundred thousand guys too few to actually go to war with, but not to worry- stop loss and unending back to back to back tours took care of that till somebody actually fired the blockhead who was the SecDef and got somebody who could see reality and not just theory and who understand that we were literally killing the Army and losing a war for lack of trained soldiers on the ground. So sure- 420k is enough- in fact why not up the ante and go for 350k? Talk about learning nothing from recent history. But heck- we all "know" that we will never be involved in another ground war-( just like we all knew that on September 10 2001). Interestingly- you don't see the Commandant of the Marine Corps voluntarily giving away his force structure in order to be seen as a team player- do you suppose that he understands exactly where this is going to lead and is not interested in being the guy who sells out his service for a handful of fools gold?
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Very True, that rapid deployments and redeployments were a killer for those serving 10 years ago. I remember Gates saying a few years ago before his book writing days that it would be a long time before we are involved in another ground war in Asia. He almost was wrong a few months back with Syria. You know it does not matter the political party in power they seem to make the same decisions. Not trying to bash either but they are not very different in foreign policy.
 
goaliedad said:
Not knocking reservists, but under "peace times" they can't be kept to the same degree of preparedness as AD personnel. I am hoping the Pentagon is not expecting this...
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No disrespect, but did you realize the fallacy of your statement? If the reservist are expected to keep same level of readiness as the AD, why do we need AD that cost a lot more than the RC?
 
bruno said:
Yep - just like 480k was the right number in 2000. Of course in 2002, they suddenly discovered that it was a couple of hundred thousand guys too few to actually go to war with, but not to worry- stop loss and unending back to back to back tours took care of that till somebody actually fired the blockhead who was the SecDef and got somebody who could see reality and not just theory and who understand that we were literally killing the Army and losing a war for lack of trained soldiers on the ground. So sure- 420k is enough- in fact why not up the ante and go for 350k? Talk about learning nothing from recent history. But heck- we all "know" that we will never be involved in another ground war-( just like we all knew that on September 10 2001). Interestingly- you don't see the Commandant of the Marine Corps voluntarily giving away his force structure in order to be seen as a team player- do you suppose that he understands exactly where this is going to lead and is not interested in being the guy who sells out his service for a handful of fools gold?
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Got it, did three tours (36 months) in Iraq in six years including the Iraq invasion and the Iraq surge in Armor and combined arms battalion. I appreciate your energy.

Still would rather have working equipment without the 2000 pax GOMoR and non-left justified OER recipient Captains and Majors they are about to separate.

Not saying it wouldn't be nice to have more Soldiers. Of course it would. With the budget realities imposed on us by our civilian leaders, who the Chief of Staff answers to, I understand why he is trying to cut back to 420k instead of 490k.

He has actually restored some "umpf" to the BCTs by adding another maneuver BN to make three maneuver BNs in a BCT. A BCT is now much larger than it was. He saw an opportunity to fix a major problem with the modular BDEs.

The Army needs to focus on training on working equipment not saying "bang bang" because we have an extra squad but no ammo or track.
 
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bruno said:
We are going to be back in 1978 all over again- Hollow, equippped with old (but still servicable) equipment and incapable of doing much of anything because the people won't be there.
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We still have a lot of old equipment (210's dating from the late 40's-50's, 378's from the 60's) but from everything I've heard our leadership is doing everything possible to ensure we keep our manpower up. The Coast Guard took a huge personnel cut in the 90's and suffered for it. We got those numbers back post-9/11 so it's a matter of maintaining them.
 
MemberLG said:
No disrespect, but did you realize the fallacy of your statement? If the reservist are expected to keep same level of readiness as the AD, why do we need AD that cost a lot more than the RC?
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The RC is expected to keep physically prepared for battle, but there is very limited time in 1 weekend per month and 2 weeks per year to prepare for all the elements that are called upon for battle. AD units are supposed to have more time for training and potential mission preparation.

My point here is that it would appear that the Pentagon's strategy is to use the AD component to engage the first 6 months of any action with an immediate call for large numbers of RC troops to take that next 6 months, during which the RC units scramble.

With the higher level of AD strength, we had more AD units available to take that second rotation, minimizing the RC activations. Integrating smaller numbers of RC units into the second rotation, will yield a higher level of overall training and preparation.

Not sure about your confusion. Of course there is a place for RC in our military plans, but it would seem that the Pentagon is overestimating their ability to hit the ground running long-term based upon the current preparedness of RC units that have had repeated deployments and have more overall battle experience than a peace-time RC unit.

If we are going to continue our past decade's frequency of RC deployments, of course we will have a more battle ready RC. However, I suspect that this will not be the case during the next 5 years given our current political leadership and national attitude towards international intervention, which will result in a different level of preparedness in the RC - i.e. the Pentagon is depending upon a political environment that may not exist to keep the RC as ready for battle as they project.
 
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