Army is breaking, let down by Washington

bruno

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"To be sure, the nation always reduces its military as wars wind down. Other services suffer reductions and shortages. But only the Army breaks. Someone please tell those of us who served why the service that does virtually all the dying and killing in war is the one least rewarded."
Because sex sells- and the F35 is sexy. (Sure- it can't do the job as well as the formerly cool toys currently in the toy box (F16/F18/A10)- but the promise is breathtaking!) And the Army also loses because the country loves to hear that it can fight wars without risking its people- so technology that promises to fight wars from afar always is cooler than the ugly reality of real wars. Sadly- once the policy makers commit to wars- they discover that the promise of the technology and the cool toys are mostly pipe dreams- and winning the war means controlling the ground and the people that live on it. So the Army will sometime in the not too distant future get committed to actions with old and inadequate equipment and too few people so it will resort to expedients like involuntary tour extensions, back- to- back -to- back tours of duty, over-reliance on the reserve components, and huge enlistment bonuses to expand. But at least we will have the national pride of having fielded $200 million dollar fighter planes!

http://www.stripes.com/opinion/army-is-breaking-let-down-by-washington-1.361011
 
I think this completely ignores the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard has been broken for years. We ignore it. Sure. It's easy to ignore…. the entire service is smaller than Fort Hood, but cover 96,000 sq. miles of coast line and inland waterways.
 
I don't know that the services are really benefiting from the F-35...
We are pretty good at using weapons to their max potential, but we'll have to see what the F-35's potential actually is!
The rest of the services are not exactly rolling in dough, especially with the F-35 eating so much of the budget.
...my aircraft is just getting an upgrade to a GPS that was discontinued 4 years ago.
 
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