47,000 troop reduction in the Army and USMC

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The Stars and Stripes Forever
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/07military.html?_r=1&hp

U.S. Orders Biggest Defense Cuts Since Before 9/11

WASHINGTON — The White House has ordered the Pentagon to squeeze almost all growth from its spending over the next five years, which will require eventually shrinking the Army and Marine Corps and seeking controversial increases in the fees paid by for retired, working-age veterans for their health insurance, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday.

The reductions of up to 47,000 troops from the Army and Marine Corps forces — roughly 6 percent shrinkage — would be the first since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reversing the trend ever since. They will be made easier by the withdrawal under way from Iraq, and will only begin in 2015 — just as Afghan forces are to take over the security mission there according to agreements with NATO.

But Mr. Gates said the cuts in Pentagon spending were hardly a peace dividend, and were forced by a global economic recession and domestic pressures to find ways to throttle back federal spending. Indeed, the announcement of his proposal, which Congress would have to approve, came on the same day as word that he would be adding about 1,400 Marines in coming months to the forces fighting in Afghanistan.Mr. Gates said the budget proposals reflect the “extreme fiscal duress” felt by the United States Government, and he acknowledged that protecting American global interests and sustaining the entire gamut of American power required the military to take a tough look at its spending practices.

The Pentagon’s proposed operating budget for 2012 is expected to be about $553 billion, which will still reflect real growth, even though it is $13 billion less than expected. But then the Pentagon budget will begin a decline in the rate of growth for two years, and then will stay flat — even with inflation — for fiscal years 2015 and 2016. Over five years the reductions would amount to $78 billion. (The Pentagon operating budget is separate from a contingency fund that pays for the military’s combat and stability efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.)

The actual size and shape of future military budgets will continue to be reset by annual spending proposals from the president, and those in turn will be based on shifting economic factors – decline or growth – and threats around the world, as well as by Congressional action.

But, for now, the Army is expected in 2015 to begin cutting its active-duty troop levels by 27,000, and the Marine Corps to reduce its active-duty ranks by up to 20,000. Together, those force reductions would save $6 billion in 2015 and 2016.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said all four service chiefs supported the proposals, and that the military would still be able to manage global risks.

I wonder how much of an impact this will have? I don't agree with controlling the size of the military by comparing it to how robust our economy is. I guess unless the spending was truly exorbitant and shrinking our budget, I would agree. Our military spending isn't really to blame for the economy and I feel like we should be ready regardless of how things are at home. If according to the Chiefs of Staff our ability to respond to crisis wouldn't change with the reduction, why did we have that additional 6% funding in the first place?
 
Wait. Let me get this straight. We all agreed that stop-loss was a bad thing, and now that we're actually reducing the size of the military, the implication is that we are less prepared to deal with global threats?

Fact of the matter is, we're pulling troops out of Iraq. I mean, it kind of makes sense. Less war = less military spending=less troops required.

Granted, if we started using more commercial products rather than trying to come up with government produced ones, we wouldn't need anywhere near the kind of budget we do now, as the enormous scale of congressional kickbacks counts for a lot of our military spending...
I mean, look at Net Warrior. What can that system do that an iPhone can't, for a tiny percentage of the weight and space? Sorry about going off topic, but that's something that really grinds my gears.
 
Granted, if we started using more commercial products rather than trying to come up with government produced ones, we wouldn't need anywhere near the kind of budget we do now, as the enormous scale of congressional kickbacks counts for a lot of our military spending...
I mean, look at Net Warrior. What can that system do that an iPhone can't, for a tiny percentage of the weight and space? Sorry about going off topic, but that's something that really grinds my gears.

Ah, the "off the shelf" or OTS technology argument. I did a large report for a RAND project assessing some procurement programs which were supposed to use a large part of their technologies from the OTS idea (FCS, some BMDS, and DEEPWATER). Long story short, OTS did not meet military needs like it was thought and the budget sky-rocketed when they tried to modify for the job or ended up scrapping because the OTS tech wasn't right.

It was a good argument, and the rave in the late 90s, early 2000s, but isn't the magic bullet that it would seem.
 
Ah, the "off the shelf" or OTS technology argument. I did a large report for a RAND project assessing some procurement programs which were supposed to use a large part of their technologies from the OTS idea (FCS, some BMDS, and DEEPWATER). Long story short, OTS did not meet military needs like it was thought and the budget sky-rocketed when they tried to modify for the job or ended up scrapping because the OTS tech wasn't right.

It was a good argument, and the rave in the late 90s, early 2000s, but isn't the magic bullet that it would seem.

Is there any unclassified reason that it would not meet military needs? I mean, by all accounts, it just seems like there's a lot of commercial technology out there that would be easily modified to military use. I guess I just don't understand why it's not a viable option.

Furthermore, it seems that oftentimes the military needs are overly complex, in order to justify additional expense on the part of the government. For example, the SR-47 project was a failure, due to the fact that they not only needed an AR that could fire 7.62x39mm, but that it also needed to feed from AK-47 magazines. Now, AR uppers that feed 7.62x39mm are readily available, and would solve the problem of ammunition shortages, as well as fulfill the original requirement for an AR platform that fired 7.62x39mm. Later, the specification was changed to include the addition of having to feed from AK magazines, and the result was that the project was changed from a relatively simple drop-in series of parts to be included in a SOPMOD kit to a separate weapons system entirely that, quite simply, would never have been issued.
To me, it just seems like they took a look at a problem that could have quite easily been solved with commercially available products, then tacked on a "does it do windows?" requirement (in this case, the requirement that it feed from AK magazines), and as a result wasted taxpayer dollars on a system that never expanded past the testing phase.
To my uninitiated eye, the reasoning behind this was government spending for the sake of government spending, that they changed the specification for the sake of spending money, moving away from a simple solution to a simple problem and towards an overly complicated and impractical solution to a simple problem.
 
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Maybe some of that $6 billion can be used by the Coast Guard to finally fix an aging fleet AND accomplish it's missions.....


....no, that would make too much sense. :rolleyes:
 
Is there any unclassified reason that it would not meet military needs? I mean, by all accounts, it just seems like there's a lot of commercial technology out there that would be easily modified to military use. I guess I just don't understand why it's not a viable option.

Furthermore, it seems that oftentimes the military needs are overly complex, in order to justify additional expense on the part of the government. For example, the SR-47 project was a failure, due to the fact that they not only needed an AR that could fire 7.62x39mm, but that it also needed to feed from AK-47 magazines. Now, AR uppers that feed 7.62x39mm are readily available, and would solve the problem of ammunition shortages, as well as fulfill the original requirement for an AR platform that fired 7.62x39mm. Later, the specification was changed to include the addition of having to feed from AK magazines, and the result was that the project was changed from a relatively simple drop-in series of parts to be included in a SOPMOD kit to a separate weapons system entirely that, quite simply, would never have been issued.
To me, it just seems like they took a look at a problem that could have quite easily been solved with commercially available products, then tacked on a "does it do windows?" requirement (in this case, the requirement that it feed from AK magazines), and as a result wasted taxpayer dollars on a system that never expanded past the testing phase.
To my uninitiated eye, the reasoning behind this was government spending for the sake of government spending, that they changed the specification for the sake of spending money, moving away from a simple solution to a simple problem and towards an overly complicated and impractical solution to a simple problem.

It was typically a security or survivability issues. In the large projects (DEEPWATER or FCS) using many OTS techs resulted in big compatibility issues.

But really, OTS and its arguments either way are really red herrings. The issue is with the contractors underbidding the crap out of the programs because the government will pay more when they go overbudget. The problem isn't that the tech is too expensive, its that we aren't valuing it correctly in the contracting phases.
 
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