Panetta's strategy

Pima

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/us/pentagon-to-present-vision-of-reduced-military.html

Many who are more worried about cuts, including Mr. Panetta, acknowledge that Pentagon personnel costs are unsustainable and that generous retirement benefits may have to be scaled back to save crucial weapons programs.

“If we allow the current trend to continue,” said Arnold L. Punaro, a consultant on a Pentagon advisory group, the Defense Business Board, who has pushed for changes in the military retirement system, “we’re going to turn the Department of Defense into a benefits company that occasionally kills a terrorist.”

Interesting article because it does attack everything on top of that quote from the 35 to cutting troops to the Navy and their nuclear program to leaving Europe and Asia from a personnel position.

Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, advocates saving $69.5 billion over 10 years by reducing by one-third the number of American military personnel stationed in Europe and Asia

Maybe somebody has the knowledge to answer this, but wouldn't that be tied to our deals with the govt regarding leasing the installations? It would seem to me that it may be difficult to do this from a political perspective.
 
Maybe somebody has the knowledge to answer this, but wouldn't that be tied to our deals with the govt regarding leasing the installations? It would seem to me that it may be difficult to do this from a political perspective.

Not sure how it would work now but back in the 80's when I was at an Army installation, we spent many millions on new facilities (including $20M for a new hospital that we never moved into) only to turn them over to the Germans when we closed 3 of 5 kaserns. They were happy to accept them.
Vielen Dank
 
Not sure how it would work now but back in the 80's when I was at an Army installation, we spent many millions on new facilities (including $20M for a new hospital that we never moved into) only to turn them over to the Germans when we closed 3 of 5 kaserns. They were happy to accept them.
Vielen Dank

I don't think there were too many who could have predicted the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.
 
. . . .
Maybe somebody has the knowledge to answer this, but wouldn't that be tied to our deals with the govt regarding leasing the installations? It would seem to me that it may be difficult to do this from a political perspective.

I don't know, but my guess is that the leasing of the installations will have minimum impact. Leases can be terminated, especially if the host country don't want us there. I think we are spending a lot of money to relocated USFK HQ down south from Seoul. A part of the reason was that we were too close to the border, but another part of the reason was that USFK HQ was occupying a former Japanes Colonial complex and sitting in a prime real estate location in Seoul. It's like a having a foreign miltiary garrison in middle of Washington DC.

Okinawa is another example, I believe locals don't want us there but the central government want us there or vice versa.
 
I don't know, but my guess is that the leasing of the installations will have minimum impact. Leases can be terminated, especially if the host country don't want us there. I think we are spending a lot of money to relocated USFK HQ down south from Seoul. A part of the reason was that we were too close to the border, but another part of the reason was that USFK HQ was occupying a former Japanes Colonial complex and sitting in a prime real estate location in Seoul. It's like a having a foreign miltiary garrison in middle of Washington DC.

Okinawa is another example, I believe locals don't want us there but the central government want us there or vice versa.

Wow. This is an interesting political shift from (1) "don't give 'em an inch" to (2) "defend in depth". In Germany, we followed the "don't give 'em an inch" policy and had the ground troops basically lined up next to the border because it was politically not feasible to inform the Germans that our plan would be to sacrifice cities like Fulda until we could see where the main thrust was coming from and then attack them on the flank. I did not know that we had shifted to a "defend in depth" strategy in Korea, which is actually a more prudent approach. Of course, I suspect it's okay for the locals to accept this approach if doing so also opens up prime real estate.
 
Moving south also makes the "tripwire" harder to break. Are we backing off from the idea of instant retaliation to DPRK aggression? Maybe I'm reading too much from the tea leaves! :rolleyes:
 
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