Can We Afford Armed Forces?

With Western Nations continually cutting their military budgets and the ever growing costs of military hardware are we fast reaching the point where it will be too costly to pay for such weapons platforms and the like.

Technology has advanced at such a rate that the sums being invested just in R & D alone are absolutely staggering. Not only that the loss of such prestigeous units such as carriers in a major conflict means that their complexity of build means that you cannot simple not them out in a couple of months or cheaply.

If in any furture conflict large and expensive weapons systems are lost there simply may not be the money there to replace them. Will we reach that point where Nations cannot afford such cost or have we already reached that point. In any Nations budget are area's such as social care, housing etc. already loosing out to massive military spending that cannot be sustained.

If we do reach that point or we have what would the face of future armed forces look like. Would such costs mean that nations only have strong defensive forces and rely on long range missiles for offence. Or will the whole thing just implode under its own inertia.

 

Oh, well I guess if everyone else is doing it...

Pubic, let me ask you a question: Do you like Anti-Lock brakes?
If you answered "yes" then you may be surprised to learn that Lockheed Aircraft invented them and first used them on our P-38 Fighter in WW II.
And for those of you that think only the Military thinks up new ways to kill people you should know that Harvard University invented Napalm.
Military research has and will continue to create useful technology.

 

Is that all you really have to offer on such an important matter?

 

Cut all military spending, sell everything, send all the men and women home and use all the savings from having no military for Universal Healthcare!!! Since Obama was elected all the world loves us, and are our friends!!!!

 

With regard to Napalm I think Callinicus beat the US to it by about 1400 years. We are not discussing what filters down from RD into everyday use but what Nations can and cannot afford and can they continue on this course.

Vast sums of money do not need to be spent on weapon development just to discover new ways to cook food.

 

Yeah, and then we won't have to worry about it



(yes, keee keee, just illustrating your point)

 

Yes were are discussing what filters down because as I said, Military research leads to great things. None of which you want to acknowledge.

 

of course we need them so we must make sure we are able to afford them but we could save a lot of money by pulling our troops out of bases on foreign soil, no need for u.s. troops in england, germany, japan, italy, etc, etc, let these countries man those bases with their own people and protect themselves, it would save us billions.

 

Of course we can. Defense spending is about 4% of GDP, far lower than what we spent in the past.