Military General Advocates Cuts in Military Spending

[Avatar9]

He claims that while the federal government has increased military spending, it has not increased national security, and such spending only serves to threaten economic security and fiscal sanity: Over the past 10 years, the DOD budget increased from $297 billion to $549 billion, not including the Overseas Contingency Operations, which alone stands at $159 billion for FY11. Even if we factor in inflation, in an era of constant budget deficits, this rate of spending is unsustainable.

Out-of-control defense spending is a major cause for the calamitous state of our overall budget. This threatens the peace and prosperity that responsible national security planning is designed to protect. We cannot allow the Pentagon to continue to spend exorbitant amounts of money without thought to overall strategy or long-term interests.
Adams offers a number of ways in which the military budget can be reduced.

Military General Advocates Cuts in Military Spending

 

[bill5]

I agree. And I have a combined 30+ yrs of military service and DoD contracting under my belt.

 

[HenryBHough]

Why should we be spending any money on the military when everybody knows we have an Apologist-in-Chief who flies by magic carpet around the world bowing and sucking ass so everybody will love us?

 

[bill5]

Wow it took 3 whole posts for someone to try and digress this thread into yet another asinine political cat fight in the sandbox. Y'all are slipping.

 

[HenryBHough]

Wow it took 3 whole posts for someone to try and digress this thread into yet another asinine political cat fight in the sandbox. Y'all are slipping.

No! That was a serious attempt at a realistic answer to the extreme cost of maintaining any military at all!

 

[whitehall]

It's a reasonable area to cut spending. We trust the Generals to make sure the cuts don't affect our Military rediness or our aid to Veterans.

 

[Toome]

I agree with the cuts in military spending, and I agree with General Adams' points. I would go one further, and I know this is going to break a lot of rice bowls: combine the military services. Our military fights jointly, it trains jointly, it should be task organized jointly. This would cut out a lot of the administrative and support personnel and streamline the tooth to tail ratio. Right now, shooters make up only 14-15% of the military force. 85-86% of the military is made up of combat support and combat service support administrative personnel. It's not that these functions aren't important; they are absolutely important. However, there's a lot of duplication of effort and other bureaucratic inefficiencies that impede military effectiveness. By integrating these services, the military would heed the age old motto of training as you fight. The military would be organized as ready-to-go combat packages and could be more efficiently tailored to contingencies as they occur.

I don't believe we will ever see the classic Fulda Gap combat scenario where tank armies are arrayed against each other in an open battlefield. That's obsolete. Instead, I think counterinsurgency warfare in third world shitholes is more likely as demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador, Grenada and Vietnam. We've been dismissing these as temporary but necessary engagements while preparing for the Big Show Down at Fulda that never ever happened.

Unfortunately, the masses have a simple, cookie-cutter understanding of the military. And these concepts will never gain ground during a political year. Also, there are too many military leaders who would never entertain the idea of breaking away from years of custom and tradition.

This makes for great discussion but too many folks are comfortable with the status quo to take a serious look at improving military effectiveness. The solution is, as General Adams puts it, to just throw more money at it and put a check in the box under "problem solved."

 

[TheBBB]

The overall military spending for 2010 was $698,105,000,000. That may seem like alot, but for the overall GDP, it was only 4.7%. Most countries military spending relating to their GDP is well over 5%. That being said, we are one of the richest countries in the world, and we can afford a military and the budget that goes along with it. There is a reason the US has the best military in the world. There are a lot of places where that money could go, but the military needs then money. The US government has to act as the World's police, if they didn't, not many other countries would. There are around 1167 US military bases all over the world, mostly trying to keep things in order. They can't just cut military spending and let all of those people lose their jobs. If they did the whole point of having a base in that location would be unneccesary. The government has military spending where it is for a reason. There are a lot of things that also need money, but military spending does not need to be decreased. There are plenty of areas in the US government that are being overspent. The military just has the most money out of all of them, so anyone against war feels the need to blame that for poverty or anything else without having any knowledge on the subject.