His ammunition budget, specifically, not the entire budget. I know you said that, but it wasn’t clear.
And that wouldn’t surprise me in the least, actually. In spite of having two armed services composed of riflemen, they don’t shoot a lot. The Air Force shoots even less, and the Navy even less than that. For a elite unit that would pay a substantial penalty for inaccuracy, it’s not surprising that they would shoot a lot. If they shot a mere 100 rounds of 9mm every day per person with 50 people, that would be (back then about $8 per 50, now much more) an ammunition expenditure of $800 per day. 100 rounds isn’t a lot of shooting, and I’d bet they did a lot more than that. 5.56 NATO is even more expensive, assuming they used an M-16 variant and not a smaller submachine gun like an MP-5. Ammunition really eats into budgets.
As for the OP, in my experience a load like that is very common. There’s no reason not to maximize the capabilities of the helicopter, as shootdowns are exceedingly rare and flight hours cost a lot of money.
A freshly trained Soldier or SEAL is not equivalent to one with 10 years of experience. And that 10 years does not need to be spent in a war zone to be beneficial. Combat personnel are always training. 10 years experience as a SEAL means 10 years of training and valuable mission essential knowledge. He doesn’t train for 6 months, earn a trident and then sit around waiting for a deployment.
So training is not simply what it takes to become a SEAL, but all of the cumulative training exercises and combat missions during his entire service.
You cannot mass produce special operations forces. Period.
That’s true for anyone with a highly specialized skill. Men with 10 years of experience are being produced every year, in fact the number of men with 10 years of experience that will be produced this year is very close to the number of men that had 9 years of experience last year (maybe this year is a bad example).
The original statement was about the financial cost of the training. The truth of it is that once you have units stood up that are self sufficient with respect to the training of replacements, the monetary cost of special operations forces isn’t exactly a massive drain on the defence budget compared to many other things.
using convnetional forces in an all-out shooting war always makes sense because spec war rarely gives you the confidence margin sufficient to expect success. but today, you have mostly assymetrical warfare which precludes the use of conventional methods.
What everybody seems to have missed, is that we have chosen to fight on the Taliban’s terms-which means that we are trading (in effect) $24 million helicopters and highly trained SEALS for tribesmen with AK-47s (of which there is an unlimited supply). Moreover, this decision nullifies our advantage-our hi-tech weaponry is useless in such a war.
So, we will find losses like the recent tragedy becoming more and more common-and if it is revealed that we were ambushed (by traitors in the Afghan army), there won’t be a lot of support for this type of operation.
Which is why this war will (ultimately) bankrupt us-our SEALS take 10 years/$2 million to train-to fight an illiterate peasant with an RPG and AK-47, costing a few hundred dollars.
