Well first I’ll talk about US troops spread to thin. BTW very well remembered that the reserves aren’t “reserves”… they were called and used from the beggining. The problem is long term occupations. Not only are reserves less “friendly” about these… but 150k soldiers are in Iraq now. That means the US has to have 150k other soldiers to replace them after a X long tour of duty in Iraq. Thats 300k soldiers only for Iraq. Add 10-15k in Afghanistan… and their 10-15k replacements. Then you have troops in Europe, S.Korea, Japan and dozens of countries. Then you need troops actually guarding the US… that adds up to an awful lot of troops. I call that spread thin… not in terms of US mainland security itself… but the reasonable and “fair” rotation of the troops.
I don’t think the US needs to bolster to Cold War levels… I think they need to avoid stupid and counter-productive invasions like Iraq. They went in for a quickie fuck… and now they’re stuck with a pregnant and volatile Iraq. Comparing terrorism threat to the USSR threat simply isn’t reasonable in terms of needing similar troop numbers. Does anyone really think Al Qaeda and Co. are a similar threat to the USSR juggernaut ?
The US defense budget is bloated and pork barrel full. Anyone disagrees ? Much more could be done with the same or less money… while education and other budgets need some boosting IMO to guarantee long term US economic health.
When I talked about Shermans… I didn’t mean to say the US should drop M-1 Abrahams and buy T-72’s. The US military shouldn’t be cheap… but they certainly should focus better on what is really needed and get more cost effective weapon systems. They seem way to addicted to super high tech solutions that aren’t necessarily practical or really needed. “Low-tech” and cheap things like the Predator were quite neglected until their usefullness was alarmingly obvious ! Procurement traditions in the Pentagon need some changing.
Also the quality of US troops in Iraq don’t impress me at all… better pay or more training would help “peacekeeping” or avoiding civil affairs disasters.
I think the ratio is even heavier, somthing along the lines of 3 units to keep one deployed: One deployed (to Iraq or whatever), one resting and replenishing and refitting, and the third training and getting ready to go.
Nope. I’ve long been a proponent of getting rid of our ICBMs. There’s a few billion. And certainly the procurement process can be revamped and made truly free-market. Things are getting better on that front, but slowly.
It’s important to note that while Afghanistan was a threat, Iraq wasn’t. It’s hard to blame planners for not preparing the armed services to fight an unnecessary war.
It’s not as if the U.S. LOST the war. Iraq, such as it was, was defeated with ease. What’s not working as well as was hoped is the occupation of the country, and again it’s hard to fault planners for not anticipating that the U.S. would occupy a big country for a prolonger period of time against the wishes of the populace. In terms of just winning the war, the forces available did a famously good job.
This is not to say more troops aren’t needed, but more troops could always be needed. You cannot perpetually be armed to meet every conceivable threat, and at present you’re going to have trouble showing that the U.S. armed services is so small that the security of the U.S. is threatened. 9/11 was an intelligence, not an operational, failure. Iraq was swept aside and in any case was never a threat.
It ain’t fronts. It’s divisions. The U.S. still has substantial naval and airlift capabilities to move and supply a number of fronts; the current problem is that the supply of actual combat-ready divisions is simply too limited. The U.S. would be undermanned for a ONE front war if it was war against China or Russia.
But again, there’s always a scenario that would overwhelm us. The U.S. has 10 regular army divisions. What do you think is the right number, Sam? 20? 30? If war were to break out against Iran, North Korea and in the Taiwan strait simultaneously, a 20-division army would not be sufficient.
I have a few questions and a few points from one who knows next to nothing about the military.
Questions:
I’ve heard quite a bit about the defense budget basically being split into 3 among the main branches of the military. This leads to a gross overfunding of the Navy and the Air Force (wrt percentage of expenditure compared to other countries). I remember hearing a figure like our Naval expenditure is equivalent to the next 20 or 30 naval expenditures put together, mostly sunk into large carrier battle groups which no other country gets close to. I realize the necessity of a large navy and a long-range air force to project power, but do you think that we can readily justify this kind of expenditure when the Army and Marines are getting pretty beat down with the daily ground combat in Iraq and Afghanistan?
I think that the obvious next step if the US faces an opening of another front is a draft. It seems to be the only way to boost numbers to the levels necessary. Do you all see this as a likely possibility if the world situation (everything outside of Iraq + Afghanistan) takes a nosedive? What do you think will be the threshold for this.
Now some comments:
I understand R&D, but I think that Rashak is unfortunately right when he points out how bloated the defense industry has gotten. Large projects are now nearly uniformly absolute sinkholes for money. This has gotten much worse recently. I can see how the F-22 is a necessary idea, but the pragmatic point is that the amount of investment it has eaten up will almost never be worth it for an air superiorty role. I fear it will be mostly shelved like the B-1 (and face it, the B-2) because there are other systems in place (albeit old) that handle the job as effectively. Look at the evolution of the B-52. The only reason that Buffs are out there is that they carry electronics to help them deal with the existing threats. We don’t need a supersonic or stealth bomber. I can see the F-15, F-16, and F-18 in a similar situation, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see them still flying in 2030 with new electronics and other adaptations.
But really the case in point of this is missile defense. Yes, it is a necessary idea that should be pursued, but the rush to deliver a deployable system has meant that the trials are an absolute laughing stock. The thing doesn’t appear to be able to hit the side of a barn, let alone a missile carrying MIRVs and decoys traveling through space at Mach 20. And it is costing us trillions.
I understand R&D. I am a researcher. But I am held accountable for my research; when I write grants they must have some interest and lots of scientific worth to merit continuance of funding. If I submit a grant with something parallel to the NMD test record, I won’t expect my checks any time soon. There is an element of pragmatism here – especially with the current world situation. Together with the inordinate divisions of defense funds, I believe that this area is stinking for reform. In concept, I agree with Rumsfeld’s strive to reshape the military. In practice, his problem is he is depending on whiz-bang large projects which apparently have become nothing more than a never-ending, non-reviewed, no-strings-attached stream of paychecks to defense contractors.
In WW2 the US was fighting against the Germans who had killed about 6 million Jews and who had killed many others during their invasions. And the Japanese were taking over islands and attacking the American military…
I thought Saddam had only killed about 40,000 Iraqis and gassed a group of about 1000 (Kurds?). I don’t think it should be the same priority as WW2 as far as the numbers of troops we should send over there.
Where did you get those numbers from? You’re off by orders of magnitude.
Iraq is littered with mass graves of Saddam’s victims. Hundreds of thousands. Perhaps more than a million. Saddam killed over 180,000 Kurds, over 60,000 residents of Baghdad, over 60,000 Shiites in the 1991 rebellion, and those are just the big campaigns we know about. Saddam routinely ‘disappeared’ undesirables - hundreds of thousands of them at least. The current Iraqi government says Saddam’s death toll was well over a million Iraqis.
And if you want to count the deaths from the two wars Saddam started, you can add another 1.2 million or so.
I think he meant to point out the magnitude of the threat… not the reasons for troop deployement.
If in fact its 3:1 to keep troops in Iraq I don’t see how a “fair” cycling of troops can be attempted. Unless refitting and retraining are counted as defending the “homeland”.
In the end a regular occupation requires numbers that don’t seem practical or cost effective for the US.
I didn’t tear on the Stryker, I said it wasn’t in the news. It isn’t, aside from military-specializing and US Army web pages. Let’s see what your link says…
Yea, that sounds like a rousing cry of battlefield efficiency. A half dozen RPGs fired at 306 vehicles in 4 months of combat duty. Yep, real front line performance for ya. I’m sure glad they’re leading the charge by… doing nothing…
The rest of the site seems to be general wargaming junk - military humor and games are a good chunk of it, and some reports snatched off AP or submitted by people, such as:
Highly reliable and in-depth site that obviously is floating just underneath the mainstream media.
:rolleyes:
yawn
OK, I’ll follow your example and use a military fanboy website… only mine doesn’t have advertisements for dating services and video games, and is written and edited by ex-generals and other ranking officials.
[The M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting vehicle is a three million dollar version of the World War II Sherman tank, with room in the back for six guys. It weighs 30 tons, so its too heavy to be picked up by any helicopter and too large to be carried by a C-130, and is not truly amphibious. It’s expensive to operate, expensive to maintain, and only carries six infantrymen. Worst of all, its a huge vehicle with little armor and packed with explosive TOW missiles.
The M2 Bradley is no better armored than a WW II Sherman tank
The idea of mechanized vehicles is to carry infantrymen behind tanks until they are needed. However, the US Army cannot field a vehicle to safely transport a dozen grunts, it must add every known gadget to field a golden "fighting vehicle". The M1A1 tank is a fighting vehicle, the Bradley is an exploding coffin. The Bradley is almost 10 feet tall, but can only carry six grunts who are trapped inside with explosive TOW missiles. During live fire tests of the Bradley, a hit usually ignited a stored TOW causing massive explosions.
The Bradley looks good in peacetime exercises, including the invasion of Iraq, but it will not do well with an enemy who shoots back. The Army has tried to counter criticism by putting extra armor on the upgraded Bradley's, but its still a huge target with little armor slope. Upgraded Bradleys are weighted down with external armor plates, but even these can be penetrated with light infantry anti-armor weapons.](http://www.g2mil.com/Bradley.htm)
You’re really comfy with going into combat with these pieces of glory? Or is the impervious Stryker and its beautiful explosion better looking?
I am well aware of that. Now can you tell me who is contracting them to do it?
Oh, yea.
I think I’ve quite fulfilled my factual background in this post. Dismantling 2 of your points is enough for before dinner. Maybe I’ll come back and dismantle this one after.
Or “Fears of falling behind in this high-tech arms race are forcing European governments to think of ways to work more closely together, partly so as to get a bigger bang out of each euro. The Organization for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR), a joint military procurement agency set up by France, Germany, Italy, and Britain in 1996, is already acting as the lead purchaser for some of the Continent’s biggest military programs, such as the Airbus A400M military transport plane, the Tiger attack helicopter developed by EADS, and the Anglo-French Meteor air-to-air missile.”
In general, the US spends 50% more on military research than Europe.
“The Americans were already outspending the Europeans before September 11 brought a huge boost in the Pentagon’s budget. Compared with Europe, the U.S. spends four times as much on defense-related R&D–over $40 billion last year–and more than twice as much on military hardware.”
Oh, I love this though
“It was one of the juiciest and most hotly contested defense contracts in Europe: the Polish Air Force’s $3.5 billion order to replace its aging fleet of 75 Soviet-era MIG-21s. When Bethesda (Md.)-based Lockheed Martin Corp. walked away with the prize on Dec. 27, the European defense companies that vied for the deal–France’s powerful Dassault Aviation and a joint venture of Britain’s BAE Systems and Sweden’s Saab–were left with a bitter taste in their mouths.”
Sounds promising for the US, huh? Wait for it…
“The Europeans were particularly irked that Washington granted Warsaw $3.8 billion in soft loans to help finance the purchase of the F-16 fighter jets.”
So we give them $3.8 BILLION in soft loans that will probably be forgiven to buy $3.4 billion worth of F-16s.
And all that is from an article that is written by Americans and is negative about the European defense industry (the same one that is designing the OICW for us, as you brought up before)
Excellent. So now that we have established that you know less than nothing about the topic, let’s see that awe-inspiring dismantling of the Bradley series that you probably researched the heck out of…
Hey, don’t get tired on me now. You made the stupid claim, now get to work and get some factual data to back up your assertion!
I pity the fool that is interested in military affairs, but is not familiar with Dunnigan/Nofi. Ah well.
Ex-generals? Ranking officials? Uh, you didn’t actually read too much there, did you? Regardless, the good Captain (not ‘General’), wrote this humorous plea to demobilize the army. In September, 2001. Not exactly prescient, that one. But let’s see what he has to say:
And so on. Simple ranting from that guy.
Too heavy? Well no shit. You want lots of armor and weapons, it’s going to be heavy. You can do away with those, and issue duece-and-a-halfs (that might make you happy), but you aren’t going to get a light and heavily armed and heavily armored. Can’t happen.
Not ‘truly amphibious’? Damn. That really hurt us when…oh ya, it hasn’t. The latest Brit IFV doesn’t seem to be bothered by being not-at-all amphibious. I suppose he will be happy only when we issue AAVP7s to the troops?
Sure. You will now demonstrate how this alleged ‘fact’ has negatively impacted the employment of the M2 Bradley in combat. They have seen combat, you know. Scads of it. Certainly you can find some empirical evidence to back your claims, perhaps some real world examples of the Bradley being as terrible as you claim it is.
Two of the damned finest IFV’s the world has ever seen, with two different missions. While you are scampering around, looking for that elusive evidence to back your stupid claims, it will be no problem for you to point to two better alternatives for our troops. Any IFVs, one tracked, one wheeled, will do, and they must match or exceed the Bradley/Stryker team in every relevent aspect.
Yep. The US Army. Which is, as you ignored, going to be picking up the XM8 (lower portion of the OICW), shortly. By the way, you still haven’t provided all those examples of superior European weapons develpment. And be quick about it.
You do not have facts on your side, but you do have clever barbs. Kudos!
OK. The point of that is…
Psst, don’t hoist the A400M program as an example of superior develpment. The Tiger ain’t doing too hot, either, but the A400M…Then again, you probably don’t have a clue what those are.
Excellent. No wonder we actually have a fully modernized, indeed, cutting-edge, military.
Again, excellent, but this is relevant how?
Yay us!
Poor kid. Not too familiar with the world of defense spending, eh? Regardless, yay us! Check out the great deal Saab landed when it sold some Gripens to Thailand:
I suppose you think it’s like running to the supermarket for another box of Depends: Pay cash, get stuff. In the world of high-tech modern miliary aviation, that is hardly, if ever, the case.
I thought the US encouraged Iraq in its fight against Iran. BTW, who are the 1.2 million you’re talking about? Is that the number the Iraqis killed or the number of Iraqi’s that Iraq’s enemies killed? If it is the latter, then I don’t think that Saddam intended to lose so many Iraqis during those wars.
Ok, I was wrong about that…
Though http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/2000/09/iraq-000918.htm
says: (info about his war crimes)
"1. The Iran-Iraq War. During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein and his
forces used chemical weapons against Iran. According to official
Iranian sources, which we consider credible, approximately 5,000
Iranians were killed by chemical weapons between 1983 and 1988. "
“2. Halabja. In mid-March of 1988, Saddam Hussein and his cousin Ali
Hassan alMajid – the infamous “Chemical Ali” – ordered the dropping
of chemical weapons on the town of Halabja in northeastern Iraq. This
killed an estimated 5,000 civilians”
“3. The Anfal campaigns. Beginning in 1987 and accelerating in early
1988,…Human Rights Watch estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 Kurds were killed”
“4. The invasion and occupation of Kuwait…During the
occupation, Saddam Hussein’s forces killed more than a thousand
Kuwaiti nationals, as well as many others from other nations.”
“5. The suppression of the 1991 uprising. In March and April of 1991,
Saddam Hussein’s forces killed somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000
Iraqis, most of them civilians.”
But remember how US soldiers have killed those who have tried to uprise against the Iraqi government as well. (Though usually they’d only kill those who attack Iraqis/US and just imprison the others)
“6. The draining of the southern marshes” (no numbers)
“7. Ethnic cleansing of ethnic “Persians” from Iraq to Iran” (no numbers)
“8. Continuing unlawful killings of political opponents. The number of those killed unlawfully is difficult to estimate but must be well in excess of 10,000 since
Saddam Hussein officially seized power in 1980.”
That was the kind of thing I was thinking about - I thought I heard a while ago that Saddam had killed about 40,000 dissidents.
http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq1.html
on the other hand
“The international community’s collective complicity in the UN sanctions regime that has been imposed on the Iraqi people, is yet another example of a war crime ignored by the current inquiry. The International Commission of Enquiry on Economic Sanctions, whose Co-President is former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, charges American, British and UN officials with “causing the deaths of more than 1,500,000 people including 750,000 children under five, and injury to the entire population of Iraq by genocidal sanctions.”…”
"Such atrocities committed by Saddam occurred not to any meaningful Western indignation, but to Western consent, complicity, and active military support…For instance, U.S. Department of Commerce figures show that after the Halabja massacre, the U.S. was granting new licenses for arms technology exports at a rate more than 50 per cent greater than before Saddam�s gassing of the Kurds. ", etc.
A half dozen RPGs fired at 306 vehicles in 4 months of combat duty.
A HALF DOZEN.
More than that, they are deployed to “northern Iraq”, not the urban settings where most of the actual combat is taking place. The fact that 300 vehicles only had a half dozen RPGs fired at them in 4 months seems to support this, given that we see Humvees exploding almost daily.
You seem to be missing something. Mainly, the point. The Bradley can’t be deployed with any effieciency. It is heavy, clunky, and still manages to have crappy armor somehow.
If amphibious was part of the original requirements set down, and the vehicle fails to meet the specs, one could say that it failed.
And surely, you, with all of your infinte military wisdom gained from military humor sites, must not be so shortsighted as to wave off a capability that can be as important as amphibious deployment.
Hey, all I know is that the people who use it say it sucks. That’s good enough for me.
At least they have actually seen combat, unlike the Strykers you love so much.
In the same breath, you talk about the US contracting European designers and manufacturers to build the fundamental parts of our armory, and then ask for an example of how the Europeans are superior in weapon development. Wow.
Sorry I wasn’t quick with this reply, I had a busy weekend.
I’ve posted more facts than you have. Nevertheless, thanks.
No need to get flustered and start with the petty, indirect taunting. Maybe you should spend more time finding examples of the Stryker actually doing something instead of spouting off every defense project and making little jabs at my apparent incontinence.
I won’t try to defend the morality of playing “you two fight each other” with human lives at stake, but I suspect if anyone will, it’ll probably be a Republican.
To quote one of the great lines from Hotel Rwanda, “you aren’t even niggers, you’re Africans”, which I think sums up how they think about putting two countries into war for political gain.
I have to admit, as far as the whole Bradley/US Military vs European military debate between Brutus and Jake the Plumber, that your points Jake are fairly laughable. You have yet to actually show anything resembling empirical evidence as to WHY the Bradley is a piece of shit, or even that its inferior in any way to other AFV’s in its class. Surely you should be able to dig up ONE piece of empirical evidence against it?
As to the fact that the US spends more money on its military than Europe does, more on research and development, etc…well duh! Knock me over with a pillow. Apples to oranges to compare the spending by the US on its military vs what the Europeans spend. Such a difference in spending explains why the US actually HAS an effective military that can be deployed overseas and actually accomplish something? Put another way, if Europe has such an effective military why haven’t they deployed some of it to, say, the Sudan? Obviously the US it tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan…but the slaughter goes on in North Africa. Where are the European militaries in shining white armor to save the day? Why did NATO rope the US into its adventure in Bosnia if the Europeans have such a kick ass military?
The sad fact is the Europeans have been riding our coat tails since the Soviets folded as far as from a military perspective. They have cashed in big time on the ‘peace dividend’ by gutting their militaries and slashing R&D. Now, that may be a smart thing for them to have done…its saved them tons of money so they can have all those fine social programs they have over there. But afaik its only recently they have started to seriously re-think and re-budget for increasing military spending in some of the European nations.
They are well behind the US both on the R&D and the actual deployment of weapons systems already in the pipeline, as well as training for their militaries. Certainly in some weapons systems some of the Europeans rival US deployed weapons (I’m thinking of the British and German main battle tanks and some of the French fighter jets)…that is their weapons systems are comparable to current generation of US weapons…in fact the French fighters might even be better than the currently deployed generation of US fighters (like the F-14, F15 and F-16’s). The problem is that they don’t have as many of them as the US does, they don’t train like the US does, and they have no real way to GET them to distant battlefields the way the US does.
