Obama Cuts Could Make Air Force Smallest Ever And Make Navy Smallest Since 1915

Even with a 25% cut we are still twice as strong as anyone in the world.

We're not even remotely "emaciated".

 

Boy, all these small government conservatives freak out when you touch the military budget.

 

Yeah! How dare Obama make a deal to ensure that our troops in Afghanistan stay supplied!

Exactly what would that missile shield have protected against again?

 

Cool. So now Questerr is on board with abolishing most of our programs and departments.

Welcome to conservatism, buddy. Where you been?

 

Like the Founding Fathers intended.

 

Clinton cut the military by 40% and Bush had to rebuild it when we were attacked.

Now Obama wants to make us even weaker than what Clinton did.

 

Like some of them. One of our Founding Fathers created the Marines.

 

Show proof. Times change and so does the military.

Obama wants to make us weak

 

I'm not a conservative. I'm a liberal. And a small "l" libertarian". They aren't mutually exclusive.

Conservatives make me sick. Their obsession with controlling people's property (ie their bodies) and people's social lives borders on fascism.

 

... in large part because we're rapidly developing new weapons platforms that would pose a threat to their vital national interests around the globe. As we spend more, we will prompt them to spend more. As we build up, we will prompt them to build up.

What makes you think we need large numbers of ships and planes to protect our global interests? Both branches of the service have been spending a huge amount of resources on new technologies and replacements that cut down on the manpower and resource requirements for fulfilling particular missions and roles.

Both services, for example, were getting in on the F-35 project because it would dramatically reduce logistical difficulties and allow them to use the same planes to fulfill a wider range of missions. Fighting smarter is more important than fighting harder.

...our nation is weak right now. Our economic fundamentals are in the toilet. By rights our military should be around a fifth as expensive as it is right now. When a country reaches unsustainable levels of military spending, they become known as a paper tiger. They may have a large and theoretically powerful force, but would lack the economic basis to support it in an actual war. Our military should be no larger than we need and no larger than we can afford. Frankly we cannot afford the military we have, even with the proposed reductions.

While there will always be a need for physical defense forces, their utility is quickly changing. It's unlikely that any of the global powers will engage in actual military warfare with each other. We'll fight economic and trade wars. We'll fight information and cyber wars. We'll use trade agreements, not cruise missiles.

Right now, our excessive military spending is leaving our nation critically vulnerable to these far more likely threats. Spending more than required on "defense" is a threat to national security as surely as spending too little would be.

Warfare today requires far fewer people than it did in 1940. We certainly do not need cold war levels of ground troops. We have no use for such a large and unwieldy force. The military doesn't even want a force like that.

 

Our Founders never wanted a large standing army. They created a system of militias for a reason.

 

Which are part of the Navy. The Founders supported us having a Navy.

 

But that version of the GOP is old and dying out and losing power in the party.

The new GOP is about maximum economic freedom, and many of us feel that our paychecks are our private property, and liberals who would confiscate the majority of that private property in order to ameliorate intractable social problems is just as fascist.

We can easily divide our society up into two distinct and separate specturms.

A social/political one(i.e. Freedom of Speech, Abortion, Gay Marriage, etc)

and an economic one (taxation, social welfare, etc)

Republicans may possibly be fascistic regarding the social/political spectrum.

But Democrats are equally or possibly even more fascistic when it comes to the economic spectrum.

 

Is that the reason or was it that worked best for that time to protect more areas. Still you show no proof

 

Yeah it's something isn't it. Pure intellectual bankruptcy. This is why conservatism is totally doomed.

 

The missile shield!

Oh God that's funny. The biggest boondoggle in history and the Baggers actually think Star Wars works.

 

Ironically if we keep wasting money on the dead weight of our military, speculating on pottential wars, we will lack the economic strength to prevail should said putative and unlikely war.

Here's a concept: if a war breaks out, if you have a strong economy, you can build a strong military to fight it. Destroying the economy to maybe fight a war in the future is a prescription for losing that war and immiserating the nation to boot.

And that's why **********s are for it.

 

^^^ This. We either slim down during peacw times and deal with some slow growth in the first days of a conflict before we bulk back up, or we convert to a fascist military driven spartan society that runs on conquest. (something tells me the latter wouldn't last long)

 

This was okay in the early 20th century when warfare was a much slower process requiring mass moblizations, etc.

But in today's world of hyper war. A military conflict can be decided in a matter of days or weeks.

America was so completely caught off guard at the beginning of world war II that it took us from 1941-mid 1943 before we had fully ramped up our war production to meet demands. The D-Day invasions for instance, took 2 years to get the necessary men and materials built up in England before it could be undertaken. The plans for D-Day had already been in place since late 1942.

2 years is far too long in today's world.

 

think about this though...

we have nuclear (*)(*)(*)(*)ing submarines...

nuclear (*)(*)(*)(*)ing submarines

(*)(*)(*)(*)ing submarines

submarines

there aint a first world nation on the ******* planet thats gonna touch us while we have even a couple of Ohio classes prowling the oceans. not to mention our dozens of unmanned drones that can fly below radar.

As for terrorist attacks. We should not even be responding to those with massive amounts of ground troops anyway. airstrikes, missiles, and a few groups of special forces should be all thats needed for getting some pay back in those cases. not ten years and trillions of dollars in nation building.

 

You got that right.

Obama got on his knees and puckered up to kiss Putin's ass on that one.

 

Excellent point.

 

This is true, but on the same hand this is the 21st century and the need for grunt soldiers is minuscule. It is an administrative vacuum for money and waste. We could consolidate the entire military into one covert/technological branch. The fact that we waged a decade long war(s) and lost less than 8,000 coalition troops, and at least some of them died of friendly fire and other mistakes proves this.

If it came to a ground battle of troops, it is almost certain America would lose against nations like Iran, Russia and China. These countries are much tougher. And if it came down to nuclear warfare, it would be the end of the human race.

 

So Obama thinks we are lazy, and Vergilius thinks we are not tough.

And people wonder why democrats are the anti-american party.

 

They only wanted militia but had a navy? You seem to be contradicting yourself and still refuse to show proof of anything you claim