Along the same lines as cutting the military. In South Carolina there are two Air Force bases, on e in Charleston an one in Sumter. They are controlled by two different Major Commands, so they have two completely different missions. They are about 100 miles apart by air. The is right next door when you are talking aircraft. I suggest closing Charleston AFB, and moving it's resources to Shaw AFB (the one in Sumter). Charleston is plagued by hurricane shut downs and "bug outs". Even if most of the personnel are shifted form one base to the other it doesn't matter. The real savings will come from not having to maintain two separate base facilities.

 

I have no information on troop count, other than the URL above. Could be the reservists being activated. Still stands the military is not the smallest it has been at current state, and spending wise it is larger today than when Ronnie was in. At that time we at least had the USSR to worry about tacking the US. Did that one miss the mark.
The military budget (050) includes 051, from what I see you are correct, this includes OCO.
It was not the size of the Military or the appearance of staying out of the war that got the US involved in WW-II. It was the insistence of being neutral while supporting Britain in Europe and supporting China in the battle against Japan. Had we actually stuck our head in the sand, it could have been much different. The US was involved in the war, up until 7-DEC we tried to make it look like we were not.
BTW : Having a small Navy or the Navy the size of the next 11 countries Navy, how did it stop the US from being attacked on 11-SEP?
Would having a Navy the size of the next 20 counties changed this ?
Down sizing the Navy to be the same as the next top 5 county's Navies is not going to leave the country unprepared for war. Fighting the last war will though.

OK, it made it easier. Did the size of the Navy have any impact on either Iraq or Afghanistan ? If it was the size of the next 5 countries rather than the next 11, would Iraq or Afghanistan been any different ?

It is not burying out heads in the sand, it is keeping our nose out of other countries business.
Had the US just left Iran alone in the 50s, do you think the radical state of today would be in power. They had a democracy until the US got involved, and that messed it up. Now the UN cannot even question the last Iran elections, as the answer is 'The US did this before in our elections, this is more of the same'. Could be the election was rigged like Iraq's election, but there is no way to find out from what the US did in the past. Burned that bridge.
Why was the US getting involved in Libya ? Were they planning a battle with the US ? Why is the US staging troops in Jordan now ?
It has gotten out of control since Yugoslavia, the US now is trying to install some form of democracy in every corner of the globe, at a huge cost we cannot afford.

The US is not fighting the last war. A Navy the size of the next 11 together is not needed, unless we plan on starting a war with 8 of our allies and the other 3 countries.
This is the US spending money we do not have.
There are other pork budget items on the Left, and they are asking for expansion of them. Someone has to take the 1st steps, and stop this bargaining chip routine of I'll cut this if you cut that.
If the GOP got out in front of this and cut the defense budget, and demanded the stop to these battles, that are none of the US's business, it would be a lot harder for the MSM to paint them as the source of everything that is wrong with politics.
The MSM could try but when the bottom line is 200B cut in one pen stroke, and this is in the next year's number, not the BS of over 10 years, it would be very hard.
Instead we have the meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I am all for helping people that are in trouble. But when it comes at such a huge cost to the tax payers, it has to stop. We do not have the money to spend on it today.
If someone is having his house foreclosed on, the power and gas were shut off weeks ago, should they still be contributing to charity ?
We can watch out for ourselves without needing to start all these actions.

 

Another good point of spending out of control. If the military were to shut down one of them, would it change the defensive posture of the US ?
What would this mean for the US's ability to defend itself ?

Not much would be my thought. The argument of it is only 500M to keep the extra base open is lame. 500 M found 10 time over is 5B, and I am sure there are easily 10 examples like this that could be found, and you cut 200B the same way you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.

 

I can not answer for sure if it is possible to close one of these bases. One question I would have is what types of aircraft are flown from these bases? Not all aircraft can use any base. A C-5 will probably not be able to land at a base built to only handle fighters. It would go through the runway. Does the base to stay open have enough room to handle all the other aircraft. Enough maintenance facilities etc. or would they have to be built.

Edit - took a look at the two bases. Shaw is a fighter base while Charleston is an airlift command base and also a joint base with the Navy which has a weapons base north of Charleston. Probably why it is a joint base. What the airlift command base flies could not fly in and out of Shaw. Shaw is smaller, narrower runways etc. By the time you upgrade Shaw, you might as well keep both bases.

SScully, you stated the defense budget was 970B for 2011. The real budget for 2011 was 526B. The rest was OCO (overseas contingency operations) which has nothing to do with things like payroll, procurement, etc.Budget for 2012 is 670.9B of which 118B is OCO and can be found here. http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbu...rview_Book.pdf

As far as naval ships, the big number of ships to look at are auxiliaries. Without these you can not support front line ships or those 11 carriers. No way to transport things like the equipment and personnel of naval and other services. At this time there are only enough aux. ships to handle carrier battle groups. All other tasks must be done by civilian ships. At any one time, at least 1/3 of all your ships will not be available due to refurbishment, modernization, etc, so the carriers are down to 7or 8 at best. The oldest, The Enterprise, I do not expect to be around to much longer as it is 50 years old and has old tech nuclear propulsion. The oldest Nimitz class is 40. Also getting long in tooth. Frigates are being phased out. Many of the early Arleigh Burke class destroyers have been decommissioned. Same with Los Angeles class subs and Ticonderoga class destroyers. With the frigates and cruisers, there are no replacements being built. The LA class subs are somewhat being replaced by the Virginia class. A few destroyers are being replaced by new Zumwalt class, but I do not expect many of them to be built any time soon.
For the Army, no new tanks or hummers, and no close replacement, only modernization. In fact they are even giving M1s away to Iraq, who is getting 140.
Air Force is getting no new planes except for the F35 (and maybe the C17), and they are cutting back on those.

Everyone states we need to cut this procurement or that procurement, but I question whether that really saves money. When we are investing in equipment that may save the lives of those we ask to defend us, is there any cost too great. One of the main requirements when designing the M1 tank was survivability, and it was done pretty well, but can it be better. My guess is yes. Same holds true with other things. F22 production has been stopped and cut way from original. Supposedly the F15 is "good enough". That "good enough" quote has lost the lives of many service men. An example is the M4 Sherman. For it's time it was at best okay and by 1943, obsolete. But there was nothing to replace it. So they built a lot of them (50,000), and lost a lot of them. The could not take on the German Panther or Tiger on a 1 to 1 basis. Best odds was at least 5 to 1 and maybe 1 of the Shermans would survive. They were called the Ronson because they flamed up first time every time when hit. There guns could not get through the front armor of the Panther, Tiger, and other German tanks. But they were "good enough".

 

Good point, in terms of this points to someone did somebody a favor by building 2 bases that close together so they might not be able to be combined.
Still think there is not fat in the defense budget that could not be cut by spending money wisely.
The Govt does not get rewarded for spending money wisely, but more so in terms of a % increase over the previous year.

It is money being spent. It is all under 050, the bulk of the number is in 051.
If it is payroll or Equipment, does one make it OK to spend money we don't have where another does not ?

OK, is there a reason to have 11 carriers ?
How are the Next 11 countries not have an issue with the size of their Navy. That's right, they don't have the money to spend on it, and don't borrow from China to do it.

Again, scale back to actual defending.
The US is out spending money waging campaigns in other countries that are not part of defending the US.

This used to happen all the time.
If it was not Germany in WW-II it was the USSR in the Cold war.
How much more advanced was the US vs Vietnam ?
- We seemed to have the best of the best and lots of it in that conflict, and still lost.
Let's go with the defense budget has to be cut, not should, along with other line items from the left. The tax revenue is not there, which makes it a spending problem today.

This spending money "just in case" we go to war with Russia or all of Europe has to stop.

There is no; cut social entitlement programs and expand military spending or even hold it at the current levels.

 

Guess again. The C-17 was designed specifically to carry more cargo than the C-130 while at the same time being able to land on the same airstrips. Basically fill the void the C-141 left while maintaining lift capcity for smaller airfields than the C-141 could land at. For several weeks they landed C-17s on dirt runways in hostile areas, until the dirt started acting like dirt. At that point they had enough materials in country to upgrade the dirt runways to something more permanent. The C-17 will be able to land without too many problems at the Shaw airfield. The weight limit on runway 1 at Shaw exceeds the max takeoff weight of the C-17. About the only upgrades the might be required for Shaw is widening the runway by a few feet. That is a maybe, since the aircraft was designed to land and take off on austere airfields.

Either way, closing Charleston would be the better option, but a savings can still be had if Shaw was closed and those resources were transfered to Charleston (Yes they have the room).

 

Something to consider with the cost of our military is we do not take the death of any of our citizens lightly. As a result we have decided to invest heavily in technology that tends to lower the risks to our people. That technology is expensive, but that is the direction our military will continue to go.

 

So you can have 3 - 5 CBGs at sea at all times. CBGs do no good sitting in port. They will always be the first responder, unless maybe the problem is in Mexico or Canada. Otherwise it will be a CBG.

 

And it begins.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-6285629.html

Haven;t seen any major cuts for domestic or "entitlements" yet, have you?

But must have pay increases.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...g.html?hpid=z1

 

Had the GOP congress put into action, the defense part of the plan that was draw up by the GOP at the start of the 112th congress, the GOP could have gotten credit for being proactive and forward thinking on budget issues. This would have left the Dems standing looking like spend happy people, spending money the govt does not have.

The MSM paints the GOP as the single reason everything is deadlocked, where it is both fighting about every little line item and quid pro quo for cuts.

Now the Dictator, I mean POTUS has laid out 10 year plans for the Pentagon that requires cuts.
The MSM will present this as Obama is having the fix the spending problem the US has ( even though Obama has been in the "income problem" camp since the start ), where the GOP have done nothing but block forward momentum ( again back to the quid pro quo cuts that both sides look for, and the arguing that comes from it ).

The DEC unemployment looked OK ( how ever the count is being made now, it looks good to the general public ) and now Obama is addressing the spending problem the US federal govt has.
This is the start of the campaigning for NOV, and the majority of the voters are dumb enough to fall for more of the same.
This is along the lines of Hope & Change ( not what are his qualifications ) to make voters turn out and punch the ticket for the Democratic party.

And it starts, no the media battle for the 2012 election started just after the 2010 election results were in.