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Alright guys, I've mentioned this in brief in other threads, but here, I'll expand.
The size of our military force has always been benchmarked by our ability to hold at least 2.5 wars simultaneously. We have basically maintained enough troops, weapons, vehicles, and equipment to be able to accomplish this. The reason for this is so we're not left open in the case we send our troops out to wage a full-scale war. Much like Britain was during WWII while the Germans expanded their rule into France. If they would have simply invaded Britain then, and left France the pushover later, they would have taken them over fairly easily since the majority of Britain's military wasn't in the country but away fighting other battles. Don't quote me on that, I'm not a WWII expert, but many has speculated that the two main mistakes Hitler made that lost him the war was not invading Britain first and then trying to expand into the soviet union.
Anyway, so the hypothetical situation is if we're off fighting a full-fledge war, we will no longer be capable of taking care of another situation if we only had the military force to wage a single war, that's why we need to have the capability to hold 2.5 wars simultaneously.
Well, while we were in major combat with Iraq, despite what the media neglected to report, we were also actively sending troops to, and fighting, in Afghanistan. My concern is whether we have stretched our capability in doing that in the aftermath of the Clinton military downsizing campaign.
Bush didn't really have that great deal of time to rebuild our military after Clinton, it's always quicker to decommission troops and ships than it is to put some into service.
In case you don't already know the numbers:
<ul>
<LI>Active-duty force reduced from 2.1 million ro 1.6 million
<LI>Army's mechanized divisions reduced from 18 to 12 (10 was used in Dessert storm alone)
<LI>Navy reduced from 546 to 300 (the smallest Naval force since pre-WWII period)
<LI>Air Force was reduced from 76 flight squadrons to 50
<LI>Eliminated 232 strategic bombers
<LI>Eliminated over 2,000 Air-Force and Navy combat aircraft
<LI>Eliminated the ENTIRE fleet of battleships.
<LI>Eliminated 305,000 people from federal payroll, 286,000 (90%) of them from the Department of Defence[/list]
This was all within Clinton's first 3 years, more was to follow afterward, and overseas deployment of troops increased 300% while supplies are being cut. Clinton sent troops and equipment to over 17 countries in his 8 years.
Well, that seems to me a bit hard to recover from in just a few years.
Despite our record breaking speed and efficiency in our invasion of Iraq, perhaps we were capable of doing even better with even fewer casualties than our already insanely low numbers? Perhaps Bush was being a little too optimistic to believe we can have conflicts with Afghanistan and Iraq simultaneously?
Does anyone know where our military stands right now? Does anyone have the current statistics? Did we rebuild our military before we engaged in these conflicts? It's obvious enlistment rate increased in this time period, since during the Clinton years they were given a payfreeze and over 80% of enlisted soldiers were making less than $30k a year, a lot of them qualifying for welfare, the reenlistment rate was obviously at record lows. But the number of troops might be higher now, what about the combat aircraft? What about the ships, the tanks, or gunships? Does anyone know just how capable we were to be in Iraq and Afghanistan?
<hr>
--"General Hammond, request permission to beat the crap out of this man." -Col. Jack O'Neill -Stargate SG-1
--Capt. Carter: "You think it might be a booby trap?"
â â Teal'c: "Booby?"
--"I'm a bomb technician, if you see me running, try to catch up" -in Russian on a bomb tech's shirt from "The Sum of All Fears"
--"All my life, I've been waiting for someone and when I find her, she's a fish!" -Tom Hanks "Splash"
--"War is not about who's right, it's about who's left." -Anders Russell
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Alright guys, I've mentioned this in brief in other threads, but here, I'll expand.
The size of our military force has always been benchmarked by our ability to hold at least 2.5 wars simultaneously. We have basically maintained enough troops, weapons, vehicles, and equipment to be able to accomplish this. The reason for this is so we're not left open in the case we send our troops out to wage a full-scale war. Much like Britain was during WWII while the Germans expanded their rule into France. If they would have simply invaded Britain then, and left France the pushover later, they would have taken them over fairly easily since the majority of Britain's military wasn't in the country but away fighting other battles. Don't quote me on that, I'm not a WWII expert, but many has speculated that the two main mistakes Hitler made that lost him the war was not invading Britain first and then trying to expand into the soviet union.
Anyway, so the hypothetical situation is if we're off fighting a full-fledge war, we will no longer be capable of taking care of another situation if we only had the military force to wage a single war, that's why we need to have the capability to hold 2.5 wars simultaneously.
Well, while we were in major combat with Iraq, despite what the media neglected to report, we were also actively sending troops to, and fighting, in Afghanistan. My concern is whether we have stretched our capability in doing that in the aftermath of the Clinton military downsizing campaign.
Bush didn't really have that great deal of time to rebuild our military after Clinton, it's always quicker to decommission troops and ships than it is to put some into service.
In case you don't already know the numbers:
<ul>
<LI>Active-duty force reduced from 2.1 million ro 1.6 million
<LI>Army's mechanized divisions reduced from 18 to 12 (10 was used in Dessert storm alone)
<LI>Navy reduced from 546 to 300 (the smallest Naval force since pre-WWII period)
<LI>Air Force was reduced from 76 flight squadrons to 50
<LI>Eliminated 232 strategic bombers
<LI>Eliminated over 2,000 Air-Force and Navy combat aircraft
<LI>Eliminated the ENTIRE fleet of battleships.
<LI>Eliminated 305,000 people from federal payroll, 286,000 (90%) of them from the Department of Defence[/list]
This was all within Clinton's first 3 years, more was to follow afterward, and overseas deployment of troops increased 300% while supplies are being cut. Clinton sent troops and equipment to over 17 countries in his 8 years.
Well, that seems to me a bit hard to recover from in just a few years.
Despite our record breaking speed and efficiency in our invasion of Iraq, perhaps we were capable of doing even better with even fewer casualties than our already insanely low numbers? Perhaps Bush was being a little too optimistic to believe we can have conflicts with Afghanistan and Iraq simultaneously?
Does anyone know where our military stands right now? Does anyone have the current statistics? Did we rebuild our military before we engaged in these conflicts? It's obvious enlistment rate increased in this time period, since during the Clinton years they were given a payfreeze and over 80% of enlisted soldiers were making less than $30k a year, a lot of them qualifying for welfare, the reenlistment rate was obviously at record lows. But the number of troops might be higher now, what about the combat aircraft? What about the ships, the tanks, or gunships? Does anyone know just how capable we were to be in Iraq and Afghanistan?
<hr>
--"General Hammond, request permission to beat the crap out of this man." -Col. Jack O'Neill -Stargate SG-1
--Capt. Carter: "You think it might be a booby trap?"
â â Teal'c: "Booby?"
--"I'm a bomb technician, if you see me running, try to catch up" -in Russian on a bomb tech's shirt from "The Sum of All Fears"
--"All my life, I've been waiting for someone and when I find her, she's a fish!" -Tom Hanks "Splash"
--"War is not about who's right, it's about who's left." -Anders Russell
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well I think the army right now doesn't have a lot of troops in Afghanistan. Majority are special forces which are very effective. More so then the major army units because they don't run into houses and cause a big problem with the locals. So if they see special forces people driving up in their toyota truck to have a chit chat with who ever is in charge of the village about those terrorist they usally have a fun time together and work with them more effictively. They respect them since they speak their language, know and respect how they live, give them free medical care, and try to work with them in solving their problems.
So you don't need a lot of personal in Afghanistan. This seems to be the trend of what the US wants to do. The reason why they have the option right now after 9/11 for anyone off the street to enlist and be a green beret after only 2 years of traning. Which is VERY long. Normaly they train you only for 4 months tops.
As far as iraq. They seem to have handeled that situation very differently. With a more conventional force because iraq had a conventional army defending it's self.
I don't think any country could stand a war with america very long. I don't think we need an army to carry out 2.5 wars at the same time. Because anywhere we go it's going to be over in a few months at the most. Winning the peace though is a different story. That requires time and effort and can be either through special forces like in afghanistan or with an occupation of conventional forces like in iraq. For winning the peace I would always go for special forces. They work wonders in showing the good side to america and help show some sort of humanity. It's not just some faceless hord of men with american flags on their arms running around with guns oblivious to the cultor of the people they are dealing with, and there is less man power needed[img]/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-wink.gif[/img]
forgive the spelling errors.
"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift.."- Plato
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Well, neither Afghanistan nor Iraq is a very good benchmark for what they consider a major war. What would be is something like a war with North Korea.
Let's pretend that while we had our guys in Afghanistan and in Iraq, North Korea would invade South Korea, it is basically up to us to go over there and defeat the N. Korean force. Well, to be honest, it would have been a good opportunity for them because our capability would have been vastly disadvantaged by our decreased size.
It's not about actually fighting 2.5 wars, I mean, what exactly is .5 of a war? It's the fact of having a military that is CAPABLE of it. It's always a good idea to have more than what you think you might need in the near future, so nothing will catch you by surprise.
<hr>
--"General Hammond, request permission to beat the crap out of this man." -Col. Jack O'Neill -Stargate SG-1
--Capt. Carter: "You think it might be a booby trap?"
â â Teal'c: "Booby?"
--"I'm a bomb technician, if you see me running, try to catch up" -in Russian on a bomb tech's shirt from "The Sum of All Fears"
--"All my life, I've been waiting for someone and when I find her, she's a fish!" -Tom Hanks "Splash"
--"War is not about who's right, it's about who's left." -Anders Russell
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yeah I'am not to fond of it either demon. Look at what it did for us after world war 1 when we were thrown into world war 2.
Sure it cost a lot to maintain but spending money on your military is a lot better then spending your soldiers lives when something does happen because you couldn't slap the other person on the hand at the right time when they went for the cookies[img]/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-very-happy.gif[/img]
I would guess that I have a bit to much faith in our military. Even a war with north korea would be over pretty quickly. Sure it would take a while to clean out all their stupid arty, but once that's taken care of when someone is shelling the crap out of you and you see a bunch of tanks and well trained infantry with a cability of knocking any strong points in less then 30 mins via a 500lb present from the sky things would be over fairly quickly.
Poltical leverage is about the only thing I see benifical from having such a large army. But that's pretty important. I think they will do fine though. Although like you I want to see a big well trained military. Screw the quality, quantity has a quality on it's own[img]/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif[/img]
Now what would be intresting is a war with china. I think we would be a bit overwhelmed in numbers there, and they seem to be doing quite well for themselves. I think it would be like the Russo-German war of 41-45. Well minus the genoicde on the US part.
"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift.."- Plato
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Um, shouldn't discount the N. Koreans just yet. You forget we already fought them once before, in 1950, and were unable to defeat them, fighting lasted for 3 years until finally lines were drawn and the firing stopped temperarily, but they are actually legally still at war since no treaty was ever signed to end the war. I think it is the longest war in modern history, 53 years and counting...
<hr>
--"General Hammond, request permission to beat the crap out of this man." -Col. Jack O'Neill -Stargate SG-1
--Capt. Carter: "You think it might be a booby trap?"
â â Teal'c: "Booby?"
--"I'm a bomb technician, if you see me running, try to catch up" -in Russian on a bomb tech's shirt from "The Sum of All Fears"
--"All my life, I've been waiting for someone and when I find her, she's a fish!" -Tom Hanks "Splash"
--"War is not about who's right, it's about who's left." -Anders Russell
-
Well, let's not forget that as of this week, the US Navy has the lowest number of ships it has had since before World War I. But that's just a point of interest. Building ships takes a lot of time and costs ridiculously large amounts of money. Which is why only the US has so many carriers in service.
But be that as it may, we are still capable of holding two full scale wars and a conflict or so. We are currently militarily involved in nearly 100 different places (according to a Pentagon briefing from last week - I personally haven't tried counting) and are considered to be "comfortablly engaged" in most of them. This means that we're not taking large numbers of unexpected losses and are able to disengage freely.
The US is also bringing warfare to whole new levels. No, there is no way we could match the Chinese man for man, or even tank for tank. But we don't have to. Due to both the quality of our soldiers and materials, any conflict we fight in will generally be considered to be asymetric. While the technological advantage and focus we have can be a disadvantage in many ways, it lets us fight a "higher quality" war with a lower quantity of warfighters and equipment.
There is also the issue of our logistics groups. Again, China has far more men under arms than we do or are capable of fielding. However, they don't have to logistical ability to take Taiwan intact. Facing the Chinese on a level playing field would be idiocy, and wars simply aren't fought that way. Instead you use your strengths to gain a tactical advantage. Hence the use of new technologies like the (admittedly unproven) Stryker system and the ongoing work on the FCS system. A Stryker brigade can be delivered much more rapidly than a Heavy (Abrams) brigade, and with enough capabilities to fulfill a similar function. We also implement technology as rapidly as possible to increase those advantages.
"The submergence of self in the pursuit of an ideal, the readiness to spend oneself without measure, prodigally, almost ecstatically, for something intuitively apprehended as great and noble, spend oneself, one knows not why, - some of us like to believe that this is what religion means. "
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Let's hope so, because those numbers worry me.
<hr>
--"General Hammond, request permission to beat the crap out of this man." -Col. Jack O'Neill -Stargate SG-1
--Capt. Carter: "You think it might be a booby trap?"
â â Teal'c: "Booby?"
--"I'm a bomb technician, if you see me running, try to catch up" -in Russian on a bomb tech's shirt from "The Sum of All Fears"
--"All my life, I've been waiting for someone and when I find her, she's a fish!" -Tom Hanks "Splash"
--"War is not about who's right, it's about who's left." -Anders Russell
-
The navy might have less ships then before world war 1, but each ship has 1000 times the firepower, does it not?
<Center>
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yeah that was our mistake though. After the A-Bomb the US thought that's how our problems would be solved. Our conventional forces took a backseat to things for 5 years. When war did break out we lost because to the north koreans due to lack of training and equipment and men in the first few part of the war. Once enough equipment and men reached korea we pushed them back and even when we came up to the yellow river we were disregarding any type of modren doctrim of mechanized warfare and had our butts handed to us by the chinese of all things.
But once Matthew B. Ridgway(god I love this guy) got in there and started to handel things and change our strategy we won.
When it comes to war it's mainly about the doctrims that you apply and I have absolute faith in our people. They seem to prove themselves time and time again over the past 20 years.
"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, provided the madness is given us by divine gift.."- Plato
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