Item from today's Air Force Association Daily Report:
Panel Targets Nearly $1 Trillion in Defense Cuts: The Pentagon should cancel the F-35 and V-22 programs, and delay the KC-X tanker for five years, the Congressionally chartered Sustainable Defense Task Force recently recommended. Lawmakers led by Rep. Barney Franks (D-Mass.) chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, created the task force to explore how DOD could help reduce the federal deficit. Making these moves, along with a bevy of additional cuts, could save up to $960 billion from Fiscal 2011-20, states the 14-member panel. The panel itself is non-partisan, but is loaded with well-known critics of defense spending including Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives, Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress, and Winslow Wheeler of the Center for Defense Information. Among its recommendations, the panel calls for reducing the US nuclear arsenal to 1,000 warheads deployed on 160 Minuteman ICBMs and seven nuclear submarines (thereby eliminating the bomber leg of the nuclear triad), trimming the US military presence in Europe and Asia by one-third, eliminating three Air Force fighter wings, and cutting the Navy fleet from 286 ships to 230. (SDTF report; caution, large file.)
We'll not flog dead draft animals here. You're either aware of stuff in DoD's world or you're not... stuff like a replacement tanker procurement that's in something like its tenth or 11th year now, an aging fleet of first-line aircraft that are getting harder and harder to maintain in a mission-capable status, our fifth generation fighter fleet capped at 187 airframes just as Russia and China are goin' full-tilt boogie on their fifth-gen fighters, and so on and so forth. I'll leave the skewering of the Navy recommendations to the more than capable Nav-bloggers. But Hey! We have MORE than enough money for bogus "stimulus" programs and gub'mint run health care, don't we? I'm thinkin' it's no mere coinky-dink that the useless fucking stimulus program and the proposed cuts in DoD budget are equal in size.
But like the post title sez: we knew this was coming. It's as predictable as the sunrise.
Had a nice time reading your blog. Sounds like a nice life. Hope I get to that someday (I mean the retired taking it easy).
ReplyDeleteYeah, let overspend and then cut money from defense to pay the bills.
ReplyDeleteI hate the democrats in office right now.
the DoD still plays a huge roll in keeping my former company afloat with business and opportunity as they move from track to wheeled military vehicles.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, we KNEW this was coming. Whether or not it happens is a different story all together. It's insane of Obama to think he can send another 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan to fight a war using antiquated and aging weaponery. Or he'll do what most do: borrow the technology and equipment from Canada. "Lease it" - wouldn't be the first, nor last time that has happened - but it most certainly isn't the cheapest method either.
Interesting times, n'est-ce-pas?
Buck, you're right. We saw this coming from day one. But it still hurts. I can think of a whole lot of other places to cut. We could stop the damn stimulus and cut fat, muscle, and bone out of those programs and departments that involve the "redistributing the wealth" philosophy he's following.
ReplyDeletewv: "systics," definition: ticks that are deftly inserted into our presently statist government system (its programs and departments), blood sucking ticks that are designed to secretly suck our nation's life blood.
Sorry, got a bit carried away there.
Hell, I'm just surprised it took this long...
ReplyDeleteTLIOL: Thanks for dropping by!
ReplyDeleteI hate the democrats in office right now.
Yeah, it's the "same ol', same ol'," innit?
But yes, we KNEW this was coming. Whether or not it happens is a different story all together.
Key point, KC. I'm convinced it won't happen to the extent quoted in the article. But some form of stupid cuts will be forthcoming, you can bet on that.
Dan: Your points are VERY well taken. There are whole bureaucracies that could be undone and we'd not be the worse for it... like the Depts of Education and Energy, just for starters. Rewriting the tax code could cut thousands off the IRS' employee rolls, and there are PLENTY more where those few examples come from.
BR: Give 'em time, give 'em time...
A few of the cuts are actually fairly reasonable...namely, the stuff to do with reducing the number of ICBMs and boomers and removing the bomber portion of the triad. There's a reason the Bones aren't nuke capable anymore, and it's not just because of START. Nukes are expensive, and maintaining nuke capable weapons systems is just as, if not more, expensive (not to mention the amount of ass pain they generate). Also, reducing overseas basing (particularly in Europe) would trim quite a bit of fat.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I doubt these recommendations have any basis in reality or responsible defense decisions. At this point, with how many screwups it's had, we should just kill KC-X and start developing a bomber with unrefueled intercontinental range, a la the B-36. Oh, and I'm no fan of the F-35, but to cancel it NOW, without any sort of an alternative plan, is to basically consign U.S. tacair to be a second rate force. Which of course has second and third order effects, since there are many (pretty much ALL of our allies) air forces that depend on the U.S. to provide the technological edge in an air campaign.