EPA to cut three brigades of lawyers
No, just joking. Actually the Army is getting ready for the hatchet to fall on their troop strength according to a Fox News link from Old Trooper;
Gen. Raymond Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, says officials are developing plans to cut spending, but are committed to ensuring the force is properly trained, staffed and equipped to defend the U.S.
The Pentagon is slated to cut $450 billion over 10 years, but the reductions could be doubled if Congress fails to find $1.5 trillion in savings.
Originally, the Ranger Battalions were supposed to provide a cadre of highly trained NCOs that would rebuild the Army in the next war after Vietnam. It might be time to revive that plan, not with the current Ranger Battalions, but another unit.
The Washington Times warns that massive slashing of the defense budget will have an adverse effect on recruiting;
On the table: higher health care premiums and a shift of the military’s guaranteed pension benefits to an investment-based 401(k)-type of retirement savings plan.
John Raughter, spokesman for the 2.4-million-member American Legion, said the nation’s largest veterans group is increasingly concerned about how deep reductions will affect recruitment.
“It is a major concern to us,” Mr. Raughter said. “When you start tinkering with Tricare [the military’s health care system] and the military retirement systems, it’s basically a slap in the face. The system is basically saying your service tomorrow is not as valuable as our service was yesterday.”
Well, as long as the lawyers at EPA are safe, right?
Category: Military issues, Veterans Issues
What’s funny is the left and democrats threw a fit when it was suggested that people should have the “option” to put 3% of their Social Security into a 401K style account, but now it’s ok to do it to the military? Yeah, we all know how the democrats feel about the military. If they think it’s good enough for the military, it should be good enough for everyone else, including congress.
There is no way to cut 450 billion dollars out of military spending and not decimate the military. Whoever thinks that plan is feasible has absolutely no connection to that thing we call reality; and it’s going to be our troops who pay the price for that stupidity.
1. We’re leaving billions of dollars in equipment to the Iraqis, or to whomever the Iraqis sell the stuff. That’s lazy, sloppy leadership on the order of Field Marshal Douglas Haig. Odierno must have crapped his intelligence in exchange for CSA.
2. We’ll leave billions of dollars in equipment to the Taliban, unless Karzai can sell it to someone else first.
3. Investment-based 401K: sounds good, unless the economy is in the tank, as it is now. Recommend tangibles: land and such.
4. The Army will cut guideons, and consolidate.
5. It will take a while to train forces to be World-Class OPFOR. And who will they model? Russia? The PLA?
6. Acquisitions remains broken. The current crop of leaders and soldiers will go insane waiting for a properly done, ruggedized kit.
7. The Rangers, Ranger Battalions, and tab-wearers won’t cut it. The Army is much bigger, and far more powerful than that. Another idea is to bring the immediate-pre-9/11 and immediate-post-9/11 retirees back as cadre to re-teach the skills, even KISS (Keep It Simple & Synchronize). Corps, division, BCT leadership and staff need to relearn that “major muscle movement” doesn’t involve a wipe and flush.
It is going to get bad… the baby boomers have come home to roost and are collecting their just dues… now, how to pay for it? Massive overseas pullouts and inactivation of units (*note one inactivates units not deactivate units). Germany, England and Japan will get hit with US military pullouts. Consolidation and out-sourcing will be the mantra. We are broke and have to get smarter, unfortunately saving money in the civilian world doesn’t equate to saving lives in the military.
Long wars=short promotions. Careerism will be in the forefront. Seen it before…
Jonn, EPA lawyers are gs employees who are hard to fire and vote for democrats. To get rid of the military, who vote Rebublican, just under train or under equip them. The soldiers will either die or quit in frustration.
First they cut the military. Then, they refuse to honor our commitments. That leads to hard-won gains being lost. In effect, our enemies will fill any vacuum we leave (and kill off our allies). Sound familiar, VietNam era guys?
#2″Whoever thinks that plan is feasible has absolutely no connection to that thing we call reality; and it’s going to be our troops who pay the price for that stupidity.” Yep.
3# See below.
“4. The Army will cut guideons, and consolidate.” This should logically happen, but then again it might not. We’re almost certainly going to be subtracting muscle(combat power), that is how drastic this is. Cuts have to be targetted, not across the force evenly. That is something that rarely happens. Where should the USA put its emphasis?
“5. It will take a while to train forces to be World-Class OPFOR. And who will they model? Russia? The PLA?” Unknown, but most likely the PLA. We also must retain some of the policing/irregular abilties that have been newly aquired. Capabilities that the Army allowed to atroph after Vietnam.
“6. Acquisitions remains broken.” True and likely will be for a few more years. “The current crop of leaders and soldiers will go insane waiting for a properly done, ruggedized kit.” I think you have a point for large acquisitions, but not on smaller equipment.
“7. The Rangers, Ranger Battalions, and tab-wearers won’t cut it. The Army is much bigger, and far more powerful than that. Another idea is to bring the immediate-pre-9/11 and immediate-post-9/11 retirees back as cadre to re-teach the skills, even KISS (Keep It Simple & Synchronize). Corps, division, BCT leadership and staff need to relearn that “major muscle movement” doesn’t involve a wipe and flush.” I agree with you to a point, many of the larger skills have atrophied through lack of use and must be relearned. I am a little scared that we are going to shit anything and everything we’ve learned over the last decade, for an Army, ah la post Vietnam, that is meant to settle our future conflicts in something like single engagements. That would be very short sighted. The “If its not Desert Storm Or Grenada”, call somebody else mentality. That is only half the Army’s portfolio!
#4 Agree. See above.
#7 I would say that there is so much that a soldier must learn. It must now, when we get peace, be that a Soldier is prepared to fight a big battle like we prepared for against the Russians. BUT every troop must also be trained with COIN and peacetime missions. honestly there’s so much that will be thrown into there that if you really wanted to train an 11B in those tasks their BCT/AIT would be 6 months easily. Add to that a lax in discipline, it presents a problem from training alone. that’s just talking about E-fuzzy to E-5 I’m not even talking about LTs and CPTs.
It is a strange reality that if the EPA WERE slashed by as much as the Army is about to be slashed, they offsets might be huge.
In the end this move is so shortsighted it truly scares me.
#8 I think we generally agree, though I disagree with BCT/AIT being turned into 6 months. These are fundamentally unit type missions(How large or type of formation is yet another question). The Army won’t likely have units that will have the time(never mind equipment or mix of people) to be ready to perfectly execute every possible contingency.
So where should the Army put the emphasis? Should the entire institution lean more toward certain missions rather then others or maybe have different brigades on rotation skew towards different ends? My point is that the entire Army should at least be able to understand the distinct functions, as a whole organisation ,it maybe called out to perform and at least in theory change course if needed.
If combat power is cut a serious setback is more likely to occur. We won’t have the that cushion of rotational task specifity. This in turn makes it more likely units will be tossed in situations in which they were ill prepared. Let me be clear, it happens, you can’t forsee every possible flair up, but ideally we’d like to minimize this.