More Cuts for the US Military...

[Slartibartfast 153]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12130628

[+Dave 2,322]

Middle of a war and they want to cut back. Morons.

[JediMaster 451]

Well, they DO need to cut back on the war.

[+ST0RM 145]

Some of the highlights being:

 

Delayed or cancelled production of the F-35B (I guess the thought hasn't occured to them that it will drive up costs for the other jets)

Cancellation of the USMC's Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle

Increase healthcare premiums for active-duty and retirees

 

Awesome times to come.

 

Jeff

[macelena 1,070]

The more you cut on equipment for troops, the more healthcare to pay...unless they cut off ROLE hospitals and everyone is left to bleed out. It´s just like they said about the 5.56 bullet, WIAs are more expensive than KIAs

[wahubna 0]

The F-35B is "on probation" by Gates because it is holding up the successful F-35A and C. Plus, he has ok-ed the USAF B-X program!! So maybe a new bomber is in the future for the USAF! Still, Gates is a moron...

 

Here is the Aviation Week article:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/awx/2011/01/06/awx_01_06_2011_p0-280761.xml&headline=F-35B%20Put%20On%20Probation;%20New%20Bomber%20To%20Go%20Forward&channel=defense

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

I guess they think we are fighting a 'Different type of War now'...the War of Terror

[wahubna 0]

Well combat aircraft of today are simply weapons delivery platforms. They are first and foremost designed to get weapons on target. Besides, regardless of how agile and lethal say the F-22 is it still has to spend most of its time on the ground. Making it a big easy target and all aircraft need massive support infrastructure which is all easily destroyed. So a 5th gen bomber/strike aircraft (maybe a 5th gen style of the F-111!) can easily eliminate any potential enemy 5th gen fighter like the J-20 and T-50 (China and Russia/India respectively). In short, a 5th gen bomber would be a welcomed compliment to the F-22 and F-35A in USAF service.

[MigBuster 2,884]

The F-35B is "on probation" by Gates because it is holding up the successful F-35A and C. Plus, he has ok-ed the USAF B-X program!! So maybe a new bomber is in the future for the USAF! Still, Gates is a moron...

 

Here is the Aviation Week article:

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/awx/2011/01/06/awx_01_06_2011_p0-280761.xml&headline=F-35B%20Put%20On%20Probation;%20New%20Bomber%20To%20Go%20Forward&channel=defense

 

Interesting potentially a new bomber and a threat to cancel the F-35B, more new Super Hornets for the Navy and this:

 

Gates also announced decisions on a number of controversial aspects of the new aircraft. It will be nuclear-capable — some had argued for this, on the grounds that radiation-hardening is relatively inexpensive at the design stage and costly to retrofit, while others had opposed it because it brings the bomber within the scope of arms-control discussions. Gates also says that it would be “optionally” piloted rather than unmanned, and that it would make use of existing technologies to speed development.

 

 

erm not a fan of this - assuming this means nuclear powered - Manned or unmanned - one will still crash surely

Edited January 7, 2011 by MigBuster

[FastCargo 412]

MB, I think you're reading that incorrectly....'nuclear capable' means able to carry nuclear weapons - NOT nuclear powered.

 

I still think a 2 tiered bomber force would be more cost efficient in the long run...smaller stealthy penetrator for Week 1 ops, then larger COTS platform for sustained standoff ops and low IADS locations.

 

FC

[Atreides 144]

Have the American decision makers been taking advice from the British one's ? The same people that have just gutted the U.K military.

[eraser_tr 29]

Morons, plural, its not one person. At the very least its two: one clueless listening to one moron.

 

As for cuts, why don't they cut out all those billions for contractors? Surely the military was capable of doing its own laundry and cooking and serving its own food and other simple logistical things before we contracted them out? Why should we give people buckets of money for everyday tasks? Cut that crap and suddenly there'd be plenty of money for the soldier's healthcare, R&D for new weapons and procurement!

 

Crooks.

[HrntFixr 4]

You think they would learn from past mistakes!?!

[+daddyairplanes 10,232]

Morons, plural, its not one person. At the very least its two: one clueless listening to one moron.

 

As for cuts, why don't they cut out all those billions for contractors? Surely the military was capable of doing its own laundry and cooking and serving its own food and other simple logistical things before we contracted them out? Why should we give people buckets of money for everyday tasks? Cut that crap and suddenly there'd be plenty of money for the soldier's healthcare, R&D for new weapons and procurement!

 

Crooks.

 

 

indeed as i happen to be a US Army cook (reserve now) and on three deployments have only come close to doing my full job once. my two soldiers got abit closer as they got shipped to supervise locals cooking for our teams out and about. (i asked to go but they didn't want to lose their guy that could get sodas and snacks!) the DOD in its wisdom decided that it was better to have a guy get paid $140,000 a year to supervise 100 foriegn nationals paid 500 a month (600,000 year total for employees 740,000 for the shift a year) rather than use my squad to do the same and incidental our trained for job at approx. 250,000 to 300,000 for the year we were there. yes the idea that we were freed up to pull triggers was nice but only if we were actually used to pull triggers which, we were not.

[JediMaster 451]

I've never understood the idea of contractors overseas (unless you're in the UK or Germany or something so you don't need active duty doing mundane tasks), but stateside the reasoning makes sense...without them the armed forces would need to be twice as big to do all the day-to-day stuff and that costs more. It may not seem like it, but add in that you have to pay for housing for those in the military, their more expensive benefits than contractors get (contractors get only money, not a single other thing), the highly expensive training starting with boot camp (or more for officers) and moving to on-the-job training that most contractors do NOT do (they only hire those that already know what to do most of the time), and you can see how it adds up. In fact, I know the payments they make for health insurance will be going up to more realistic (ie closer to what the rest of the country pays) rates, but still cheaper of course, as the DoD is finding that even they are suffering from the costs of that.

 

The system fails in a couple of ways though...first, both civilian and contractor jobs have turned into former-military welfare. You do your 4 yrs enlisted and you're guaranteed access to top-paying jobs for life. I'm a rarity--a contractor with no prior military service. I had to fight hard to get this job, while I've seen those that are barely qualified get similar jobs over perfect candidates just because from 1996-1998 they were overseas half the time in a uniform. There are regulations in place that make this a certainty for civilian jobs, but in theory contractors are supposed to be free of this. In practice, though, those in charge at these contractors are former military so there's an informal "good old boys" club while at the same time it's a subtle bribe to the military people they work with along the lines of "see, when you retire maybe you could get a job with us as long as we keep our contract"...and believe me, I see it a LOT. This is a small base I work at, only 5000 people or so, yet in the 10 yrs I've worked here I can go into ANY building and point out to you several people who I know were active duty one week and came back the next week without a uniform and likely getting paid more (in the civilian jobs case, contractor jobs rarely pay more, that money all goes to "stockholders") to do the same job except now they can't be told to TDY or PCS anywhere at a moment's notice.

 

So the problem is the theory of how contractor and civilian jobs should work is really unimpeachable, so you won't have any high-level mandates to eliminate it, but the practice is totally different. Unfortunately, no one will change the practice itself because there's no one with the desire or authority to do so. Those with the authority are benefiting from it, so why change it? Those who want to can't do a damned thing about it.