The inevitable conclusion is that without decisive MANEUVER, the U.S. cannot locate, destroy and eliminate sub-national terrorists groups that threaten her very existence with possible nuclear, biological or chemical attacks, nor defend her allies and areas of vital national interest from a skilled nation-state aggressor armed with our own digital firepower technology to create a SSC to use against us. Over-relying on aircraft bombing and ignoring ground maneuver has in the past been nearly fatal to our allies. The Egyptians surprised the Israelis with the world's first SSC when they crossed the Suez Canal in a surprise maneuver attack in 1973 under the cover of an air defense missile system that denied the Israeli Air force the ability to bomb them, with anti-tank hunter/killer teams on the ground to stop the Israeli Armor Corps. Fortunately, the Egyptians stopped giving the IDF Generals like Ariel Sharon the time to reorganize themselves into a combined-arms force with MANEUVER elements that could strip away the Egyptian anti-aircraft and anti-armor missiles, eventually crossing the Suez Canal themselves, encircling and cutting off the Egyptian Army for a decisive victory that saved the nation of Israel. 29 years later, President Ariel Sharon would again save Israel from homicide bombers by MANEUVERING light and heavy tracked armored fighting vehicle forces into Palestinian territories to root out terrorists before they could strike again.

But it will be too late after a nuclear, biological or chemical weapons attack for America to reorganize her military to create a Surveillance-Strike MANEUVER capability (SSMC) like the IDF did when backed-against-a-wall.

The American socio-political forces that converge together to enact the dangerous formula of firepower-only that yields less than victory and puts America's survival at risk are the following:

1. U.S. generals that want expensive weapons ("favorites" or "cash cows") so they can have bigger budgets and more power. Since 1947 two of these services--the Air Force and the Navy have by battlefield function been set at odds with the other two services--the Army and the marines---the AF/Navy by focusing on their platforms which to play a starring role can at best deliver bombs and missiles---want firepower to ascend in importance and have deliberately underdone their transport responsibilities to deliver Army/marines because the latter's maneuver success would diminishes their budgetary stature for firepower platforms that may bring their own service the glory. Now, even the Army/Mc have opted for the easy out of letting the AF/Navy bombard hoping then their services will be lessened or not needed.

2. Civilian politicians and their wonkish appointees (increasingly without any military experience) who want zero casualties so they can be re-elected who thus do not want large ground forces to do maneuver because in the past, U.S. military incompetence at maneuver using blind-obedience culture amateurs in non-robust forces resulted in at times heavy casualties (they forgot about Honduras, Panama, Grenada, Haiti where America's most elite ground maneuver units won without heavy air firepower bombardment and casualties were light).

Anti-war liberal politicians are eager to spend billions on barracks and troop welfare programs...especially if the bases are in their home district/state but refuse to solve warfighting problems like not having enough airlift or having light tanks to win combats so the men will be alive to be able to use the new barracks. This subtle anti-military undercurrent is best expressed in the quote below:

3. Technoarrogant civilian military dilettantes without any practical military experience (due to a national abandonment of military service throughout the populace) advocating that we can fight wars without maneuver. Chief among these are discredited sociologists Alvin and Heidi Toffler whose book "War and anti-War" is the "bible" of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) crowd.

4. Defense contractors who want continued and bigger profits by offering expensive, automated firepower means that give all 3 parties above what they want: low-risk quasi "warfare" (really posturing).

5. A corporate funded press that wants to stay in the information loop and not "rock the boat" or have its reporters lose their comfortable middle-class lifestyle

6. The personal computer has made it easy for the parties above to "spin" and "power point" lies and deceits into a smooth, professional looking presentation to make defeat look like victory, the current fad to sugar coat business-as-usual is called "transformation"

7. With the advent of the weak, co-dependant All Volunteer Force (AVF), most Americans have no military input nor afterwards the personal experience to judge whether our military is on the right course or not. An in-bred, divorced-from-its-citizenry, stupid blind-obedience U.S. military culture; if tasked to do ground maneuver would engender heavy casualties by "yes-man" toadyism, methodical battle, unimaginative force structure, weak or non-existent tactics, techniques and procedures and physically non-robust, adaptive forces. Compare the ugly, egotistical existentialism of the U.S. military with the can-do, humble and moral Israeli Defense Force ethos and how it draws on the full power of its citizens to be egoless and pull together to make an effective military.

All 7 of these factors merge into the fatally flawed "bombard & occupy" strategem employing America's costly surveillance-strike complex called by some a a quasi "transformation" that offers up precision firepower as the panacea to meet all U.S. national security needs, even though truthful analysis reveals that its at best a 50% solution that never takes care of the other half, even over time. The desire to "send a bullet and not a man" is not new to America, its a natural outgrowth of a professionally amateur U.S. military which began in the 1940s with a vast industrial capacity to produce ordnance to send firepower to attempt what only maneuver and ground control can do. Today, in the 2000s, the same technoarrogance of a non-military society has simply "morphed" itself into a vast information and computerization capacity; an ability to direct ordnance more precisely so we use less of it since its more expensive, with a capacity to deceive ourselves about its effects with "spin". Because the U.S. military is run by amateurs, it increasingly sees less of the need for militarily sound maneuver and cannot self-reform and adapt to get it which takes candor, truth-telling and risk-taking in peacetime to find a way to do ground maneuver without heavy casualties. Thus, by default national decision makers opt for air/sea bombardment and hope the firepower "snake oil" salesmen are able to deliver. If they do not deliver, we can "spin" away their failures and keep trying until the bombardment "works". That dangerous enemies like Red China are waiting and preparing to challenge and defeat the U.S. with a new war system or formula as soon as they are ready does not bode well for the survival of the United States.

Why America doesn't want to do MANEUVER?

Dave Grossman's studies On Killing, have concluded that in the face of danger, human beings have only 4 basic choices;

a. Fight
b. Flee
c. Surrender
d. Posture

Of all the choices, the last one; posturing or PRETENDING to fight is the most dangerous. It has been over the years the core America military strategem to avoid casualties. America does not want to fight wars to victory, she wants to live to experience that next beer party and the posturing ploy brings our men back alive and the media pundits can "spin" the saber-rattling into a quasi-"victory" of sorts. Some pinprick air strikes and some aircraft flying around, perhaps a "base" is set up somewhere with some token U.S. troops and the enemy is shown "not to mess with the U.S." and we all go home happy and alive. This works as long as the enemy doesn't call our "bluff". In 1983 the enemy drove a truck bomb into a marine barracks killing 241+. In 2001, the enemy flew fuel-laden airliners into the World Trade Center towers, collapsing them, and destroyed a wing of the Pentagon, killing 3,000. As time goes on, the price for U.S. military failures to defend America have risen, and its not too outrageous to anticipate that the next failure will be nuclear, chemical or biological with the dead running into the MILLIONS as an American city is wiped out. Perhaps then, the American people will realize that in the world we live in, the military is a necessary evil, to participate directly and study war and to understand and get good at it instead of bribing some power-hungry, egotistical "lifers" to do all our dirty work for us who instead build empires and goof off with their own make-believe war styles. That cultural paradigm shift has NOT taken place in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. 3,000 dead is nothing compared to the 50,000 dead that die each year in car accidents. America has not been hurt bad enough to pay attention and realize its basic core assumptions about life are wrong and need to be changed. We are operating business-as-usual with an added emphasis on countering terrorism.

Future tragedies are imminent

The "snake oil" transformation salesman are so filled with their own technohubris they are thinking that precision weaponry can replace massed nuclear firepower as a deterrent to those with similar weapons. They think precision guidance can shoot down the enemy's missiles as well as wipe out their ground combat divisions----such that they advocate the unilateral disarmament of over 50% of America's nuclear arsenal.

Why the snake oil transformation firepower people are fundamentally wrong

The key mistake current "transformation" thinking is philosophical---the bombard & occupy advocates think that man is on a treadmill of progress and that whatever is "new" replaces whatever worked in the past, not because it can't work today, but because ITS "OLD" AND THUS, WE DON'T LIKE IT. In this case, mental means through computers replaces tried-and-true PHYSICAL means. At the center of this is a personal egotism that thinks its "new" ideas are so much better than its predecessors and their methods actually used in real warfare, that we can discard them. If we can mentally direct some firepower ordnance to a desired spot on earth, why do we need men on the ground? Clearly these folks do not understand that war is not just about blowing things up---human war is about CONTROL----whose will dominates. To win wars, men on the ground are not just another way to get line-of-sight to deliver ordnance firepower---men on the ground are a form of force distinctly different than firepower, its called MANEUVER. If you do not control the ground through maneuver, the enemy will use our unwillingness to employ ground maneuver--boots on the ground---a weakness---to not only avoid our firepower but to launch devastating attacks like the 9/11 suicide airliners diving into populated buildings full of civilians. The 9/11 attackers infiltrated into American society because we are unwilling to close our own borders and deny this ground to potential enemies--which takes ground maneuver to effect. Its America's unwillingness to MANEUVER---to physically be present on the ground that has created open borders, lack of HUMINT spies to infiltrate and destroy terrorist cells from within, and in the U.S. military to have robust, air-deliverable forces that can project anywhere in 3 dimensions and smash enemies throughought the depth of the battlefield--and not get hurt while doing it. In the street vernacular we have become "pussies".

No maneuver from the Sea

"No one is thinking if everyone is thinking alike. In too many organizations, toadyism is buried like a cancer. It must be removed with the sharpest bayonet available. All sorts of suggestions, ideas, concepts, and opinions must be allowed to promote an environment of learning and imagination. A fault of many potentially fine commanders is a lack of the ability to admit that other people have good ideas. If younger Soldiers are not allowed to use and cultivate their imaginations and their abilities for abstract thought, where will we get the next generations of qualified, motivated, and confident commanders? Commanders who never ask for an opinion, never listen to suggestions, and think they have the only correct idea find that their Soldiers will stop communicating altogether. They'll begin to sit on their asses and wait for orders before doing anything. No matter how high in the ranks a man goes, he can't know everything. We can always learn from each other. Juniors must learn not only to be allowed to use their imaginations, but they must be encouraged to do so.

Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men. I cannot count the times I've seen men who should know better than to keep quiet when unjust decisions are being made, decisions that literally affect the lives of tens of thousands of Soldiers. These decisions are made, not on the basis of sound military policy, but purely to further the political and personal ambition of officers in high command. Cowardice on the battlefield is disgusting enough. Cowardice in the military planning room is repugnant. It ultimately means the unnecessary death, mutilation, and disfigurement of Soldiers for the sake of the commanders. It takes courage to stand up for what is believed to be right and just. Most men seem to lack such courage. Sycophancy for the sake of career is just as deadly as incompetence."

--General George S. Patton Jr.

Carlton Meyer has brilliantly described why current Navy/Mc doctrine is not real maneuver but a form of maneuver avoidance caving in to American cowardice to not physically fight and stay at a safe distance off-shore, over-the-horizon (OTH). What he assumes in his writings as he calls for changes to get "boots on the ground" is that the Navy/Mc want to do maneuver. The objective observer must conclude that they do not. The Navy is not the only guilty party in America's avoidance of maneuver warfighting. The Mc has had chances to "ante up" and surrender 4,000 man-slots to keep the two heavily armored Iowa Class battleships operating so we have effective area fire support to facilitate amphibious landings that can operate close to shore in the face of enemy anti-ship missile fires and sea mines. But the Mc has decided keeping "8th and I" silent drill teams and recruit training depots to give America's kids a feel-good rite-of-passage to deceive them into thinking they are warriors when it takes a LIFETIME of humble study to be a real warrior---are more important than having effective forces for maneuver in real war.

When the LST-class ships were retired they were sold off and replaced by a smaller number of new LSD-41 ships--re: the Congressional anti-military undercurrent. Ever wonder why we never seem to have enough "amphibious lift" to move more than 3 battalions at any one time?

This is no accident.

The Navy has no glory to gain by delivering marine MANEUVER forces to a fight to possibly win it. However, there is perhaps some glory and a CNN video clip if it can bombard the enemy with its surface ships using long-range cruise missiles. Its no accident that there is "never enough amphibious lift".

Examine what the Mc loads onto its ships---hundreds of soft-skin, unarmored trucks, some LAV thin-skinned armored cars---a light infantry force that walks---in a tiny battalion size able to at the most seize a forward base. Certainly not a force that can maneuver in the face of enemy fires and encircle it to destroy it. In fact, the tiny MEU cannot force-an-entry if the enemy lays seamines since the Navy is not interested in that aspect of warfare, during the Gulf War 18,000 marines were blocked by 1,000 "low-tech" Iraqi seamines. The MEU cannot "force" an entry, it can only land where its invited or unopposed. Thus, the Taliban/Al Queda were already gone when the southern air base in Afghanistan was occupied by marines and turned into "Camp Rhino"---another case of token saber-rattling via seizure of a forward base not operational maneuver. What Mc generals want is to come ashore---hopefully first for bragging rights---then leave the dirty work of defeating the enemy to the Army. They want to do amphibious BASE SEIZURE not amphibious warfare. If taking that base by amphibious assault requires costly "cash cows" like V-22s and AAAVs, so much the better. After all time/distance/logistical energy is expended keeping Navy ships safe OTH with expensive cash-cow platforms, the Mc will have a built-in excuse not to go far inland and get its fingers dirty via warfighting or long peacekeeping occupations. Their supply lines will be 50 miles away OTH from the get-go. However, they can claim some glory with media "spin", and then be back on ship eating ice cream in a few days, because they are "assault troops", ie; its not their job, man. "Mission complete" is doing just their narrow niche not doing everything it takes to put america's enemies out of action for good. "How far are you willing to go?"...to get VICTORY?

Maneuver from the air?--maybe

The Army's current leaders deep down inside have bought off into the Tofflerian bombardment lie and do not want to practice the decisive maneuver they preach in manuals like FM 3-0 Operations that encircles and collapses enemies---they have chosen the road-bound 20-24 ton LAV-III/IAV rubber-tired armored car with a computer screen to beg for precision fires from someone else---rather than do ground maneuver because its wheeled with high ground pressures and cannot travel cross-country freely. They chose the new, expensive LAV-III/IAV rather than upgrading some of their perfectly good M113A3s which are more capable of MANEUVER as armored vehicles---and transforming the Army overnight into 3D maneuver capabilities. Instead the Army wants to spend a lot of money and only change a small part of itself. Again, there is no sense of urgency to reform for maneuver combat. The LAV-III/IAV itself, is too heavy to fly by C-130 and is so dimensionally bloated that it can only fly two-at-a-time in a C-17--the same number of 33-ton M2/M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles that can be delivered a planeload at a time--so the Army's current leaders are in no hurry to get to a fight.

When Army Rangers parachute dropped to raid the southern Afghanistan airfield, they did not land with M113A3 light tracked AFVs to hold the position even though these vehicles were sorely needed in their last major combat in Somalia "Blackhawk Down!". Had they learned from Somalia, the 75th Ranger Regiment would have requested some war-stock M113A3s and 9 years later been ready to hold the southern Afghanistan air base for follow-on forces to airland or airdrop. But that's not the Ranger's "mission", they are "raiding" forces--even though AFVs are needed by good raiding forces; not having AFVs insures a built-in excuse not to hang around if the situation gets dangerous. In other words, Ranger ego is anti-armored vehicle unless it can be done in a sexier way than the lesser beings of the Army's "mech" community.

In fact, an Army M113A3-based unit is ready at Ramstein AFB in Germany to fly into Afghanistan by C-130s to reinforce the Army 101st Airborne Air Assault Soldiers that are now there as of this writing (May 2002) but the Army's Chief leader, General Eric Shinseki rejected this sensible, life-protecting measure because positive publicity for the M113A3--which the Army already owns 17,000 of---would show the world and the American Congress that his purchase of expensive, vulnerable LAV-III/IAV armored cars (his favorite "cash cow") is not needed and not wise. So the "Screaming Eagles" are in Afghanistan---where the rogue Taliban enemies have T-55 medium tanks---without any tracked armored vehicles--another "Blackhawk Down!" or more precisely a Lang Vei in the making.

If the Army had held the airfield in Southern Afghanistan while the Taliban/Al Queda were still fighting in Kandahar, it would "turn them out", ie; force them out of their positions to be hit by our air strikes or meet our Army Soldiers in ground combat---MANEUVER. This is not the "favorites" U.S generals want to play---they want to do politically low-risk bombard-then-occupy---so we waited until the enemy had fled before placing any long-term troops there. And now the enemy is regrouping not only in Afghanistan to threaten the interim government there, but to strike at the heart of America again through asymmetric terrorism.

The First Fix

The National Defense Act (NDA) of 1947 creating the separate services at odds with each other have ruined the warfighting vigor of the U.S. military by putting firepower in competition with ground maneuver instead of working in cooperation.

The NDA of 1947 needs to be abolished and replaced.

The marine corps should merge back fully into the Navy so its generals can have a chance to take the "helm" of that service and insure it has an amphibious maneuver emphasis as a natural part of Naval combat or it should merge into the U.S. Army to create a seamless Airborne/Amphibious warfighting capability. Maybe a marine colonel will have no ego loss commanding a mine sweeper that enables his marines to land?

The U.S. Air Force's transport (C-5A/B, C-141B, C-17, C-130) and Close Air Support (A-10) aircraft should become part of the U.S. Army--a rebirth of the Army Air Force (AAF)---since it is the Army that will hold the ground bases to which these aircraft operate on, and its the Army that needs airlift to get to the fight to win it by maneuver. We must not put the cart before the horse. The Air Forces that take air supremacy and does tactical interdiction and strategic bombing have safe bases in CONUS and when they don't they will operate from bases that first must be taken by Army Airborne forced-entry. The forces that hold the ground should control the airlift that gets and sustains them there.

When both the Army and marines--the maneuver forces of America---have control over the means to get them to the fight---then they will then have the synergistic power to mastermind an optimal force structure mix to achieve decisive strategic, operational and tactical maneuver to decisively defeat Americas enemies not just blast them from the air and hope for a miracle. We will suddenly get enough "air and sealift" because we will not be divided in our warfighting purposes by bureaucracy. They will know intimately the air/sea craft they have available and can then better configure the maximum forces possible to achieve decisive maneuver and not get hurt.

The Second Fix

All U.S. Generals that prescribe to the firepower bombard & occupy world view should be forced to retire and replaced by younger, more vigorous officers who understand the art of war from a classical understanding of Sun Tzu, Liddell-Hart etc. (not New Age technofluff) and want decisive maneuver by leading from personal example. Before and after the failure at Pearl Harbor, hundreds of officers were replaced by the mastermind, General George Marshall to get America ready for a war of national survival. No such quickening has taken place in the U.S. military as the same leaders with the same ideas are in place enacting their same pre-9/11 attack agendas.

"Cleaning the slate" is just a one-time temporary fix to meet the current and future threat; a total reform of the U.S. military to create a force of thinking professionals is necessary for the survival of the nation.

The Third Fix

All officers must serve first as enlisted followers before becoming leaders. Being a warrior is stressed as a lifetime of HUMBLE study not "shake and bake" rites of passage at a boot camp followed by trash talk emanating from lemmings too low-skilled to risk with live ammunition in their weapon to defend themselves from terrorist attack much less take the fight to the enemy through maneuver.

We should study the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and see how many tactics and innovations came about because their leaders listened to the grunt and took the actual warfighter's opinion into account. Look at the IDF's code of ethics and retirement age and the reasoning behind it---everybody works and everybody fights just like the ideal of Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

This means no more rank-hath-its-priveliges bullshit.

The higher in rank you go, the MORE responsibility you have to share the burdens and risks of your men to lead them by power of your on-scene personal example, not miles away safe in a computer CP.

British General JFC Fuller in his book available here online: Generalship: its Diseases and their Cure describes this in great detail;

www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Fuller/Fuller.asp

His main thesis:

"The more mechanical become the weapons with which we fight, the less mechanical must be the spirit which controls them".

Yet in the U.S. military we have consistantly sought to dehumanize our men into robots by S&M basic trainings and rites-of-passage games since the dawn of the 20th century. That this piss-poor military culture has resulted in battlefield defeats and thousands of casualties hasn't dawned on our military and civil leaders that its a recipe for the exctinction of our nation when we face a foe without time and resources to get our act together after initial losses.

The Fourth Fix: Affordable platforms

Out-of-control platform-centric, DoD headed towards a total melt-down: like the Roman Empire, America cannot afford to defend itself this way

Right now, America is fighting the war on terror using the war machines built during the 1980s. The machines slated to replace the current machines are more complex, more costly and often simply do not work. The crisis is brewing to dangerous proportions because even if the new war machines were vastly superior to give us a significant advantage in war, they are so costly we cannot buy enough of them to replace what we have now. DoD pundits say we will simply shrink the force and use less war machines since they can "do more". This cliche' is false because it doesn't realize the cost of the new war machines has already reached the "threshold of impotence" where we will find ourselves dangerously unable to defend ourselves, our invincible "Tiger tanks" surrounded by more enemy "T-34s" than we have cannon shells to destroy them with.

The Impotence Threshold

The earth is a big place; to apply military force over it and against human enemies requires quantity--numbers as well as qualitative superiority over other human war machines. The impotence threshold for the U.S. where we can no longer defend 270 million Americans in a 3,000 mile long land mass is 1,000 war machines of every basic type (air, land, sea) for 1 week of nation-state war. You can argue all you want about qualitative advantages, but if the enemy nation-state fights us "even" in an all-out, non-nuclear war, in 1 week we must be ready to lose 1,000 war machines and keep fighting. The model for us to study is the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The Israelis lost about 1,000 tanks and 500 war planes in 1 week of war. They would have lost more planes had they had more and decided to continue to send them into combat without taking out the enemy's surveillance strike system (SSC) first. 1,000 war machines also includes infantry Soldiers. Right now, the U.S. military is BELOW the impotency threshold. The United States is no longer building 1,000 each year of ANY large war-machines except infantry Soldiers. The United States on the average has gone to war every 10 years with another nation-state military since WWII. This means at the very minimum, we could get by with producing 100 war machines for 10 years, and when the war comes be ready with the worse-case thousand platform losses. However, we are not even building 100 war machines each year! Because we have a "Tiger tank" mentality where each war machine must be replaced with a dramatically improved war machine that exalts human technohubris and ego, it takes 10 years to develop the war machine and it costs at least 10 times as much as what it is supposed to replace. Thus, we can only buy 1/10th of the new war machines assuming we have the same national willpower and monies available as we had when we bought the previous war machines. At the end of the 10-year development cycle we end up with things like V-22, F-22 and RAH-66 that even if they worked, we simply cannot afford to buy, so they are cancelled or if they cannot be made to work, are delayed again and again from going into production. The war platforms we have are then made to "soldier-on" for another 10 years; in the case of CH-46 helicopters it means men dying in crashes as the USMC waits for the "perfect solution" so they can pretend to be a quasi-Airborne force to compete with the Army Airborne using sound USAF fixed-wing aircraft for global strategic mobility.

What Kills War Machines: not just the enemy

Contrary to popular belief, the number #1 killer of war machines is not combat against other humans but operations against mother earth. Weather, corrosion, accidents, human and mechanical failures destroy more of our war-machines than any other factor. The most at risk of the war machines are air/sea machines since man-made things do not normally reside in those mediums. Chuck Spinney's "Death Spiral" is felt the most there. In war, there are always two battles underway, the battle against the earth, and the battle against man.

We have heard the quantity vs. quality argument going on between military reformers for the past 20-25 years. Back in the early 1980’s, the reformers were arguing that the event of the precision guided missiles rendered the MBT, the large surface combatant, and the manned combat aircraft obselete because an enemy armed with lots of ATGMs, ASMs and SAMs could defeat a force which was well-armed with these conventional fighting platforms. They sided with John Kerry against building the Abrams tank, the F-15 fighter and future CVN construction proposing that we build thousands of missiles instead as our only realistic hope of countering massively superior Soviet conventional forces in central Europe.

Despite the fact that their claims remain unsubstantiated, we have people like Thomas Friedman of STRATFOR and folks even in our own Army arguing the same thing today that the tank is obselete so we have to lighten the force (which anybody with half a brain knows will make it more vulnerable to a much wider range of less expensive weapons like HMGs, RPGs and even small arms, not less.) The fact is the tank, the aircraft carrier and the manned fighter bomber, far from "obsolete" they remain the unquestioned dominant weapon system for their respective areas of the 21st century battlespace and that is not likely to change anytime soon. Of all these weapon systems, the aircraft carrier is perhaps the most vulnerable to increasingly proliferation of anti-ship missiles and super-fast torpedoes against which the US Navy has little to no defense, something I address in my book, “Red Star Rising Over America”. The submarine, a system long appreciated by the reformists, will replace it as the dominant naval weapon system in future decades.

The death spiral is very real today. After wasting $44 billion to build 20 B-2 bombers each costing nearly as much as a U.S. aircraft carrier did in the late 1980s, we are now looking at building $250 million F-22 fighters (25 times the cost of the F-16 Falcon) and a lot of other wasteful weapons systems like the Osprey and the Stryker. As in the case of the FCS alone, we cannot sustain the procurement costs posed by so many overpriced weapon platforms. We are going to have to prioritize and cancel the one’s that don’t measure up which is something that thus far the Bush DoD has proven almost completely unwilling to do.

What is amazing is that it turns out the Commanche cancellation is going to cost the Army about $2.3 billion alone in addition to the $8 billion already spent. This at a time when the Army has cancelled about 46 important programs, many of them fairly critical to cannibalize modernization of the Current Force in favor of deploying 2200 militarily inferior Stryker death trap armored cars and developing the next generation wheeled network-centric “death trap” which is euphemistically called the Future Combat System a concept that is extremely vulnerable to asymmetric "low-tech" warfare.

U.S. Army

NEW! See the Army's absurd plan to try to beat the death spiral: recreate the WWII Italian Army of foot-troops: U.S. Army Briefing to House Armed Services Committee, February 25, 2004

The Army has 10 Divisions; only 6 are half-inside tracked armored vehicles, the other ride in unarmored trucks. The other 4 Divisions have no armored vehicles at all, and walk or ride in unarmored rubber-tired, wheeled trucks. No armored vehicles are being mass-produced. Because of Army Generals being techno-arrogant, the thousands of M113 Gavin light tracked armored vehicles that were mass-produced and sitting in storage that could be upgraded to fully air-mechanize the entire Army are ignored, so troops continue to get killed and maimed on foot and in trucks in the guerrilla war in Iraq. The Army's only "get out of jail free card" to avoid their death spiral is not used. Instead, the Army buys handfuls of expensive, over-weight, over-priced $3 million dollar Canadian-made Stryker and $250,000 HMMWV wheeled trucks with make-shift armor slapped on and a computer inside to micro-manage the Gen-X/Y slackers inside. The American-made "Future Combat System" after 10 years and billions of dollars will be found at $10 million each unaffordable to buy. Once the tracked armored vehicles die off, all that will be left will be the un-armored wheeled trucks that didn't get worn out carrying all the make-shift armor that they were not designed to carry.

To try to increase its size, the Army wants to create smaller units composed of young recruits with a rifle in their hand, driving around in the wheeled trucks; ie we are becoming the Italian Army of WWII. The post-Baby Boom America has less young people than needed to stay above zero population growth, and as America ages, many of the young people available are off-spring of immigrants with little if any loyalty to the U.S. by culture but desperately needing economic advancement. To attract them to military service to get their use as a war machine, weak, co-dependant cannon fodder, increased amounts of All Volunteer Force (AVF) pay/benefits (bribes) have to be offered to get them to be our mercenaries (Roman Legions all over again).

We are basically becoming mirror images of civilian society that only mass-produces SUVs and babies at a ZPG rate; an Army with slacker nintendo video-game kids with a sporting rifle riding around in a HMMWV truck.

In the air, Army Aviation is dying having wasted $10 Billion and 10 years on the RAH-66 stealth scout helicopter that refused to work and is unaffordable to buy in quantities. No Army helicopter is being mass produced as the numbers of existing helicopters dwindle from mother earth and combat losses; all are under 1,000 in number except for the UH-60 Blackhawk. The CH-47 production line is completely closed. The conventional helicopter for V/TOL flight comes at only great costs and dubious speed, range and altitude making them easy for the enemy to inflict losses.

We have long advocated mechanizing our entire Army. Given the existance of the highly capable M113 Gavin MTVL and M8 105mm gun Buford/120mm gun Thunderbolt light tanks there is no reason why we cannot an Army wide extend transformation to an-all tracked mechanized force to the light divisions including the 82nd and possibly even the 101st using lighter tracked vehicle varients as well. Image what a powerful force the Army would be if it was fully mechanized. Instead, as you point out the Army is unilaterally disarming itself by disbanding its ENTIRE tracked vehicle fleet—not just its all-important heavy tank fleet, but its Bradley Fighting Vehicles, M113 Gavins, armored recovery vehicles, SP artillery, etc. These vehicles consist of roughly 99% of the Army’s current armored vehicle inventory. Even several months after he has thankfully departed, General “Mad Eric” Shinseki’s goal of scrapping the Army’s entire active component tracked vehicle fleet by 2024 and its entire tracked vehicle fleet from its reserve/national guard component by 2027 remains the Army’s transformation plan under Rummy’s hand-picked puppet CSA, GEN Schoemaker.

How much do you think it is going to cost to replace the Army’s entire armored vehicle inventory which is currently almost entirely tracked with all-wheeled Shinseki IAV and subsequently FCS wonders? Assuming your figures are correct of roughly $10 billion per FCS vehicle, replacing our pre-Shinseki fleet of 7800 Abrams tanks alone would cost $78 billion, an amount roughly equal to the Army’s entire annual budget, while delivering less combat capability (with the exception of NETFIRES) for a much higher price, but of course its not going to end there as we have tens of thousands of other tracked vehicles to replace. Has anyone really priced this out and took into account the true costs of Army transformation to a lighter, but far less capable force?? I do not agree that the entire FCS program will be cancelled like Commanche unless we get a pro-Army CSA and SECARMY anytime soon, but many variants might be cancelled at the cost of billions and perhaps tens of billions wasted. What I am pointing out here is that the Army will not be able to transform at the rate envisioned because it is far too costly to do so. Also, it will not be able to abandon its entire tracked vehicle fleet anytime soon without transforming the world’s finest Army into a third-world force incapable of fighting any war let alone major wars as it would leave us with described as a bunch of Mogadishu-style “technicals”—namely unarmored trucks with .50 cal mounts as is basically the case with our Hummers and small arms fire vulnerable Stryker death traps.

Yes, the Army is ignoring the lessons of World War II and Gulf Wars I and II and transforming itself into a tankless, 1930’s era all-wheeled dismounted infantry-centric force incapable of surviving the 21st century battlefield. In future wars, an enemy armed with even light tanks in concert with a relatively modern air force or modern air defense system may be able to clean our clocks. As you point out, unlike the Reagan military buildup, under which all of our modern weapons systems were constructed, the Bush defense budget has failed to result in the construction of many new weapons at all, focusing instead on pay increases, recruitment, R&D and most of all operations and maintenance for what has become our more or less UN-directed Army As a consequence, we are pretty much continuing under Bush the same procurement holiday we experienced under Clinton. The Army is as unready and unprepared to fight wars under Bush as it was under Clinton, if not more so.

Certainly, maintaining the current force would give us a far more capable Army than the tankless, all-wheeled dismounted infantry centric force envisioned by 2024. Of course, our adversaries are not standing still. China is building 3 aircraft carriers to be fully deployed by 2008 and is developing a clone of the Russian 50 ton T-95 with massive armor and a 152mm cannon as they re-equip their Army with Type 96s and Type 98s which are pretty much on par with the Russian T-80 tank. Russia is producing T-95 tanks, new SAMs, ABMs, hypervelocity flying vehicles, EMP and thermobaric weapons and new ICBMs and SLBMs and new strategic and nuclear attack submarines. But the biggest threat we face will be assymetric weapons like supersonic anti-ship missiles, ASAT and ABM capable lasers, HPMs, and nanosatellites and both conventional and nuclear EMP weapons, again all vulnerabilities Dave Pyne will address in his new book.

We have long advocated mechanizing our entire Army. Given the existance of the highly capable M113 Gavin MTVL and M8 105mm gun Buford/120mm gun Thunderbolt light tanks there is no reason why we cannot an Army wide extend transformation to an-all tracked mechanized force to the light divisions including the 82nd and possibly even the 101st using lighter tracked vehicle varients as well. Image what a powerful force the Army would be if it was fully mechanized. Instead, as you point out the Army is unilaterally disarming itself by disbanding its ENTIRE tracked vehicle fleet—not just its all-important heavy tank fleet, but its Bradley Fighting Vehicles, M113 Gavins, armored recovery vehicles, SP artillery, etc. These vehicles consist of roughly 99% of the Army’s current armored vehicle inventory. Even several months after he has thankfully departed, General “Mad Eric” Shinseki’s goal of scrapping the Army’s entire active component tracked vehicle fleet by 2024 and its entire tracked vehicle fleet from its reserve/national guard component by 2027 remains the Army’s transformation plan under Rummy’s hand-picked puppet CSA, GEN Schoemaker.

Navy

It costs $1 BILLION dollars to build a nuclear aircraft carrier; it costs $3 BILLION to scrap one. Almost every ship the Navy builds has become a $1 billion dollar purchase. With less than a dozen ships built each year, how long the 300-ship Navy can exist is in doubt. In 10 years only 100 ships will have been made, by the time the 20 year mark hits, the 300 ships will have to be retired and then the Navy will atrophy down into a 200 ship fleet. In the next 20-year cycle the Navy will shrink to just 100 ships. With only 1/3 of our ships at sea at any time, this means only 33 ships for two oceans or just 16 ships for each. That's just two aircraft carrier battle groups, or in essence two floating airfields operating at best 4 squadrons of fighter-bombers.

The aircraft on the Navy's carriers have dwindled to where now almost every mission will be flown by the overweight F/A-18 Hornet. Each year dozens of aircraft are lost in carrier operations (mother earth strikes again); in fact the number of Hornets bought only keeps up with these losses. A massive infusion of new aircraft will have to be received to give the Navy's dozen aircraft carriers something to fly. USN is banking everything on the F-35 JSF to stay in business.

Several years ago, the Navy debated abandoning future fleet aircraft carriers for a force consisting of 4,000-8,000 ton (destroyer size) escort carriers with about 8 x VTOL Harrier-type aircraft each. The idea was that carriers were becoming so vulnerable that it would be better to disperse Navy combat power among several cheaper more expendable ships to make it more survivable. This concept is today not without merit. A force of 11 such carriers with 88 aircraft might be able to be designed more cheaply than one of their equivalent fleet carrier sisters with 90 aircraft each, but there would have to be a lot of cost-cutting involved because each ship would have to cost less than $400 million each to make that happen or less than $850 million if you use the $10 billion CVN(X) as a baseline. While, the first figure could not be achieved, the second figure might be. While previously skeptical of the concept, given the prohibitive cost of the new CVN(X), abandoning the large future fleet carrier construction in favor of much lighter and cheaper escort carriers with VTOL F-35 fighter-bombers looks desirable. Of course, the recommissioning of the two Iowa-class battleships still on the U.S. Navy rolls and perhaps even the construction of the 1980’s era concept Arsenal ships, BUT ARMORED makes sense.

Will the U.S. Navy Death Spiral: Bend or Break into the "Hollow" Navy?

We are rapidly declining in the ability to keep large aircraft carriers operating. If we don't reduce from the 12 we have to 6 we are going to have a "hollow" navy. This means 5,000 men on carriers with not enough airplanes by financial default.

Reduce to 6 carriers, supported by 24 small STOVL amphibious well-deck ski-jump end carriers (M113A3 Amphigavins swim selves to shore from flooding well deck) with F-35 STOVLs and CH-53Xs (can sling-load the Amphigavins ashore)---like the Thais have 1 model. Put 6 of the oldest carriers in a Naval Reserve "surge" capability for major nation-state wars. The large carriers will be the "nucleus" of a CVBG and operate the large C-2 Greyhound COD/E-2C Hawkeyes, F-18s (hopefully someday OA-10C SeaHogs) that can't fly from STOVL carriers.

If we don't bend here, we will break.

4 x 10,000 ton STOVL aircraft carriers instead of 1 supercarrier?

500 men to operate; 4 STOVL ski jump carriers to carry 20 x F-35 JSFs = 2,000 men = 80 aircraft at half the manning cost of 1 x 4,000 man super-carrier

World Aircraft Carriers List: Thailand

www.hazegray.org/navhist/carriers/thail.htm

Chakri Nareubet VSTOL aircraft carrier

Displacement: 11,486 tons full load
Dimensions: 548.3 x 73.8 x 20.2 feet/167 x 22.5 x 6.2 meters
Extreme Dimensions: 599 x 100 x 20.2 feet/182.6 x 30.5 x 6.2 meters
Propulsion: CODOG: 2 diesels, 11,200 bhp, 17.2 knots; 2 LM2500 gas turbines, 2 shafts, 44,250 hp, 26.2 knots
Crew: 455 ship, 146 air group, 675 troops
Armor: none
Armament: 2 launchers for Mistral SAM, 2 12.7 mm HMG
Aircraft: 6 AV-8S Harriers + 4 S-70B Seahawks (or up to 18 helos)
Concept/Program: A small multirole carrier, based on the Spanish Principe de Asturias class design, and built in Spain. She can serve as a disaster relief ship, troop transport/assault ship, and has accomodations for the royal family.

Design: A reduced version of Principe de Asturias, with various improvments and modernization of features. Three 6-cell Sadral SAM launchers are to be added.

Chakri Nareubet 911 Photos: [Chakri Nareubet as completed]. [Chakri Nareubet on trials].

Built by E.N. Bazan. Laid down 12 July 1994, launched 20 Jan 1996, delivered

27 March 1997, commissioned 10 August 1997. Has been largely inactive due to lack of crew and operating funds.

Another U.S. small carrier concept:

www.nps.navy.mil/tsse/files/2001.htm

This is the link to Sea Archer. Sea Archer is a small carrier design meant ot operate in groups along side Sea Lance (which seems to have become the littoral combat ship).

An Army sea transport expert writes: "Mike, It makes a lot of sense to me. Shallow draft dramatically increases mission profile."

Another analyst writes:

"I think this is workable. The Navy claims its aircraft can now do multiple sorties thanks to PGMs. In other words, PGMs are giving the aircraft less to do. Why do they insist on having supercarriers with 80-100 aircraft on board when a few bombers are more powerful than the old cold war air wings. I'll tell you why, tradition. During the cold war it took about 300 sorties to take out a given target. With PGMs, only one is needed. We must take advantage of new technology to save costs. This is true! It costs $20 billion to get one carrier group in service, including air wings and escorts. This is greater than most countries defense budgets. Carriers might be effective in modern war, but they are far from cost-effective."

A marine writes:

"This is really amazing! During WW2, America built over 100 small escort carriers like this. Can you imagine a common hull warship with modular construction as the new surface warship. The vessel can carry a smooth deck with different modules for a aircraft carrier, or a missile launcher with VLS and so on. Simplicity itself!"

Air Force

The U.S. Air Forces new F-22 fighter is already in "production", with 25 built (for testing and training), and 19 to be manufactured this year. The air force wants to eventually buy 276, at a cost of over $250 million each. The F-22 is the "pinnacle" of 20th century warplane design and technology. Unfortunately, it's now the 21st century and new aerial threats are appearing that may make the F-22 obsolete before it even enters service at the end of the decade.

One thing that has always threatened the F-22 has been cost. Development costs kept growing beyond constantly increased budgets, to the point where the development bill was nearly $30 billion. The large cost of the F-22 was always a threat to the project. Originally conceived in the 1980s as the successor to the F-15, and the primary weapon to keep the Soviet air force from controlling the skies, the F-22 prototypes first flew just as the Cold War ended. At that point, the air force planned to buy 648 aircraft, almost the 1,000 threshold required to be relevent. That number has come down steadily as development costs escalated, and no credible threat to American air supremacy appeared to replace the Soviet Air Force.

The main threat to F-22s are advances in radar technology that are making the stealthiness of these aircraft less effective. A lot of this has to do with improvements in computer and software technology, but the end result is more vulnerability for a few very expensive aircraft that was banking on invulnerability like the RAH-66.

Project On Government Oversight

http://pogo.org/p/defense/do-010801-unilateraldisarm.html

August 2001

Is the Air Force Spending Itself into Unilateral Disarmament?

by Col. Everest Riccioni, USAF Ret.

Summary

With its ever increasing commitment to complex, expensive, high-tech weapons and willingness to advance the cause of defense contractors, the Pentagon is on a path that will actually degrade U.S. fighting forces. For example, at the start of the cold war, America's long-range bombing fleet consisted of 1,380 B-47s and 680 B-52s. Those bombers have declined significantly in number since the advent of fewer and more expensive bombers like the B-1B and B-2 Spirit.

Table of Contents

Section A About the Author Introduction to Unilateral Disarmament Bombers Fighter Air-to-Air Missiles

Section B

Fighter Aircraft Root Causes of Unilateral Disarmament Resolutions to the Problems

Endnotes

[Figure 1 Unilateral Disarmament By Cost] [Figure 2 Air-Air Missiles] [Figure 3 Unit Flyaway Costs] [Figure 4 Aircraft Procurement] [Figure 5 F-22 Cost History] [Figure 6 F-22 Force Size History]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Author

Colonel Everest E. Riccioni has had an extraordinarily illustrious career. After he began flight training for the United States Army in 1943, he learned to be a test pilot at the knee of Chuck Yeager; was a flight test engineer and experimental test flight pilot instructor in the experimental test pilot school; and taught the most advanced engineering course at the Air Force Academy. He then went on to command both prototype and flight mechanics divisions of the Flight Dynamics Lab at Wright-Patterson and pioneered the first supersonic cruise fighter design conference in history. Riccioni was one of the three legendary "Fighter Mafia" mavericks who forced the Pentagon to produce the F-16 to improve the military's air superiority and completed several stints as a fighter pilot flying 55 different types of military aircraft throughout his career. After retiring from the Air Force in 1976, he worked for Northrop Corporation for 17 years managing aircraft programs, including managing operational studies on the B-2 bomber. Most recently, until his 1997 retirement, Colonel Riccioni consulted with the GAO, the United States Navy, and the Air Force.

Introduction to Unilateral Disarmament

With its ever increasing devotion to complex, high-tech weapons and its willingness to advance the cause of Defense contractors, the Pentagon is embarked upon a policy of unilateral disarmament that threatens the security of the United States.

Shocking as it may seem, the Department of Defense (DOD) is actually degrading America's military capability even as it spends more and the threats we face diminish.

To put the issue in perspective: The Pentagon is spending on the order of $320 billion annually and now accounts for more than 50 percent of the federal discretionary budget. The U.S. military budget is three times greater than the combined military budgets of India, Russia, and China! Yet the result of this enormous expenditure is a severe degradation of the military capability of our nation. The problem here is that the more we spend on new weapons, the fewer we actually acquire. This is not a new phenomenon. While there is little difference in the behavior of the four services, the examples provided are primarily from the service I know best - the United States Air Force (USAF).

As long ago as 1969, in a report to some of the Pentagon's highest military and civilian leaders, Pierre M. Sprey, of the Pentagon's Programs Analysis and Evaluation, concluded that DoD was "opting for unilateral disarmament by purchasing military weapons at unprecedented and prohibitive prices resulting in too few weapons to win our wars." By way of explanation, Sprey suggested that, in seeking to gain a technological edge on our enemies, the Pentagon was committing itself to ever more complex arms whose costs inevitably grew beyond projections, necessitating downward adjustments in the number purchased. Sprey also questioned the edge the new technologies presumably provided, noting that complexity in fact could ensure that high tech weapons would fail to meet their specified battle requirements.

In the same time frame in which Sprey was offering the Pentagon his warnings, Norman Augustine, a DoD official who later became CEO of Lockheed-Martin, plotted the numbers of USAF aircraft purchased as a function of time. Extrapolating the results forward, Augustine predicted that, by 2010, the U.S. Air Force would be able to purchase only one aircraft.

More recently, in a 1975 study, Air Force Col. John R. Boyd showed that the USAF was continually buying new systems that it could not afford, thus creating a constantly increasing bow-wave of future monetary commitments. While the debts incurred caused pain, Congress temporarily alleviated the situation with increased funding. In fact, however, by taking such actions, Congress was simply putting off until tomorrow addressing what is now an enormous financial burden.

Since the early 1980s, Franklin C. Spinney, who worked for Boyd on his landmark 1975 study, has been elaborating on its finding. Spinney, who has appeared on the cover of Time magazine and still works at the Pentagon as a civilian, became something of a bete noire during the Administration of President Reagan by informing Congress that the Pentagon not only could not afford future weapon systems being advocated by then-Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger but also could not afford the military systems for which it already had contracted. In fact, the situation identified by Spinney was largely responsible for the enormous increase in America's national debt during the 1980s.

In the years since, the problems identified by Sprey, Boyd and Spinney have festered and deepened. Despite their warnings, the totally compliant and credulous Congress, urged on by cooperative administrations, managed to provide the Pentagon with virtually all the funding it has sought - even as taxpayers as well as our national security have suffered.

In any discussion of U.S. military spending, it must be noted early and emphatically that, in war, America often has put itself at an advantage by providing its military with a preponderance of numbers; that is to say, overwhelming force. When skillfully applied, such force has a habit of generating victory. Unfortunately, even ironically -- since the end of the Vietnam War - the United States increasingly has been denying itself the advantage of overwhelming force. Today this advantage is being eliminated not for lack of funding, but for lack of insight into the nature of modern war and the failures of our acquisition system.

How has this happened? Largely, perhaps, as an outgrowth of the Cold War and the persistent threat of nuclear annihilation that it has fomented, a system of weapons acquisition has emerged in which the prevailing assumption is that victory in future wars will be obtained by those weapons that are the most technologically complex. The conventional wisdom that "bigger, more expensive fighters are better" is wrong. Forgotten in all this is that fighters aren't to be compared one-to-one, rather, equal-cost fighter fleets should be compared in relative battle effectiveness.

Complexity prolongs the weapons development process, which then encourages military contractors to ingratiate themselves in ever more creative ways with the political system that sustains them economically. The result is as follows: It becomes axiomatic that the time it takes to bring new weapon systems on line as well as their costs always are underestimated in the early going and then grow exponentially thereafter.

At the same time, once the Pentagon bureaucracy is hooked on the overstated potential of a new weapons system, it becomes almost impossible to withdraw from the commitments made to such a system. Why? Because the process quickly invests such a wide array of interests in its success that rising costs are viewed institutionally as inevitable and largely irrelevant.

To date, as the costs of new weapon systems have begun to climb, Congress has approved requests for supplemental funding as if it would be unpatriotic not to do so. Thereafter, as cost increase curves have steepened, the inevitable has also occurred: the number of units to be purchased has been reduced.

Ironically, the time it takes to develop these complex new weapon systems often has been so prolonged that, before these weapons actually enter into production, the threats they are designed to thwart, we discover, have disappeared. More than occasionally, too, we find that the technologies these weapons were intended to exploit cannot be proven.

In addition, in many cases, we learn that, by the time the new weapons in which we have invested either don't work as intended or don't address the real threats we face, we also discover that the weapons these new systems were intended to supplant have worn out.

Finally, when the utility of our latest high tech weaponry is in complete question, the ultimate solution - turning off the faucet that pours good money after bad - rarely is undertaken.

Thus it is that the United States has begun its own unilateral disarmament, eliminating the advantage a preponderance of numbers has always provided us.

In effect, our unilateral disarmament is a self-inflicted wound; one that we cannot afford to keep committing upon ourselves if we want to remain economically robust and thus be able to ensure our security as a nation.

As long as we keep investing in weapon systems that are highly complex and rely on technologies that are not fully proven, we will find ourselves spending more and more on fewer and fewer weapons that are of questionable relevance to the threats we face.

Reversing this trend is essential, but perhaps not as simple as we would wish. A more detailed look at the experience of the Air Force in developing both new aircraft and missiles will best illuminate the ways in which America is, to its own detriment, unilaterally disarming itself.

As a former Air Force Colonel who has been involved in the engineering of a number of aircraft both within the Air Force and the private sector, I am at once confident and unhappy with the conclusions I have been obliged to draw.

Let us look first at the evolution of America's long-range bomber fleet, and its cost enforced degradation.

Bombers

At the start of the cold war, America's Strategic Air Command, which was led by General Curtis LeMay, consisted of 1,380 long-range B-47 jet bombers. They were replaced by some 680 B-52s which carried many more bombs over a longer distance. The B-52 strato-bomber was a magnificent weapon and deterrent during the Cold War. The bomber meant to replace the aging B–52 fleet was the B-1. An initial plan -- to purchase 250 of the bombers -- foundered as the number and size of the aircraft's cost overruns grew. Finally, only 100 of the B-1 were produced. Making matters worse, B-1 was the worst designed bomber in U.S. history. It was known to be falsely and inadequately flight-tested yet still was declared "available" for three campaigns. Finally, however, the aircraft flew fewer than 20 combat sorties, accomplishing essentially nothing of military significance. In effect, the B-1 represents a zero return on a large investment and still consumes a $1 billion a year for maintenance.

Following on the B-1, the B-2 stealth bomber overran its cost so badly that a mere 20 aircraft finally were built out of a $40 billion program aimed at the purchase of 135 to 150 aircraft. In fact, the calculable cost of the B-2 -- $2 billion per aircraft -- is understood by Pentagon "Insiders" to be an understatement because the aircraft was the beneficiary of "Black Program" funding, which is hidden from the view of the public. It also is known that much more will need to be spent on the B-2 to resolve a host of problems the aircraft is still experiencing; most notably, with maintaining its stealth and resolving its battle system difficulties.

As has been shown, the number of U.S. bombers acquisitions has fallen precipitously -- from 1380 B-47s in 1950 to only 20 B-2s in 1995 - and provides a clear picture of unilateral disarmament - [Click here to see Figure 1]. The declining numbers of bombers purchased by the United States is a sad testimonial to the Pentagon acquisition system, which is fraught with over-optimism, misinformation, and misguided efforts.

At best our bomber fleet is a motley affair. The B-1 is so dysfunctional that 56 old B–52s have been retained to shore it up. The B-2 fleet is so tiny that the dysfunctional B-1 had to be retained -- though it also must be noted that DoD actually considered retiring the entire fleet of B-1 in 1995 before it became fully operational.

Fighter Air-to-Air Missiles

The development of Fighter air-to-air missiles has followed a similar path to that of America's bombers. Dramatically increasing costs have spurred dramatic decreases in the number of missiles.

As ambitions for air-to-air missiles have grown so too has their complexity and costs. Unfortunately, the greater these missiles alleged domain of relevance, the less effective they seem to become in combat.

In Figure 2, the unit cost of various means for "killing" an enemy is portrayed together with their relative effectiveness in combat. The cost of these so-called expendables is a weak parameter since the system support costs to destroy aircraft with missiles is enormous and ever increasing with missile complexity.

Now, examine Figure 2 closely. The cost of killing an enemy aircraft has gone from hundreds of dollars (when only guns were involved) to $15,000 for an AIM-9B/D to $90,000 for the AIM-4 to $190,000 for an AIM-7D to a precipitous ten-fold increase to $1.9 million for the Phoenix. Clearly, now we cannot even afford an air war or even one kill with the Phoenix.

In effect, the greater the sophistication, the greater the claims, the greater the expense, the less effective the military result! 1 At these prices the constant complaint of theater commanders is that we lack sufficient missiles for a war - small wonder. One example is the cruise missile. Almost the entire NATO/U.S. inventory of cruise missiles was expended in the Kosovo engagement, with questionable political/military results.

[See Figure 2]

Figure 2 reveals the story of U.S. air-to-air missile over a time span of four decades. Even though the AIM-7 Sparrow missile, in its fifth stage of development, has finally become reasonably effective, the most useful air-to-air missile remains the simplest - the short ranged AIM-9. Even it has been made increasingly complex over the years and does little to refute what is becoming obvious: That firing air-to-air missiles has become so expensive that it's as if we are firing unmanned fighter aircraft at manned fighter aircraft.

Realizing there will never be enough ships to get to a fight before the Army can get there by aircraft, the USMC desperately needs the V-22 tilt-rotor to give them the speed/range and not require empowering its men to parachute jump which would require a cultural change from the asshole S&M culture of blind obedience the weak co-dependant egotist revels in while "being" a "marine". The problem is that at $80 million each the V-22 is not affordable to replace all the helicopters the corps has even if it did work. If the USMC gets the V-22, many will crash/burn and word that it is a deathtrap will make even the most ardent self-egotist to think twice about enlisting and filling a char-broiled body bag.

DoD thinks Unmanned Vehicles are its salvation

Like the crumbling Roman empire, America thinks the way out of its inward moral decay is the mercenary, in this case a techno-mercenary in the form of unmanned vehicles so you don't have to pay for a man to operate the war machine. To prevent a man having to be there to kill the other enemy human, a precision guided munition will be launched to strike at him. Aside from the fact that real military force is more than blowing things up, that it is actually about controlling ground and people, the unmanned revolution has not panned out as a way out of the technoarrogant death spiral. Unmanned systems like Predator, Global Hawk etc. have been proven not only just as expensive as manned war machines, they have a nasty lack of a survival instinct and mother earth is killing them so fast that no monies are being saved. Details:

UAVs are failures

Some say the F-22 is now threatened by combat UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) or "UCAVs". These UCAVs are being built and tested by the air force and navy. The technology is somewhat mature and widely available. The rest of the world is waiting to see what the United States comes up with, knowing that if it works this is the desired future advantage and it will be software, more than anything else, that will make a superior UCAV. If UCAVs can be made effective, and other nations start building UCAVs, the current American fleet of manned warplanes will be threatened. UCAVs are slightly cheaper than manned aircraft, and can be used more aggressively. You don't have to worry about losing pilots. Not just because you don't like to see your pilots get killed, but also because of the time and cost required to produce effective combat pilots. UCAVs are slightly cheaper to build, use and lose but whether this will pan out with their propensity to self-destruct without the manned pilot survival instinct embedded. Many UCAVs will be bombers, and the Air Force, Navy, Marines see their new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) threatened as well. UCAVs being developed are stealthy, and can take risks you would avoid when using manned aircraft. If the Air Force decides it needs a lot of UCAVs in a hurry, Congress will probably not put up with buying expensive F-22s and F-35s (which cost about $40 million each) as well. So the air force is looking into the possibility of cutting or canceling F-22 and F-35 production, and upgrading current aircraft (F-15s, F-16s and A-10s) to "hold the fort" until the UCAVs are available in quantity. The huge development costs for the F-22 and F-35 won't be wasted. Those technologies can be applied to UCAVs, which can be built slightly cheaper (at least 20% percent cheaper) because these aircraft don't have to carry a pilot. That means F-22 class UCAVs could be built for under $100-150 million each which is still far too expensive. The F-22 UCAV would be a slightly more capable aircraft, being able to perform maneuvers a human pilot could not survive but would be lost in routine crashes negating the cost savings desired.

The Real Way-out is a new DoD populated by entirely new people with new, sound concepts

Before outlining what the sounder, more affordable war-machine types would be for each category, ground vehicle, air vehicle, sea vehicle, combat Soldier---we must say that nearly everyone involved in DoD needs to be fired and America must start completely over. Defense contractors must be barred from ANY political campaign contributions. Anyone who serves in uniform cannot work for a defense firm for 10 years after leaving the service. America must get EVERYONE involved in national life by a repeal of the 17th Amendment direct election of senators and having state capitals become once again the centers for national issues debate. 2 years of national service for everyone who is an American citizen. All elected officials must be graduates of 2 years of national service.

The solution to the DoD platform centricity death spiral is to consciously--by choice---use robust, simple, durable and easy-to-maintain platforms that can last for at least 5 R&D cycles; ie 50 years. These platforms must be affordable to be mass-produced at 1,000 war machines a year to "surge" to equip the entire force, and replace emergency combat losses. After the force is fully equipped, the production line slows to 100 war machines a year to replace losses against mother earth and keep the line open to surge in war. No ground combat vehicle should cost more than 1/10th of an R&D cycle or $1 million each. No air combat vehicle should cost more than $10 million each. No transport aircraft more than $100 million each. No combat ship more than $1 billion each.

U.S. Army

Light Tracks
The Army must face the realities of the non-linear battlefield means the days of driving around in "safe", "rear" areas" are over and should cancel Stryker and HMMWV truck purchases. Computer mental gymnastics cannot mouse-click reality into a linear battlefield that doesn't physically exist. The Army should at the very minimum move completely inside, simple, easy-to-maintain M113 Gavin light tracked AFVs modernized from the thousands in storage. Use amphigavins with waterjets to expedite prepo-ship off-loads.

The FCS-3D and FCS-2D prototypes using the M113 Gavin's simplicity as inspiration would be $1 million each make-overs of light M113s and the existing M2 medium and M1 heavy to improved capabilities.

Fast Helicopters
A simplified, bare-bones UH-60 Blackhawk with Piasecki VTDP and wings ("SpeedHawks") to unload the rotors to fly at 200+ mph speeds and 2,000 mile ranges must be mass-produced to be the Army standard and fitted with stork landing gear to transport a miniaturized M113-type light tracked AFV under 4 tons in weight like one-half of the NATO Bv206S. The conventional slow helicopter is dead meat on the modern battlefield and if it doesn't deliver a light tracked AFV contributes only fight-the-enemy-even cannon fodder. Use trailers to move SpeedHawks without having to work around having to fly them.

Small Jets
Re-open A-37 Dragonfly production line and use as 2-seat FAC aircraft, either manned or unmanned, an "U/MCAV". Tow by trailers to move alongside ground forces and launch using Zero Length Launch (ZEL) techniques and its already good STOL capabilities.

The Adult Soldier
Make the Army a place that is tolerable, where adult warriors not egomaniacs populate. A place where candor, empowerment, innovation and initiative are rewarded.

U.S. Navy

Armored Precision Strike Battleships
Restore two Iowa class battleships back to reserve duty
Develop long-range (over 500 miles) precision 16" shells use them not manned fighter-bombers, expensive PGMs to take out deep, hardened enemy WMD missiles as they fuel

Jet Seaplanes/resupply ships for heavy bombing
Develop P6M SeaMaster type seaplane jet bomber to replace the aircraft carrier bombing mission, use water as runways

Affordable Flight Deck Destroyers to get naval air supremacy
Everyone; USAF, Navy/Marines buys STOVL F-35 JSFs to get air-to-air fighter cover operated from small destroyers with a small adjacent flight deck and ski jump end

Begin by putting ski jumps on the end of USN LHA/LHD amphibious carriers so AV-8Bs (retire ASAP) and J-35 JSF STOVL aircraft can operate safely with an extra boost of altitude/lift during take-off runs, buy new class of modular Flight Deck Destroyers at rate of 4 per 1 large aircraft carrier

U.S. Air Force

Cancel F-22

SLEP A-10s into two-seat, up-engined OA-10Bs

Re-open production line for generic F-16, A-10s to 1,000

Create fleet of prepo-cargo 747s pre-loaded with Army light tracked AFVs to surge in time of war

Mass produce F-35 JSF to over 1,000; use trailers to move alongside Army maneuver units, use ZEL to launch

U.S. Marines

Cancel V-22, buy Speedhawks with Army to get back into mass-production
Develop VTDP SpeedStallion version of CH-53E
Cancel AAAV
Use Amphigavin variant of Army's M113 Gavin light tracked AFVs
Retire AV-8Bs, use OA-10B SeaHogs for CAS

The Adult marine
Make the USMC a place that is tolerable, where adult warriors not egomaniacs populate. A place where candor, empowerment, innovation and initiative are rewarded.

The Fifth Fix

1. America needs an Army Strategic ground Maneuver Force (ASMF) with a Surveillance-Strike Maneuver Capability (SSMC) and a CAVALRY BRANCH to protect its people, its equipment and insure it stays a vibrant war form for the present and future

a. Threats are global and asymmetric and employ C3D2; maneuver needed to flush them out; small unit SOF teams are inadequate quantitatively to the task

b. USAF air strike and small-unit directed PGM firepower "Surveillance-Strike Complex" cannot win wars, America needs a MANEUVER force to overcome enemy SSCs; a SSMC force

c. America's survival hangs in the balance since its now widely known what her weaknesses are (except in the Pentagon) and a nuclear, biological or chemical attack could kill millions of Americans

2. Army and marine culture have been perpetual failures since Van Steuben

a. America's military does not have a well-conceived culture of thinking excellence

b. Failure in numerous battles (Lebanon, Beirut, Koh Tang island, TF Hawk, Kosovo, Somalia, USS Cole, 9/11 CONUS attacks)

c. Failure at CMCs: JRTC, NTC, MCGACC 29 Palms: innovation not welcome

d. Future failures planned: "trance-formation" BS that insists on inferior rubber tired wheeled armored cars to do B&O warfare rather than superior light tracks in existing top-down, stay-in-your-lane bureaucratic systems

e. NO CAVALRY BRANCH TO INSURE THIS STYLE OF MOBILE GENERAL PURPOSE WARFARE IS DONE WELL AND EQUIPPED (why we are in mess we are in today; being too light or too heavy)

American defeats in Iraq, Kosovo, and now Afghanistan where American Generals have refused to employ decisive ground maneuver to destroy enemies evading our stand-off firepower have began a debate about the validity of american military thinking and the culture that creates it. Clearly, American military leaders do not have an understanding of everything at a glance (coup d-oeil) and reports indicate most lose touch with physical reality beyond the rank of Major and become politicized from then on. While many have offered different organizational schemes (Vandegriff, Macgregor, Grange, Jarnot, Lind etc.) to try to create military excellence, even these daring reformers have shied away from attacking the basic ideas by name that create out-of-touch American military leaders who for example think a 19-24 ton LAV-III armored car made into an "IAV" with computers, applique' armor and a remote weapon station weighing 20-24 tons is somehow going to be 16 tons to fly by USAF C-130 aircraft.

In America, the basic problem is that as officers increase in rank they feel like they are "above" knowing the dirty details of a dirty business called war, and whatever they may have known as a young Captain or Lieutenant is soon forgotten as they first become "yes-men" staff officers sugar-coating reality themselves, and then later getting fed by it themselves in later ranks. This basic lie that knowing the details and specifics of your profession is somehow "underclass" comes from ancient Roman mythology where the worker of the metal forge, Vulcan is a dirty, lame being who though he makes useful things for the world to use, he is an outcast from the "gods" who are aloof and not concerned with the details and getting the job done. This attitude is later passed onto the Roman Catholic church and then the French military, where aristocracy, avante garde' and obedience to social class results in methodical firepower battle to not get their fingers dirty as leading-by-example maneuver would entail, the result being the WWI bloodshed and failure. Sadly, America learned her modern military methods and outlook from the French when they came over in 1917.

In contrast, Nordic people---tinkerers, innovators, Germans, Swedes value in their cultures, craftsmanship, innovation; to them the details are not "dirty". For decades, military reformers have wailed asking why the Germans were so skilled militarily in two world wars. The answer is cultural, the Germans embrace details, they embrace being personally involved, getting physically dirty and finding a way to excellence, and they can take the truth unvarnished. They earn the respect of their men by being humbler and harder working and are not afraid of being seen as human like them. Those that report the truth in order to get a better result through trial and error are not accused of being "disloyal" and leaving their social class ("stay in your lane"). Their observations are factored in and used to bring about true excellence that no one can deny.

STEP #1 REJECT ALOOFNESS AS GOAL OF RANK

Clearly, its high time the U.S. Army as an institution publicly reject morally bankrupt values that make knowing the details "dirty".

Jesus was a carpenter.

Think about it. When God himself took human form, 2002+/- years go, how did he spend his time? Was he aloof and condescending? Was he out of touch with basic people-level details? We all know he was remarkably in touch with reality, and at the same time he articulated a "transformation" vision that has lasted for over 2,000+ years and will extend into infinity. His example proves good leaders CAN know the small details and simultaneously use this grasp of everything at once (coup de oeil) to further a big vision that is actually realistic and do-able. One of the keys is you have to be humble. You can't be humble when you act like an aristocrat and don't get personally involved with the men. You can't achieve the genius of an excellent bottom-to-top organizational vision if you cannot see the truth without sugar-coating at every level.

STEP #2: CHANGE SOLDIERS FOREVER INTO HUMBLE WARRIORS

So if the U.S. Army were to amend its leadership and cultural values, its still left with the fact that its people enter the Army with the cultural values of "details-are-dirty" snobs learned from civilian life where managers leave the shop room floor and reside in air-conditioned offices as rewards for hard work. They join the Army with the expectation that their reward is that as they increase in rank, they will be asked to do less and get paid more. We must change paradigm...that the reward of rank is greater work and only slightly greater pay with a greater expectation to lead-by-example to be the best. To be a thinker-doer, not an aristocrat. The U.S. military needs a moral, humble and innovative code of honor/ethics just like the IDF has, for ALL its Soldiers not just service academy cadets.

Proposal for morally sound U.S. Army Ethos:

The President's FY2005 budget request boosts funding for the Department of Homeland Security by 10%.  Most Americans welcome this news that more resources will be devoted to "National Defense" while limiting the growth in other government agencies to 0.5% in an attempt reign in the growing national debt.  However, the President requests a 7% increase for the massive Department of Defense, which has little to do with National Defense; it was properly called the War Department until 1947.  The USA now spends more money in real dollars (inflation adjusted) on its military than at the peak of the Vietnam war when some 500,000 GIs were combat, and more than during the Cold War when the powerful Soviet Union existed.  For unknown reasons, the Bush Administration wants to spend a record $402 billion in FY2005, and this excludes the $50 billion needed to garrison Iraq and Afghanistan.  In addition, the Pentagon's current plan expects annual funding to grow 30% over the next five years while record budget deficits threaten economic chaos.  

     Paul Kennedy's famous 1997 book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" describes the fall of great empires in history and predicted the United States would follow the same downward path that destroyed all empires.  Each empire's capital became increasing wasteful, arrogant, and corrupt.  Leaders focused on foreign adventures rather than domestic issues while telling their citizens that sacrifices and high levels of military spending were needed to protect them from foreign demons.  Each empire died after they as they ran up so much debt from foreign adventures that no one would loan them more money, causing a rapid collapse.  The United States is following that exact pattern, as described last October, and is evidenced by this Pentagon plan for continual spending growth at three times the rate of inflation. 

Fiscal 2005 DoD Budget by Title

($ in billions)

                                            Fiscal 04   Fiscal 05   Fiscal 06   Fiscal 07   Fiscal 08   Fiscal 09

Military Personnel                 97.9         104.8         109.4          113.1          116.8         120.4

Operation & Maintenance 127.6         140.6         146.1          151.2          156.3         163.9

Procurement                          75.3            74.9           80.4            90.6           105.1         114.0

R&D                                          64.3            68.9           71.0            70.7             71.6           70.7

Military Construction             5.5               5.3             8.8            12.1             10.8           10.2

Family Housing                       3.8               4.2             4.6              4.5               3.6             3.5

Other                                          0.8               3.0             2.3              1.6               1.4             4.9

Total                                       375.3          401.7         422.7         443.9           465.7        487.7

Note: These figures exclude money spent on overseas expeditions in Iraq and Afghanistan.  They also exclude the cost of nuclear weapons development, testing and storage (in the Energy budget), the cost of veterans programs (in the Veteran's Administration budget), most military retiree costs (the Treasury budget), the cost of weapon grants for allies (State Department budget) and interest for money borrowed to fund military programs in past years (Treasury budget).  It also excludes several billion dollars from exempting sales and property taxes at military bases (local government budgets), and the cost of tax free food, housing, and combat pay allowances.  Ironically, this "Defense Budget" even excludes the cost of defending the USA itself, with the Coast Guard and Border Patrol (Homeland Security Budget). 

Robert Higgs at the Independent Institute calculates the real "National Defense" budget is around $754 billion, excluding the military retirement portion paid for by the Treasury Department since its costs are hidden with Enron type accounting, although they are estimated at $30 billion a year.  Also excluded are the cost of providing property and sales tax exemptions for the military, a benefit unknowingly paid for by local governments, and the hidden cost of tax free pay in combat zones and tax free food and housing allowances for all military personnel.

      Americans are told the world is a safer place since the threat from Iraq has been eliminated, so why not decrease military spending? One excuse is that the US military must be rebuilt after deep cuts during the Clinton administration.  After the end of the Cold War, military spending was cut only 10% under a post Cold war balanced budget plan devised by George H. W. Bush, the fiscally conservative President Bush, and then began to rise toward the end of the Clinton administration.  The myth of "Clinton Budget Cuts" was refuted last September by a former member of the Reagan administration, Larry Korb.  Hopefully, conservatives in Congress will reject the President's plan to increase military spending 30% over the next five years and freeze Department of Defense spending at this year's level, which is already 29% higher than when President Bush entered office in 2001; a figure which excludes costs in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Here is where cuts can be quickly and easily imposed:

Cut $13.0 billion from RDT&E  The US military spends almost as much on Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation (RDT&E) as on procurement to buy new weaponry.  There is no risk with cutting RDT&E for weapons which will not be purchased for years to come.  There is no foreign nation investing tens of billions of dollars in weapons research to overtake the USA.  If $13 billion were shaved from RDT&E programs, the remaining $56 billion will exceed the entire defense budget of any other nation on Earth.  This is still 35% higher than the $41 billion spent in FY2001.

Cut $4.2 billion from new base housing  On-base housing is a remnant of the old fort system which devolved into pork projects.  It has produced wasteful government cities like those envisioned by Karl Marx. Contractors charge the US military twice as much to build on base as they charge for identical houses off-base.  This then requires billions of dollars in infrastructure support costs in the form of roads, sewers, and utilities.  

Eliminating this entire category will have zero impact since construction projects take years to complete. Since the 2005 base closing process will shutter one fourth of US military bases, all construction should be delayed.  One may argue that military housing costs will rise in a couple years as less government housing will be available.  This is debatable since the overall costs providing base housing are so much higher.  However, billions of dollars can be saved each year if Congress phases out the marriage incentive for E-3s and below. 

Cut $4.1 billion from new military construction  Again, with the 2005 base closings on the horizon, new military construction can wait.  Why begin projects on a base which will close?  However, some construction is vital at bases unlikely to close, so allow $1.2 billion for urgent needs, but hold back the rest until Iraq costs have shrunk and base closings finalized.

Cut $4.0 billion by limiting pay raises to inflation  The President has proposed a 1.5% cost of living pay raise for federal civilian employees, but wants a 3.5% pay raise for military personnel.  Several years of military pay raises at 2-3 times the inflation rate have boosted military pay 16% in real dollars these past five years. In contrast, a US Census report last year revealed that median household income declined 3.4 percent  between 1999 and 2002.  

New recruits now earn 30% more than full-time civilian workers their age.  The most recent data reveals the average 40-year old full-time American worker earns $32,240 a year, while the typical 40-year old enlisted man (an E-7 with 22 years) earns nearly twice as much $59,956 in Regular Military Compensation, which excludes bonuses for deployments and reenlistments.  A typical 40-year old officer (O-5 with 18 years) earns an amazing $106,992 a year, which is 113% more than Americans with bachelor's degrees, who average just $46,852, and even 81% more than Americans with advanced college degrees, who average $58,992.  Therefore, it is no surprise that military morale is high when senior enlisted men make more than Americans with advanced degrees, enjoy 42 paid days of vacation/holidays each year (compared to 13 days for the average American), plus the option to retire after just 20 years without contributing a single penny to their retirement fund.

Most people are surprised to learn the Pentagon spends more in real (inflation adjusted) dollars on 1.4 million active duty troops today than when 2.1 million were in uniform in the early 1980s.  Over 20 years of raises at up to three times the annual inflation rate has raised military pay far above American workers, which explains the high recruiting and retention rates despite frequent deployments and an unpopular war.  It is true that some 130,000 GIs are overworked in Iraq, but they receive combat pay, separation pay, and tax-free basic pay.  More than 90% of active troops are not in Iraq; so why another pay raise for them?  Most will never go to Iraq, and many work less than 40 hours a week in beautiful places like Hawaii, London, Florida, and San Diego.  If Congress wants to help those in Iraq, limiting the military pay raise to the rate of inflation will free funds for more body armor, armored M113 Gavins,  and better food and medical care in Iraq. 

Recruiting and retention rates would be even higher if the Pentagon would advertise comparisons between military and civilian pay to eliminate the old myth of low military pay.  Unfortunately, powerful lobbyists like those from the Association of the US Army continue to spread lies while greedy officers in the Pentagon produce bogus reports to justify even higher raises, despite occasional articles revealing the truth.  This fraud is supported by government accountants and congressional staffers who benefit too.  Each year, powerful federal employee unions push for military pay raises at 2-3 times the inflation rate, then successfully insist on "pay parity" because "they defend the nation too."  As a result, the 700,000 civilian employees of the Department of Defense earn at least 50% more than comparable civilians, which is why all are alarmed at planned base closures.  Meanwhile, Congressmen shower their office workers with big pay raises and enjoy political support with this form of vote buying.

Cut zero from procurement - There are dozens of wasteful and unneeded procurement programs which are too numerous to list here.  While priorities must change, procurement funding remains small in the overall budget.  Our military is facing serious shortfalls in weaponry and equipment as the post Cold war "procurement holiday" redirected resources to dubious RDT&E programs and unnecessary pay raises and new benefits which pushed the annual cost to $99,000 for each active duty serviceman.  Most Congressmen believe the US Army must grow in size to garrison newly conquered territories in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, yet the Pentagon is reluctant to expand the forced due to high manpower costs.  They should realize that every billion dollars saved from unneeded pay raises allows for a permanent increase of 10,000 full-time troops.

     While the leading Democratic presidential candidates are called "liberals", not one has addressed this issue of irrational increases in military spending. At a time when the nation is facing potential bankruptcy while borrowing tens of billions of dollars from communist China, the President cannot exempt any arm of government from budgetary discipline.  Hopefully, fiscal conservatives in Congress will rally against this mindless spending like they did toward the end of the Reagan era.  The cuts listed here can freeze military spending yet have no affect on readiness or operations overseas.  If some believe a few box cutter armed Arabs pose more of a threat than the Soviet Union of the Cold war era, they should call for a major tax increase to fund a further expansion of our military.  However, citizens would take an interest in military spending and reject more taxes for more government.

                                                                       Carlton Meyer editor@G2mil.com