re: #700 JasonA

Someday we’re going to realize that we need to take a hatchet to our defense budget. It’s a matter of when, not if.

Not going to agree with that one, not entirely at least. We have learned several times already in our history what happens when we do not pose a credible threat to our enemies. It is easy after 35+ years of relative peace to ask why we need such a strong military and want to see it cut.

It is already being cut, by budget attrition and overuse without commensurate budget increases. The entire air force has less than 1000 planes, fighters, bombers, transports, Lear jets for the brass, everything. The navy is struggling to maintain it’s carrier groups and has cut the size and number of escorts rather than cut the carriers. It flies mainly antique planes that are well beyond their design life cycle.

The entire military procurement cycle has become fucked up beyond belief, we could save a lot of money there, but not nearly as much as you are seemingly talking about. Just going back to the “made in America” requirements would at least keep the money here instead of being overcharged for shit being made overseas.

We can’t build a tank without a German made main gun barrel, we can’t even build an F-16 fighter plane (our main export sale cheap fighter) without parts supplied by 16 separate countries.

We may have a seemingly strong military and we are paying top dollar plus for it, but it is shallow in depth. The industry that fueled our win in WW-II is mostly overseas now and we would be unable to replace our losses in an actual war. Well not unless we have several years to attempt to reacquire that manufacturing base from scratch.

So, basically I agree that we need to change how we spend our military money but can’t really agree that we need to be spending less, just spending it smarter and creating more jobs here.