More Obama Murder of America: The Pentagon Cuts

[MadImmortalMan]

Heard this on NPR: How many troops would it take to occupy Beijing? C'mon America.

[crazy canuck]

So what happens next time we have a difficult occupation?  Going to have all the growing pains of last time, desperately trying to increase numbers, lower standards, and inadequately train soldiers as the country tries to save face.

I find that argument to be pursuasive.

[Josquius]

I'm torn on the a10.
Part of me says apart time, they were meant to so that years ago.
Yet cheap, sturdy and functional is just what is needed in modern warfare, not ultra sonic whiz bang would fall out of the sky if not for it's computers fighter planes.

[LaCroix]

So what happens next time we have a difficult occupation?  Going to have all the growing pains of last time, desperately trying to increase numbers, lower standards, and inadequately train soldiers as the country tries to save face.

So why not keep the force at reasonable numbers?   I can't say what reasonable is, but less than 400,000 doesn't seem reasonable, and the army doesn't think so either.

was lack of numbers the sole reason for why the occupation of iraq turned out the way it did, rather than lack of preparation, pre-war planning, and reliance on sketchy intelligence?

as jacob said, it is very expensive. and no military branch thinks a massive reduction is reasonable 

[CountDeMoney]

I'm torn on the a10.
Part of me says apart time, they were meant to so that years ago.
Yet cheap, sturdy and functional is just what is needed in modern warfare, not ultra sonic whiz bang would fall out of the sky if not for it's computers fighter planes.

The US military is not always going to have air superiority over the battlefield space, and they will need a Sturmovik to get shit done on the deck for CAS, and they will not have it.

[Neil]

I'm torn on the a10.
Part of me says apart time, they were meant to so that years ago.
Yet cheap, sturdy and functional is just what is needed in modern warfare, not ultra sonic whiz bang would fall out of the sky if not for it's computers fighter planes.

The US military is not always going to have air superiority over the battlefield space, and they will need a Sturmovik to get shit done on the deck for CAS, and they will not have it.

Actually, they probably will.  They pick their enemies very carefully.

[Admiral Yi]

I would think the Warthog would be the last plane to send on a mission in the absence of air superiority.

[CountDeMoney]

I would think the Warthog would be the last plane to send on a mission in the absence of air superiority.

Neil doesn't understand the concept of flying machines.  They frighten and confuse him.

[grumbler]

Heard this on NPR: How many troops would it take to occupy Beijing? C'mon America.

the Chinese did it with approximately 120,000 troops in 1989.

[lustindarkness]

I wonder how much an A-10 will sell for. 

[grumbler]

The point is that creating a doctrine which requires a decisive win in one conflict decisively and quickly enough to deal with another adversary in another conflict leads to a bias toward acting quickly to go to war in the first conflict.

Good thing no one is talking about "a doctrine which requires a decisive win in one conflict decisively and quickly enough to deal with another adversary in another conflict," then.  If you misread the current US strategy that way, you need to brush up on your reading skills.

[grumbler]

Yet cheap, sturdy and functional is just what is needed in modern warfare, not ultra sonic whiz bang would fall out of the sky if not for it's computers fighter planes.

This is an argument for drones, not for the A-10.  Cheap is meaningless in the context of the A-10, because they are paid for already, so costs are just maintenance costs (which are high for its relatively unsophisticated systems, because they are so old), sturdiness is not really a consideration on the modern battlefield (one hit with a SAM is a kill on an A-10, a drone, or an F-35), and thee are many functional airframes.

And computers in aircraft are not bad things, even if they are essential for flight stability.

[The Minsky Moment]

In more recent budget and strategy documents, the military has been ordered to be prepared to decisively win one conflict while holding off an adversary's aspirations in a second until sufficient forces could be mobilized and redeployed to win there

The Schlieffen Plan part II, what could possibly go wrong?

What are the alternatives?
1) Having the capability to decisively win 2 conflicts - that would require a much higher level of resource commitment that the US can't or won't afford.
2) Having a lesser capability of only being able to handle one conflict without being to hold enough another adversary - then it is open season on US allies and interests if the US commits itself to one conflict.  The mere announcement of such a concept would cause havoc.
3) Having a strategy of engaging in two conflicts simultaneously but doing a crappy job in both?

[FunkMonk]

Heard this on NPR: How many troops would it take to occupy Beijing? C'mon America.

the Chinese did it with approximately 120,000 troops in 1989.

[MadImmortalMan]

I wonder how much an A-10 will sell for. 

Probably for less than the Vulcan they remove from it.