"Leaner" US military

[philw]

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1616859/Obama-touts-leaner-US-military

President Barack Obama unveiled a strategy on Thursday for a leaner US military focused on countering China's rising power and signalling a shift away from large ground wars against insurgents.
   
The plan calls for preparing for possible challenges from Iran and China, requiring air and naval assets, while downplaying any future massive counter-insurgency campaigns such as those conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan.
   
The "defense strategic review" sets out an approach for the US military in  a looming era of austerity, as Obama's administration prepares for $487 billion in defense cuts over the next 10 years.
   
But the US president, anticipating attacks from his Republican rivals in an election year, said reductions would be limited and not come at the expense of America's military might.
   
"So yes, our military will be leaner, but the world must know -- the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with armed forces that are agile, flexible and ready for the full range of contingencies and threats," Obama told reporters at a rare appearance at the Pentagon.
   
White House officials stressed Obama was deeply involved in the strategy review and sought to portray the president as taking a careful approach to defense spending having acted on the advice of leading commanders.
   
Saying the country was "turning the page on a decade of war," Obama said the new strategy would increasingly focus on Asia, where commanders worry about China's growing military capabilities.
   
"We'll be strengthening our presence in the Asia Pacific, and budget reductions will not come at the expense of this critical region," he said.
   
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, appearing with Obama along with top officers, said the strategy envisages a "smaller and leaner" force that will expand the military's role in Asia while maintaining a strong presence in the Middle East.
   
According to the eight-page strategy document, the military will work with allies in the Middle East to ensure security in the Gulf and counter Iran's "destabilizing policies."
   
However, counter-insurgency operations receive a lower priority under the plan, enabling the administration to scale back ground forces.
   
Panetta said "with the end of US military commitments in Iraq, and the drawdown already under way in Afghanistan, the Army and Marine Corps will no longer need to be sized to support the large scale, long-term stability operations that dominated military priorities and force generation over the past decade."
   
But the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Buck McKeon, hit out at the strategy and accused Obama of gutting defense.
   
"The President has packaged our retreat from the world in the guise of a new strategy to mask his divestment of our military and national defense," McKeon, a Republican, said in a statement.
   
The review reinforces what defense officials have already signaled -- that funds will flow to aircraft, ships, missile defense and high-tech weaponry while the US Army and Marine Corps will be downsized.
   
Washington's focus on Asia is fueled by concerns over China's growing navy and arsenal of anti-ship missiles that could jeopardize America's military power in the Pacific.
   
In keeping with plans for a smaller force, the strategy discards the doctrine that the military must be prepared to fight two wars at the same time, an idea long debated inside the Pentagon.
   
Instead, the United States would be ready to fight one war while waging a holding action elsewhere to stave off a second threat.

The strategy review suggests reducing the atomic arsenal without saying how, amid calls from some lawmakers to reduce the number of nuclear-armed submarines.
   
The review also hints at scaling back the military's footprint in Europe but offered no details, saying "our posture in Europe must also evolve."
   
Britain's defense minister cautioned Thursday the US pivot to Asia should not neglect Russia, which he called an unpredictable force on the global stage.
   
"If the US is going to see its focus drawn increasingly to the Asia Pacific region, how does it secure the backyard?" said British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond during a visit to the US capital.
   
The new strategy comes ahead of the proposed defense budget for 2013 due to be released next month, which is expected to call for delays in some weapons programs, including the troubled F-35 fighter.
   
Despite talk of belt-tightening, the defense budget for 2012 came to $530 billion, not counting the cost of the war in Afghanistan.
   
Obama said future military spending will still remain high and "larger than roughly the next 10 countries combined."

An Obama downsize, likely end up costing twice as much!

[santahog]

Imagine, if you will...
A guy takes his big guard dog out in his yard, in front of the whole neighborhood and slits it from scrotum to sternum, just deep enough for the thing to survive if left alone. Think he'll have company the next time he leaves the house?
Well, something like that...
Welcome to the Global Community, where no one needs fear a neighbor..

[twyacht]

Pres. Carter did the same thing......It's really true.....Carter v2.0,....but even Carter wasn't so bold to bypass Congress and the Constitution with impunity over and over....

Check the "dictator" phrase regarding BHO on Google,....it's up around 726,000 hits....

[jnevis]

We're headed towards the English model.  Just enough military to say we still have one but not enough to completely secure our borders so we have to have help from our neighbor we've been in open conflict with repeatedly over our entire history.

[fightingquaker13]

Maybe. Or maybe we have learned a valuable lesson. Eg., invading muslim countries and occupying them for a decade trying to establish democracy and respect for human rights is a waste of blood and treasure. Deal with them from the air and go home. We still maintain the Marines, and the Army is just scaled back. But if we have made, I hope, a resolution to never again in engage in an open ended commitment to sideshows like Iraq or Afghanistan and instead focus on real threats like Iran, North Korea and China, its not a bad thing. The test will be this. Will the BO, or future administrations expect us to do a repeat of Iraq or phase II of Afghanistan without the proper resources? If the answer is yest, its a bad idea. If instead we say "We aren't making those mistakes again". its not all that bad as a working theory. BTW, last I checked, the Europeans could put some decent armies in the field. Where TF are they? Time to stop giving them a free ride. (God, I sound like a Paulite, but its the truth).
FQ13

[Sponsor]

[Rastus]

We're headed towards the English model.  Just enough military to say we still have one but not enough to completely secure our borders so we have to have help from our neighbor we've been in open conflict with repeatedly over our entire history.

Which, in a real pinch would bring out tac nukes quicker....assuming of course we have the will to do something other than point our behinds in the air with our heads down. 

It is important to remember that bravado without a big stick will get your head bashed in. 

The people who are saying we can live with less are the ones that believe their own stupid BS...like Hollywood's itsy bitsy women kicking a 240 lb man's behind and wrestling him to the ground...pure foolishness....those are the same ones who will/are saying we'll have a sufficient deterrent.  Weakness invites disaster....I hope we don't have a slaughter of soldiers because we would not back them or could not support them in some real war in the future because of the liberal fools and sheep who are absolutely destroying this nation. 

[fightingquaker13]

Maybe Rastus, but if the ballon had gone up in NK or Iran a couple of years ago, we'd have been a little busy. The reality of military planning is that its always one war behind. "The Cold War is over", "We'll never fight another Gulf War", "We'll never fight another Vietnam", We need to focus on counter-isurgency, why do we need a new generation of fighters? Where is the enemy's airforce"? All of these have been proven wrong. Yet and still, there is only so much money, so you take your best guess. I don't think we need to use nukes tactically, just have them as a detterenet. And I do think making a decision to honor W.'s campaign promise 12 years too late to get out of the business of "nation building" is not an all bad idea.
FQ13

[twyacht]

We are one more terrorist attack away, on the scale of 9/11,, to say one of two things....

1) "We can't spare the military resources available".

2) Nuke The FU*****

Depending on who is in the White House,....the "3rd" option,...is of Neville Chamberlain's greatest moment redux.....

Which would you prefer?

[fightingquaker13]

We are one more terrorist attack away, on the scale of 9/11,, to say one of two things....

1) "We can't spare the military resources available".

2) Nuke The FU*****

Depending on who is in the White House,....the "3rd" option,...is of Neville Chamberlain's greatest moment redux.....

Which would you prefer?

I think the third option is to do Afghanistan phase 1, which is to wage an operation based ona  regime change/punative expedition and then go home. Historically, its a lot more in keeping with our values, as well as common sense. I'm not arguing in favor troop draw downs until I've seen all the facts. I am saying that we shouldn't plan keeping our recent levels of foriegn occupations up, and that should let us adjust our spending priorities towards other threats.
FQ13

[ronlarimer]

It sounds to me like he forgot about Korea.  "with guided missiles dog fights are dead."  Oops!

The only way to hold ground is to have boots on the ground.