Post #3,350
8/1/01 2:39:36 AM
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Ya got me there, partly. Smartass.
Still n'all - how's come that there *Federal* military budget remains at er cold war levels? Is it about the fear of incoming from N. Korea, Iraq and France?
Is it about: the mythical man-mo ^h^h umm simultaneous Theatre-class War on Two Fronts\ufffd for which we must perpetually rehearse?
(Would a Drug War in Colombia AND one in Peru count as fulfilling the prophecy? For appropriations purposes.) Could the Local US Drug War also be counted - EZ qualifier then - and, a General IS heading it. No?
Could we have a War on Corporate Welfare - with a General in charge?
So what's it all about, Alfie?
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Post #3,367
8/1/01 7:32:36 AM
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Re: Ya got me there, partly. Smartass.
Still n'all - how's come that there *Federal* military budget remains at er cold war levels? Reagen Defense Spending = 6.5% of GDP Cold War Average roughly = 5% 2000 spending = 3.9% Now while I could not find 2001 spending...since all the serious repos were bitching at shrub about neglecting his campaign promise to increase military spending...I'm guessing as a percent of GDP that we're still significantly lower. Um...er...well...
I have no choice!
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #3,517
8/1/01 6:43:02 PM
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So then: a suitable metric for er
The Safety, Comfort and Hegemony of the Murican Peepul is:
Some near-constant %-GNP? And after all the Evul Empires have self-destructed: a 10%? 20%? reduction -- is the best deal our febrile great minds can manage for us ~ 300M folk?
And - it just Can't have anything whatsoever to do with: massively profitable Corporate preferences?
It's about Security pure and simple* ??
(* -minded?)
Now then - what was the question?
Ashton
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Post #3,551
8/1/01 9:57:49 PM
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I'm not sure what your point is.
It appears to be that the best option is to spend $0 on national defense.
% of GDP is the measure that almost everyone uses. And a 45% reduction from cold war highs IS significant..even if you fail to realize it...or for that matter care.
So...reduce it to 2% of GDP...that way we can pay our soldiers...but we can't give them any weapons...now >that< would be effective.
Maybe we should eliminate the incentive programs designed to gain recruits...Lord knows every teenager is just DYING to wear army greens.
We don't need a military...nor a missile defense...since we should be content to stay within our contiguous 48 and buy American.
Um...er...well...
I have no choice!
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #3,556
8/1/01 10:14:20 PM
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The need for defense spending will end...
when the nature of man changes.
Don't hold your breath.
Alex
Only two things are certain: the universe and human stupidity;
and I'm not certain about the universe.
-- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
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Post #3,583
8/2/01 4:47:48 AM
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Cold war 5.0 avge; 2000 3.9 = 20% reduction
You don't think it odd - with the major components of M.A.D. dismantled:
That we believe we need to spend 4/5 of the average cold war amount for 'defense' on er 'defense'? Against whom and what? Need same number of subs hiding in the Bering Sea? B-52s on 24/7 still? I don't think so.
And since the nature of the game of late has been to hit targets by remote control, does this mean that the new techno equipment costs + the new lethal toys: costs 4/5 of the cold war average? A similar number of personnel?
This must be a quite malleable idea of 'security' - if the insane extremes of the M.A.D. years - cost only 25% more than the 2000 budget. I must be missing some Large threat out there.
A.
(Oh, and a bunch of the guys think we're underfunding, too?)
Nope, don't get it.
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Post #3,607
8/2/01 10:10:00 AM
8/2/01 10:14:53 AM
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Avg vs High vs Trend
It would be nice to make it such a simple argument.
For example...we don't make B-2 bombers anymore...they're too expensive. BUT...for the approprate alternate aircraft to accomplish the same obejectives...over 100 soldiers are put at risk...in the B-2 it is 4. To reduce that number further...and build an automated army...it is extraordinarily expensive...but THAT is what is being done. Running Abrahams tanks by remote control would be better than putting soldiers in harms way...wouldn't it? Even if its a tad expensive?
Also...[link|http://bepatient.net/spend.jpg|Look at this chart] to show the overall trend of defense spending for the US. It is quite markedly a downward trend. Drastically since the early 60s.
So, we have the technology and capability to do things like mechanize the armed forces and protect against ballistic missile threat (they still exist...and in hands that make the Russians a preferred enemy)...but golly its expensive....and to spend on defense, as we all know, NEVER leads to anything beneficial in the private sector (even though all dod funded research must...by rule...have a commercialization plan...see [link|http://lionhearth.com|here] for an example)
And we all know there's [link|http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/08/01/mideast/index.html|peace ] in the [link|http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/08/01/srebrenica.verdict/index.html|world]
Um...er...well...
I have no choice!
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
Edited by bepatient
Aug. 2, 2001, 10:13:17 AM EDT
Edited by bepatient
Aug. 2, 2001, 10:14:53 AM EDT
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Post #3,642
8/2/01 4:37:52 PM
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Nice chart.
Even if a USNA grad can't spel mandatory ;-)
And yes, the trend for "spending it in advance" is as evident as the downward trend of 'defense discretionary'. I guess one next needs to examine that rising "pre-spent" amount for the Real military overall %-GDP - no?
So then.. it's about keeping soldiers out of harm's way - let the costs rise as they may: OSHA safety standards for the armed forces. Risk-free wars, courtesy of keen new and e$pecially effective remote-robots.
Of course, when the next er 'police action' or mini-war looks to perk up a flailing or just plain boring admin's image: it will become so much Easier -- with all the boys staying at home and using their remotes. No grieving parents to underscore what 'war' might mean. Less incentive to avoid.. Progress, perhaps?
It's such a fertile ground for reading social and political meaning into - I suspect that the actual annual military expense shall remain diffused across a lot of ledgers - next too. No politico would want an actual referendum with full disclosure.
Anyway - nice chart. Can Brilliant Pebbles and 'Nuke from Orbit' be far away? - all unmanned too. Really cheap that way.
A.
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Post #3,658
8/2/01 7:53:08 PM
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Well...
..it seems taht you are advocating a position that is neither safe nor prudent. One that says, we, as the advanced leader of the "free world" should unilaterally disarm ourselves because it is the only humane thing to do.
Why spend on defense when there is nothing to defend against seems to be your question...even though were involved in one conflict I linked to and are likely to end up involved in the other.
But we don't need a well equipped, well-trained armed force because it may make war more palatable.
Not to the enemy facing those forces.
We are spending less. almost 50% less than the highest point (6.6 to 3.9) We've cut good programs to make these reductions. We face serious readiness problems because we are spending so much less. Yet because you see no "clear and present danger"...you still seem to advocate spending little or nothing.
Methinks we may not see an agreement reached between us on this finer political point.
Um...er...well...
I have no choice!
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #3,702
8/3/01 5:16:48 AM
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These points are of course, debatable. Simply they aren't
(debated) much - or in a manner which (more than putatively) seeks the input of citizens re
Quo vadis? - since the dissolution of the USSR. The rhetoric remains cold-warish and even the cliches 'hawk / dove' appear to be just resting for a spell.
"More military spending" is deemed by one cliche-side as simply: the unarguably patriotic Thing to do. Undoubtedly the reverse is: let's disarm (I don't recall mentioning that straw dog?).
I submit that, before 'we' can assign some %-GNP or any other manifestly *arbitrary* indicator of OK-patriotic-spending - there needs first to be a public, massively debated and reviewed and then debated some more: "sense of purpose". An overt, explicit replacement for the vestiges of M.A.D.. I know of no such - even "mock-plebiscite".
There's a major qualitative change in our position vis-a-vis the entire world, and we are simply drifting with the hot air of a now deceased "permanent emergency state" -- which most of us alive today, took to be "the normal state for homo-saps".
It wasn't 'normal' however it was our average behavior, then. Now is different! (Unless we keep saying, it isn't.) I submit there is nothing like 'a national consensus' on:
WTF we *ought* to be doing - next, at home or in the world. Our One Party with Two Right Wings and a skeleton 'middle' is demonstrating neither 'direction' nor method. The ABM diversion, I submit - proves how 'tactical' is our group-think: how utterly devoid of anything like a long-term strategy for the US next, military or otherwise.
In this context - I think "%-GNP" is about as much Red-Herring as it is unimaginitive. It is cart-before-horse. You spend what you *must* after FIRST having plan, strategy and some sense of the citizenry - or it's just random waste pork. Again. IMO.
(And out there STILL: are all those thousands of nukes we all duped ourselves into overbuilding, knowing we *never could use a fraction of them!* except in a final M.A.D. unthinkable suicide.)
Want Ad? Terra looking for kindergarten teacher. Apply UN - Geneva or NY, Earth.
A.
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Post #3,666
8/2/01 8:42:43 PM
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what price victory or defeat?
as a percentage of GNP is one way to look at it. I dont look at it that way.
To get caught in the position we were in during 1940 would be bad. The really bad thing I think is lack of training rounds. It takes a lot of rounds to make a could shooter and simulators arnt the same. Do we have the capability to mount desert storm in under two years? My understanding is that we don t. Our ammo stocks in smart weapons is low and manufacturing more is not an option as the companies have retooled. It aint gonna get any better anytime soon and the people who dont like us or we are in their way know this. Scary shyte comming down the pike and I am afraid it might be my boys in a few years. I wonder if they could take my tired carcass instead. At least I got practice at getting anhilated.
thanx,
bill
Our bureaucracy and our laws have turned the world into a clean, safe work camp. We are raising a nation of slaves.
Chuck Palahniuk
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Post #3,470
8/1/01 3:20:32 PM
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Not any more
Is it about: the mythical man-mo ^h^h umm simultaneous Theatre-class War on Two Fronts\ufffd for which we must perpetually rehearse?
The current Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) has told Congress that they are pretty much abandoning that philosophy
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #3,518
8/1/01 6:49:18 PM
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Hmmm.. then what chimera are we using to replace it?
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Post #3,520
8/1/01 6:55:47 PM
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Nothing much
In the last eight to ten years, the military has been trying to say "this is our job, let us do it". However politicians have been using the military for a lot of little things that the military wasn't well set up to do like humanitarian relief, local policing, show of force exercises, etc... stuff the military didn't really want to do that sapped it's operating proficiency. That's why our military is in such a shambles today. Basically, Rumsfield has said that they are going to abandon the two theatre war policy and focus on being better equipped for the smaller mission sets
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #3,585
8/2/01 4:53:46 AM
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That sounds relatively sane. But why so expensive still?
Assuming BP's numbers in ballpark: I still read 4/5 of avge cold war GNP% - in 2000.
I fail to understand the nature of this 'threat' which requires expenditures that close to cold war rate.
A.
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Post #3,612
8/2/01 11:09:04 AM
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Simple, operational deployment costs more....
...the training and preparataion.
Actually deploying troops to Bosnia, etc,...is more expensive than merely preparing to do the same.
Jay O'Connor
"Going places unmapped
to do things unplanned
to people unsuspecting"
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Post #3,643
8/2/01 4:39:42 PM
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LRPD below explains! 'We have a moral imperative.'
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Post #3,628
8/2/01 1:51:26 PM
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Gotta wory 'bout France, ya know... *snicker*
jb4
(Resistance is not futile...)
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Post #3,656
8/2/01 7:45:26 PM
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More than you know ;)
I work for them
Um...er...well...
I have no choice!
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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