Sec. Hagel warns Navy could lose 3 Carriers and troop levels to 1950's numbers!

IL add another point.

I think the USA offensive capability’s is too much. It so much it can easily be abused. The USA does not need all that offensive ability for mainland defence. It only needs it for well interfering.

Now I understand that it needs an offensive and has a right to some to protect its treaty obligations with Taiwan and Japan ect.

But the fact is the USA Offensive force is so huge it can go anywhere and do anything it want unilaterally. And that’s a bad thing and in my opinion it’s being abused and used to send the USA into pointless and morally wrong wars. They say power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Well the absolute power of the US military I think has gone to the heads of you politicians.

The USA ability to be able to unilaterally do what it wants needs to be tempered somewhat or the next Iraq or worse is just round the corner and the USA will just be another evil empire in the history books.

I think what I’m saying is the USA should have the ability to defend itself and retain a mobile offensive fleet to come to fully if needed treaty obligations. But it shouldn’t hold the absolute power it has now, no country should
.

Originally posted by HauntWok
Good, there's no need for this big of a military at all. We should cut back all the armed forces to pre WWII numbers, even better would be to cut them back to pre civil war numbers and actually disband the Army and Airforce if there is no congressionally declared war on.

That would save the budget boatloads of money.

As nice as this sounds, it really isn't feasible in today's world. In the modern world we have to be able to fight a war on both coasts at the same time. That is just simple geography. But the other reality is we can't cut back to a preWWII level. We got away with it then because even the most complicated war material then was no where near as sophisticated as it is now. You won't be able to ramp up and sustain production like we did then if we needed to. Disbanding it would be the biggest mistake you could possibly make. For whatever reason should we find ourselves at war we would be technologically behind and ultimately defeated. Technology requires research, development, and training. The best we can hope to do is bring troop levels and overseas commitments down to a defensive level and continue R&D. There is an excellent case for military cuts and the Pentagon is one of the first places that should be facing audits, but you also have to be realistic about the whole thing.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000

I have to disagree with you on that. If anything,. I think the Carriers are needed more now than ever before and for two important reasons. First, assuming major naval warfare is not something looming on the horizon between world powers (Russia is dramatically increasing their fleet size with modernization for existing ships, as one concern there), then the Carriers serve another major purpose.

I disagree and agree with a bit here. Carriers are a vital cog in the military machine and for good reason. But to me the question isn't of whether or not we need them. But do we really need the ones that are planned on the current timetable? The diesel carriers have all been replaced, we have just decommissioned the Enterprise, with several more retirements coming as new carriers are completed. But are they really at the end of their serviceable life? Or are we pandering to the shipyards that have long-term contracts to build them.

WWII and the airplane effectively killed major naval warfare on the surface really. Naval engagements are not very likely to be between huge ships, most surface engagements are going to be basically pirate interdiction, not just for the US but most industrialized world powers. The world is a lot smaller you just are not going to hide a naval fleet in the middle of the ocean anymore.

reply to post by KeliOnyx


Now you raise an excellent point. At some point, yes, we do need to phase these carriers out, as nothing lasts forever and the ocean cuts forever by half anyway.

Do we need what's on paper or still under 50% build at this point? (using 50% so we don't outright waste more in cutting one up then finishing it...and I could see them doing it, too) I count 10 on the deployment list that are in a state of ready or off-line with projected readiness dates to come back online. I think cutting that to 6 or 7 is sheer stupidity, and the fact only a few are afloat and out of port right now says why. Still?

I'll have to admit, you make a lot of sense here. I'm sure those could be worked and refitted for another decade or so of life, at least. Most don't have decommission dates until well out into the future anyway. We can surely save billions, if not 10's of billions by the end by just cutting out what isn't close to being done right now.

Hagel admit that our military is guilty of wasting a lot of things they don't need. We need to cut down all the fat and trim that we don't need.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I can see a 1.5-1 replacement with a number of ships though, including the carriers. The Ford will be able to do things the Nimitz only dreams of doing once the new technologies mature (which are coming along nicely), and now that the UCLASS can go forward after the X-47 trials, we're going to see a much more capable hull coming out, and like the Nimitz hulls, each will be a little better than the last, and incorporate new things that will be retrofitted.

reply to post by crazyewok

I would tend to really agree with you on cutting forces back in Europe. The Pentagon started this in a serious way last year, but that effort still leaves 40,000 over there. Like you, I do wonder why, outside of tradition and just the status quo for a lot of reasons, we actually need more than a quarter of that number. Perhaps less. I can see the major medical facilities and I see why. I can also see the air bases or at least shared facilities with close allies going forward. Certainly not what we have now though.

@ Thread

As mentioned earlier, while some people have a real zeal to see the U.S. Military cut in the most meaningful, not financially effective ways? I don't much care to see them take axes to hack away at what it's taken generations to build and may just be needed if the world does slide off the edge and into war. It's funny how recently...MONTHS recently...people were discussing that very thing. Some still are ....while almost simultaneously discussing how we need to cut the Military where readiness bleeds the most.

Well.... That's just a crock and here's just one TINY part of why. Keep in mind too, when I was on a thread with this not long ago, all the sudden? Oh.. Gee, cutting military or government spending wasn't all that important anymore. Jobs were suddenly far more important. (Jobs paid for by the workers themselves in taxes. The logic of rooting for more spending by Government escapes me)

CNN was allowed rare access to what amounts to a parking lot for more than 2,000 M-1 Abrams tanks. Here, about an hour's drive north of Reno, Nevada, the tanks have been collecting dust in the hot California desert because of a tiff between the Army and Congress.

The U.S. has more than enough combat tanks in the field to meet the nation's defense needs - so there's no sense in making repairs to these now, the Army's chief of staff Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told Congress earlier this year.

(Emphasis by me)

No sense even repairing 2,000 main battle tanks. Indeed.... Surely we wouldn't need more of them right?

"When a relatively conservative institution like the U.S. military, which doesn't like to take risks because risks get people killed, says it has enough tanks, I think generally civilians should be inclined to believe them," said Travis Sharp a fellow at the defense think tank, New American Security.

Wise words, I do believe. Waste? What waste? Oh... THAT waste! The stuff Congress fights tooth and nail to maintain AGAINST the stated needs and even pleas of the very people Congress insists need them.

To be exact, 173 House members - Democrats and Republicans - sent a letter April 20 to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, urging him to continue supporting their decision to produce more tanks.

Source

Now given the fact Chuck Hagel, as a long time member of Congress, helped MAKE these problems? What can be said? It costs, as near as I could find, about 400 Million per year, per carrier. So about 4 Billion a year to run the entire set of them. All 10.

So the more I got to thinking about things like the 2,000 broken tanks no one even wants, while they produce more of them endlessly ....and the costs of what basically forms about 50% of the entire US Naval power... I got to looking.

According to a breakdown of costs, the Department Of Defense, not counting V.A. costs, is running 633 Billion dollars for 2013. (4 Billion to run ALL TEN Aircraft Carriers....recall)

This is what it looks like visually, in perspective.



The more I get to looking at what things *REALLY* cost by their own figures for the big ticket and high dollar core systems of defense they talk about cutting? The more I come to the realization, these crooks throw MANY MANY times more in actual dollars into ...well? Pork, waste and corruption. By the truck full. It sure isn't accounted for in the systems and forces they are ITCHING to cut. Cut ALL the Carriers. Strip them and cut them into razor blades. It'll cripple the US Military ...and you know how much it will cut off the D.O.D. Budget? 0.631%

Now I don't know which point is more meaningful here. The defense of how cheap the Navy is to operate those...Or perhaps far MORE important here? If just over 1/2 of 1 Percent of the Defense Budget is all it takes to run that massive symbol and core of our nation's defense? What in the name of all that's sane and logical *IS* the other $629,000,000,000.00 being spent on every year?! Cut the PORK Congress helped make....if former Senator Hagel has the guts to even consider it. Somehow I doubt he'll even think it. The corruption pays his and his buddies retirement deals and private sector employment. Troops? bahh... They don't even get to vote half the time, since the Pentagon STILL hasn't gotten all the legally mandated voting garbage worked out after years of mandate.

Pure Politics at the cost of actual, meaningful and real defense.

The problem with navy cutbacks is it takes two years to comeback from the loss of skilled people three carriers means. 15,000 skilled sailors lost and if needed 15,000 new sailors to train to put them back in service.
Plus to train these new carrier sailors you have to strip about 1/3 of the skilled "old hands" sailors for each carrier from the rest of the fleet carriers to act as a training crew.
That means that the rest of the carrier fleet is short skilled sailors and needs 6 months to bring there replacements to full readiness.

Add to this it takes 9 to 12 months from enlistment to getting there first ship for schooling..

I believe that this was planned by the democrats to cause major cuts in the military.
But to make it look like they were not anti military.

reply to post by ANNED


We need training carriers. So put three into active reserve, and rotate them through training status. Each one goes through a month or two of sailing around in the Gulf of Mexico letting pilots from Fort Worth get landing experience, and crew members get experience being on the ship. Then rotate the next one through. You don't save as much as having three mothballed, but it keeps you from having to pull one of the others out of a combat area, or an area they're needed, while training people. It also makes sure that they're ready to go if they have to come out of the yard and be used.