Supporting our troops

Pentagon budget-cutters looking at ending military retirement. You'll walk away from your military service with the same worthless shrinking 401(k) to be stolen by Wall Street as the rest of us have. Which means people will put in their 20 years... why?

As with all attempts to take pensions away from public employees, the end result is going to be no (zero) cost savings. College-educated public employees currently accept wages approximately 20% lower than they could make in the private sector with their education and experience because of the expectation that they'll get a pension at the end of their service. Military "lifers" stay in the military, accepting far less money than they could make in the private sector, because they expect that pension at the end of their service. Take away that pension, and you'll have to pay them far more to stay, or else risk losing critical expertise, because the "lifers" are the institutional memory of the military, the propagators of a military culture that has proven to be extremely effective at killing lots of America's enemies with relatively little loss of American life. Destroy that military culture, and you destroy the military -- you end up with the sort of barely organized rabble that is a typical non-American military (otherwise known as TARGET PRACTICE if they dare take on the U.S. military).

In short, this is a bad idea on top of a bad idea, and just another example of how our Republicans in office (including Republican Obama) mouth platitudes about supporting our troops, but when the rubber hits the road.... uhm... not so much. But hey, yet more taxpayer money needs to be funneled to defense contractors for yet more jets that don't fly and other such nonsense... ignoring the fact that what makes our military so effective is its people, the advanced weapons are just the icing on the cake. But hey, we have CEO presidents now, who like the CEO's who destroyed American industry believe people are fungible... SIIIIIiigh!

- Badtux the Military Penguin

Yet more mission creep

U.S. Marine Corps wants world's finest rock crawling area so they can train for a mission that's never been in their organizational goals.

The Corps wants a training area for large-scale, live-fire exercises where three battalions could simultaneously practice assaulting a fixed location. Gen. James Amos, the commandant, considers the expansion "absolutely essential to providing the requisite training area for preparing Marines to meet the challenges of the future security environment."

At which point, I say, "whaaaaaa?!". The future security environment is small scale wars where small teams of soldiers fight guerillas, not large-scale unit maneuvers where multiple battalions maneuver armored units through desert terrain. As usual, the Marines are fighting the last war, no, not even the last war, the war BEFORE the last war. There are no -- zero -- enemies that the United States is going to fight over the next twenty years that have any tanks or any weapons bigger than a Soviet-era RPG. There are no (zero) enemies we're going to fight over the next twenty years that require three battalions of Marines to assault a fixed position. The EU, Russia, and China are the only three nations with significant military forces, and they have no (zero) interest in attacking America -- why should they, when we're doing such a good job of doing that to ourselves?

The last time the U.S.M.C. fought a large-scale tank engagement was... err.... NEVER. Not. Ever. Not ever in the history of this nation. Not during WW1, not during WW2, not during the Korean War, not during Vietnam, not during Gulf War 1, not during Gulf War 2, not during any action the USMC has ever been involved in. That's why we have a U.S. Army, to handle that sort of thing. The closest the USMC has ever gotten to a tank battle is during Gulf War I, when they were still armed with the M60 tank, when they were sent into Kuwait to hand-hold the Saudi military units (the fear was that the Saudis would turn tail and run if not bucked up with real soldiers) while the U.S. Army was holding a tank battle (more like turkey shoot) at the Kuwait-Iraqi border a hundred miles away. No USMC tank has ever fired a round of AP in anger. Plenty of HE in support of small unit battle groups, but the sort of mass maneuvering of armor that would need Johnson Valley has never been done in USMC history, and there's no reason to start now. Not that this is going to stop USMC generals who are lusting for mission creep...

That said, soldiers are trained to be paranoid, and I suppose that with news that the Mexican drug cartels are now building tanks (actually, more armored trucks with machine guns), we might need to invade Mexico with large armored columns and, err... what? Remember that we've invaded Mexico multiple times over the past 200 years (the last being Black Jack Pershing's invasion in 1914) and never stayed for long because the place is a total armpit.

Or maybe the Marines are prepping for the invasion of Canada so we can put an end to the threat of poutine, universal healthcare, and William Shatner. Except if that's the case, Johnson Valley's the wrong place to do it. I suggest Nome, Alaska.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

In Soviet America, the military beggars YOU!

Over half of all federal discretionary spending goes to the Pentagon. In non-Soviet Russia, the people beggar the military, which has to beg even for enough money to feed its troops and keep the power hooked up at its falling down bases. In Soviet America, the military beggars YOU.

So where is the money going? Well, bunches of it are going to contractors who provide truck drivers making $150K+/year to take the place of GI's making $20K/year, who provide cooks making $150K+/year to take the place of GI's making $20K/year, etc. Because of course it's cheaper to hire someone for $150K/year than to hire someone for $20K/year (snark!). Funny, most of these contractors also seem to be Bush administration cronies. Odd how that works out, eh?

Other money is going to weapons we don't need. The F-16 and the F/A 18 Super Hornet will be the best fighter jets in the world for the next 20+ years. Past a certain point you hit fundamental laws of physics, past which it is impossible to improve beyond what an airframe has already achieved. Consider this: The F-16 first flew over 30 years ago, yet even today, there is not a single jet fighter in the world that can out-dogfight it. None. Zero. Zilch. The only improvements there have been in the past thirty years have been in engines and avionics. Airframes? Not so much. We've hit fundamental laws of physics there. Yet we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on F-22 and F-35 fighter jets that don't work any better for 99% of tasks than what we have yet are five times more expensive because, well, Pentagon cronies need money, I guess.

Then there is the enormous sum of money spent maintaining legions around the world -- Germany, South Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, and hundreds of military bases all over the globe. Democracies don't need that. But empires do. And, in the end, that is what causes the collapse of empires. The Roman Empire collapsed because it ran out of money to pay its soldiers and they decided to sack Rome (repeatedly) and install one of their own as Emperor (repeatedly) to take by force what was due them, until there was nothing left to take and the barbarians came in and took over the pitiable remnants. In a democracy, there is little need for a large military because democracies do not attack other nations and defense can be handled by a part-time National Guard like in Switzerland. In a democracy, the people beggar the military because there just isn't much need for one. In an empire like Soviet America, on the other hand, the military beggars you.

-- Badtux the Budgetary Penguin