Any reason you picked the undeveloped Ike for the lead picture, Tom?

Walt

....using appropriated money continues. Guess the budget is not shrinking as fast as the Chairman assumes.

My goodness, all the wailing and whining and angst about cut the military’s budget seems a bit over done. We spend more on the armed forces than the next nineteen nations put together and most of those nations and certainly the ones with the best military establishments are our closest allies. The U. S. military also possesses a technological lead which for all practical purposes joined again with our most capable allies is a generation or more ahead of both China and Russia the two largest potential contenders.

If a smaller military means a more selective, innovative, efficient and better officered military then bring on the cuts particularly for the Army. If it also means curtailing gold plating speculative weapons programs then once again bring it on. It is time to tell the services that they are going to do more with less and to figure out how they are going to do that then do it!

As an example, the Navy wants to reduce expensive manning and so one way to facilitate that goal is to intensively cross train ratings. But that requires a better-educated inflow of new people, intensive training and inducements to keep the productive ones aboard. This is not rocket science; there are a lot of good ideas out there they just need to see the light of day.

Incidentally, ‘great leaders’ are not built from scratch. Like a great artist, scientist or Tom’s friend Ike they are discovered with a native latent talent and then mentored and cultivated to achieve their best potential. In our age it is fashionable and very PC to lie to children by telling them they can be whatever they want to be. Unfortunately, that is not the case if a person wants to be a surgeon, or mathematician or yes a leader in the military. The average person basically does not have leadership potential and never will no matter how much energy is devoted to the process. If it was that easy we would have a lot more great leaders. One must have some clay to shape in the first place just like Ike.

Tom:

I'm working on a blog post right now about budget cuts. Suffice to say, I've got no love for organizations like AUSA.

AUSA (and other lobbyist groups) howl at the very mention of, say, raising TRICARE premiums for retirees (never mind how many billions this costs the taxpayer). They produce pamphlets extolling the virtues of a large US presence in Europe (despite its questionable utility, and somewhat misleading statistics). And let's not forget defense contractors peddling all sorts of boondoggles (Future Combat System, anyone?)

We can't seem to cut guns or butter. But training budgets are an easy, low-hanging fruit. There's no lobby to protect flying hour programs, no contractor getting rich on peddling 5.56mm training rounds.

This past month, we learned that our flying hour program for the calendar year will total roughly 1200 hours (10 aircraft, 25 aviators). To put this in perspective, that means our organization can only fly roughly 100 flight hours per month. (In Iraq and Afghanistan, it's not unheard of for individuals to log that much time)

I'd like to see hard stats on this, because I doubt my experience is unique.

How will we develop leaders if we don't have the facilities to train them?

Though, on a positive note, dropping the Army's dead weight--in terms of unfit officers and NCOs--is at least one step in the right direction towards better leader development.

To second STARBUCK, your experience is not unique. My reserve unit just found out that all quarterly ammo had been scrapped and according to the comptroller there is no more money for uniforms for the fiscal year. We'll adjust accordingly and get creative. But hey at least the first two F-35Bs were delivered today.

I was on brigade level staff, calculating company level mounted training using a whiz wheel, trying to figure out how to run our lanes without exceeding our miniscule OPTEMPO allocations.

We actually HETTed tanks between lanes on any move over 5KM.

Pretty absurd, particularly since OPTEMPO costs are funding projections, not real costing figures. But if you blew too many tank packs, and were over your OPTEMPO mileage, you were at risk of getting fired.

1. Our service chiefs know (assumption) the damage that is going to be done with these cuts, as outlined by examples previously posted.

2. Thoughts like those from JPREWEL are wishful thinking, unfortunately, and there is zero empirical evidence to dispute that fact.

3. If a GO/FO falls into category one, should he or she resign to protest the inherent danger these cuts are going to bring? Should they at the very least, level with us in uniform, and the POTUS, about how these cuts must be carried out in order to avoid the pitfalls of the past, and stand their ground for cuts that should not be executed?

4. If a GO/FO falls into category two, espousing false assumptions and ignoring previous lessons learned, then should he or she resign for reasons of incompetence?

I don't mean these comments to be disrespectful to our officers or to JPREWEL by the way. But the issue of GO/FO resignation has been thrown around since the run-up to the Iraq invasion, and before - so I'm curious if it's an issue that should be discussed. I think it should be and I think our service chiefs needs to start some open dialog about these cuts and quit with the alternative views of reality.

People saying that the proposed cuts aren't going to hurt badly didn't serve in the U.S. armed forces in the 1990s when the peace dividend took hundreds of billions (and ~250,000 active duty Soldiers, among other things) out of DOD.

Example: Stateside artillery units circa 1992-1993 borrowing golf carts to practice maneuvering sections, platoons and batteries at the post golf course because there was insufficient money to move howitzers out of the motor pool or maintain them when they got back.

Another example: Insufficient ammunition stocks to meet Army qualification standards. Suspect it would have been much worse if we weren't able to use ammunition being brought back from European warstocks, but no matter what, lower priority aviation units (e.g. 25ID) NEVER got sufficient 2.75" rockets they needed, and lousy 40mm TPT rounds that burst as they came out of the M203 barrels meant we almost never actually qualified our folks on the weapon.

Some of you might remember there were a number of flare-ups within the officer corps among company and junior field grade officers who didn't think their leaders were doing enough to push back on the "do more with less" (DMWL) mindset of the period. My sense is that a large chunk of the resistance to GEN Shinseki's transformation ~ 2000 was due to lots of people considering it yet more DMWL, resistance that wasn't overcome until after 9/11 when more resources meant it was "do more with more."

DOD cannot and must not be the only billpayer for fixing the budget, but service members and retirees whining about TRICARE costs when enrollment charges haven't risen for years don't help the cause. If we defend everything, then we are defending nothing. After all, what good is cheap TRICARE going to do you when your unit gets whacked in combat because it is poorly trained and equipped.

As an example, the Navy wants to reduce expensive manning and so one way to facilitate that goal is to intensively cross train ratings. But that requires a better-educated inflow of new people, intensive training homeremodelingblog and inducements to keep the productive ones aboard. This is not rocket science; there are a lot of good ideas out there they just need to see the light of day.