What should military members be willing to sacrifice first?

treedancer said:

Most of the time it’s thru attrition…at least that’s the way it used to be.

Click to expand...

but...but...but...we need to keep those gubmint jobs because it's great for the economy!

obvious Child said:

Agreed. Secretary Gates essentially stated that unless we get healthcare costs in the military under control, there won't be money for weapons. And the US spends more on defense then the majority of the entire world combined.

Click to expand...

Wow. What do we spend on offense? :neutral:

Lokiate said:

I saw waste every day in the Army too. We were supposed to have gone electronic to save paper, but we (as one company) must have wasted at least a ton of paper every fiscal year. We wasted fuel, energy, resources, all of it. I'm not even counting training, just the stupid ****. Hundreds of thousands down the ****ter every year, and that's just one company.

Click to expand...

To be fair, the whole "paperless" thing has proven to be a myth everywhere. It's not just the military.

apdst said:

but...but...but...we need to keep those gubmint jobs because it's great for the economy!

Click to expand...

We'll bring em home a send them to OKC and let haul oil well supplies...on the cheap.:mrgreen:

Reduction in manpower,
I was in the Navy....when at sea, I felt we were adequately staffed, but when on shore duty, I felt we had way too many bench warmers. Of the approximately 10 enlisted technicians in our group, half were lazy or incompetent, and we still had more workers than we had work to do. And a lot of young officers were sitting at desks doing work that mid-level enlisteds could do. These young officers also spent a lot of time out of the office. Long lunch hours were common. the ratio of officers to enlisted was high, much higher than WWII, according to Admiral Rickover. He was very vocal about this issue...
We would need less boots on the ground if we just forget about ground troops in places like the ME, just blast the hell out of their defenses first, then any and all offensive weapons larger than a rifle, and then leave them to clean up the mess.
Smart hardware purchases...
No way should congress force the military to take hardware they don't want or need just to keep employment high somewhere.

UtahBill said:

Reduction in manpower,
I was in the Navy....when at sea, I felt we were adequately staffed, but when on shore duty, I felt we had way too many bench warmers. Of the approximately 10 enlisted technicians in our group, half were lazy or incompetent, and we still had more workers than we had work to do. And a lot of young officers were sitting at desks doing work that mid-level enlisteds could do. These young officers also spent a lot of time out of the office. Long lunch hours were common. the ratio of officers to enlisted was high, much higher than WWII, according to Admiral Rickover. He was very vocal about this issue...

Click to expand...

all true enough.

We would need less boots on the ground if we just forget about ground troops in places like the ME, just blast the hell out of their defenses first, then any and all offensive weapons larger than a rifle, and then leave them to clean up the mess.

Click to expand...

interesting idea. How would you handle the massive civilian casualties that would result from this aim-for-a-tie strategy?

No way should congress force the military to take hardware they don't want or need just to keep employment high somewhere.

Click to expand...

daggum right. I think I read somewhere that the F-35 had something like 500 representatives in Congress when you looked at where they had decided to put one part of assembly or another.

cpwill said:

all true enough.



interesting idea. How would you handle the massive civilian casualties that would result from this aim-for-a-tie strategy?



daggum right. I think I read somewhere that the F-35 had something like 500 representatives in Congress when you looked at where they had decided to put one part of assembly or another.

Click to expand...

They always used the military to pay back their friends...Pentagon is used as a money launderer of sorts....Never should anything be purchased, or the development pursued for any other reason than to enhance our troop safety and capability. Its a disgrace how much is squandered for all wrong reasons.

We can talk about duds in the military and anyone who has ever served knows theres duds...but tell me what profession doesnt have any.

radcen said:

To be fair, the whole "paperless" thing has proven to be a myth everywhere. It's not just the military.

Click to expand...

The military gets crazy with it. My first unit went through about a rainforest a year.

DaveFagan said:

Mullen: 18 veterans kill themselves every day in the U.S. | The Raw Story

"Navy Admiral Mike Mullen (ret.), former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience in Aspen this weekend that military has “18 vets a day who are killing themselves in the United States” due to the incomprehensible stresses of military life, which he said are compounded by a public that is increasingly disconnected from the ongoing wars.

"Military suicides rose dramatically after the start of the Iraq war, according to a recent study by the Army’s Public Health Command. That same study found that in 2008, 1 in 5 U.S. soldiers voluntarily submitted to a mental health evaluation, “implying a prevalent public health problem.” Since then, the military’s suicide rate has continued to climb, hitting a 10-year high in 2012, even though U.S. forces are almost entirely withdrawn from Iraq."

Click to expand...

No way it is 18 a day. Maybe 1 a day. Of course, whatever it is, it is too many people finding a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

And about the thread subject, I don't think suicides have anything to do with retirement benefits.

cpwill said:

all true enough.



interesting idea. How would you handle the massive civilian casualties that would result from this aim-for-a-tie strategy?



daggum right. I think I read somewhere that the F-35 had something like 500 representatives in Congress when you looked at where they had decided to put one part of assembly or another.

Click to expand...

what massive civilian casualties? cruise missles and smart bombs in a daylight raid on military targets....once the leaders no longer have a military, they tend to fight less....

UtahBill said:

what massive civilian casualties? cruise missles and smart bombs in a daylight raid on military targets....once the leaders no longer have a military, they tend to fight less....

Click to expand...

Really? Have you informed the leadership of Al-Qaeda of this?

We aren't fighting WWII, and it's worth noting that when we did fight WWII we burnt cities full of women and children to the ground, flattened other cities with atomic weaponry, thought dead civilians were an excellent psychological weapon and all told all of us together were killing about a million people a month.

"Blasting any and all weapons larger than a rifle" is awesome in rhetoricland, but in the Middle East it means bombing civilian populaces en masse. I'm not going to say it's not an option, but we need to be upfront about the fact that we are going to be accused of attempting to commit genocide.

cpwill said:

Really? Have you informed the leadership of Al-Qaeda of this?

We aren't fighting WWII, and it's worth noting that when we did fight WWII we burnt cities full of women and children to the ground, flattened other cities with atomic weaponry, thought dead civilians were an excellent psychological weapon and all told all of us together were killing about a million people a month.

"Blasting any and all weapons larger than a rifle" is awesome in rhetoricland, but in the Middle East it means bombing civilian populaces en masse. I'm not going to say it's not an option, but we need to be upfront about the fact that we are going to be accused of attempting to commit genocide.

Click to expand...

We shouldn't be fighting AQ directly, we should be helping ME countris fight AQ...
Any govt that allows terrorist groups to operate from their soil should be sanctioned.
That includes the Taliban...

many many things from the military are open for cuts.

one of the things that gets me is the constant changing of gear,since vietnam we have used most of the same gear up untill 9/11,most of it was quite effective and simple,some not so effective but they were phased like example the old vests.during the war on terror we have been spending 750k-1.5 mil on vehicles that hold no better odds of surviving an ied due to lack of restraints(armor is no good in a rollover if a 20 pound ammo can flies at your head at 50 miles an hour)plus we could have done the same with uparmored humvees by just adding a v hull,billions and billions spent that no one gained from except contractors.

the military even stateside has been trying to replace humvees with the newer matv/jltv trucks,which are massively expensive and when we got them in afghanistan,broke down every other day due to overpriced oversensitive electronic(kiss rule was not applied when approving this truck)yet this same truck has less functionality than a humvee,and about 10 998 or 1097 humvees can be rebuilt or bought new for the price of one of these,its too small inside to be an effective troop carrier,and too high off the ground with too small a bed to be a small cargo truck.basically a truck the size of an lmtv,passenger capacity of a 4 door humvee,no extra room beyond passengers,and no cargo capability except from its bed the size of a kids tonka truck.


new rifles are constantly being aquisitions,yet do not improve over the old models,or actually work worse with a high price tag,sad part is the old model a-2 rifles were capable of most the addons as seen on the rail systems,but somewhere along the lines someone thought it was great to fix what wasnt broken.

furniture-this one boggles my mind,my unit refused to buy anything from lack of funds until the end of the fiscal year,then my brigade bought 150k worth of furniture,money that could have gone to equipment we didnt have(our motor pool pretty much consisted of 1 full toolbox,a crescent wrench,and a tankers bar)dont know why such waste is allowed,at my company level when the end of the fiscal year came,the commander and the xo would ask every section what they need that they could get during the year.however it seemed at every higher level waste became more abundant.

during my deployment i saw units basically having unit wars over who could build the biggest monuments to their units.my unit built a 60k dollar smoke pit with the unit logo,to try and compete with 1 air cav and 3rd acr,they also built the most expensive and elegant uso ever seen,the large camps like bagram couldnt compete with that uso.the fact that not only does the military permit such actions,but allows it fully,just shows they really dont care about budgets.


of all the examples listed above shows money severely wasted where it shouldn't have been,now i dont know why we need to freeze pay or cut medical when the army and airforce are running around with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of worthless equipment,yet during my deployment the marines and the navy were still using the old pasgt helmets,still driving the old 998 huvees held together by duct tape,and with less equipment and much much less funds are still in the front line doing fine.


in my opinion we need to stop spending on useless equipment,it has been shown to save no lives and give us no advantage,just hundred and hundreds of billions of dollars into design contractors pockets.

Disband the Reserves.

PrometheusBound said:

Disband the Reserves.

Click to expand...

why the reserves and the guard save quite a bit of money already ending the reserves would mean needing to create more active duty jobs to fill the support roles in the even of wartime.

I would prefer more reduction in fraud waste and abuse than direct hits to the soldiers.
By this I'm talking about situations where they waste horrendous amounts of money on no bid contracts with contractors. Programs where they spend millions or billions on R&D on some new weapon or equipment and then the program gets scrapped completely.

I feel the soldiers themselves sacrifice enough already. When I was deployed (5 times) a normal work week was 6 16 hour days with us often also having to work on that 7th day. I've also had days where I had to work 24-48 hours straight no sleep because of missions. We don't get overtime. There are also lots of missed Birthdays, Anniversaries, Family Get together. Particularly in the special operations community its not uncommon to see soldiers who have missed most of their children s life.

One thing I have to say is make the US Military uniform uniform again. There's no reason why we need eleventy six godamned different camo patterns, most of which don't camouflage ****. There's only 3 modern camo patterns that are worth a damn, and those are the Marines desert and woodland camo, and the Multicams. Army and Air Force greys can get tossed, whatever the **** it is that the Navy is wearing (blue Marine cammies?) those can go too, along with the excess of other uniforms they have as well. The Navy may as well be a gaggle of women with the amount of different uniforms they have to have.

The amount of different dress uniforms is mind boggling too. Why not just one branch specific dress uniform for each branch? Officers get their own, Enlisted get their own, and that's it. For all forces, I propose total uniformity in uniforms and certain pieces of equipment. One type of Battle Dress Uniform (Cammie or ACU cut) two camo patterns, one desert, one woodland except for gear specialized to SF, specific units, and MOS.

CIF is another pet peeve of mine. Why did we ditch the M-65 that works perfectly fine, for ECWCS crap that costs thousands? Most of CIF issued equipment doesn't even get used. Toss the useless ****, save ECWCS for duty stations where it actually does get cold enough to need it. [/rant]

beerftw said:

many many things from the military are open for cuts.
one of the things that gets me is the constant changing of gear,since vietnam we have used most of the same gear up untill 9/11,most of it was quite effective and simple,some not so effective but they were phased like example the old vests.during the war on terror we have been spending 750k-1.5 mil on vehicles that hold no better odds of surviving an ied due to lack of restraints(armor is no good in a rollover if a 20 pound ammo can flies at your head at 50 miles an hour)plus we could have done the same with uparmored humvees by just adding a v hull,billions and billions spent that no one gained from except contractors.

Click to expand...

A couple of things on this. 1) The ammo can example is moot because, if the ammo can is flying at you, you or someone in your vic failed to properly inspect the vic prior to departing for patrol/convoy. All gear should be strapped down inside of vics prior to DFL. 2) Uparmored humvees do not work simply because they are not made to haul the armor they are already carrying. Sure, you can try to fit a small turbo that should go on a Ford Focus like we tried but it doesn't work. Anyone who has tried to navigate soft sand in one of those things knows what I'm talking about. Now, when you add armor underneath, you have vic that has to have a new transmission, new suspension, a bigger turbo, and different tires. Sounds like a new vic to me.

beerftw said:

the military even stateside has been trying to replace humvees with the newer matv/jltv trucks,which are massively expensive and when we got them in afghanistan,broke down every other day due to overpriced oversensitive electronic(kiss rule was not applied when approving this truck)yet this same truck has less functionality than a humvee,and about 10 998 or 1097 humvees can be rebuilt or bought new for the price of one of these,its too small inside to be an effective troop carrier,and too high off the ground with too small a bed to be a small cargo truck.basically a truck the size of an lmtv,passenger capacity of a 4 door humvee,no extra room beyond passengers,and no cargo capability except from its bed the size of a kids tonka truck.

Click to expand...

Agree that stateside units shoudl just use Humvees. A vic is a vic when practicing vehicle maneuvers/tactics. Even SF dudes on Ft Campbell still use humvees for that stuff.
The MAT-V, IMO, is the best vic to come out (besides the Marine Corps 7 ton truck) in the last 12 years. I had them on my deployment in the Sangin River Valley/Kajaki areas. I've never seen any military vic be able to climb the grades that thing can. It left plenty of room in the bed for our extra gear, the comm suite up front is well arranged, the turrets are automatic (which is something the Marine Corps didn't have before unlike spoiled Army dudes), and we were hit a few times by IED's with nothing more than concussions. It also had the fuel capacity for us to go out multiple days and set up OP's and the like. If you take a humvee out and run it 18 of 24 hours like you have to on an OP (radios) then you aren't staying longer than a day.

beerftw said:

new rifles are constantly being aquisitions,yet do not improve over the old models,or actually work worse with a high price tag,sad part is the old model a-2 rifles were capable of most the addons as seen on the rail systems,but somewhere along the lines someone thought it was great to fix what wasnt broken.

Click to expand...

What rifles? The only new rifles introduced were the SCAR-L/H, the IAR replacing the SAW (which needed to go), and a few of the latest Remingtons.

beerftw said:

furniture-this one boggles my mind,my unit refused to buy anything from lack of funds until the end of the fiscal year,then my brigade bought 150k worth of furniture,money that could have gone to equipment we didnt have(our motor pool pretty much consisted of 1 full toolbox,a crescent wrench,and a tankers bar)dont know why such waste is allowed,at my company level when the end of the fiscal year came,the commander and the xo would ask every section what they need that they could get during the year.however it seemed at every higher level waste became more abundant.

Click to expand...

Concur with this. I have never understood the whole "that money comes from a different pot" thing. Money is money I thought.

beerftw said:

during my deployment i saw units basically having unit wars over who could build the biggest monuments to their units.my unit built a 60k dollar smoke pit with the unit logo,to try and compete with 1 air cav and 3rd acr,they also built the most expensive and elegant uso ever seen,the large camps like bagram couldnt compete with that uso.the fact that not only does the military permit such actions,but allows it fully,just shows they really dont care about budgets.

Click to expand...

What else do fobbits do man? They waste money on Corporal's Courses, concerts, nice to haves that guys like me would never dream of, and crap like you're talking about. They see the lots with endless piles of wood and don't think that it is meant to build up small patrol bases like I was one that only have 2 foot burms around it.

well marine you may argue about no flying ammo cans should happen,but they,alot.especially on the maxxpro mraps harnesses and nets for gear is almost non existent,during my initial mrap training shown the army maxxpro mrap statistics the army had that soldiers died more from the mraps during ied attacks than they did in other uparmored,most humvees lack the same equipment to secure anything,some come with netting systems.the only military truck that deals with this problem is the lmtv/mtv family that has rear compartments with nets to secure all heacy objects.

Picatinny 'squeezes in' solution for MRAP ammo stowage | Article | The United States Army

on the subjects of rifles,i mean brand new m-16 and m-4 rifles,traditionally the military would repair and maintain the existing rifles,but lately alot of units have been buying them brand new,not sure if its part of a military initiative to replace older stockpiles or just a reason for contractors to make money(i think its the latter)


on other rifles i have not seen any other brand new versions of them at all,they are all still retrofitted frankensteins.

Ron Paul hit this one partially on the head. We have to take the world off of military welfare. We should flat out tell some allies, spend X% of your GNP on guns, bullets and all that comes with or we have to reconsider our alliance. Why are we still prepared to defend the world when they aren't prepared to even put up a formidable defense?

Save money: Get rid of a few bases overseas or restructure the positioning of those bases. This means building others but can consolidate our forces better now that it's the year 2012.

beerftw said:

well marine you may argue about no flying ammo cans should happen,but they,alot.especially on the maxxpro mraps harnesses and nets for gear is almost non existent,during my initial mrap training shown the army maxxpro mrap statistics the army had that soldiers died more from the mraps during ied attacks than they did in other uparmored,most humvees lack the same equipment to secure anything,some come with netting systems.the only military truck that deals with this problem is the lmtv/mtv family that has rear compartments with nets to secure all heacy objects.

Click to expand...

Sorry dude but sounds like a discipline and SOP problem to me. There are many, many thing you can use to tie down stuff in a vic. The Army needs to learn to get creative like we have had to. 550 cord, duct tape, ammo straps, and weapons slings are all things we have used to accomplish this. I will give up my 550 cord or sling in a minute to save from being hit by a can of .50 cal ammo.
Picatinny 'squeezes in' solution for MRAP ammo stowage | Article | The United States Army

beerftw said:

on the subjects of rifles,i mean brand new m-16 and m-4 rifles,traditionally the military would repair and maintain the existing rifles,but lately alot of units have been buying them brand new,not sure if its part of a military initiative to replace older stockpiles or just a reason for contractors to make money(i think its the latter)

Click to expand...

Oh okay, gotcha. That is a good point.

We have earned these entitlements by our service to this country. While civilians are resting comfortably in their beds we are on ships at sea or fight in some country to protect you.......We miss holidays, birthdays and watching our children grow up. We do it voluntarily....The gov made a promise and we signed a contract......Our benefits are not wlefare......Like I said we have earned them......

Redress said:

I support cuts to the defense budget in the near future. We can make those cuts without making our troops sacrifice. Efficiency improvements alone in a 700 billion budget could account for significant savings.

Click to expand...

Are you really serious..........Hussein Obama is proposing a billion dollars in cuts> Where the hell do you think they would come from?

If you cut benefits for our military it will affect enlistment...........People would not enlist........You would have to have a draft.........Do you people that want to cut want to be drafted?

Navy Pride said:

We have earned these entitlements by our service to this country. While civilians are resting comfortably in their beds we are on ships at sea or fight in some country to protect you.......We miss holidays, birthdays and watching our children grow up. We do it voluntarily....The gov made a promise and we signed a contract......Our benefits are not wlefare......Like I said we have earned them......

Click to expand...

We earned some of them......and like you said, we also volunteered for the hardships. I'm not saying military guys don't deserve some benefits. From the head trauma, back/knee, and shoulder issues I have developed, I plan on compensation for it. But I also think we should be willing to give up some things. Namely retirement age IMO. The gov't could save massive amounts of money if the military retired at 55 vice immediately upon retirement. If we picked up a bigger chunk of the co-pay from injuries/sickness not related to military service it would help a lot.
If we would just stop being so wasteful it would help. I'm talking down at the enlisted level. Everday, run of the mill servicemembers waste a lot of materials just because they don't personally pay for it. Leaders should be graded on how fiscally responsible they are just as much as how tactically proficient they are. You can't go to war without the bullets, beans, and bandages, no matter how tactically proficient a unit is. If you pit a great tactical General against a great logistical General, I bet you the logistical General wins 8 times out of 10.