Government Policy and Budget Discussion Thread (no politics)

[OrangeAfroMan]

Where are you getting "what we'd never deploy" just because you think we'd pound Iran into rubble before invading it?
An invasion of Iran is not the only, much less the most serious, contingency for which we need to be prepared.  And we need to be prepared for multiple contingencies at the same time.  We can't count on our enemies only presenting us one problem at a time.
Unless we want to surrender our hegemony--which is China's goal for us--and let China, Russia and others set the rules for international affairs, including trade, alliances, etc.
That would be a far worse world than anything anyone on this board has seen.

But our 13 ground combat divisions aren't any part of our deterrent of being attacked.  For any war vs one enemy or many, our ground troops might as well be a cleanup crew after the event.  That's why I don't understand the need/cost for them.  
Our navy, air force, and technological weapons are the deterrent, no?  They're what we rule with, they're what we'd fight with, and what we'd win with.  The ground troops would be for helping civilians and maintaining order in the country we decimated.  

[CWSooner]

Of our 13 ground combat divisions (active duty), there are of course scenarios where most would deploy.  The worst would be a Soviet invasion of say Lithuania or Estonia or Latvia, or perhaps Poland.  I don't view that as likely, the Russkis are not in good shape. 

Another would be the Korean peninsula, I don't view that as likely either.  Another would be Taiwan, though we'd probably try and maintain distance there, not ground forces.

One reason these things are not likely is those 13 divisions.

We went into Iraq with 2 divisions reinforced as I recall, 4th ID was held up in Turkey.  That was plenty to destroy the Iraqi military and not nearly enough to stabilize the country.  If you break it, you own it.

I lean to think we could go to a larger reserve force and smaller active, but I'm not sure about that of course.  The IRR is there as well, and then the NG, which is not in great shape according to one member of my family.

Not sure which Iraq war you are citing, CD.
In 1991, the good guys' order of battle included 8 U.S. Army divisions, 3 U.S.M.C. divisions, a French division, a UK division, plus 2 U.S. armored cavalry regiments (about 2/3 of a division total), and about 5 1/2 Arab division equivalents.  Plus a huge number of troops in corps artillery and aviation brigades, not to mention intel, engineer, transportation, supply, maintenance, medical, etc. units.  Or the USAF and USN.
In 2003, the good guys' order of battle included 4 U.S. Army divisions, a reinforced U.S.M.C. division plus a MEB, a UK division, plus about a division equivalent in the Special Ops Command.  Plus all the assets at Corps level and higher to support the front-line guys.  The 4th Div was late, awaiting all its vehicles, which our friendly NATO ally Turkey would not allow to transit, but it did get into the race to Baghdad.  All in all, it was about half of what we put into Iraq in 1991, and that's not counting the lack of allied Arab units that we had had in the earlier campaign.
You probably recall that there was much controversy over how much weaker our force was in '03 compared to '91.

[Cincydawg]

You don't think 2 ID is not a deterrent to North Korea?  3rd MarDiv in Okinawa?  The other divisions don't give Russia a bit of pause on being more adventurous militarily?

I guess you think we need only a kind of police force to arrive after the technology destroys some country.

Look at Libya as an example of how we used standoff weapons (and local militia) to take down a dictator.  It didn't work out very well in my view.  We should have left Qaddafi in charge in my view.  Syria is another disaster.  We're better off with Assad in charge there, and no conflict.

[Cincydawg]

I didn't recall we had 4 Army divisions in 2003.  I knew we shifted VII Corps from Europe in 1991.

[CWSooner]

But our 13 ground combat divisions aren't any part of our deterrent of being attacked.  For any war vs one enemy or many, our ground troops might as well be a cleanup crew after the event.  That's why I don't understand the need/cost for them. 
Our navy, air force, and technological weapons are the deterrent, no?  They're what we rule with, they're what we'd fight with, and what we'd win with.  The ground troops would be for helping civilians and maintaining order in the country we decimated.

There's a book you should read.  This Kind of War, by T.R. Fehrenbach, a good writer (despite being a Texan).
Here's a pertinent quote:

“In July, 1950, one news commentator rather plaintively remarked that warfare had not changed so much, after all. For some reason, ground troops still seemed to be necessary, in spite of the atom bomb. And oddly and unfortunately, to this gentleman, man still seemed to be an important ingredient in battle. Troops were still getting killed, in pain and fury and dust and filth. What happened to the widely-heralded pushbutton warfare where skilled, immaculate technicians who never suffered the misery and ignominy of basic training blew each other to kingdom come like gentlemen?
In this unconsciously plaintive cry lies buried a great deal of the truth why the United States was almost defeated.
Nothing had happened to pushbutton warfare; its emergence was at hand. Horrible weapons that could destroy every city on Earth were at hand—at too many hands. But, pushbutton warfare meant Armageddon, and Armageddon, hopefully, will never be an end of national policy.
Americans in 1950 rediscovered something that since Hiroshima they had forgotten: you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men in the mud.”

Your theories of what future war will be like might be correct.  But probably they are as wrong as the theories that left us unprepared to fight even one little regional war like Korea.
Here's some more from that excellent book.

Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even into death.


If, however, you are indulgent, but unable to make your authority felt, kind-hearted but unable to enforce your commands; and incapable, moreover, of quelling disorder, then your soldiers must be likened to spoiled children; they are useless for any practical purpose.

—From the Chinese of Sun Tzu, THE ART OF WAR

TEN YEARS AFTER the guns fell into uneasy silence along the 38th parallel, it is still impossible to write a definitive history of the Korean War. For that war did not write the end to an era, but merely marked a fork on a road the world is still traveling. It was a minor collision, a skirmish—but the fact that such a skirmish between the earth's two power blocs cost more than two million human lives showed clearly the extent of the chasm beside which men walked.

More than anything else, the Korean War was not a test of power—because neither antagonist used full powers—but of wills. The war showed that the West had misjudged the ambition and intent of the Communist leadership, and clearly revealed that leadership's intense hostility to the West; it also proved that Communism erred badly in assessing the response its aggression would call forth.

The men who sent their divisions crashing across the 38th parallel on 25 June 1950 hardly dreamed that the world would rally against them, or that the United States—which had repeatedly professed its reluctance to do so—would commit ground forces onto the mainland of Asia.

From the fighting, however inconclusive the end, each side could take home valuable lessons. The Communists would understand that the free world—in particular the United States—had the will to react quickly and practically and without panic in a new situation. The American public, and that of Europe, learned that the postwar world was not the pleasant place they hoped it would be, that it could not be neatly policed by bombers and carrier aircraft and nuclear warheads, and that the Communist menace could be disregarded only at extreme peril.

The war, on either side, brought no one satisfaction. It did, hopefully, teach a general lesson of caution.

The great test placed upon the United States was not whether it had the power to devastate the Soviet Union—this it had—but whether the American leadership had the will to continue to fight for an orderly world rather than to succumb to hysteric violence. Twice in the century uncontrolled violence had swept the world, and after untold bloodshed and destruction nothing was accomplished. Americans had come to hate war, but in 1950 were no nearer to abolishing it than they had been a century before.

But two great bloodlettings, and the advent of the Atomic Age with its capability of fantastic destruction, taught Americans that their traditional attitudes toward war—to regard war as an unholy thing, but once involved, however reluctantly, to strike those who unleashed it with holy wrath—must be altered. In the Korean War, Americans adopted a course not new to the world, but new to them. They accepted limitations on warfare, and accepted controlled violence as the means to an end. Their policy—for the first time in the century—succeeded. The Korean War was not followed by the tragic disillusionment of World War I, or the unbelieving bitterness of 1946 toward the fact that nothing had been settled. But because Americans for the first time lived in a world in which they could not truly win, whatever the effort, and from which they could not withdraw, without disaster, for millions the result was trauma.

During the Korean War, the United States found that it could not enforce international morality and that its people had to live and continue to fight in a basically amoral world. They could oppose that which they regarded as evil, but they could not destroy it without risking their own destruction.

Because the American people have traditionally taken a warlike, but not military, attitude to battle, and because they have always coupled a certain belligerence—no American likes being pushed around—with a complete unwillingness to prepare for combat, the Korean War was difficult, perhaps the most difficult in their history.

In Korea, Americans had to fight, not a popular, righteous war, but to send men to die on a bloody checkerboard, with hard heads and without exalted motivations, in the hope of preserving the kind of world order Americans desired.

Tragically, they were not ready, either in body or in spirit.

They had not really realized the kind of world they lived in, or the tests of wills they might face, or the disciplines that would be required to win them.

Yet when America committed its ground troops into Korea, the American people committed their entire prestige, and put the failure or success of their foreign policy on the line.

. . .

The civilian liberal and the soldier, unfortunately, are eyeing different things: the civilian sociologists are concerned with men living together in peace and amiability and justice; the soldier's task is to teach them to suffer and fight, kill and die. Ironically, even in the twentieth century American society demands both of its citizenry.

Perhaps the values that comprise a decent civilization and those needed to defend it abroad will always be at odds. A complete triumph for either faction would probably result in disaster.

Perhaps, also, at the beginning a word must be said concerning discipline. "Discipline," like the terms "work" and "fatherland"—among the greatest of human values—has been given an almost repugnant connotation from its use by Fascist ideologies. But the term "discipline" as used in these pages does not refer to the mindless, robotlike obedience and self-abasement of a Prussian grenadier. Both American sociologists and soldiers agree that it means, basically, self-restraint—the self-restraint required not to break the sensible laws whether they be imposed against speeding or against removing an uncomfortably heavy steel helmet, the fear not to spend more money than one earns, not to drink from a canteen in combat before it is absolutely necessary, and to obey both parent and teacher and officer in certain situations, even when the orders are acutely unpleasant.

Only those who have never learned self-restraint fear reasonable discipline.

Americans fully understand the requirements of the football field or the baseball diamond. They discipline themselves and suffer by the thousands to prepare for these rigors. A coach or manager who is too permissive soon seeks a new job; his teams fail against those who are tougher and harder. Yet undoubtedly any American officer, in peacetime, who worked his men as hard, or ruled them as severely as a college football coach does, would be removed.

But the shocks of the battlefield are a hundred times those of the playing field, and the outcome infinitely more important to the nation.

The problem is to understand the battlefield as well as the game of football. The problem is to see not what is desirable, or nice, or politically feasible, but what is necessary.

We could turn Iran into rubble or even radioactive glaze.  But if we were to go to war with Iran, that would not be our objective.  It would be to alter or destroy its regime without annihilating its people.

[CWSooner]

I didn't recall we had 4 Army divisions in 2003.  I knew we shifted VII Corps from Europe in 1991.

3rd ID and 4th ID, 82nd Abn and 101st Air Asslt.  Each of those last two was minus a brigade, which I didn't notice the first time I went through the OB.
I think that we should have toppled Saddam Hussein back in 1991.  I thought it then and I still think it.  We had the forces on the ground to do a far better occupation in 1991 than we did in 2003.
But George Bush didn't want to go beyond the UN's authorized mission of kicking Iraq out of Kuwait, and he would not have had the Arabs' support had he had us drive on to Baghdad.  He took the safe course of action.  Sometimes that's not the safer course in the long run.

[MrNubbz]

Good find, MrNubbz!
I thought you were going to tell a story about Ford making Rolls-Royce engines in the USA.  Packard made Merlins, but I didn't know anything about Ford making R-R engines.
But this is about Ford of England.  And I didn't know about that either.

Ya Packard did make them state side.i just saw how brilliant though archaic RR was.The were handcrafting and Uncle Sam was mass producing.One thing the Packard merlins solved in 42-43 was the Merlin's float controlled carburettor meant that if Spits or hurricanes were to pitch nose down into a steep dive or climb, negative g-force produced temporary fuel starvation causing the engine to cut-out momentarily. Packard went with the Bendix Pressure carb A floatless pressure carburator is a type of aircraft fuel control that provides very accurate fuel delivery, prevents ice from forming in the carburetor and prevent s fuel starvation during negative Gs and inverted flight by eliminating the customary float-controlled fuel inlet valve.

[847badgerfan]

I'd like to see the US have another 10 aircraft carriers and all the supporting fleet that goes with them. 

Increase the size of the Marine Corps too. Those are our finest fighters - first to fight - and supremely trained at that. 

[OrangeAfroMan]

CW, that's concerning itself with an all-or-nothing idea, though.  I'm not talking about nuking anyone or ramping things up to 11 in the slightest. 
We could decimate nearly any country with what I'll call mid-major weapons from afar.  It would include more civilian casualties than is "acceptable" in 2020, but it wouldn't be difficult.  And at the same time, we have methods of pinpoint destruction with drones and such. 
.
I don't think I'm conveying my thoughts well here.
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Hell, I'm 39 and I don't know what a proper, country-that-could-win vs country-that-could-win war even looks like.  Maybe my mindset is concerned with that, and it never happens, I don't know.  All I've experienced is this tedious terrorists-playing-peekaboo crap and in the first Gulf War, which was an elephant swatting a fly. 
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I just don't see, if it ever happens, needing a bunch of ground troops (and all that funding) for a knock-down, drag-out war with a country that was an actual threat.  I just think that many of our strengths militarily are irrelevant.  I may be totally wrong. 
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Because of our spending and the whole big MIC, we're basically Superman and none of the other countries has superpowers.  None of them is even Lex Luthor.  We're using our superpowers to get a cat out of a tree when a ladder would do.
Maybe that's even more confusing than what I've already said, lol.

[CWSooner]

I'd like to see the US have another 10 aircraft carriers and all the supporting fleet that goes with them.

Increase the size of the Marine Corps too. Those are our finest fighters - first to fight - and supremely trained at that.

The Marines are very good at what they do, surely the best in the world at amphibious operations, but they don't do everything.  The Marine Corps is actually getting a bit smaller, and is in the beginning stages of a redesign that will make it more specifically oriented toward littoral rather than inland fighting.  Eliminating its tank battalions, for example.  Overall, making it more different from the Army than it already is.
In general, when you increase the size/number of elite units, they get less elite.  The Marines get their share of elite guys, so do the Ranger battalions and the 82nd Airborne Division and 173rd Airborne Brigade.  So do Delta Force, SF, SEALs, USAF Parawhatevers.  If all of them increase in numbers, the average quality will tend to decrease.
There's a longstanding and ongoing debate about the survivability of fleet-size aircraft carriers.  Of which we have virtually all of them in the world.
A nice summary: There are no easy answers.  The defense budget is not going to go up much, if any, in the near future.  If we add a new carrier, what do we cut elsewhere to pay for it?  Force structure?  In which service?  Training?  Readiness?  RD&A?

[CWSooner]

Ya Packard did make them state side.i just saw how brilliant though archaic RR was.The were handcrafting and Uncle Sam was mass producing.One thing the Packard merlins solved in 42-43 was the Merlin's float controlled carburettor meant that if Spits or hurricanes were to pitch nose down into a steep dive or climb, negative g-force produced temporary fuel starvation causing the engine to cut-out momentarily. Packard went with the Bendix Pressure carb A floatless pressure carburator is a type of aircraft fuel control that provides very accurate fuel delivery, prevents ice from forming in the carburetor and prevent s fuel starvation during negative Gs and inverted flight by eliminating the customary float-controlled fuel inlet valve.

Have you read about "Miss Tillie's orifice" regarding the RR "carburettor"?

[Cincydawg]

One idea on AC carriers is to have more smaller ones.  The F-35B enables the smaller carriers to launch capable planes without a catapult.  (They cannot launch tankers though at this point).  Fleet carriers are huge, expensive, and somewhat vulnerable, and we have ten at the moment.  Usually 2 or 3 are docked for some level of maintenance or overhaul, 2-3 are working up (training the air arm and newbies), and 3 or so are on station.  In a true emergency, we can't really surge most of them though some maintenance can be skipped, you still need training.

I like the MEU concept, Marine Expeditionary Unit, about 2200 with air support etc. on floats at sea able to react to just about anything for a month or so of operations.  But, they are small obviously in numbers.

I also agree that making that branch larger will diminish its level of eliteness.  I'm told it has somewhat been degraded of late anyway.  The DIs have quotas, they can't fail all who should be failed.  To be elite, you have to weed out weaker candidates without mercy.

I still go back to my point about reviewing our overseas obligations first.  Without cutting them some, I don't see how one can cut spending much at all.

[MrNubbz]

Have you read about "Miss Tillie's orifice" regarding the RR "carburettor"?

I've read about it and a mighty fine orifice it was too.Although a stop gap measure that Bendix cured permantly until fuel injection then jet engines

[Cincydawg]

Jet engines are fascinating to me, the more I learn about them (the wife worked for a company that makes them, so I got some inside previes).

The turbine blades in the combustion section survive at a temperature above their melting point.  The blades have special cooling techniques to prevent that (usually).

The higher the temperature the more efficient they are.

The high bypass fans used today in civilian applications are basically turboprops that are ducted.  Nearly all of the air bypasses the combustion chamber and is pushed out of the read end by fans.  The thrust provided by the actual combustion directly is 10-15% of the actual thrust developed.

Unducted fans would be even more efficient but have noise issues, and perhaps some safety issues.

The Boeing 737 Max issue MAY be in part due to a shift in the center of thrust with the new engines that caused them to add in a "safety feature" that can cause the aircraft to pitch down uncontrollably to prevent what registers as a stall/high angle of attack.