Quote:
Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
Two good things about cutting back on the military though, you can target the cuts to specific areas, therefore reducing the impact, it makes perfect sense to close all the bases in the pacific north west, Bremerton, Edmunds, etc, it is a high employment hi tech area and most of those jobs would be absorbed by the local hi tech industries anyway resulting in little impact on the economy.
Second you can also target them onto the more extreme tea party states, 'here you go, how do ya like a balanced budget now?, say goodbye to Fort Hood'
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Sure, you could look at cuts on the administrative side, they could do what Canada did to cut costs when they retired in force a lot of flag level officers. I think one of the things that they could really look at cutting is on logistical delivery and consolidate their supply chain.
I've always said that the sharp end of the spear or the fighting side of the military needs to be taken care of whereas the logistical and administrative chain is often too large.
If I remember right in the Canadian Forces only about a quarter of our men and woman are in actual combat roles, the rest are involved in logistics and other areas, so for every soldier in the field fighting there's 3 or 4 people standing behind him to make sure that he's fed and kept healthy and combat supplied.
I think its even worse in the U.S. Military.
Another thing that you have to look at is the officer to nco ratio and the senior officer to military force ratio.
I hate the idea of punative base closures, we saw what happened in this city when a vindictive Jean Chretien ripped the Canadian Forces base out of this city and moved it to Edmonton to reward Anne McClellen (sp?)
It devastated that area for a long time and destroyed a lot of businesses that depended on the military trade in those areas.