Military Spending Is Already Bankrupting America

What makes you think they don't?

 

For one, every NATO country has their militaries geared to be part of a U.S. force. As do the Japanese, South Koreans, Filipinos, Australians to name just a few.

Claiming those nations "manage just fine" when they are military dependencies of the U.S. is assumption of facts not in evidence.

Now you're going to say "what about Russia and China".

China has three times as many people as the United States.
Russia has nearly three times the land area of the United States.

Naturally no one wants to bother either of them for obvious reasons of geography and demography. So if the U.S. suddenly acquires three times the land or three times the population I will take this position of yours seriously.

 

No. Just saying "half" is not an answer. I ask for specifics. And if you're the long time navy veteran that you claim to be then you should be able to answer them.

And I would say that if the active duty U.S. military was "cut in half" you still couldn't reduce the budget by "half". A quarter at most. Because a huge portion of the defense budget is not related directly to hardware.

 

They will learn to become independent. this will not happen over night. Adapt or die. I don't care if they have ten times the number of people we have. Why is that even an issue? Because they can use them to invade us? That is ridiculous. They can never invade a country with nuclear weapons. NEVER

 

I did give you specifics. Half. That is a very clear number. Closing bases and mothballing ships will save billions. moving people to the reserves will save even more. This is sounding better and better!

 

Reservists still have to be paid, trained, and equipped. And I assume that "moving people to the reserves" implies at some point being able to "activate those reservists" which means a standing infrastructure (bases and ships) capable of doing that.

You're simply trolling.

 

We could do it for much much much less than we pay now. See actually having been on active duty and the reserves I know a little more about this than you.

You lost....and now you are frustrated. You are free to leave. Trolling is only a problem if you take the bait.

 

And we have to maintain our woefully (failing grade of D+ by the ASE, I think) maintained infrastructure. If trucks start to fall off collapsing bridges we will all have to pay more for everything, if we can get it at all.

In 1983, after the KAL 007 atrocity the secret Reagan plan was to outspend the Russians and hope they would kill themselves trying to keep up. It worked, the Russian crop failures and Carter's refusal to sell them grain after Afghanistan helped, but it was mainly their trying to keep up with our military spending that made them go broke and collapse in 1989-1991.

Now, for some reason we seem determined to do this to ourselves. And why, who are we defending from, the Cardassians?

We spend billions on poorly working jet systems to fight wars that will never be because they will go atomic first; and meanwhile bandits in Toyotas run roughshod over our troops for lack of cheap drones. Madness

Military spending is a conduit for money, directly from the taxpayers to the Defense contractors. Boeing, Lockheed-Martin et al are all nice people but I don't want to give my income to them in perpetuity

 

We did anything BUT leave Afghanistan alone. We supplied them weapons and training for decades.

 

He refers to the 90s; the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989.

 

So you are admitting you are trolling. then nothing else you claim can be taken seriously.

 

This isn't new.

 

Our MoD is always after more of our money too; but hey, when it comes to 'national security' ( ) and feeding the insatiable appetites of the Colonel Blimp militarists and arms manufacturers, the sky's the limit.

 

If you are referring to the F-35 I assume you don't know that it was designed and built to SAVE money. Which goes to show why attempting to "save" defense budget money is often a mistake.

 

I have responded to you politely and respectfully. I have directly answered any question you asked. Trolling is simply the claim of the person who has lost the argument because they have no facts.

 

Saving money by spending billions.....military contractor logic

 

If you were really in the U.S. Navy as you claim you would know that the F-35 was NOT proposed by military contractors. It was through a mandate by Congress which decided on its own that instead of the Navy, Marines, and Air Force buying aircraft specified for their own unique needs that they would all fly different variants of the same design. Even though previous attempts to do that (F-111 for example) have been largely disastrous.

 

ALL military spending comes thru Congress. Congress has kept making tanks even when the army did not want them. Of course it is congress to blame.

Cut it all in half

 

the Army was wrong in this instance.

Don't know why you think "cut it all in half" would do any good anyway?

 

Well cutting it in half would result in billions of dollars being saved but MORE IMPORTANTLY we would stop sending american heroes to die overseas to protect profits for corporations

 

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So all those opposed to American interests overseas would happily put away their weapons and walk away just because the U.S. defense budget has been cut in half. There is a far, far more likely outcome that you seem to have ignored.

 

I don't care what they do. I guarantee they will not be attacking the US.

 

And some have been rather successful - F4, A7, C130...

 

These were not attempts to create multi service platforms. In the case of the F-4, and A-7 the USAF simply adopted the navy aircraft basic designs because they were better than anything the USAF had come up with.

 

Based on what? And do you deny the U.S. has vital economic interests overseas or do you want us to simply abandon those as well?