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posted by martyb on Friday March 24 2017, @11:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the which-swamps-are-we-draining? dept.

President Trump has proposed a $54 billion increase in defense spending, which he said would be "one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history."

Past administrations have increased military spending, but typically to fulfil a specific mission. Jimmy Carter expanded operations in the Persian Gulf. Ronald Reagan pursued an arms race with the Soviet Union, and George W. Bush waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Trump has not articulated a new mission that would require a military spending increase. This has left analysts wondering what goals he has in mind. Erin M. Simpson, a national security consultant, called Mr. Trump's plans "a budget in search of a strategy."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/22/us/is-americas-military-big-enough.html

Donald J. Trump - Military Readiness Remarks

[Related]: 2017 Outlook for Navy Shipbuilding

What do you think about the proposed increase in military spending ? Does USA really need more weapons ?


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @11:39PM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @11:39PM (#483919)

    First, the U.S. Military needs to get rid of all of these external vendors. They are a vampire draining the blood money away. Somehow, the U.S. were able to defeat the enemy in World War 2 without needing Haliburton, Blackwater, et. al.

    Invest in education. Rather than turning soldiers into mindless killing drones, and sticking them in oil hotspots around the world, invest in education. There is so much technology out there, and the soldiers that use it every day could make it better, if they knew how.

    Clean out the bad apples. The rapists in the military need to be put in prison, along with the ones posting women's private photos for their own group enjoyment. Those that do those acts are not fit to serve.

    Teach the Military to do more with less. Somehow, we got into this mode where we pump endless money into the Military-Industrial Complex. The Military could be smaller, and more efficient than it is now. Do we really need the F-35 money-pit?

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 24 2017, @11:44PM (7 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday March 24 2017, @11:44PM (#483920) Journal

    Do we really need the F-35 money-pit?

    Yes! We have to be "ready" for that hot war with China.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:29AM (2 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:29AM (#483950) Journal

      Do we really need the F-35 money-pit?

      Yes! We have to be "ready" for that hot war with China.

      China will churn up more low-tech drones than you'll be able to destroy then swamp the operation theatre with them [teamliquid.net].

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday March 25 2017, @10:27AM (1 child)

        by driverless (4770) on Saturday March 25 2017, @10:27AM (#484068)

        Do we really need the F-35 money-pit?

        Yes! We have to be "ready" for that hot war with China.

        China will churn up more low-tech drones than you'll be able to destroy then swamp the operation theatre with them.

        If it actually ever really came to a war between China and the US, China would dump its T-bills and cause the US dollar to collapse. No need to fire a shot.

        Before people jump in and say "that would never work", it already has, and it was the US that did it. They told the UK to get out of Egypt or they'd destroy the pound, and the UK did, ending the Suez crisis.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 25 2017, @11:38AM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 25 2017, @11:38AM (#484077) Journal

          If it actually ever really came to a war between China and the US, China would dump its T-bills and cause the US dollar to collapse.

          Would have been effective close to 2008, but today that's disputable [wikipedia.org]

          A significant number of economists and analysts dismiss any and all concerns over foreign holdings of United States government debt denominated in U.S. Dollars, including China's holdings. [15][16][17][18]

          However, other economists have also argued that it is only China and Japan's willingness to hold US dollars that prevent a shock to the global economy. Therefore, it is arguable that as the Chinese economy gradually shifts from an export based economy into a service economy, their need to hold US dollars in order to strengthen the renminbi will diminish.[19]

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @02:35AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @02:35AM (#484006)

      That smells of sarcasm, but...

      World War I was originally The Great War, the war to end all wars. It was silly to prepare for more war, and such a waste of money, since there would be everlasting peace. An even bigger war was unthinkable.

      Uh, that didn't work out.

      The fact that we can't be perfectly 100% ideally prepared is no reason to give up and just throw in the towel. Such is treason, demonstrating that you value neither your own generation nor the next.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @03:49AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @03:49AM (#484019)

        Uh, that didn't work out.

        A big war breaking out is always a possibility, but that is no reason to be constantly paranoid and no reason to steal massive amounts of people's money to fund a ridiculously bloated military.

        The fact that we can't be perfectly 100% ideally prepared is no reason to give up and just throw in the towel.

        We're not. Last time I looked, I believe we spend more on our military than the next 7 or so countries combined. If anything, we need to halve the military budget (and that's being generous), and then they can figure out how to become more efficient with the money they do have. It's funny how, to the inconsistent 'small government' types, throwing endless amounts of money at other problems (such as schools) could not possibly fix them, but throwing endless amounts of money at the military is a-okay.

        Such is treason, demonstrating that you value neither your own generation nor the next.

        This has nothing to do with treason, idiot. I'd say it's worse to continually steal people's money for the military and then leave our own citizens to die in the streets than it is to maybe be unprepared for some giant hypothetical war. 'The land of the free and the home of the brave' seems to be in a perpetual state of fear and is unwilling to take any risks whatsoever.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @03:22PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @03:22PM (#484118)

          Bravo, well said!

    • (Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:26PM

      by linkdude64 (5482) on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:26PM (#484192)

      Wasn't Trump cutting that F-35 project?

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by fishybell on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:36AM

    by fishybell (3156) on Saturday March 25 2017, @12:36AM (#483953)

    Are you sure about that? What do you think General Motors was doing during the war? Making Cadillacs?

    WWII is what gave us the Military Industrial [congressional] Complex [independent.org]

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:17AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:17AM (#483980)

    The main issue with the F-35 is sunk costs, water under the bridge, and the often-wrong idea that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

    The effort that led to the F-35, called the Joint Strike Fighter project, was a mistake on day 1 and this should have been obvious. We've been down this path before. The FB-111 was intended to serve as both a fighter and a bomber, for both the air force and the navy. It ended up too small to be much of a bomber, but to large to be a fighter and way too large for an aircraft carrier. The navy eventually wiggled out of the requirement to accept the plane. The air force bought a few, which they barely used. Canada and Australia bought a few, probably under US pressure, and nobody else bothered. Overall, it was a disaster.

    The problem is that the 1-size-fits-all approach produces bad results. We've now repeated our FB-111 mistake with the F-35, with only a minor difference: we replaced the bomber requirement with a vertical lift requirement.

    We continuously face a choice. Do we continue or not? It's like the choice you face when copying the content of a large network file server to another large network file server. The progress bar is at best a joke, probably with moving diagonal stripes, but maybe just jumping up to 99% and then staying there for hours. When will it be done? Are we there yet? With the F-35, we also wonder if it will work OKish. We know that a new design started today would be better, but if you always cancel projects for that reason then you never get any product.

    Note however that a canceled project is not all waste. It still manages to do two things. It develops technology, and it retains the availability of the engineering talent. You can't just stop designing aircraft; if you do then the people get laid off and then become unavailable. Rebuilding an engineering team from nothing is extremely difficult: expensive, time-consuming, and likely to produce a few horrible disasters due to inexperience.

    • (Score: 2) by deadstick on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:55PM

      by deadstick (5110) on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:55PM (#484094)

      The progress bar is at best a joke, probably with moving diagonal stripes, but maybe just jumping up to 99% and then staying there for hours.

      What a bloody good simile.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @07:03AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @07:03AM (#484050)

    Teach the Military to do more with less.

    Easier said than done. Preventing wasteful practices often requires adding more rules and monitors, which costs yet more.

    • (Score: 2) by fishybell on Saturday March 25 2017, @06:03PM

      by fishybell (3156) on Saturday March 25 2017, @06:03PM (#484144)

      The fact that they are bureaucracy of enormous size is the biggest problem. Things don't happen electronically, you fill out forms in triplicate and they go to three different offices and three different people process and file them three different ways for three different purposes.

      When I was in the Marines (for a very short time) the process of getting sent home on medical took over a month. They literally signed the papers saying I was going home, and it took over a month to put me on a plane. There were people in the recruit-separation-platoon that had been there for over a year, just waiting to be processed out.