Wow!!!!
The Army Times is reporting (its been behind a paywall) that the Army is planning on cutting 42000 soldiers in the next 2 years AND its going to cut the number of BCT's.
Wow again!
I can guarantee that at least half those people will have wanted to stay in the Army. The wailing and gnashing of teeth has just begun (biblical reference).
I think it is even going to be more than that, generals are going to cut manpower before they cut their toys....
ReplyDeletedoomsday scenario is here. if the army is cutting this many in two years then the floor is actually 380K
DeleteAgree Sol, they won't stop there, yeah, I think the floor will be 350k to 380k range.
ReplyDeleteAccessible Link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.armytimes.com/article/20130625/NEWS/306250042/Army-announces-10-brigade-combat-teams-cut
Countdown to irrellevance
ReplyDeleteOnce we cross that threshold, it will be keep going downward because Army won't be able to go to war with anyone besides smaller nations. We struggled with Iraq for fuck's sake. Forget China or North Korea.
It's over.We're done as a superpower
Paralus
DeleteWell, you don't need an army to fight the AirSea Battle against China, and the US army is not needed in the second Korean war because the ROK army is powerful enough to take on 1.5 million communist troops.
Accordingly, the US should focus on preserving its naval and air forces at the expense of ground troops.
that is so false! this isn't aimed at you SlowMan but i get tired of the Airpower proponents that think that they can fly over a city and control the situation. it didn't work in kosovo, it didn't work in Kuwait, it didn't work in Iraq and it won't work in the Pacific.
Deleteairpower can only control airspace and destroy targets. it can't conquer a country, or control a portion of land. islands are land. the cities in the pacific are on land. land power has a serious role to play. especially when you consider the fact that urbanization is heavy in the region.
Paralus is right. Iraq and Afghanistan were hard. try dealing with pushing China off a Japanese island. we would get mauled. plus you have the pussification of the military going on and its game over.
Well hell, Slowman, you may have solved the riddle
Delete"Well, you don't need an army to fight the AirSea Battle against China, and the US army is not needed in the second Korean war because the ROK army is powerful enough to take on 1.5 million communist troops."
We're never invading another nation and trying to nation build either. No enemies we'd need ground forces for so we might as well ditch Big Army altogether and devote those resources to the Navy and Air Farce. we can get by with just a few dozen battalions of MP and some engineer units. We could wrap them up into a package, call them Constabulary Bridagdes, assign them to SOCOM and save ourselves hundreds of billions of dollars.
Goodbye Budget Deficit!
All we need to do is design a strategy that relies on air strikes and make sure we only get involved in wars we can win through air power alone.
we just have to make sure that our aircraft are invisible (forget stealth, that's passe'), our bases plentiful and invulnerable, then pray that our future enemies are incapable of waiting out the 'shock and awe' airstrikes we will surely inflict upon them. Part of it will include a fierce public relations/civil affairs effort that will convince the enemy that they are defeated and that resistance if futile. We'll call it "Effects Based Outcomes".
Paralus
ReplyDelete"We struggled with Iraq for fuck's sake. Forget China or North Korea."
But doesnt that show you how flawed "army" thinking is?
Iraq was an utter disaster, despite a massive influx of troops from allies. The task was beyond the US army.
North Korea is small geographically and has a smaller population, but the terrain is far worse for an occupier, and the North has a vast army, properly trained in insurgency.
North Korea has been beyond the US to occupy for a long time. You'd need a million plus!
massive influx of allied troops? wait one fucking minute. the allied troops fought well and bravely but it was hardly a massive influx. every country in europe fought sending troops and when they did send them it was with strings. climb down off that arrogant ass high horse cowboy.
Deleteadditionally we're talking about US capabilities to help our allies. if we want to go to a fortress USA then we're golden. and quite honestly with comments like that i sometimes think we should.
Some 20% of the forces in Iraq were none US forces in 06, less than I thought, I thought it was more like 30%, but it fluctuated a lot.
DeleteI'm not trying to talk down the US or talk up EUrope, or the UK
But facts are facts
The US lacks the numbers required for an occupation and it lacks the allies to make up the difference.
Not an accusation, thats just a fact
Either the US vastly increases the size of its armed forces to several times the size it is now, in WW2, the US estimated it required one GI to occupy 20 civilians, if we follow that logic you need over a million men in Afghanistan, not over 100,000, or the US gets better allies.
If we give up on occupation, we're left with
"additionally we're talking about US capabilities to help our allies"
Almost every nation of the world has plenty of tanks and plenty of riflemen, and in most cases, plenty of Fighter/Attack aircraft.
As we saw in Libya, EUropes biggest weaknesses were
Logistics, a shortage of AAR put a stop to dreams of a continual overhead presence.
Stores, at one point, I think Denmark was the only nation with any guided bombs, everyone else ran out
Intelligence, there just wasnt any. Either on who and where the Gadafists were, or who and where the Bengazists were. The UKs first contact team got arrested....
The 1965 Indo-Pak war ended when both sides ran out of, or thought they had ran out tank shells
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1965#Intelligence_failures
A few container ships of ammunition would have done more than an armoured brigade there
Nickel Grass was all just kit, I think it interesting that Israel hasnt had kinetic aid since the Suez War.
"What do our allies want" is a good question, thats going to vary for all of our allies.
3 Army divisions 6 months later might not be high on anyones wishlist, it might be of course.
I look at these things from a very UK centric view (obviously), and I fully believe we have some of the best soldiers in the world, but we just dont have enough of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Frontiers
France and Germany each deployed over one and quarter of a million men.
The UK, 70,000
Thats not a typo, theres not a 0 missing.
Lets say, because I like bashing Argentina, Argentina and Chile go to war.
It would be in the UKs interests to intervene, on Chiles behalf.
Chile and Argentina would each be throwing half a dozen units at what we could call a Brigade.
The UK could rush an over sized Battlegroup / understrength Brigade to the area, it might be the be the best equipped and best trained battlegroup in the area (it might not be, Chile doesnt **** about), but the other sides would be throwing 10-15 times as many forces around.
The war might even be over before our land army can transit to theatre. Lets face it, 3000men arent going to be the tipping point for a Pusan style breakout
I figure Chile has, or could / should have the land war locked up.
Logistics, stores, intelligence, are all already covered.
To that, I'd add deep strike
Its (going to be once the CVFs are running) very easy for the UK to strike the rear areas of Argentine forces in that war.
Blowing up enemy tanks is sexy and gives awesome pictures and headlines, but a bomb dropped on a tank kills a tank. A bomb dropped on fuel bunker kills a tank brigade.
That rambled
i beg to differ. when was the last time the US fought a war for national survival? WW2. when was the last time the US fully mobilized all of its ARMY, MARINE, NATIONAL GUARD and RESERVE for combat? WW2.
Deletelets say something erupted on the Korean peninsula. lets say that somehow, someway China got involved and lets say that somehow it turned into a war for national survival. in that light the US would be able to fight alone. i'm not gonna say win but we still retain the capability to fight alone and probably be successful (assuming no half assed rules of engagement are applied).
my contention is that with these types of cuts, i'm not sure we're going to be able to do that anymore.
and here's a little ugly American. in a hypothetical match up between the US and Europe (not counting Russia) i like our chances. include Russia and give us Australia and i still like our chances. add Japan or S. Korea to our side and we win going away.
i think its time to look at military strength world wide.
"and here's a little ugly American. in a hypothetical match up between the US and Europe (not counting Russia) i like our chances."
DeleteROTFPMSL
Like your chances?
You'd steamroller us in a week! If that!
As is, Europe has no planning capability outside NATO, so we couldnt plan any sort of fight back. Even if there was, we have no shared identity, so there would be no willingness to "take one for the team.
Imagine the US mounted a three prong invasion the UK, France, and Spain. The three armies would fight for their home soil, if EU central command ordered the French army to abandon France and fight for spain., they'd be ignored. The 3rd Florida division would leave florida defenceless to defend Georgia.
But it would never happen, we couldnt fight you, we cant fight at all without your aid except in the most basic fashion. We just dont have anything, from bullets to targeting.
We did Sierra Leon without you, but Libya, Mali (France but the same problem) and even the Falklands all required massive US assistance
I frequently raise the point that the UKs armoured division is great, but the UK cant deploy it without US aid, much of our defence spending subsidises the US subsidy of Europes defence, if that makes sense.
i think you're underestimating European tenacity. especially in a case of survival. that is going to be whats going to get the Muslims in trouble. right now they can depend on guilt or political correctness or whatever disease is inflicting the body politic of Europe but they're close to pushing too far. when that happens they're going to see a face of Europe that few have seen and even fewer studied.
Deletethe Brits in particular can be vicious.
everyone likes to talk about the atomic bombs dropped during WW2, but everyone ignores Dresden and Hamburg firebombing.
want to know the dirty little secret? more lives were lost in those raids.
the Brits designed the strike to create the Fire Storms that ravaged those cities and caused a death that some deem more painful than the atomic weapons. additionally those raids were carried out over a series of days. the British high command even planned it so that fire fighters would be secondary targets so that the flames could last even longer.
Brits can be vicious bastards. if push comes to shove i still believe it resides in the national DNA.
Its not so much a matter of will, just capability.
DeleteWe just dont have anything, anything at all in Europe, that could hunt down a US Carrier Group, or kill it, let alone nine of of the ****ers!
When the SAS went in to Iraq in 91, they built their own claymore mines, that was how poor our supply situation was. Not for nothing do you call us the borrowers, and I dont think we'll be able to raid your supply tents during war.
It was said light heartedly, but on a recent post about uniforms here, someone quipped that they werent happy that the UK and the US shared uniforms now, they'd never be able to keep us out of their supplies......
"the Brits in particular can be vicious."
I wouldnt say we're vicious, but we are detail people.
If you want to burn a city to the ground, killing the firemen is an important detail.
That said, the UK has no history of "Jew bashing". People often point to this as a sign of our civility. Its not.
Whereas Europe and the Middle East had regular outbreaks of violence and legal assault against Jewish communities, Englands jews were expelled in 1290. All of them.
There was no cultural dislike of jews, simply because there were no jews to dislike.
As I said, detail people.
And yeah, it does worry me what might happen in the future, because we have a tendency to do detail.
detail people.
Deletei like that.
but let me add this. i've been doing a bit of detailed reading on the war in iraq (outside of my personal experience) and i've come to a conclusion. too many times when forces are measured and capabilities looked at, its through the prism of the American way of war. what happens when you have a highly trained, technologically advanced force whose forte is to fight asymetrically?
while you're thinking about that consider how the RAF might attack a CBG. around the clock ultra long range missile attacks by anything that can carry them. i could even see A400 being modified as antiship missile carrier in a pinch if war loomed. the Brits did stuff like that in the falklands and industry would bite at the chance to supply emergency requests for such things. the meteor is the way of the future. we rely on the launcher, the Brits rely on the arrow. which is right? i don't know but both have their advantages.
it wouldn't be a cakewalk...we would win by sheer mass of numbers but it wouldn't be pretty. which is why we'll unite to kick the shit out of the Chinese.
I think they'll wind up sending them to the Reserves and National Guard Units
ReplyDeleteMost of these cuts will come through normal attrition and reduced recruiting goals. The USMC has an 80% turnover in personnel every 3 years, the Army isn't all that much better, so when it comes to losing people it is easier to just tighten the inflow of recruits instead of handing out pink slips. HRC is already talking about an early retirement option for some NCOs with 15+ years of service, and that is the right answer when it comes to thinning the herd who normally staff the HQ elements of the 11 BCTs we are losing (consider it a 25% reduction in BDE CSM slots, S3 SGM slots, Battle NCO, etc) so the pyramid will get broader at the base and narrower quicker, and promotions will slow as a result. With fewer Brigade Commands, but the same number of Battalion Commands due to restructuring, the jump from LTC to COL at the command level will let the Army be more selective (with about the same ratio as CPT to LTC is now, a reduction of about 70% of a year group IIRC).
ReplyDeleteWhen the Air Force (who currently have more personnel than the Army) start another round of cuts we'll know that the budget woes are real. The Air Force did their first Purge back in the 2004-2006 time frame, and we picked up some of their personnel in the "Blue to Green" program as we needed people willing to fight on the ground in wartime.