Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: randy@ms.uky.edu (Randy Appleton) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Defense cuts Message-ID: <13033@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 11 Jan 90 04:59:33 GMT References: <12854@cbnews.ATT.COM> Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences Lines: 76 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Randy Appleton In article <12854@cbnews.ATT.COM> budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg) writes: >60% of the DoD (and the Coast Guard's portion of the DoT) budget goes to >people, not hardware or hardware development. This 60% includes >paychecks, chow, pensions, training and education, ... Therefore, if >you need to tighten a budget, cutting obsolescent or obsolete hardware >is really only incidental to cutting the people costs. Certainly. But then the question remains, "which people?". It seems to me the answer could be "the OV-1 crew and support people" if one decides that the OV-1 is a weapon system not worth the cost. The point is, if I were going to cut costs, I would look for weapons systems to eliminate. Here is my (new) list of things to cut: 1) All the Battleships, and whatever support ships I can toss with them. They did LOUSY in Lebanon, don't seem very cost-effective in a real *naval* war, and there function (delivering 1000lb warheads, etc) can be taken over by other systems (CV's and subs carrying SLCM's, etc..) 2) One of the 3 Marine divisions. Why do we need 3? IMHO, Marine divisions should do what they do best, anphib landings. If we need lasting land- based firepower, we should look to the army, and if the Army isn't doing it right, that should be fixed. I figure we need 2 Marine divisions. We have one in Korea (it might be politically hard to switch an Army div in there) and one divided into Marine Ready Battalions (or whatever they call them) to be ready to go. 3) Most (if not all) of the Marine Air Force. If the Marines want air power, let them get it from the CV's. If there fighting it out on land SOO FAR from the ocean they can't get naval air, why are we using Marines? In Vietnam didn't we in fact do this? It seems naval air wuld be available, can you imagine an anphib invasion in contested waters? 4) 170 of the B-52's. That would leave us with 100 (I think). Rex's point about eliminating *all* of a weapons system to receive the full economic benifits is well taken, but I figure we need more bombers than just the 75 ready B-1's we have, and the B-2 seems to expensive to your's truely. If we build the B-2, then the B-52 should be eliminated entirely. 5) Seven Army divisions. That should leave us with 10 ready divisions. There would be 1 airborn, 1 air-mobile, 1 light inf, and 7 regular divisions: 3 for Europe, 1 for "the Pacific" (along with one of the Marine div's) and 2 regular divisions to go where there needed. And of course the 10 reserve divisions if the going *really* got hot. Why would we need more than 20 divisions? 6) Maybe 10 of the Posiden SSBN's. Let's convert then to SSN's. The Navy says we need more SSN's, and for that matter ASW ships, and most people (at least most right-thinking people |-) feel we have AT LEAST ENOUGH strategic nuclear warheads. Historically, this was done in the past, by pouring concrete into Polaris missile tubes and some serious paperwork. The savings here is the need to build fewer new SSN's. 7) Couldn't the Coast Guard be more closely integrated with the military? Didn't they just order some new AEW aircraft? Why couldn't they use some of the Navy or AF's stuff? (If an E-1 won't do, THAT would be weird). I mean, the crews are just sitting there, they need the practice, etc... Could the training be integrated? Does the Coast Guard need its own pilot school, or could they use someone elses? 8) I haven't said much about the AF. What can be cut there? Maybe some of the older tankers (especially with fewer B-52's????) What else? Any Other Ideas??? Randy -- _______________________________________________________________________________ "Tiger gotta hunt, bird gotta fly, man gotta sit, sit and wonder why. Tiger gotta sleep, bird gotta land, man gotta tell himself that he understand" -Bokonon [Address:Randy@ms.uky.edu]