That's a no, then.

Relevance is if you had then you'd know what goes into requisitioning training and equipment and the bureaucratic red tape and lead time involved. They can look to cut fat, and sure they need to, but if you don't fund now after the Obama force draw down, we will be throwing rocks.

(02-09-2017 10:35 AM)Crebman Wrote:  

(02-08-2017 10:10 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  We don't really need to spend more on the military, but we need to spend much more efficiently. McKinsey did a study of defense spending by OECD (basically, advanced) countries. The average OECD country spends 14% of its military budget on combat, 23% on combat support, and 63% on administration and overhead. That's pretty inefficient, but wait, it gets worse. The US spends 9% on combat, 14% on combat support, and 77% on administration and overhead. Putting that in the context of some actual numbers, the total defense budget is currently around $600 billion, so that's roughly $54 billion combat, $84 billion combat support, and $462 billion administrative and overhead. Let's say we added that $30 billion to the combat and combat support total, bringing it from $138 billion to $168 billion, and at the same time achieved the OECD pitiful level of efficiency. That would be a total of roughly $450 billion, or a 25% decrease in total military spending, with a 20% increase in combat and combat support capability.

Now I realize full well that there are some apples-to-oranges comparison issues in that kind of quick and dirty calculation. But $150 billion worth? Somehow I don't think so.

The Pentagon has more people working in and around it today than it took to win WWII. Depending on how you define warships, the Navy either has more admirals than ships or slightly more ships the admirals. And this pricey leadership has given us the Ford aircraft carrier that costs $13 billion (its predecessors cost $6-8 billion) and works fine except for its catapults and arresting gear, the LCS for which the standard operating procedure if hit by an enemy bullet is to abandon ship (seriously), and the F-35 which is a $70 million fighter with a lot of neat electronics except that it is costing $200 million apiece (though Trump has already addressed this) and a lot of those electronics don't work yet.

This!! This a thousand times!!
We can argue the finer points of this weapon or that ship day long, but the elephant in the room is the - Administrative Costs!!!
My god - I bet they could remove $100 billion of it and 6 months later - no one (except those bureaucrats that lost their job) would notice a difference.

That would be about my best guess at a number.

(02-09-2017 10:18 AM)rath v2.0 Wrote:  Yep. Obama's crew took a page right out of Clinton's from the early 90's. It was a hot mess back then. Got to fund to retain good NCOs, equip, and train troops. Bean counters cut that out and wonder why force readiness sucks.

Firing a bunch of senior officers who didn't toe the party line didn't help either. The flag ranks are full of ass-kissers instead of warriors.