(11-08-2012 09:52 PM)UCF08ulyanovsk31 Wrote: But ICBMs do nothing to protect minor interests or to protect us from enemies such as unaffiliated terrorists, so we do need an standing military. Do we need to have more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined? I'm going to say, no.
The problem is that you've left out the problem of affiliated terrorists, those affiliated with a rogue nation. And if we're going to address that problem, then we probably do need more carriers than the rest of the world.
They don't all need to be 110,000 tons, you can build a pretty capable ship in the 80,000 ton range for a bunch less money (probably $6 billion v. $9 billion today). And if you build that ship with both CTOL and VSTOL capabilities (think Russian Ulyanovsk), then you have greater interoperability with all our allies, which comes in handy on combined operations (like Libya).
The big cost is people, so we
1) Bring troops back from Europe and Japan; that doesn't save much unless we also
2) Convert a bunch of active duty slots to reserve slots at 20-25% the cost, probably actually increasing total head count for less total money; the key to keeping a large military at a low price is keeping much of it at a lowered state of readiness, see Sweden or Switzerland or Israel; swapping 400,000 active duty slots for 800,000 reserve slots saves $40 billion
3) Reform the top-heavy personnel structures; the navy doesn't need more admirals than ships
4) Cut civilian headcount; we don't need more people in the Pentagon than it took to win WWII
As for procurement the big savings is that not every system needs to be cutting edge state of the art, particularly not in an asymmetric warfare context. We don't need Arleigh Burkes on pirate patrol in the IO. Perrys can do the job just as well for less money. Go with Bud Zumwalt's high-low mix philosophy; smaller carriers would be one example. Don't cut R&D.
Oh, and never fight a war we don't intend to win.