perfidy

The implications and assumptions inherent in your assertion are interesting: it seems to suggest that the left take the big-money stuff that the right spend their time on as either given or fixed. Do you think that is true?

I mean, it's possible to cut defense spending, but only so far before the little problems like funding for the NEA become moot due to national defense crisis.

You classify health care expenditures as an order of magnitude lower than defense? Why?

Just to play Devil's advocate here, but the Right's pet expenditures, as you call them, are more systemic then the left's. What does that say?

I don't classify health expenditures as an order of magnitude less. The _difference_ between what the "conservatives" would do and what I would do amount to vastly less than that. Defense spending can be cut outright -- anything I've read on the Pentagon shows me that there are any number of stupid, incredibly expensive programs going on at any time. You know how you fix it? You cancel three of these money and time-wasters. Then you take the money from one of them and distribute it TO THE SOLDIERS, as additional pay. You can cut the military budget and pay soldiers more, quite easily. The payroll in the military is NOT where the money goes. It goes to manufacturers and other black holes. What do we need right now? Do we need hundreds of billions of dollars worth of strike fighters? No. We need to increase the pay of our soldiers by 20 or 30 percent. We need more soldiers, which that 20 or 30 percent can help get. It's the boots on the ground, not the shiny metal UFOs the Joint Chiefs are desperate to build.

I am not against raising the pay of those in military service. But personnel costs are about $105 billion out of about $375 billion total. Close to a third of the total. $117 bn goes to Operations and Maintenance - that's the day-to-day and training expenses, which we really don't want to reduce - if anything, training budgets should be increased. The rest goes to procurement and R&D - $73 and $62 bn respectively.

While there are certainly programs that could be cancelled, like the Sgt. York was, many of these are the very things that allow us to win wars with minimal American, and yes foreign casualties. And the R&D money is what will allow us to continue to do so.

Btw, better that we get the Chair Force to spend money on the relatively inexpensive Joint Strike Fighter than the hideously expensive F-22. The Air Force should be allowed to replace its aging warplanes - but the emphasis should switch from pinacle technology wonderplanes to higher quantity weapons platforms that deliver wonderbombs, wondermissiles and wonderbullets.

Let's start giving wonder technology to the soldiers and marines. They've been left out for too long.

105 out of 375 is a lot closer to a quarter than it is to a third. :)

Here's the thing...we spend substantially more ($135 Billion) on _stuff_ than we do on the men.

Assuming we have in the neighborhood of 2 million active duty soldiers, we're looking at an average salary of around 52,000. Soldiers don't make anywhere NEAR that; they'll make what, half of that? Now that's not so bad because they have a lot of basics taken care of, like the hut in Iraq they'll be living in for the next five years.

We could easily reallocate money towards personnel, making it easier to recruit and easier to equip. The kind of basic equipment that the guys in the field need to have just isn't all that expensive -- really good kevlar vests.

Ask a soldier to pick between an ass-kicking kevlar vest and a non-functional missile defense shield, and I think I know which way he'll go.

You also neglect to mention that this year's military budget is a heck of a lot higher than that; what percentage of all this extra cash goes to the men, by the way? Not very much at all. Most of it is used for replenishment, and exhorbitant rates, of million dollar missiles we rain down on five dollar patches of dirt.

I am way out of my area of expertise here, but it seems to me that there was no credible Iraqi air threat. Air cover effectively suppressed some defenses, but as in Kosovo, it takes a truly incredible level of bombing to be effective. You can get the obvious stuff, but dug-in troops are just that. They stayed dug in until the tanks showed up, and then they surrendered, most of them...

So at some point we have to stop saying "we'll give our boys ANYTHING!". We have to say that we'll give them what's necessary, and even part of what they just plain want.

I've been around people who've spent enough time around military procurement processes that I know it's just bullshit from one end to the other. It's a highly funded old boys club, where decisions are made for careers and jobs, not for the benefit of those in the field.

Guess I'm jaded because I just finished "Boyd", and the insight that provides isn't encouraging.

.28. A bit closer.

Those were fiscal year 04 numbers.

Of course a soldier will choose a functional system over a non functional one. Will he choose a functional missile defense system that protects his family over a improved kevlar vest? I don't know.

The next wave of technological advances in the military is pushing computer networking, communication and targeting capabilities down to the individual soldier. The Landwarrior system, when completed, will cost anywhere from $40 to 100k per unit, but will increase the lethality of the common soldier five fold or more. Installing the similar technology in armored units had this effect back in the early nineties. This is more than just a better suit of armor.

As far as air defenses go, sure we met no serious threats in Kosovo or Iraq - but that doesn't mean we never will. We must plan for it, and that means having some expensive equipment. As I said in my last comment, we should increase spending on stuff, goodies, for the people on the ground. But that doesn't mean we should stop spending on other things.

And the fact is, we don't give them everything they want. You should see the DoD's Christmas wish list. The closest the military has ever gotten to everything was 1944 and 1983. They won't again unless we go up against China or the aliens come for our women.