Thread: Proposed US Defense Budget Changes

All postulation about who could or couldn't beat the US is more or less meaningless, because the outcomes of wars are decided by so many factors other than the size and sophistication of the armed forces of the belligerents. You simply can't make blanket statements about who would or wouldn't win. The outcome will vary tremendously depending on countless variables. But the US does outgun China and everyone else pretty heavily.

Edit: BUT, I'm not saying that we should put all our eggs in the guerilla-warfare basket just because we outgun everyone else. Fortunately, we're in danger of doing so. Gates' proposed budget changes still leave plenty of eggs in the conventional warfare basket.

Originally Posted by Mr. E

Well....maybe. There is no reason to think the world will rally behind us should the shit hit the fan. I'm just saying that we're not untouchable like a lot of people like to think. No bad can come from continuing to fund forward-looking technologies, but there is a danger in putting all of our eggs in the guerrilla warfare basket.

Lol, Mr. E...

Currently we have all our eggs in the conventional warfare basket, while our soldiers are fighting in urban warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We have conventional warfare capabilities that far, far surpass those of any other country, while we are relatively ill-equipped to fight the actual conflicts that we're forced to fight and are actually fighting.

That's why so much funding is going towards urban warfare. And they're not talking about completely cutting off our conventional warfare capabilities, but rather shifting the focus heavily towards the conflicts we're fighting now and in the near future while still devoting some but less development towards our conventional warfare capabilities.

Originally Posted by Mr. E

The only thing though is I don't see these conflicts lasting much longer, and I am optimistic that, given the current direction of our country, we're not going to have any more conflicts for a while.

The DOD can't plan it's spending based on your optimism, though. It has to be prepared to fight, and like it or not, most experts agree that unconventional warfare is going to be common, if not dominant, in the coming decades. So it behooves the DOD to improve it's capabilities for that type of warfare. Besides, like I said, history shows that people rarely see wars coming even a few years in advance. Saying that you don't think we'll have any more conflicts in a while is all very good, but the reality is that neither you nor anybody else knows what kind of shit we may be involved in 2015 or 2020 or 2025. Again, we can't plan based on your optimism.

Besides, all that aside, the fact is that we are currently involved in a counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, and it's not going to be over for a few more years even in the best-case scenario, and winning the war we're actually fighting right now is the #1 priority. So it's hardly unreasonable for the Pentagon to put more money into the programs that will help us win that war, especially since some our problems in that war have stemmed directly from our lack of the things that these programs provide. Especially if even after putting more money towards those programs, we are still also putting PLENTY of money towards conventional warfare programs, in case China wants to throw down in twenty years or whatever.

EDIT: In terms of cuts to programs like DDG-1000 and the F-22, it's not about "We don't need conventional warfare capabilities any more so we're not buying any more jet fighters or warships"; it's about "These programs are incredibly expensive and don't provide benefits commensurate to their costs".