Service Chiefs: Troops Will Head for Exits if Budget Cuts Persist

This addresses the front-end of the Military. The back-end is addressed by the way this Nation treats its Military Veterans; which is a National disgrace!

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Military.com | Sep 15, 2016 | by Hope Hodge Seck

Caps on defense spending limit training, force service members to use old gear and may lead to an exodus of troops from the armed services, the four service chiefs told lawmakers Thursday.

Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the leaders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps warned that a return of sequestration budget caps would promote fiscal uncertainty and take a deep toll on rank-and-file morale.

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 put a temporary stay on a half-trillion dollar tranche of defense budget cuts, but the armed services must plan around the reductions for five more years if Congress does not again act to avert them.

For the Navy and Marine Corps, limited funding and delayed aircraft modernization have resulted in limited pilot flight hours. This summer, the Marine Corps resorted to an unusual measure, pulling 30 F/A-18C Hornets from the "boneyard" at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and putting them back into service in an effort to maintain readiness ahead of F-35B Joint Strike Fighters entering the fleet in numbers.

"When our pilots are flying less hours a month than Russian and Chinese pilots are, we're going to have a problem," Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona who heads the defense committee, told the generals.

The chief of naval operations said limited flight hours also take a toll on morale.

"Our pilots join the Navy to fly naval aircraft; that's what they want to do," Adm. John Richardson said. "Money can help up to a point … but at the heart of the matter, there is a highly dedicated team that wants to defend the nation in high-performance aircraft, and that's what they want to do: They want to fly."

Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Marine Corps, said aircraft maintainers and aircrew were also at risk of being lost to commercial aviation companies and contractors as the service is forced to cannibalize parts and require staff to maintain productivity with fewer resources.

"We're making it now on the backs of those sergeants and staff sergeants out there that have to do work twice to get the part we want and put it on another [aircraft]," he said. "So I'm as concerned about maintainers sticking around."

Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said readiness and morale are inextricably linked for the service, and airmen who are not being used to their full potential will look for other opportunities.

"Pilots who don't fly, maintainers who don't maintain, controllers who don't control, will walk," he said. "And there's not enough money in the treasury to keep them in if we don't give them enough resources to keep investing."

Without reliable money to modernize, Goldfein said the service has had to lean heavily on Service Life Extension Programs to make its aging aircraft last longer -- an expensive and risky endeavor, he said.

"There's a reason [SLEP is] a four-letter word," he said. "The reality is, we only fix what we can accurately predict. Then we put the aircraft into depot maintenance, we pull the skin off, and what we find are things breaking that we never predicted."

With the service's F-15C Eagle, a steering problem fix turned out to require a part that hadn't been manufactured in five years. The Air Force was forced to commission new parts at significant cost.

The chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Mark Milley, said sequestration cuts would undercut plans to ramp up training for high-end threats, which had fallen off during the last 15 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"An armor officer today -- a tank officer up through rank of major -- has very little experience in terms of maneuvering tanks against an opponent who has armor," he said. "We have to rebuild that. That's going to take considerable time and effort on our part. Sequestration will take the rug out from underneath us."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said he found the lack of action in the face of troubling defense budget concerns "repugnant." With the return of sequestration, he confirmed with the service chiefs, some 30 ships would not be added to the Navy's fleet and the Army would lose between 60,000 and 100,000 troops. Neller confirmed that the Marine Corps, too, stood to lose personnel.

"Would you agree with me, general, that Congress is going to shoot down more planes than any enemy we could think of in the near term?" Graham demanded.

"Potentially," Goldfein responded.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck

Service Chiefs: Troops Will Head for Exits if Budget Cuts Persist

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

It is long past the time for all the idiots and ignoramuses’ in this Country to  cease and desist “cherry-picking” short phrases out of our Constitution and offering them up as the sole entirety of said Amendment. It is also past the time that all the rest of the idiots and ignoramuses’ in this Country stop blindly nodding their tiny little pea-brain heads in acceptance of such abortion.

 

Every time the Second Amendment of our Constitution is brought up in conversation of any sort, the “cherry-picking” comes out; “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. That’s it? That’s all they have to offer up in explanation of why they prefer to keep a virtual arsenal of weapons in their houses and on their person?

First, of all, the Articles and Amendments that make up the U.S. Constitution were crafted in the late 1700’s. Our Country was still a Colony of the British Empire, and was in the throes of building a government and a new Nation. At best, our Founding Fathers needed to come up with a way to ensure our borders were defended; “being necessary to the security of a free State,”.  We had the British and the Spanish coming at us from the East, and Native Americans coming at us from the North and West. Couched in that light, the basic interpretation of the Second Amendment draws the intent toward a “National Guard” –“A well regulated Militia,” ; in lieu of a formal standing Army, which was not a possibility at the time. When, in the twenty first century, you are trying to make sense out of this document and how it may apply to modern-day life, paying attention to the original intent and environment of the document is paramount.

 

Please, folks, stop listening to all the little nit-picking, nattering nabobs of negativism, and start using that thing resting on top of your shoulders, i.e. your friggin’ brain (also, referred to as the mass between your ears)! You are making those of us who have half a brain look really stupid, and that’s not nice, so quit it out!

Missile, missile...My Kingdom for a missile!

Let’s see: Genocide in the past in the past, say, 130 years has seen the industrial world sit back as if nothing was going wrong. The alarming rate at which this seems to happen around the world has to be telling us something about human nature. Why do we tend to “look the other way” especially when our so-called friends and allies engage in such a practice? Hell, why do we turn and look away when not-so-friends and enemies do it?

When I see the “civilized” societies of the post-industrial era embark upon a genocide, I must believe there is some commonality in their motives. Indeed, there are perhaps three commonalities in this situation. The first would be ownership of real estate. The second might be simply a matter of exceptionalism, including what is thought of as religious war of jihad. The third certainly could be for reason of some economic gain. These three are neither mutually exclusive, or in any order of priority or hierarchy. A thread in these commonalities seems to be one of “entitlement”. One example of all three commonalities would be that of Turkey’s genocide of the Armenians. The German genocide in the middle of the last Century might fit well into all three, as well. The genocide, aka “ethnic cleansing”, after the break up of Yugoslavia at the end of the last Century fits neatly into the “exceptionalism” category.

There are hundreds more examples all across the Globe during this time span; these are but three. Which leads me to the economic reasons for waging a genocide, and a timely question of whether the Palestinian – Israeli war which has gone on for sixty some odd years is more economically based than either exceptional, or a simple land grab. I must admit that when I hear of Dick Cheney sniffing around the edges of a messy conflict the red flags start popping up at an alarming rate. There is either a gut feeling, or a base of knowledge, that points to a mother load of oil sitting beneath Palestine. The ageless Cheney wouldn't be anywhere near this hot-spot if there wasn’t a potential of vast amounts of money to be made from drilling rights. Oh, did I forget to mention that it is rumored Halliburton (Cheney’s other person-hood) has, or will sign contracts for drilling right in the West Bank.

My major problem with this end of the Palestinian – Israeli war is that the land being leased to Halliburton by Israel actually belongs to Palestine (Take a look at the maps on the historical shrinking of Palestine since 1949.) My second major problem with this is that the industrial Nations have let this go on, unchecked, since 1949. Our modern day, democratic governments have been fueling the fire by engaging in Arms and Technology “sales” to Israel to defend itself from a people whose land they are stealing. If you can make rational sense of that, you’re good.

So, let’s truly think of the act of genocide as we witness the annihilation of the Palestinian people while the “developed” Nations fiddle and Rome burns.

DOMINOES IN THE DESERT - there goes the neighborhood

As the United States plies its brand of “democracy” in the Mideast and Persia, the Church State of Iran is countering with spreading their unique brand of Islam. It has become painfully evident that the U.S. does not have a clue when it comes to understanding any other religion forms of Christianity and Judaism. The fate of all the Mideast, Persian, and neighboring Countries hangs in the balance. With most of Europe and all of Russia sharing in this demise, the longer this state of affairs exists, the longer western expansionist tendencies in the region will last, and the more dramatic Iran’s reaction will be. What is perfectly clear is that outside involvement in the Mideast and Persia is not about the oil. It’s not about human rights. It is about the total lack of understanding of the Islamic religion. This lack of understanding fuels a high level of fear that the political and corporate driven attempts to bring calm and peace to the region can’t seem to resolve. In this case, ignorance is not bliss; it is very dangerous to the world as a whole. There is a solution to all the turmoil that has been draining the human resources of too many Countries around the world.

The solution is three-fold in nature. The first part involves a concerted effort by all non-Islamic nations to do their best in understanding the true nature of the Islamic religion. This is not a religion that foments jihad, or any sort of extreme violence. As religions go, Islam is a very beneficent religion; loving, nurturing, kind, and forgiving. The second part of the equation involves the non-Islamic nations understanding and accepting that some folks prefer a Church State to that of a western style governmental structure. Not everyone wants to be like the United States; or, Canada, England, Spain, Greece, Russia, China, etc. Once these two are put into practice, Islamic governments around the globe will truly feel that they have a place at the table, and they aren’t going to be targets of colonialism, expansionism, or occupation.

The third part is a little trickier, but not out of the realm of possibility. This would be a legal form of State sponsored assassination. The “State” in this instance would ideally be the United Nations. As a world body, the U.N. should have the ability to remove singular despots from their perches as Kings, Emirs, Dictators, Grand Imams, Ayatollahs, etc. The benchmark would not include how a ruler got into power, but what he did once he assumed that leadership role.  Topping the list of determinants for assassination would be Human Rights, as describe by the U.N.; not described by any one member Nation, or private interest group. The U.N. would have the right to choose the “who, what, when, where, and why” for this action to proceed. In no way would any corporate influence be allowed to have any weight, whatsoever, in determining the specific action. Sorry, Dick Cheney. Sorry, Halliburton. Sorry, Exxon-Mobil.

This third part, being relative drastic in nature, would necessarily be preceded by diplomatic efforts to resolve the problem in a predetermined time period. Given the enactment of this third option, it would only take a few legal assassinations to let folks know that the world means business when it comes to peaceful coexistence. In defining “crisis intervention”, this type of action offers the absolute minimum of collateral damage to people, places, and things. Certainly, all peace-loving people would agree that lowering the “collateral damage” quotient is a desirable element in achieving World Peace.

The current situation in the Near-East and Mideast is not sustainable for very much longer. The next step will undoubtedly be an escalation of hostile takeovers that the world has never seen before. The entire quagmire will amount to a “domino effect” more damaging than that which occurred in Indo-China in the 1950’s, 60’s, & 70’s; an effect the United States has yet to recover from. And, of course, what happens to Israel is totally up in the air, as they will be surrounded by the opposition.