[martin14]

Because the DOD budgets of the next 10 'friends' on the list are so poor.

And that includes us.


It's not just their security they are paying for boots, they pay
for all of us.

I dont remember how many fully loaded Canadian Amoured Divisions
were sitting in Germany over the past 60 years.





If you open a (security) hole, someone will come to fill it.

[bootlegga]

martin14 martin14:

Because the DOD budgets of the next 10 'friends' on the list are so poor.

And that includes us.


It's not just their security they are paying for boots, they pay
for all of us.

I dont remember how many fully loaded Canadian Amoured Divisions
were sitting in Germany over the past 60 years.

If you open a (security) hole, someone will come to fill it.

Take a good, hard look at the DoD budget. The military it maintains is far more powerful than the top 10 nations (of which Canada isn't a part - last time I checked we were about #15).

For example, they have 11 super-carriers, while their closest 'competitor' (UK) is building two large carriers, neither of which will match one of the Nimitz class carriers. The US is buying somewhere around 2500 or so F-35s. The next biggest buy is maybe 500 from the UK. And while they may not have the largest army on the planet, it is the best equipped and one of the best trained as well.

My point is that if the US decided to buy 2450 F-35s instead of 2500 (65 F-35s are going to cost Canada $9 billion dollars), it wouldn't make that much of difference in the overall superiority the US enjoys over potential adversaries, but the savings would be immense. Trim a procurement here and there by 5-10% (or extend the procurement period), and suddenly there's an extra $50-100 billion annually that can be spent elsewhere.

There is a problem with spending $800 billion a year on the military while the economy is in a recession. As I said, other nations in the past have overspent on their military while they had economic issues and it generally turns out to be bad for the nation doing so.

If the recession ends and the US economy rebounds, then $800 billion, as huge as it is, isn't that much. But with a deficit of a trillion (or two) dollars annually, it makes for bad economic news years down the road (which of course has the possibility of extending the recession).

[andyt]

bootlegga bootlegga:

For example, they have 11 super-carriers, while their closest 'competitor' (UK) is building two large carriers, neither of which will match one of the Nimitz class carriers. The US is buying somewhere around 2500 or so F-35s. The next biggest buy is maybe 500 from the UK. And while they may not have the largest army on the planet, it is the best equipped and one of the best trained as well.

My point is that if the US decided to buy 2450 F-35s instead of 2500 (65 F-35s are going to cost Canada $9 billion dollars), it wouldn't make that much of difference in the overall superiority the US enjoys over potential adversaries, but the savings would be immense. Trim a procurement here and there by 5-10% (or extend the procurement period), and suddenly there's an extra $50-100 billion annually that can be spent elsewhere.

There is a problem with spending $800 billion a year on the military while the economy is in a recession. As I said, other nations in the past have overspent on their military while they had economic issues and it generally turns out to be bad for the nation doing so.

If the recession ends and the US economy rebounds, then $800 billion, as huge as it is, isn't that much. But with a deficit of a trillion (or two) dollars annually, it makes for bad economic news years down the road (which of course has the possibility of extending the recession).

The US military is an imperial one, meant for an imperial power. Keeping it will just exacerbate their down slide, since they can't afford it. It's the same story as how the US "defeated" Russia. Russia defeated itself economically - they couldn't afford to keep up the expenditures to keep up to the US. The exact same thing is happening to America.

And anybody who thinks the US will just turn this around in the next couple of years, will just rebound to business as usual, hasn't been paying attention. They've been living on credit since the Reagan days, and their credit cards are about maxed out. If they do manage to make it to the top again, it will probably be a long painful slog, and because China got stuck with it's own problems.