Battleland

“Increasingly Expensive and Incapable…”

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Former Army intel officer Chris Davis, who served with a light-infantry unit in Afghanistan, is pondering the price, and cost (there is a difference) – of the U.S. military over at Small Wars Journal:

As the defense budget continues to grow, the military is less able to deliver desirable political outcomes in America’s conflicts. The high spending of the GWoT did not produce a correlating increase in American security; instead, it hastened the coming crisis facing the military. Increasingly expensive and complex weapon systems reduce the availability of military forces, and restrict their flexibility by requiring them to operate equipment and execute doctrines ill-suited for the demands of war. Last year, the Department of Defense announced that the Army alone will lose 50,000 personnel in an effort to reduce costs. Predictably, just last week, it was announced that the cost of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will increase by 20 billion dollars and that it’s lifetime cost is expected to be at least 1.45 trillion dollars. As the military continues to break its own suicide records and maintain higher-than-average domestic violence, divorce, and sexual assault rates, it decides to decrease the number of personnel available for worldwide military operations in favor of over-priced military platforms incapable of performing basic military tasks like surviving contact with the enemy.

Ouch. Guess that explains the former Army officer part.