The Army’s Mission For 2014: Holding Its Ground

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/12/the-armys-mission-for-2014-holding-its-ground/



The Army’s Mission For 2014: Holding Its Ground
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on December 20, 2013 at 3:05 PM

Yesterday’s Senate passage of the budget deal took $20 billion worth of pressure off the Pentagon. But for the Army the deal just dials the pain back down from “agonizing” to “acute.”

The largest service has more to lose in the post-war drawdown (which happens to have begun before the war is actually over). In fact, the Army is losing a lot already: its top-priority weapons program; some 80,000 people; even its ability to keep all its units fully trained and ready; and there’s more to come, even though the Army got the sequester slowdown that its top brass has begged for.

So the Army’s challenge for 2014 isn’t to stop the bleeding: It’ll be hard enough just to slow it down. To do even that, the Army needs to make a compelling case to Congress, the White House, and the American people for the relevance of large and usually heavy land forces in the post-Afghanistan, Pacific Pivot era – which so far it hasn’t done.

~snip~

But, truth to tell, none of these missions requires a large land force. The Army’s already shrinking from its wartime peak of 570,000 down to 490,000, but that’s slightly above its pre-9/11 level. Everyone expects it to shrink further; the question is how much. One team of thinktankers led by the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Clark Murdock proposed slashing the regular active-duty army to 327,000.

[on point]

1. DOD budget needs to be slashed by at least 50%. Better plan for it Army

[msongs]

2. get rid of private contractors and replace them with active duty troops

saves a bundle, some of which can be used to give raises to active duty personnel.