LATimes: Appeals for More Troops Were Denied

[chomerics]

Sarge, (not going to quote the entire post because it's more of a general thing, anyway),

When was the last time a defense system wasn't delayed?

Has there ever been a major new weapons system that came in before projection?

The only one of the systems you point out that I know much about was the V-22. If I'm not mistaken, Boeing was pushing that thing on Carter fer cryin out loud. (I know I heard about it before Clinton, but I don't remember how long before Clinton.) Was it delayed because Reagan just hated shiney new gosh-wow military hardware?

(And, isn't it possible that the reason it was delayed during Clinton's administration was because the pesky thing kept crashing? Could that have had something to do with it?)

In any case, what I'm seeing you saying is that a lot of new things that're showing up nowdays were funded under Clinton, but you think they should've been here sooner.

You are also forgetting what was done during Clinton's years. . .

The JSF plane, remember that? The only military program to come in ON time and ON budget? Why? Because of competition. The F-22 was started in Bush I's term, and the JSF was started in 96. Wh have JSF planes in production now and the cost of the program was 1/4th the cost of the F-22.

It is not only in giving out the contracts, but also holding those accountable for the contracts. Clintonian policy was to force competition to drive the price down for goverment, whereas Republican government is to hand out contracts with no oversight. We lost $8Billion dollars in Iraq for cripes sakes. how the hell do you "lose" $8Billion dollars? How?

I myself prefer highly specialized, lean and agressive troops. I don't prefer a bloated military who spends on things like an $800 hammer and $300 nails just to pork Uncle Sam. When the people in charge running of the show are friends with the $800 hammer company, things tend to get "overlooked" shall we say.

It is funny though, the more Sarge talks, the less meaning his words have, especially when you look at the numbers. I am, really starting to think that Clinton did have it right, and things were run efficiently in the military. The foxes just weren't allowed free reign of the hen house, and that's what they are really upset about.

[Redskins Diehard]

I guess there is no hope that this thread would discuss the original topic. It also appears that there was no room in the 1000 other threads that talked about Klinton killing the military and his alter-ego Clinton saving it.

Its a shame, but at least the title conforms to board format rules now:applause: , even if it is unrelated to the content of the thread

[Redskins Diehard]

And Halliburton doesn't have to do these things?

Halliburton does, the US G doesn't. Sure the G is paying a percentage of this as the contract is certainly billed higher than the salary paid to the truck driver in this particular example.

In addition Haliburton is only providing this while the truck driver is out there driving...that PVT is being paid year round, over seas and at home, and some expenses could carry on for a lifetime.

I recognize that you may be one of the "this war is being fought to pad Haliburtons pockets" crowd. If that is the case then I am sure this discussion is a waste of everyone's time.

[themurf]

Can someone tell me why we have LESS personel in the military NOW than we did in 2000???

Your kidding, right? Why would anyone want to join these days? The answer to your question is as simple as the number of kids they get to sign up and to reenlist. As soon as you raise your hand they deploy you. Kids coming out of high school don't want to deal with that. And I'm saying this as someone who has served in and work with the Army for 11 years now.

[Sarge]

You are also forgetting what was done during Clinton's years. . .

The JSF plane, remember that? The only military program to come in ON time and ON budget?

Really? It's amazing how on a daily basis you demostrate to the world how it is that you don't know what your talking about in regard to defense

http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,112886,00.html

The Air Force plans to reduce its expected purchase of Joint Strike Fighters by 72 aircraft in the service’s proposed six-year spending plan due to skyrocketing costs in the Lightning II program, defense officials tell Inside the Air Force.

The proposed reduction, roughly the equivalent of one fighter wing, is part of the Air Force’s fiscal year 2008 spending plan that the service submitted to the Office of the Secretary of Defense on Aug. 15. That budget blueprint spans fiscal years 2008 to 2013.

Defense Department officials anticipate acquiring just under 2,500 F-35s for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The Pentagon’s eight international JSF partners are expected to purchase more than 770 of the futuristic fighters.

For the U.S. military, it is designed to replace a number of aging fighter platforms used for decades by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

However, if the service’s purchasing plan is adopted by OSD officials and folded into the president’s FY-08 defense budget request sent to Congress in February, it would allow the Air Force to adhere to current F-35 development and production schedules -- but with 72 fewer planes.

Such a move also would offset staggering cost increases that came to light earlier this year, officials noted. Service officials want to use the dollars that would have been spent to buy the 72 fighters to pay the unexpected bills that triggered a substantial cost spike from last year.

The total price tag for the tri-service Joint Strike Fighter program shot up by nearly $19 billion during a four-month period in 2005, according to a Pentagon selected acquisition report (SAR) released April 7 after it was sent to Congress.

Prior to that significant increase, overall JSF cost growth set against the program’s 2002 baseline estimates came in at $75 billion over a three-year span. “Base year” cost estimates for the JSF totaled just over $202 billion in 2002, states the April 7 report.

With that trend of cost spikes, the F-35’s $276 billion price tag has made it one of the most expensive defense acquisition efforts in Pentagon history, according to defense officials and analysts.

The increase also placed the JSF program among the 15 platforms listed in the April SAR that DOD says breached the Nunn-McCurdy statute during the September through December 2005 time frame. The Nunn-McCurdy Act places caps on single-unit cost growth for all major DOD acquisition programs, notes the April 7 report.

Using dollars previously intended to buy a wing of JSFs to pay for the 2005 cost increase, however, is not a sign that Air Force officials are re-thinking their place in the tri-service, international fighter effort, one senior service official tells ITAF.

Brig. Gen Charles Lyon, deputy director of programs in the office of the deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and programs, characterized the change as more of a “refinement” than a deviation from the service’s F-35 plans.

“We are not making any change that would push things to the right or accelerate them to the left. We are staying the course on the JSF,” Lyon said during a Sept. 6 interview at the Pentagon. “We just have got to have it to stay a viable Air Force for years to come, and we know that.”

Lyons declined to discuss the specifics of the service’s POM submission, saying that doing so would taint the Pentagon’s budget process.

The service’s proposal to cut its overall JSF buy comes only weeks after Navy and Marine Corps officials submitted to Pentagon officials an FY-08 spending plan that proposes a one-year delay in fielding the fighter, InsideDefense.com reported on Aug. 18.

If approved by OSD, the Navy-USMC plan would delay fielding the first Marine Corps F-35 squadron from 2010 to 2012, while also pushing acquisition of 35 additional Air Force and Navy Joint Strike Fighters beyond 2013, according to sources contacted by InsideDefense.com. Those sources said the move would free up nearly $1 billion across Navy and Marine Corps coffers.

OSD could reject the naval services’ proposal, alter it or adopt it outright as they craft a military-wide six-year spending plan over the next several months.

For his part, Lyon said the Air Force did not follow the Navy-Marine Corps plan in its budget submission. Still, if adopted by OSD, the kind of delay outlined in the Navy-Marine Corps POM would undoubtedly create a “ripple wave” effect on the entire program.

“Perturbations come from all different areas, they are just some things that are a fact of life and happen,” Lyon told ITAF. “What we will do is we will be a partner with the Navy and the Marine Corps here in the Department of Defense to keep this program on track and keep it solid.”

If a delay in fielding the F-35 is enacted, such a move would force the air service to recalibrate its ambitious aircraft retirement plan, Lyon said. He added that a one-year delay in fielding the next-generation fighter would force his service to keep more aging legacy fighters in the air longer than under existing plans.

“We would have to re-look it, we would have to re-look the entire calculus of our retirement plan and our basing plan and the impact on pilot production,” the one-star told ITAF. “There is a huge ripple effect there if we delay the genesis of the F-35 into the Air Force.”

The prospect of further extending the life of some aging fighters that are on “a glide path” toward retirement has some top brass concerned. The service’s aircraft fleet has an average age of 24 years. For service officials, operating those platforms at full levels brings into question whether or not the aircraft can perform under such demands, Lyon said.

“This is the situation that we are in [because] we had a procurement holiday in the 1990s” and legacy aircraft just got “older and older,” he said. “Now there are some that say that is just fine, that an aging fleet is OK, but we are just really nervous about it.”

Even if OSD and Congress enact all of the air service’s desired retirement and procurement plans each year until the FY-13 budget cycle, the average age of the fleet would still be at 30 years at that time, Lyon said.

Budgetary pressures facing the entire federal government, however, make buying enough new aircraft between now and FY-13 to bring that number down unlikely, according to defense officials and Pentagon observers.

“We had the luxury during the early part of the Cold War -- the 1950s to 1960s -- to acquire a lot of aircraft in a very short period of time,” he said. “We do not have that luxury as a nation now.”

It is funny though, the more Sarge talks, the less meaning his words have, especially when you look at the numbers

I'm sorry you didn't understand the PlayDoh analogy. It was about as simple as I could make it

Maybe if I have time I can translate it into a "Dick and Jane" format

[Larry]

The total price tag for the tri-service Joint Strike Fighter program shot up by nearly $19 billion during a four-month period in 2005, according to a Pentagon selected acquisition report (SAR) released April 7 after it was sent to Congress.

Prior to that significant increase, overall JSF cost growth set against the program’s 2002 baseline estimates came in at $75 billion over a three-year span. “Base year” cost estimates for the JSF totaled just over $202 billion in 2002, states the April 7 report.

[Redskins Diehard]

you put no words of your own in your last post. if you had they would be in here now:)

I think a claim was made that the JSF came in on time and under budget. That claim appears to be something short of the truth.

So how about that appeal that was denied?

[Larry]

I think a claim was made that the JSF came in on time and under budget.

And Sarge's response was that after the party of the defense industry took over, the prices got jacked up.

(Now, if he's saying that the aircraft weren't delivered untill after the price got jacked up, that's a more convincing argument. But I don't see that claim being made.)

[Sarge]

And Sarge's response was that after the party of the defense industry took over, the prices got jacked up.

(Now, if he's saying that the aircraft weren't delivered untill after the price got jacked up, that's a more convincing argument. But I don't see that claim being made.)

The JSF plane, remember that? The only military program to come in ON time and ON budget?

Reeeeeaaaaaad.

Come in ON time and ON budget

THe program was only in the research stage when Klinton was in office. IT was far from "coming in on time and on budget"

IT wasn't even in production back then

[Beaudry]

We could really make a seperate political forum and have like a roundtable group of 12 people argue all day long about everything. They do it in the Tailgate already.

In summary:

Chom comes in with his half-assed facts again.

Sarge makes fun and blames everything on a guy who hasn't been president for over 6 years. Wants to get rid of schools and roads and just build tanks, missles, subs, and fighter jets.

[Baculus]

I am not sure how much I use the word "cabal," but if the shoe fits, so be it! But let me guess - cabals do not exist, right? ;-) But let's see one definition of cabal: "A cabal is a number of persons united in some close design, usually to promote their private views and interests in a church, state, or other community by intrigue."

Well, considering how closed the administration has been with their efforts, and often operating in secrecy, I believe "cabal" would be an accurate term. So thanks for mentioning that term!

[chomerics]

I think a claim was made that the JSF came in on time and under budget. That claim appears to be something short of the truth.

Really? Do you know anything about the development of the JSF? Do you know why LM won over Boeing? DO you know what the costs were?

I am talking about the development costs of the JSF until LM was chosen as the supplier. That would be when we had a democrat running things. The JSF came in on time and budget.

Now, in order to make my point even further, Sarge pipes in with his numbers. And of course, as I have been saying ad nausea for the past few years, the republicans bloated the contracts. They are now coming in over budget and long on schedule. . . why is that?

[Sarge]

Really? Do you know anything about the development of the JSF? Do you know why LM won over Boeing? DO you know what the costs were?

I am talking about the development costs of the JSF until LM was chosen as the supplier. That would be when we had a democrat running things. The JSF came in on time and budget.

Now, in order to make my point even further, Sarge pipes in with his numbers. And of course, as I have been saying ad nausea for the past few years, the republicans bloated the contracts. They are now coming in over budget and long on schedule. . . why is that?

Well, at least you clarified.

And I have no love for the current contract system myself BTW

The JSF was in development when Klinton was in. That was it. SO like I said, no major weapons systems came on line with Klinton

Now the program is delayed on a couple of technical issues

Personally I thnk we should go back to the "fly before you buy" concept. It would cut a lot of this stuff out

[chomerics]

Well, considering how closed the administration has been with their efforts, and often operating in secrecy, I believe "cabal" would be an accurate term. So thanks for mentioning that term!

Yep, which was why I initially used it, at least the quip was not lost on all

[Redskins Diehard]

Really? Do you know anything about the development of the JSF? Do you know why LM won over Boeing? DO you know what the costs were?

I am talking about the development costs of the JSF until LM was chosen as the supplier. That would be when we had a democrat running things. The JSF came in on time and budget.

Now, in order to make my point even further, Sarge pipes in with his numbers. And of course, as I have been saying ad nausea for the past few years, the republicans bloated the contracts. They are now coming in over budget and long on schedule. . . why is that?

Actually I have no knowledge of the JSF other than what is posted here. You said it came on line on time and under budget and yet it still has not been fielded.

So what do you think about the fact that neither GEN Franks or GEN Abizaid have never said that they asked for troops and didn't get them. You know, the guys that are responsible for the whole theater? You never answered that question

[Sarge]

So what do you think about the fact that neither GEN Franks or GEN Abizaid have never said that they asked for troops and didn't get them. You know, the guys that are responsible for the whole theater? You never answered that question

You just ended this thread :laugh:

[Redskins Diehard]

You just ended this thread :laugh:

Come on Sarge, Chomerics would like you to think that even though nobody ever answers his questions he always answers theirs. I guess the subject of the thread was important enough to start, but not to debate.

(For the record he also never acknowledged that you can't just double the special forces and add 100k to the conventional overnight. Maybe he didn't know what a SFC, 1SG, or CSM were)

[Sarge]

Come on Sarge, Chomerics would like you to think that even though nobody ever answers his questions he always answers theirs. I guess the subject of the thread was important enough to start, but not to debate.

(For the record he also never acknowledged that you can't just double the special forces and add 100k to the conventional overnight. Maybe he didn't know what a SFC, 1SG, or CSM were)

That would be like "Being spanked" and "running off with your tail between your legs", right?

Favorite Chomisms:laugh:

[Baculus]

Well, I don't think it takes a genius to realize that there has been a disconnect between the civilians attempting to run the conduct of the war and the military planners. This is an old issue, as evident by the following article from two years ago:

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_plan_111804,00.html

And here is the dichotomy typical of this war: IMHO, I do not believe it was advantageous for us to invade Iraq. OTOH, if we do invade, it would be preferable that it's done right - in reality, it WAS a successful invasion, at least on the convential military level. It is the unconvential occupation that has been tough, and really, it is my impression that a lot of the current occupation is really centered around US troops being ambushed by IEDs, which have been the bulk of casulties over the last two years.

It is a strange position to criticize the original premise of the war, and then criticize the occupation/post-war planning, as well as the original post-troop level as proposed by the Bush administration.

[chomerics]

So what do you think about the fact that neither GEN Franks or GEN Abizaid have never said that they asked for troops and didn't get them. You know, the guys that are responsible for the whole theater? You never answered that question

They are doing their job, you know that as well as I do. Do you actually think a standing general will come out in the press and state that he is not getting the troops he asked for or needs and undermine the Secretary of Defense and President? It would ruin their career.

[chomerics]

(For the record he also never acknowledged that you can't just double the special forces and add 100k to the conventional overnight. Maybe he didn't know what a SFC, 1SG, or CSM were)

No, I have stated that Kerry wanted to bring on more troops, and I would be for it as well. Why are there less troops now then before he took office? We are at war after all.

[Redskins Diehard]

They are doing their job, you know that as well as I do. Do you actually think a standing general will come out in the press and state that he is not getting the troops he asked for or needs and undermine the Secretary of Defense and President? It would ruin their career.

GEN Franks is long since retired. Next reason.

Of note a regional combatant commander has in all likelihood culminated. Their career is for all practical purposes "over".

[Redskins Diehard]

No, I have stated that Kerry wanted to bring on more troops, and I would be for it as well. Why are there less troops now then before he took office? We are at war after all.

Because the military leadership has said a number of times that they do not want to increase end strength. Resources would have to be removed from the fighting force in order to grow that large. In all likelihood this conflict will long since be over before effective fighting units would come into existence.

[Larry]

That is an argument that makes some sense.

Although the image of, say, doubling the size of Special Forces sounds good, in order to make, say, 12 Green Berets, they'd likely have to take, say, 18 (some of them aren't going to make it) experienced combat corporals (to be trained) and a couple of Seargent Majors (to train them) out of combat to do it.

(Or something that looks kind-of like that to a civilian.)

[chomerics]

GEN Franks is long since retired.

And he was focusing on retirement during the invasion, of which in the subsequent months, there was a void of leadership. At least that was the way it was posed in COBRAII