{"id":39981,"date":"2014-02-24T08:40:51","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T13:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=39981"},"modified":"2014-02-24T08:40:51","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T13:40:51","slug":"hagel-proposes-to-shrink-army-to-pre-pearl-harbor-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=39981","title":{"rendered":"Hagel proposes to shrink Army to pre-Pearl Harbor numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ex-PH2 sends us a link to MSN<\/a> which refers to a New York Times<\/a> article published yesterday which gives a peek into Chuck Hagel’s plan to ask Congress to cut the numbers of the Army to pre-1940 size. <\/p>\n

The proposal, described by several Pentagon officials on the condition of anonymity in advance of its release on Monday, takes into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly and exhausting land wars. A result, the officials argue, will be a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations.<\/p>\n

The officials acknowledge that budget cuts will impose greater risk on the armed forces if they are again ordered to carry out two large-scale military actions at the same time: Success would take longer, they say, and there would be a larger number of casualties. Officials also say that a smaller military could invite adventurism by adversaries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, well, I guess we figure that everyone on the planet is so impressed with Smart diplomacy that we’re no longer a target. I remember when we cut the number of troops in the early 90s, operational tempo (OpTempo) didn’t decrease along with the numbers. In fact, the administration that depended heavily on the use of cruise missiles to project our political goals was able to deplete our stocks of missiles without replacing them. I also remember an MP company at Fort Hood which had no training ammo for their M9s. <\/p>\n

There are History Channel documentaries which show US troops in the 1940s training with wooden rifles because there weren’t any real rifles available. Of course, the US was able to call up troops to swell it’s ranks quickly in 1942 because we had a draft, not an advantage Hagel could draw upon in this day and age.<\/p>\n

How ’bout we draw the EPA down to pre-Nixon numbers, or we reduce the Education Department to pre-Carter days? Or Health and Human Services Department to the pre-Johnson era? Makes about as much sense to me.<\/p>\n

From Fox News<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Officials told the Times that Hagel’s plan has been endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and protects funding for Special Operations forces and cyberwarfare. It also calls for the Navy to maintain all eleven of its aircraft carriers currently in operation. However, the budget proposal mandates the elimination of the entire fleet of Air Force A-10 attack aircraft, as well as the retiring of the U-2 spy plane, a stalwart of Cold War operations. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good. We should reduce the Joint Chiefs to pre-1940 numbers, too, if they truly think that this is maintaining our defensive posture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ex-PH2 sends us a link to MSN which refers to a New York Times article published … Hagel proposes to shrink Army to pre-Pearl Harbor numbers<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,198],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-big-army"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}