Note that although I was in college, I took no deferrment from the draft. I was as eligible as all others of my age, but I did not volunteer to serve. I guess the instinct for self preservation exceeded the nationalistic brainwashing slightly.

Of course moral is at an all time low and proficiency in anything is lacking. Everything we valued has been attacked, ridiculed and perverted by shear nonsense.

"....and get them in the field." Amen!!! That's
where the rubber meets the road. BT (M-48A2s & M-60s)

Well, he is at least no begoggled by BS and knows what is really up. But I get from him there is a lot of issues hiding in plain sight that are being ignored, or the upper floors are unable to pay attention.

It must be hard to have a son motivated to do great and heroic things only to be bogged down in bureaucracy. The problem is the military only becomes effective in combat because the ass kissing officers get killed and the tough fight on and up the promotion ladder. .

Not the troops fault either, it is the fact the support organizations cannot get their acts coordinated to make it work. The troops just go where they are told and when, then scratch their heads when no one is there.

No, indeed, Infantry is a key, but one thing we used to do well, and forgot, was Combined Arms operations, where artillery, infantry, armor, and air were all coordinated and actually knew what to do. I have heard today it is hard to get all of them to show up on the same day in the same general area.

Exactly. No good politician can resist a good war, or make one if needed.Reminds me of the movie from the 60's where the little country in Europe declared war on the US, just so they could surrender and get reconstruction aid...

Indeed, he seems to nail it, and is pretty much what I have heard as well. War is political violence, and you cannot just go in bad places, and hope the natives will "vote" for you, because when they vote against you, it is with AK47s and RPG/IEDs. The Army top brass has snet a lot of guys to their deaths with wishful thinking. Not unique, Bernard Montgomery (WW2) did that a lot as well...

Indeed it is.

Indeed an excellent point. The hog has proven itself to be one of those one in a hundred designs that just works, and is cheap to fly. Yet business interests keep pushing the politicos on the need to replace it, so they can have another program to milk and overrun. The Navy has been doing the bulk of that lately...

Good for them, testing the hypothesis is the problem though. Also the varied nature of the "enemy" is one of the real problems they face. A whole different set of skill are used in house to house terrorist hunting, versus large unit tank combat. Doesn't help to kill all the terrorists just to get run over by the Russians...

Combined Arms combat. However go look up the AF readiness rates and you will not be so sure. A lot of units are running at 50% now due to parts shortages and personnel shortages. A lot of people are hanging out somewhere's but in units....

Not bad ideas, I liked the way Heinlein handled officers in Starship Troopers. Absolutely the right way. My sone is an E7 Combat Engineer, who says that only 20% of the units that go to practice basic combat skills in CA pass. They have focused on small unit warfare so much in the last 20 years, large unit combat is not a skill anymore. Supposedly they are going to rectify that but estimate 10 years to get all of them retrained.

As a former tanker(M-60's) I am ashamed. But the military is now under Obama an instrument of social change not a fighting force. FIre 20% of the officers and close 10% of the bases and get them in the field. And fix the VA.

Pretty much what this former Army guy thinks.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_se...

Watching the videos, It seems this is far more a personnel test than an equipment test. I suspect an M1 Abrahms can out run and gun any of these diesel clunkers.

"...dumping the A10s." is foolhardy (at best!) It is the best ground support weapon ever. BT

Perhaps, but one unit an army does not make. If one compares the sizes of the armies of the various NATO groups and assuming even a 2:1 kill ratio (not unreasonable for defensive postures), they are still outnumbered by the Soviets if they chose to invade.

And what one forgets in ground maneuvers is that the real battle begins in the sky. Without air superiority, the ground-pounders don't stand a chance. And that is an area where no NATO nation can come close to competing with the USAF.

With a Commander-In-Chief who is in reality a Dismantler-in-Chief it is hard to imagine anyone in the military who is not depressed over their careers.

All the more reason to get out of NATO --- after all, we can't have other showing us up, right? We, not "they," are supposed to be the bullies.

When the new Commander in Chief first spoke to the head of NASA, he changed NASA's main objective to promoting his favorite religion. I have to believe he did something similar for the military.

Note that it was militias (not regular army) that started and fought for our independence. It was farmers and lawyers and shopkeepers who took the fight to the British. There is much to be said with not being trained in fighting skills. As a veteran, there is much to be said about how we train our military. There is such a thing as overtraining and we do it quite regularly. There are some good programs and real world training, such as the SpecOps does is good. However when everyday people best the supposed best the regulars have to offer, it just shows that you don't need to be the best trained, just the best that works together as a team.

What if our guys kill more of the enemy even though they didn't place in this competition what would you say about them?