The largest part of the saving will come from the almost 100K fewer troops that will be in the military starting in the next 2 years...this is just part of that. Instead of having 80K troops permanently stationed in Europe, they will rotate troops that are currently stationed stateside in and out to maintain a presence, but of a much lighter and more mobile nature.

Once the economy picks up for real (if it ever does), that number of troops to be reduced will increase dramatically. The US Army will see the largest number of reductions....unless they finally get rid of the Marines altogether. Which, although a good idea, will never happen.

Standing US military force will drop from around 1.5 million to under 800K eventually. Should drop much further than that based upon defense issues only, but the military also serves as a jobs program and it's damn successful at it...which will mean the standing force will never drop to the number it could based upon security alone, around 400K.

 

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Ptilk why would getting rid of the Marines be a good idea? They seem to be quite effective at their jobs.

 

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Their mission is redundant. They are organized as a fast reaction force delivered by sea very rapidly.

At this time, there are not enough ships in active service to actually deliver more than about half of them, and future cuts already agreed upon will reduce that even more. We spend a TON of money keeping the Marines equipped and trained....and what they are equipped and trained for isn't even possible.

Nothing against Marines, but their mission and reason for existence has been supplanted by changes in the nature of war and technology. The US Army can respond to anywhere in the world just as quickly with the same number of troops as the Marines can these days. It makes no sense (or cents) to have two forces trained and equipped for the exact same mission.

..and then the rest of your post where you explained why the TDY designation wouldn't save that much money, unless I misunderstood your post entirely.

Keeping soldiers overseas is going to be expensive regardless, but this will save DOD a pretty hefty sum at the end of the day. Like I said, drawing down Europe entirely is the better way to go. TDY assignments are extremely hard on families.

 

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Ptilk is spot on here and echoes something many of us have been saying for years; not any marines tho.

The marines perform the same job as the army. Get rid of them. Roll the SEALS and other special ops into the army's green berets and JSOC.
Any units or mos that is critical to the navy or of a special nature to fleet operations gets rolled into.. the navy. Tah dah.

The Marine force as a whole is trained to do assaults that will not take place any longer. There are no more D-Days.

 

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It would take an act of Congress to shut down the Marines and Congress doesn't care about what's efficient.

The way to do it is to merge Marine training with 11B training. There'd be lots of bitching and probably more than a few fights in the barracks, but eventually they'll be perceived as redundant functions.

 

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I can agree about redundancy and efficiency but I think some of you are suggesting it's implementation backassardly.

The marines have to long and strong of a history, and well I guess the army does too fighting injuns and such. But the marines do everything the army does and more. The marines already report under the dept of the navy. You get more bang for the buck disbanding the us army and bumping up the navy (marines) a bit.

Not only do you get rid of the on the ground foot redundancy, you also get rid of an entire war department!

 

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One of the first jobs of the Marines was to fight Mexicans

 

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Mexicans - native Americans...


Whateva

 

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