Obama "Not Commited" To ABM site in Europe.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Of that you will find lots, and lots .. and lots. The current ABM program itself is a hallmark for a lot of things that has gone wrong with military procurement.

In what way? Prove it.

We've gone from having virtually no capability to intercept ICBMs aimed at CONUS to having one, in less than eight years. When you compare it to all the other items in the budget, it's really cheap.

I was referring to this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/washi ... nted=print

October 12, 2008
Insider’s Projects Drained Missile-Defense Millions
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON — They huddled in a quiet corner at the US Airways lounge at Ronald Reagan National Airport, sipping bottomless cups of coffee as they plotted to turn America’s missile defense program into a personal cash machine.

Michael Cantrell, an engineer at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command headquarters in Huntsville, Ala., along with his deputy, Doug Ennis, had lined up millions of dollars from Congress for defense companies. Now, Mr. Cantrell decided, it was time to take a cut.

“The contractors are making a killing,” Mr. Cantrell recalled thinking at the meeting, in 2000. “The lobbyists are getting their fees, and the contractors and lobbyists are writing out campaign checks to the politicians. Everybody is making money here — except us.”

Within months, Mr. Cantrell began getting personal checks from contractors and later returned to the airport with Mr. Ennis to pick up a briefcase stuffed with $75,000. The two men eventually collected more than $1.6 million in kickbacks, through 2007, prompting them to plead guilty this year to corruption charges.

Mr. Cantrell readily acknowledges concocting the crime. But what has drawn little scrutiny are his activities leading up to it. Thanks to important allies in Congress, he extracted nearly $350 million for projects the Pentagon did not want, wasting taxpayer money on what would become dead-end ventures.

Recent scandals involving former Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California, and the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, both now in prison, provided a glimpse into how special interests manipulate the federal government.

Mr. Cantrell’s story, by contrast, pieced together from federal documents and dozens of interviews, is a remarkable account of how a little-known, midlevel Defense Department insider who spent his entire career in Alabama skillfully gamed the system.

Mr. Cantrell worked in a division that was a small part of the national missile defense program. Determined to save his job, he often bypassed his bosses and broke department rules to make his case on Capitol Hill. He enlisted contractors to pitch projects that would keep the dollars flowing and paid lobbyists to ease them through. He cultivated lawmakers, who were eager to send money back home or to favored contractors and did not ask many questions. And when he ran into trouble, he could count on his powerful friends for protection from Pentagon officials who provided little oversight and were afraid of alienating lawmakers.

Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican, for example, chewed out Pentagon officials who opposed a missile range Mr. Cantrell and his contractor allies were seeking to build in Alaska, prompting them to back off, while a staffer for former Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, intervened when the Pentagon threatened to discipline Mr. Cantrell for lobbying, a banned activity for civil servants.

“I could go over to the Hill and put pressure on people above me and get something done,” Mr. Cantrell explained about his success in Washington. “With the Army, as long as the senator is not calling over and complaining, everything is O.K. And the senator will not call over and complain unless the contractor you’re working with does not get his money. So you just have to keep the players happy and it works.”

The national missile defense program has cost the United States more than $110 billion since President Ronald Reagan unveiled his Star Wars plan 25 years ago. Today, the missile defense effort is the Pentagon’s single biggest procurement program.

The Army declined to discuss the Cantrell case, other than to say it had taken steps to try to prevent similar crimes from happening again.

But some current and former Defense Department officials say the exploiting of the system that preceded Mr. Cantrell’s kickback scheme has had a damaging impact, slowing progress toward building a viable missile defense system by diverting money to unnecessary or wasteful endeavors. That pattern of larding up the defense budget with pet projects pushed by lawmakers and lobbyists is a familiar one.

“What they did may have been a scandal,” said Walter E. Braswell, Mr. Ennis’s lawyer, referring to the actions of his client and Mr. Cantrell. “But even more grotesque is the way defense procurement has disintegrated into an incestuous relationship between the military, politicians and contractors.”

Dr. J. Richard Fisher, one of Mr. Cantrell’s former bosses, said: “The system needs to change. But it is not likely to do that. There is just too much inertia — and too much self-interest.”

Getting Around the System

Towering over the highway near the entrance to Huntsville is a replica of the Saturn V rocket, the powerful missile that lifted the first man to the moon.

Created in Huntsville, it is a fitting icon for this once-sleepy cotton mill town, now so dominated by the aerospace industry that it is nicknamed Rocket City. An estimated 18,000 uniformed and civilian federal employees work in the aerospace industry in the Huntsville area today, augmented by about 40,000 others, who work for federal contractors.

Michael Cantrell grew up on a dairy farm nearby, listening to the rumble of rocket test flights. As a young engineer, he became a civilian employee of the Army and quickly impressed his bosses. “Mike moved at the speed of sound,” said Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who briefly headed the missile command.

By 1990, Mr. Cantrell, then 35, took over an experimental program to develop faster, cheaper and lighter missiles that could intercept and knock out enemy missiles flying within the atmosphere. Under the Reagan administration, money was plentiful for such research, but with the fall of the Soviet Union and the arrival of the Clinton administration, Pentagon bosses were forced to make budget cuts.

Like other Army employees, Mr. Cantrell was prohibited from lobbying or even visiting Capitol Hill unless he had permission from his agency’s Congressional liaison, a prohibition intended to block employees from promoting initiatives that Pentagon leaders did not see as a priority.

But General Garner said it was obvious to his managers what they had to do if they did not want their programs — and jobs — eliminated.

“If the money does not end up in the POM and you need it,” he said in an interview, referring to the Program Objective Memorandum, “the only other place you can go to get it is the Congress.”

Soon enough, Army missile program managers started opening what amounted to their own lobbying shops in Washington, according to Mr. Cantrell and his former supervisors.

Mr. Cantrell became a regular on Capitol Hill, both in the halls of Congress and in the bars and restaurants where Hill staffers gather after hours. He set up a makeshift office in the US Airways lounge at Reagan National Airport, where he followed up on pitches for money to lawmakers and hid out from his Defense Department bosses. He identified lobbyists who could prove useful and contractors — many of them campaign donors — with projects that needed nurturing.

With the backing of the New York Congressional delegation, for example, he blocked cuts in financing for a sophisticated wind tunnel in Buffalo, where he promised to test his missile components. With help from then Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, who wanted Army assistance for a “technology corridor” in his district, Mr. Cantrell managed to get millions more for his program. Eventually, a dozen or so lawmakers helped him.

“It was like I was going hunting in Washington,” Mr. Cantrell said. “And I would always come up with money.” One colleague was so impressed with Mr. Cantrell’s record that she gave him a bobblehead doll carrying a briefcase marked with dollar signs.

The Pentagon had objected to Mr. Cantrell’s financing requests, but he was not discouraged. “He kept trying to kill our programs,” Mr. Cantrell said of one supervisor. But “we would go around” and get a lawmaker “to whack him.”

Inspired by his successes, Mr. Cantrell soon embarked on a more ambitious project that would all but guarantee sustained financing.

His proposal, which was based on the premise that Congress would significantly increase annual financing for his experimental missile defense work, involved not just five test launchings, but the construction of a new launching site on a remote Alaskan island and the lease of a mothballed Navy helicopter carrier, which would be used to send the simulated attack missile.

The Launching Project

It was easy to find willing partners.

The program’s main contractors, including the defense giant Lockheed Martin, prepared presentations for Congress making the case for an extra $25 million to $50 million a year for the project.

Officials in Alaska, who had been seeking money for a spaceport on Kodiak Island to launch commercial satellites, eagerly chimed in. And nearly a dozen lawmakers also did their part, Mr. Cantrell said, including Senator Stevens of Alaska; Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama; Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine; and Representative C. W. Bill Young, Republican of Florida, all members of the Appropriations or Armed Services committees with missile defense contractors in their districts.

But the military already had rocket launching sites around the globe, and Gen. Lester L. Lyles of the Air Force, who then ran the missile defense program, had no intention of spending money on another one.

General Lyles and his deputy, Rear Adm. Richard D. West of the Navy, were particularly incensed when they learned of the plans to lease the helicopter carrier, the Tripoli, and spend several million dollars renovating it.

Summoned to Washington in 1997 to explain the project, Mr. Cantrell offered little information. That only further infuriated his bosses.

“Who in the hell is in charge of this program?” Admiral West finally demanded in an exchange both men recall.

Mr. Cantrell was ordered to remove his experimental equipment from the planned launching. But the money kept coming. Mr. Stevens’s office had called to insist that the Kodiak project proceed, Admiral West and Lt. Gen. Edward G. Anderson, then the head of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said in interviews.

“I got hammered pretty hard,” Admiral West recalled. The military men backed off, and the construction at Kodiak continued.

Mr. Cantrell said he knew that building a new launching facility was wasteful. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “The economics of it, they just don’t work.”

But he did not care.

“I went up there to get the money,” Mr. Cantrell said of his dealings on Capitol Hill. “And we got what we needed.”

Mr. Cantrell and his deputy, Mr. Ennis, visited Kodiak Island on the afternoon of the inaugural test launching in November 1998. The Air Force had substituted other equipment for Mr. Cantrell’s payload.

The two men, armed with a cooler filled with Miller Lite beer, watched the launching from a trailer, emerging just in time to see the missile burn an orange streak into the sky. They had hidden out to avoid any local newspaper reporters who might discover that Mr. Cantrell’s missile parts — the justification for millions of dollars in spending — were not even being tested. “There is no way we can explain this,” Mr. Cantrell remembered telling Mr. Ennis.

Fearless

The hand that grabbed Mr. Cantrell by the shoulder startled him.

It was General Lyles, who happened to be on Capitol Hill when he spotted Mr. Cantrell outside Mr. Lott’s office. It was February 1998, even before the dispute over the Alaska project had played out. But the general said he immediately suspected Mr. Cantrell was up to no good.

“Are you over here lobbying?” General Lyles asked in an exchange the two men recalled.

Mr. Cantrell had been working with Mr. Lott, then Senate majority leader, for several years. The lawmaker included several million dollars in the defense budget for an acoustics research center in his home state, and Mr. Cantrell made sure it went to the intended recipients: the University of Mississippi in Oxford and a Huntsville defense contractor that had a branch office in Oxford. In turn, Mr. Lott’s office helped get extra financing — $25 million or so every year — for Mr. Cantrell’s program.

It was an arrangement that Mr. Cantrell did not want to discuss with General Lyles. While he did not consider himself to have been lobbying that day, he readily acknowledges that he often did.

“I just mumbled a lot,” he recalled of his response to the general.

By then, Mr. Cantrell felt confident that he could find his way out of any trouble with the help of his many friends in Washington. Several were lobbyists or consultants working on his behalf; he had /placed them with friendly contractors, allowing them to bill the government for the costs, even though federal law prohibits paying any expenses associated with lobbying.

For example, Mr. Cantrell arranged for James Longley, a former Republican congressman from Maine who started his own consulting firm, to be hired as an employee by Computer Systems Technology, a missile defense contractor.

“The man could put ‘honorable’ in front of his name and go places with that,” Mr. Cantrell explained, saying that Mr. Longley introduced him to lawmakers and appealed to senior Pentagon officials to protect Mr. Cantrell’s program.

Mr. Longley, in an interview, insisted that he never sought money from Congress, but simply provided strategic advice to Mr. Cantrell.

But several people, including Dr. Fisher, one of Mr. Cantrell’s bosses, thought the arrangement improper.

“Here is an ex-congressman out there promoting Mike’s programs,” Dr. Fisher said. “He can call himself what he wants, but he is basically a lobbyist.”

The incident with General Lyles prompted a formal investigation into Mr. Cantrell’s activities that same year.

But Mr. Cantrell got Mr. Longley to call Army officials. Then Mr. Lott’s office requested that the case be closed, Mr. Cantrell said. Eric Womble, a former aide to Mr. Lott, said he could not remember taking such a step, but added that it would not have been surprising.

“Senator Lott’s staff protects people who are trying to help us and help the nation,” Mr. Womble said.

Soon, the investigation of Mr. Cantrell came to a close. He got only an oral warning from his boss.

That episode would embolden Mr. Cantrell. On several occasions, he would again be caught violating Pentagon rules and each time escape with nothing more than a reprimand.

“If you have the Senate majority leader’s office calling over to get you out of trouble, you can’t help but get a little cocky,” Mr. Cantrell said.

The Fallout

From the US Airways club, Mr. Cantrell could see the symphony of the arriving and departing planes, the Potomac River and off in the distance, the Capitol dome.

One day in 2000, Mr. Cantrell met in the airport lounge with Mr. Ennis, his deputy, and a Maine contractor to figure out how to pocket some of the government’s money.

There were easy ways to cheat. The prototype missile nose cone and heat shields that the Army had paid the Maine company to design for the Alaska tests. Why not hire the business to pretend to design them again? Mr. Cantrell asked.

The ballute — an odd cross between a balloon and a parachute — had been rejected by experts as a tool to strike an enemy missile. But why not pay the Maine company to develop them anyway? Mr. Cantrell suggested.

He could pull off such shenanigans because, by then, he had an extraordinary degree of independence. Mr. Cantrell’s experimental missile program, which had cost nearly $250 million, was about to be canceled. No working missile system had been built — and almost none of the components had ended up being tested in real launchings as planned. The effort had produced some benefits for the players involved: Congress sent an annual allotment of extra money to the Alaska launching site now totaling more than $40 million, and one of the contractors that had worked with Mr. Cantrell initially to pitch the space port, Aero Thermo Technology, had secured a no-bid federal contract to provide launching services.

Now Mr. Cantrell was on to another assignment overseeing missile defense research in Huntsville, and through his friends on the Hill, he was once again getting money for projects that the Pentagon did not want.

Mr. Cantrell, who by now was helping to oversee 160 or so contractors and managing a $120 million a year contracting budget, said he knew that if he only requested a few million dollars at a time for his scheme, there would be little scrutiny of his requests or demands that he prove that the work was actually done.

For example, the missile nose cones and other parts now made round trips from Huntsville to Maine with little or no change. Mr. Cantrell or his deputy simply marked off the work as complete, and that was the end of it.

For nearly six years, from 2001 to 2007, the men collected kickbacks from contractors. During one visit to the US Airways Club, Mr. Ennis picked up a briefcase stuffed with $75,000 in cash, according to federal court records. Mr. Cantrell also got checks, ranging from $5,000 to $60,000, once or twice a month, court records show.

The Maine contractor, Maurice H. Subilia, is under investigation; his lawyer, Toby Dilworth, a former federal prosecutor, declined to comment. Dennis A. Darling, a Florida contractor who got government research grants and then divvied them up with Mr. Cantrell, was indicted last month on a charge of paying Mr. Cantrell $400,000 in bribes from 2005 to 2007.

With his new wealth, Mr. Cantrell, now 52, built himself a $1.25 million home in an exclusive Huntsville neighborhood called the Ledges.

Mr. Cantrell, who received the bulk of the kickbacks, acknowledges his crime but he ticks off the failings of the system that he exploited: lawmakers who are eager to please contractors and campaign donors; unwillingness by the Army to push back against members of Congress whose agendas were at odds with those of the military; and little scrutiny.

“We just paid for meaningless work,” he said. “And there was so little oversight that no one noticed.”

Admiral West, the former deputy director of the Pentagon missile defense program, faults Mr. Cantrell for wrongdoing, but says there were multiple missed opportunities to investigate his activities.

“The blame needs to go around widely here,” he said. “Congress should know better; the contractors, too.”

Mr. Cantrell, who is awaiting sentencing on conspiracy and bribery charges, now spends his days sitting in the kitchen of his father-in-law’s house; his dream home was seized by the federal government.

On top of the kitchen table, next to a King James Version of the Bible and bottle of Extra Strength Excedrin, is a stack of books on how to master poker. Mr. Cantrell has reduced them to mathematical formulas pinned onto a bulletin board in front of a computer terminal, where he plays Internet poker for hours at a time. Even now, he is trying to beat the system.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 15, 2008
Because of a transcription error, an article on Sunday about corruption involving contracts for Army missile defense programs misstated a word in a quotation from Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who briefly headed the missile command. In an interview, describing how Army officials would seek Congressional approval for money that was not contained in the military’s budget request, General Garner used the acronym POM, referring to the Program Objective Memorandum, an internal budget document. He said, “If the money does not end up in the POM and you need it, the only other place you can get it is the Congress.” He did not say, “if the money does not end up in the palm.”

[Count Chocula]

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you

Off the top of my head, Iraq expenditures head the list. After that, you'd have DoD salaries & benefits, the rest of the F-22 procurement program, the F-35 ramp-up to production, acquisition of a new AF tanker, the Navy's next gen surface warfare vessels, ABM system prototypes, ammunition purchases, small arms upgrades, and so on. Unless someone beats me to it, I'll dig for budget numbers tomorrow after work.

[Medic]

But you could make that argument about any branch of any service you wanted to. Why let any aviation assets exist outside the Air Force, for example?

Great example. A-10's are ideally suited to Army Command and arguably should be, noting the number of hot-dogging fragging incidents Army-insulated pilots commit. Inversely, Strategic Air Command, a PART of the-then newly independent United States Air Force of 1948, became THE instrument of destruction in the US strategic arsenal and the world in the 1950's, maintaining a huge bomber fleet and a budding missile arsenal. Sharing the slice of the DoD budget was as big a battle then, as now, with missiles and subs vying against bombers for funding in the deterrence mission. The Army was survived practically, by being given continental missile defense against aircraft and ballistic missiles.

but that ideal world doesn't exist.

And that's all we're talking about really, I acknowledged that in my post backhandedly.

A Marine Corps, while not entirely superfluous in our current DoD, in the context of cutting fat from a DoD so it could capitalize on strategic strength and not conventional strength of arms as I understand what we are talking about, is not parsimonious, either. Not with an Army capable of such operations extant side-by-side.

They do all things on their own, even adviser training, so they bring more experience on identical missions, which can be exchanged below doctrine-level, between leaders. That's a good thing, in that more lessons learned from more angles broadens everyone's knowledge, so long as it's shared.

Finally...how much money would you save? How many bases could you actually close? I understand you'd clip some of the top ranking stuff, but the units and their infrastructure would presumably stay. Equally the Army keeps most of its major formations in separate bases. In the end I don't think you'd save that much money, because the whole premise of IP's initial comment was that USMC as a whole would get the arse.

Uniforms, weapons, training would all change and be axed. "Marines," as they exist in our more-ideal, or simply more economic military, would join the Army, do Army basic as infantrymen, and would either be based in a bog-standard infantry unit and later as a matter of career progression, eventually qualify as airborne, or air assault, or marine, and undergo the specific schooling at appropriate Army institutions. The Army has it's own "drown-proofing" classes and training and these could be adopted in any new "Marine" school. I say again: doctrine exists and you could expand existing Army bases. Of course, the mere cost of ENACTING these changes, right now, costs money obviously and would not clearly be a money saver. We're talking ideals at this point because historical inertia's diverged the best solutions from the most likely ones, politically.

2. That's not the case as far as I know; the Marines still believe in going over the beach via the EFVs and LCAC, with all the armour that brings along. They also have organic fixed-wing support, which the 101st would not, but I suppose that could be changed.

TBH I think that says more about the 101st though. Why does it exist again? Anyone can get in and out of a helicopter, as was demonstrated in Vietnam.

If anyone can get on a helicopter, what's it matter if it's Army or Marine? We're talking afterall parsimonious funding of capabilities. The Army maintains a broader set of capabilities and adding, or more accurately, resurrecting this one while removing the USMC branch is more parsimonious.

The Army's lack of fixed-wing air support under it's own roof is that conspicuous, eh? You know the answer as to WHY this state of affairs, exists, right? I say again, A-10 is something ideally suited to Army operation. The Army will never need a full-blown F-16 or F-35 fighter bomber with "gold-plated" junk like avionics and radar for air combat, it needs to be only as capable as the A-10, and could stand to be even less; radial or piston engined even. An A-4 is another good example. USAF would scream at this encroachment in their territory though, and I believe does whenever it rears it's ugly (to them) head.

As far as going over the beach with LCAC's: put M2 Bradley's in them, with modest upgrades to corrosion resistance and waterproofing and dump the EFV. The whole EFV program's been in development since the 1980's anyway and is bloated physically and financially. It's just a sterling example of an independent branch's ability to siphon off funds out of proportion to their benefit. V-22 as well. (the Army for it's part, can claim Stryker in this company)

Besides, this sort of storming-the-beaches scenarios increasingly represents a vanishingly small percentage of actually likely operations and at the numbers the Marines operate in, quite likely to sustain ridiculous casualties. Any beachhead actually needing storming under fire quite likely needs storming by substantial forces and the longer-preparation we're talking, the less relevant "Marines" should sound to you, since rapid-response is half their game.

3. Again...those 'very expensive assault ships' bring heavy armor and heavy weaponry to the conflict, something that The 82nd simply cannot do.

You know there once existed Light Tank Battalion's operating Sheridan's? And that there should be now M8 Bufords, like the Sheridan, air-deployable but killed in favor of Stryker-swarm which is not air-deployable? The acquisition process, corruption, conflict of interest and random bullfuckery by the wrong people have given us a far-less-than-can-be streamlined US Army, and doesn't represent the most capability for the least price.

At the end of the day, the Army used to be so MUCH larger than it is now. We've bloodletted entirely amphibious operations to USMC, huge swatches of fixed-wing operations to USAF and a bevy of support jobs to DA civilian contractors. We won a world war with the old model, so there's evidence it'll meet contingencies across the the spectrum and theaters of operations. If we're trying to be as stingy as possible, an independent Air Force can be worked around but certain fixed wing assets simply need to be under Army control, like Predator and a close-support aircraft. USMC's certainly demonstrated the value of pilots with a ground-pounder's mindset in Vietnam. The Army can't also enjoy it thanks to USAF.

[thejester]

Great example. A-10's are ideally suited to Army Command and arguably should be, noting the number of hot-dogging fragging incidents Army-insulated pilots commit.

I don't think you could seriously argue that friendly fire casualties are the result of A-10 pilots being culturally insensitive to the Army. They occur almost universally because of communication fuck-ups.

Uniforms, weapons, training would all change and be axed. "Marines," as they exist in our more-ideal, or simply more economic military, would join the Army, do Army basic as infantrymen, and would either be based in a bog-standard infantry unit and later as a matter of career progression, eventually qualify as airborne, or air assault, or marine, and undergo the specific schooling at appropriate Army institutions. The Army has it's own "drown-proofing" classes and training and these could be adopted in any new "Marine" school. I say again: doctrine exists and you could expand existing Army bases. Of course, the mere cost of ENACTING these changes, right now, costs money obviously and would not clearly be a money saver. We're talking ideals at this point because historical inertia's diverged the best solutions from the most likely ones, politically.

Weapons? How many weapons does the USMC actually use that are different from the Army? I can think of an absolute handful. Similarly...if you have to expand the base, how much money are you going to end up saving? All of this stuff sounds like pennies a piece and whilst it might sound impressive to the ear, as a percentage of the DoD's budget it must be pretty small.

If anyone can get on a helicopter, what's it matter if it's Army or Marine? We're talking afterall parsimonious funding of capabilities. The Army maintains a broader set of capabilities and adding, or more accurately, resurrecting this one while removing the USMC branch is more parsimonious.

What does it matter if it's in a guy whose shoulder patch says 'Air Assault' or one who says 'Light Infantry'? The point being that the US Army sees fit to maintain a specialist division for a mission that anyone can do.

The Army's lack of fixed-wing air support under it's own roof is that conspicuous, eh? You know the answer as to WHY this state of affairs, exists, right? I say again, A-10 is something ideally suited to Army operation. The Army will never need a full-blown F-16 or F-35 fighter bomber with "gold-plated" junk like avionics and radar for air combat, it needs to be only as capable as the A-10, and could stand to be even less; radial or piston engined even. An A-4 is another good example. USAF would scream at this encroachment in their territory though, and I believe does whenever it rears it's ugly (to them) head.

I know why it exists; but even if the Army were to get its own planes, they presumably would not be able to fly from LHD/LHAs like the USMCs can. The overall point being that the Marine units are integrated combined-arms forces at every level which would deploy more firepower than their Army equivalents.

As far as going over the beach with LCAC's: put M2 Bradley's in them, with modest upgrades to corrosion resistance and waterproofing and dump the EFV. The whole EFV program's been in development since the 1980's anyway and is bloated physically and financially. It's just a sterling example of an independent branch's ability to siphon off funds out of proportion to their benefit. V-22 as well. (the Army for it's part, can claim Stryker in this company)

There aren't enough LCACs, or space in well-decks, for that to work.

Besides, this sort of storming-the-beaches scenarios increasingly represents a vanishingly small percentage of actually likely operations and at the numbers the Marines operate in, quite likely to sustain ridiculous casualties. Any beachhead actually needing storming under fire quite likely needs storming by substantial forces and the longer-preparation we're talking, the less relevant "Marines" should sound to you, since rapid-response is half their game.

You don't need to storm the beach under fire, you just need to get stuff onto them as quickly as possible. The idea being that in relatively short order the USMC can have a battalion sized force with integrated armour and artillery backed by air support on the ground relatively quickly, with the ships out of harms way.

You know there once existed Light Tank Battalion's operating Sheridan's? And that there should be now M8 Bufords, like the Sheridan, air-deployable but killed in favor of Stryker-swarm which is not air-deployable? The acquisition process, corruption, conflict of interest and random bullfuckery by the wrong people have given us a far-less-than-can-be streamlined US Army, and doesn't represent the most capability for the least price.

Yeah I do, but they:

a) don't exist anymore

and

b) do not remotely fill the description of 'heavy armour'. The Sheridan in particular was just fucking useless...but really, an MEU can deploy 4 M1A1s and up to 30 AFVs (LAVs and AAVs). How much of AMC's heavy lift capacity would it take to deliver that in Bufords?

At the end of the day, the Army used to be so MUCH larger than it is now. We've bloodletted entirely amphibious operations to USMC, huge swatches of fixed-wing operations to USAF and a bevy of support jobs to DA civilian contractors. We won a world war with the old model, so there's evidence it'll meet contingencies across the the spectrum and theaters of operations. If we're trying to be as stingy as possible, an independent Air Force can be worked around but certain fixed wing assets simply need to be under Army control, like Predator and a close-support aircraft. USMC's certainly demonstrated the value of pilots with a ground-pounder's mindset in Vietnam. The Army can't also enjoy it thanks to USAF.

You won a world war with an all-but independent air force (than, somewhat ironically, had no time for CAS until the realities of war pressed in) and an independent USMC. Old model indeed.

[Medic]

Great example. A-10's are ideally suited to Army Command and arguably should be, noting the number of hot-dogging fragging incidents Army-insulated pilots commit.

I don't think you could seriously argue that friendly fire casualties are the result of A-10 pilots being culturally insensitive to the Army. They occur almost universally because of communication fuck-ups.

That was clearly the throwaway half of the argument. The Army deserves to have these assets under it's roof. To it's specifications as well.

Uniforms, weapons, training would all change and be axed. "Marines," as they exist in our more-ideal, or simply more economic military, would join the Army, do Army basic as infantrymen, and would either be based in a bog-standard infantry unit and later as a matter of career progression, eventually qualify as airborne, or air assault, or marine, and undergo the specific schooling at appropriate Army institutions. The Army has it's own "drown-proofing" classes and training and these could be adopted in any new "Marine" school. I say again: doctrine exists and you could expand existing Army bases. Of course, the mere cost of ENACTING these changes, right now, costs money obviously and would not clearly be a money saver. We're talking ideals at this point because historical inertia's diverged the best solutions from the most likely ones, politically.

Weapons? How many weapons does the USMC actually use that are different from the Army? I can think of an absolute handful. Similarly...if you have to expand the base, how much money are you going to end up saving? All of this stuff sounds like pennies a piece and whilst it might sound impressive to the ear, as a percentage of the DoD's budget it must be pretty small.

If "Marine" is just another Army MOS or specialty, it means they can be trained under Army posts, and based there as well. It means axing Lejune and Pendleton, maybe more, maybe less. The simple point is that you don't need an entire branch to teach such a specialty.

If anyone can get on a helicopter, what's it matter if it's Army or Marine? We're talking afterall parsimonious funding of capabilities. The Army maintains a broader set of capabilities and adding, or more accurately, resurrecting this one while removing the USMC branch is more parsimonious.

What does it matter if it's in a guy whose shoulder patch says 'Air Assault' or one who says 'Light Infantry'? The point being that the US Army sees fit to maintain a specialist division for a mission that anyone can do.

What does it matter? A handful of weeks of training in air assault, on top of coming into the Army having completed Advanced Individual Training at Ft. Benning. It's a VERY small amount of icing on top of cookie-cutter lowest-level infantry training, to operate out of helicopters. In fact, 10 days, open to men and women. A quick wiki notes about the Army's air assault division: "every Marine is trained in basic air assault operations." Literally anyone that can walk can step out the back ramp of a helicopter but it's only 10 days, Army training, to add in all the knowledge of fast-roping, rappelling and knots.

It is a distortion to call this a "specialist" division when there's nothing particularly rigorous or challenging about it. In other words? Units of it's type can be expanded, dare I invoke the word, "surged."

The US Army takes in Sailors and Airmen that have hardly seen or used and sometimes never touched an M4 or M9 and molds them into adviser units sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to train those countries military's, basically, in 90 days. There exists no insurmountable doctrinal, technical or bureaucratic hurdle in putting together more divisions such as the 101st, save the fact that it's a mission the USMC has carved out as their own and for the Army it represents a luxury or secondary capability, complementary to it's major priorities of sustained full-spectrum ground combat.

The Army's lack of fixed-wing air support under it's own roof is that conspicuous, eh? You know the answer as to WHY this state of affairs, exists, right? I say again, A-10 is something ideally suited to Army operation. The Army will never need a full-blown F-16 or F-35 fighter bomber with "gold-plated" junk like avionics and radar for air combat, it needs to be only as capable as the A-10, and could stand to be even less; radial or piston engined even. An A-4 is another good example. USAF would scream at this encroachment in their territory though, and I believe does whenever it rears it's ugly (to them) head.

I know why it exists; but even if the Army were to get its own planes, they presumably would not be able to fly from LHD/LHAs like the USMCs can. The overall point being that the Marine units are integrated combined-arms forces at every level which would deploy more firepower than their Army equivalents.

Along with Shep, I simply don't understand the obsession with hover jets of such meager payload which MUST be capable of VTOL. I don't see anything wrong with relying on the Navy fixed wing assets WRT amphibious operations operating out of LHD/LHA type ships. It may lessen one particular strength of putting as much firepower into one branch's hands as possible but that's precisely an argument against such a small, dedicated branches. Instead of a robust capability lacking perhaps, one of a bevy of ingredients which would make it perfect you have a good-enough solution bridged by inter-service operations. That's where planning and co-ordination come into play. Is it really so important you have fixed wing, rotary wing, tilt-rotor, and amphibious APC all under one branch, operating different types of vehicles than all would-be Army equivalents? (sans Harriers for Hornets or JSF's, replace cobras with Apaches, replace Osprey with Chinook, Blackhawk or other, and EFV with LCAC's / M2's)

As far as going over the beach with LCAC's: put M2 Bradley's in them, with modest upgrades to corrosion resistance and waterproofing and dump the EFV. The whole EFV program's been in development since the 1980's anyway and is bloated physically and financially. It's just a sterling example of an independent branch's ability to siphon off funds out of proportion to their benefit. V-22 as well. (the Army for it's part, can claim Stryker in this company)

There aren't enough LCACs, or space in well-decks, for that to work.

Build more LCAC's. Between no more V-22, EFV, Super Cobra, or Harrier you'll save billions which can be reinvested appropriately. Again back to "ideal world" -- without a 4-star pushing these for his service, you save untold billions in duplicating equivalent capabilities which can be adapted to maritime and amphibious operations. It might well kill one of three variants of the F-35 to boot, Britain and their possible use of same variant be damned.

You know there once existed Light Tank Battalion's operating Sheridan's? And that there should be now M8 Bufords, like the Sheridan, air-deployable but killed in favor of Stryker-swarm which is not air-deployable? The acquisition process, corruption, conflict of interest and random bullfuckery by the wrong people have given us a far-less-than-can-be streamlined US Army, and doesn't represent the most capability for the least price.

Yeah I do, but they:

a) don't exist anymore

and

b) do not remotely fill the description of 'heavy armour'. The Sheridan in particular was just fucking useless...but really, an MEU can deploy 4 M1A1s and up to 30 AFVs (LAVs and AAVs). How much of AMC's heavy lift capacity would it take to deliver that in Bufords? At it's base armor, it's C-130 deployable. It's level 3 protection, taking up to 25 tons and 30mm protection, 3 a piece can be transported off of C-17's, notable since they can operate off hasty field landing strips. Of course, if we can move stuff by landing strip, even hasty ones, we may as well use Army M1's, that's 2 C-17 sorties a piece. M1's can and have been moved in theater in Northern Iraq 2003 by C-17's, along with Humvees, Bradley's, APC's, troops and expendables to operate. We sort've had to do that since Turkey obstinately wouldn't let our tanks roll down Ankara.

Specifically...

The U.S. Transportation Command was able to allocate 17 C-17s for the initial airborne assault, along with the accompanying heavy drop package, and 12 C-17s per day to air land the remainder of the brigade's soldiers and equipment. With shorter turn-around times because of the brigade's location in Europe, the Air Force was able to move the brigade task force of 2,200 soldiers and almost 400 pieces of rolling stock in only 96 hours. This remarkable feat was accomplished with a total of 62 sorties of C-17 aircraft flown from Aviano to Bashur, led by the 62nd Air Wing from McChord Air Force Base.

M8's might still be preferable if all that's needed is A tank and fuel consumption is a factor.

At the end of the day, the Army used to be so MUCH larger than it is now. We've bloodletted entirely amphibious operations to USMC, huge swatches of fixed-wing operations to USAF and a bevy of support jobs to DA civilian contractors. We won a world war with the old model, so there's evidence it'll meet contingencies across the the spectrum and theaters of operations. If we're trying to be as stingy as possible, an independent Air Force can be worked around but certain fixed wing assets simply need to be under Army control, like Predator and a close-support aircraft. USMC's certainly demonstrated the value of pilots with a ground-pounder's mindset in Vietnam. The Army can't also enjoy it thanks to USAF.

You won a world war with an all-but independent air force (than, somewhat ironically, had no time for CAS until the realities of war pressed in) and an independent USMC. Old model indeed.

[/quote]All-but independent. They still usurped huge portions of the DoD budget in the 50's, though partly due to historical / strategic fluke. As for an independent USMC in WWII... I suppose you've missed the litany of threads detailing Army amphibious operations in WWII. You don't want that can of worms rehashed. It isn't in your favor.

[Medic]

Quote tags completely fucked in the middle and near the end, uh, you'll have to wade through that.

[Count Chocula]

TheJester wrote:

You won a world war with an all-but independent air force (than, somewhat ironically, had no time for CAS until the realities of war pressed in) and an independent USMC. Old model indeed.

Actually, and I'm presuming you mean WWII, land-based aircraft were in Army hands, and until 1947 the now-separate branch was called the Army Air Force. Army generals ordered the fighters and bombers into battle, and fighters were used extensively for ground support. The D-Day invasion is a good example of that. Ground support was not practiced extensively in the first years of the war, for a good reason: the Allies did not have air superiority, which is absolutely vital if you're going to use aircraft for ground support. It took a few years to grind down the Luftwaffe to a point where CAS was possible with an acceptable pilot loss rate.

[Medic]

As for an independent USMC in WWII... I suppose you've missed the litany of threads detailing Army amphibious operations in WWII. You don't want that can of worms rehashed. It isn't in your favor.

To be specific however, the US Army pulled off more and greater landings all over WWII. Starting with Torch, and ratcheting up to Italy, where they faced major German counterattacks at Anzio, pulled off the greatest amphibious operation in history at Normandy, insanely took Point Du Hoc (insane because the Ranger Regiment(s?) that took part were entirely decimated, by it), and pulled off a sting of operations in the Pacific, most notably in the Philippines, the largest ground campaign of that theater of operations. You know that little historical soundbite by McCarthur that he would return? He did, and it was the US Army attacking not some podunk, backwater of 10 square miles, but a major landmass where they had to fight inland against major Japanese forces numbering into 6 digits. The Army pulled off the very large and small -- combined amphibious and airborne units assaulted the island of Corregidor, wiping out resistance there as well.

[Count Chocula]

Google-Fu turned up immediate results for the DoD's budget, but paint me blue and suck on a boar's tit if it isn't an overwhelming amount of info!

For the interested, here's the link.

[Medic]

You know, that begs the question: how does the military spending actually break down? In other words, where is the bulk of the money going?

Going off Count Chocula's link... the most brief, useful page is the 53rd page in the report ("53" is the number on the report; I can't see the number on the file cause I don't know my free-pdf viewer program very well but it's probably 70 some, accounting for the table of contents)

The budget authority in FY2007:
$634.8 billion total
* $62.6 billion Civilian workforce
* $140 billion Military Personnel & Benefits or %22 of the total
* $227.7 billion "Strategic Modernization" or procurement and research and development of new weapons and systems or %35.9
* $204.6 billion Operations & Maintenance or %32.2

Operations for FY07 is so high because it represents the bulk of Bush's Surge. Total budget authority drops from the FY07 $634.8b figure to $581.7b (08) and $518.3b (09) respectively. Operations in FY08 drops to $176b and in FY09 to $127.8b.

Even more specifically for FY2007, out of $636B in a different table (close enough to 634 that I'm not worried about it; all the different tables seem to be computated in unique ways)
* $10B Strategic Forces
* $276.4B General Purpose Forces
* $78.4B Command, Control, Communications, Intel & Space
* $20.7B "Mobility Forces" << I think, Transportation Command, or ships and freight-hauling transports?
* $41.5B Guard & Reserve Forces
* $57.5B Research & Development
* $27B Central Supply & Management
* $74.3B Training Medical & Other
* $21.5B Administrative and Assoc(iation?)
* $17.8B Support of Other Nations
* $11.5B Special Operations Forces
* Undistributed money: $644 million

* the 634 figure doesn't cover the VA, that's separate from DoD funding at the congressional level. The total budget authority is about %22 of the Federal budget, and the single largest item, with the other ones being interest, medical, Medicaid, etc. BTW, "energy" in the federal budget is about %4.


Finally, looking at funding, BY SERVICE, essentially backs up %100 what Stuart, Shep, et. al. say WRT a military, on balance, biasing strategic strength. Biasing a military towards strategic overmatch at the expense of an Army saves money. In constant dollars, I'll give Army, Air Force, Navy, and Total in billions, and let that speak for itself -- I'm choosing milestone years (fiscal):

*1948 "Bottom of the Barrel"
Army 56 Navy 58 USAF 39 Total 156 (they don't add up because I'm leaving out "Defense-Wide)

* 1952 Peak Korean War
Army 171 Navy 118 Air Force 138 Total 432 (it's not in the 500 range like you say earlier for FY52 because this table only adds up stuff by service)

* 1956-1960 The military as it existed before the slide into "Flexible Response," consistently looks like:
Army 97 Navy 109 USAF 160 Total 371

* 1968 Peak Vietnam involvement
Army 170 (!) Navy 152 (!) USAF 175 Total 524
Seriously look at the increases over Eisenhower's military. The modest increase in USAF, btw, is likely explained by a surge in tactical aviation assets.

* 1976 Bottom-Out after Vietnam (lowest before it goes up again)
Army 88 Navy 113 USAF 106 Total 349

* 1986-89 Sustained high's during Reagan Build-Up
Army 141 Navy 171 USAF 169 Total 510

* 1998 Bottom-Out under Clinton
Army 89 Navy 106 USAF 106 Total 351 (at this point, "Defense-Wide" is 49; in the 50's this figure in billions never rose over $10b, throughout the 60's it got into the 20's, and continued to rise in proportion through history. I'm not sure of the relevance of this)

* 2007 The Surge
Army 188! Navy 146 USAF 142 Total 558 (Defense-Wide: 80)

The ebb and flow, peak and plunge in TOTAL funding directly corresponds to 1) modernization cycles and 2) Army and Marine end-strength, when you back-check the data of funding and manpower. Want to shrink the military? The much-maligned "massive retaliation" is not a bad start. It's about as costly as Clinton's military. (look at bolded above) I remember someone around here impugned the idea that building a military based on capability, as in, if we have a military that can't intervene with major ground forces, then it won't intervene with ground forces, was a shitty idea. I'll take that shitty idea over the legacy of Flexible Response any day of the week.

[Medic]

* 1952 Peak Korean War
Army 171 Navy 118 Air Force 138 Total 432 (it's not in the 500 range like you say earlier for FY52 because this table only adds up stuff by service)

Forgot to point out, $636 billion budget authority in FY2007 is higher than Reagan's build-up, peak-involvement in Vietnam, it's actually peak involvement in Korea, at $608B budget authority, which comes closest. Constant dollars. This is the most money we've thrown into the DoD at any time after WWII in other words. Now it's not all wasted, modernization of a LOT of systems is concurrent with this war, but there's a lot of money which has been either thrown away (all the money that went into Crusader, Commanche, and other programs, for example, which ultimately got killed, wasting all the money) or pissed away for arguable pieces-of-shit, of limited utility and high price. Stryker, the Little Crappy Ship, Future Crap Spreader, the V-22 and Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, hell, even F-35, if the price maintains it's upward hike. We might get a plane inferior in almost every way (but bomb bay) for %80 of the cost of a full-blown, supercruising air-superiority aircraft. The GREAT selling point of the F-35 was it's low-cost stealth, and that's going... going... almost gone.

[Guardsman Bass]

So, in other words, if we shrank the army considerably (is this just in terms of personnel, or does it extend to modernization and maintenance of stock - I think Stuart mentioned that you can't simply churn a bunch of the equipment out in 1-3 years like you used to be able to do back in World War 2), and shifted the military over to more of a strategic service with a navy and airforce attached (according to what you provided, the Navy is smaller than it's been since 1956), we could save tons of money?

Sounds like a decent idea, although you'd basically be turning your back on nearly all peacekeeping operations save things like the 2004 Tsunami aid and some air/naval support (like "no fly zones").

[Guardsman Bass]

Err, eliminate that "Navy is smaller than its been since 1956".

[K. A. Pital]

What kind of peacekeeping operations of the US haven't been a failure in the recent years? What kind of peacekeeping operations required the US to be there and were absolutely impossible to pull of with other forces? I don't think we are losing much. I don't think even the United States loses much from absolving from peackeeping operations which have a rather questionable result any way you do it (like the Kosovo peacekeeping operation, for example).

[Medic]

So, in other words, if we shrank the army considerably (is this just in terms of personnel, or does it extend to modernization and maintenance of stock - I think Stuart mentioned that you can't simply churn a bunch of the equipment out in 1-3 years like you used to be able to do back in World War 2), and shifted the military over to more of a strategic service with a navy and airforce attached, we could save tons of money?

Sounds like a decent idea, although you'd basically be turning your back on nearly all peacekeeping operations save things like the 2004 Tsunami aid and some air/naval support (like "no fly zones").

It's a 3-headed monster. A bigger Army increases costs in 3 areas you see clearly in the budget: 1) personnel, 2) operations and maintenance and 3) procurement. RDT&E (T&E means test and evaluation IIRC; you should know what R&D is) is only significant, proportionally, when the Army itself is very small. We'll look at 3 years, the aforementioned funding items for the Army in those years in addition to the total and in constant dollars.

The 1st year is 1961, before the Kennedy / Vietnam effect kicks in
* $48.6B for personnel
* $28.9B for operations and maintenance
* $10.3B for procurement
* $7.8B for R&DTE

All of the above for a whopping total of $97 billion.

The 2nd year is 1969, when land wars in Asia were 1st in-vogue
* $75.2B for personnel -- actually not a very large increase -- pay and benefits really sucked back then though)
* $48.9B for operations and maintenance -- again; not terribly much greater. Remember though: we are before the advent of smart weapons)
* $31.8B for procurement -- or a tippling from Eisenhower's baseline
* $8.8B for R&DTE -- again, we're still talking easy-to-make cheap shit. We're before Chobham armor and other niceties.

All of the above for $167.4 billion! That is, btw, the most the Army got in Vietnam.

The last is 2007, or the Surge when land-wars in Asia are once-again, in-vogue Here, I'll put Clinton FY98 (the low-point in Army funding) numbers next to what the Surge looks like:
* $38.4 / $60.7B for personnel -- what the number doesn't tell is how much smaller we are than that Vietnam military. Personnel is a very significant cost
* $31.5 / $98.5B for operations and maintenance -- wars aren't cheap anymore, as you can see. Perspective on this figure: Reagan and Clinton era peace-time operations were in the $32B to $45B, 30's under Clinton, 40's under Reagan. Other Iraq-war operations numbers go from $60 billions to $80 billions. Gulf War represented $60B itself, $15B more than was typical of a war-free Cold War year under Reagan.
* $9.1 / $50.7B for procurement -- this is partly so high because of MRAP, Buffalo's, armor, advanced optics and other war-time supply items. Again perspective: under Reagan procurement ran in the $20B regularly, under Clinton it hovered around $10B and after this $50B high, it'll come back down to earth in the $20B's. Yay FCS.
* $6.6 / $11.9B for RDT&E -- actually, this is about the same for most years after the 20th century

All of the above, from the Clinton low in 98 of $88.9 billion up to a staggering $231.8 billion -- just Army, constant dollars. Contrast that to Vietnam's peak. Last bit of perspective on the modern era, total Army dollars in other Iraq war years were all above $140 billion and in FY2013 will be $129B, the lowest since it was $105 billion in 2002, before Iraq. Both USAF and USN got $157B in 2007, to complement the Army's high of $231B.

The point is: wars, and Army's cost money, especially modern ones. General comparisons: The Army's biggest drain is operations -- warfighting -- and manpower; RDT&E is consistently a smallish chunk of their budget and procurement usually the 2nd smallest. The Air Force consistently puts more than any service into RDT&E but on balance more of their expenses go to ops and maintenance than anything else, then manpower and procurement, in about equal parts. The Navy's trends show consistently equal-parts funding for personnel and operations, with procurement being a 3rd, equal part in recapitolization years, like the Reagan build-up and in the near future here. RDT&E for them is also a significant expense but not to the extent that it is for USAF.

[thejester]

That was clearly the throwaway half of the argument. The Army deserves to have these assets under it's roof. To it's specifications as well.

Why? I doubt if they did the Army would turn around and say 'the A-10 is a piece of shit and we want THIS instead.' In any case, doing it would be both an excellent way to double up in facilities, personnel etc and would hardly solve the 'problem' given that the vast majority of CAS would continue to be flown by the USAF.

If "Marine" is just another Army MOS or specialty, it means they can be trained under Army posts, and based there as well. It means axing Lejune and Pendleton, maybe more, maybe less. The simple point is that you don't need an entire branch to teach such a specialty.

Sure, but you'd presumably need to expand Army posts to handle the thousands of extra recruits you'd need each year.

The US Army takes in Sailors and Airmen that have hardly seen or used and sometimes never touched an M4 or M9 and molds them into adviser units sent to Iraq and Afghanistan to train those countries military's, basically, in 90 days. There exists no insurmountable doctrinal, technical or bureaucratic hurdle in putting together more divisions such as the 101st, save the fact that it's a mission the USMC has carved out as their own and for the Army it represents a luxury or secondary capability, complementary to it's major priorities of sustained full-spectrum ground combat.

Fair enough, but I'm really not seeing a lot of money being saved here; and I'm getting the impression you still think the actual mission is important, something IP disagreed with.

Along with Shep, I simply don't understand the obsession with hover jets of such meager payload which MUST be capable of VTOL. I don't see anything wrong with relying on the Navy fixed wing assets WRT amphibious operations operating out of LHD/LHA type ships.

I suppose the obvious answer is 'they can't' because the USMC is the only service that operates AV-8s and was the only service to ever show any interest in the concept. This position seems to be strangely contradictory

It may lessen one particular strength of putting as much firepower into one branch's hands as possible but that's precisely an argument against such a small, dedicated branches. Instead of a robust capability lacking perhaps, one of a bevy of ingredients which would make it perfect you have a good-enough solution bridged by inter-service operations. That's where planning and co-ordination come into play. Is it really so important you have fixed wing, rotary wing, tilt-rotor, and amphibious APC all under one branch, operating different types of vehicles than all would-be Army equivalents? (sans Harriers for Hornets or JSF's, replace cobras with Apaches, replace Osprey with Chinook, Blackhawk or other, and EFV with LCAC's / M2's)[/QUOTE]

Build more LCAC's. Between no more V-22, EFV, Super Cobra, or Harrier you'll save billions which can be reinvested appropriately. Again back to "ideal world" -- without a 4-star pushing these for his service, you save untold billions in duplicating equivalent capabilities which can be adapted to maritime and amphibious operations. It might well kill one of three variants of the F-35 to boot, Britain and their possible use of same variant be damned.

There wouldn't be anywhere in the ships to carry them - that's the problem with 'more LCACs', as far as I can tell, whereas an amphibious tractor can sit on the vehicle decks.

And I think you're stretching the point a bit here - keep in mind that most of the USMC's ultra costly programs are replacing pieces of equipment that are positively ancient. The USMC simply didn't have a big 80s re-equipment cycle like the Army. The Super Cobra is the perfect example - the Marines tried repeatedly to get AH-64s but it was judged that the cost of creating a navalized version would be too expensive....so they were left to upgrade the AH-1 fleet. If anything, it's saved money.

At it's base armor, it's C-130 deployable. It's level 3 protection, taking up to 25 tons and 30mm protection, 3 a piece can be transported off of C-17's, notable since they can operate off hasty field landing strips. Of course, if we can move stuff by landing strip, even hasty ones, we may as well use Army M1's, that's 2 C-17 sorties a piece. M1's can and have been moved in theater in Northern Iraq 2003 by C-17's, along with Humvees, Bradley's, APC's, troops and expendables to operate. We sort've had to do that since Turkey obstinately wouldn't let our tanks roll down Ankara.

The fact the USAF chose C-17s rather than C-130s to deliver something that was virtually next door to a major basing area says it all, really. If the US were to deploy a brigade of the 82nd to some African shithole it would surely be done almost 100% by C-17s and C-5s. The Iraq things sounds impressive...but the realization that it took 62 sorties to move two infantry battalions and a composite vehicle force sort of undercuts it a bit. If you had to put that down in one go in some African shithole you'd be looking at nearly all the USAF's available heavylift, I would have though.

As for an independent USMC in WWII... I suppose you've missed the litany of threads detailing Army amphibious operations in WWII. You don't want that can of worms rehashed. It isn't in your favor.

I'm well aware of those threads, I'm pretty sure I argued in them :p. I think it's probably more accurate to say that the USN was capable of amphibious operations, it's just a matter of who carried them. Again, in an ideal world I think you're right - as long as the Navy maintained the capability and specialist troops like beachmasters etc you wouldn't need a specialized USMC. But the key point is that the mission would still exist, regardless of who executed it.

Actually, and I'm presuming you mean WWII, land-based aircraft were in Army hands, and until 1947 the now-separate branch was called the Army Air Force. Army generals ordered the fighters and bombers into battle, and fighters were used extensively for ground support. The D-Day invasion is a good example of that. Ground support was not practiced extensively in the first years of the war, for a good reason: the Allies did not have air superiority, which is absolutely vital if you're going to use aircraft for ground support. It took a few years to grind down the Luftwaffe to a point where CAS was possible with an acceptable pilot loss rate.

Which is why I said 'all-but independent'. It might have been the Army Air Force but it flew for itself and was as interested in supporting the Army as it was in going to the moon. CAS didn't happen in the early war years because upper air force leadership didn't believe in hanging bombs off fighters - it wasn't sexy like strategic bombing and it wouldn't decisively win the war, so why bother? It had very little to do with air superiority; its eventual emergence came from practical necessity and on-the-spot innovation from commanders like George Kenney.

[Medic]

This post is from a blackberry so I can't realistically use quote boxes but I'll reference your responses by topic.

On CAS, on 2nd thought its a weak argument because fixed bunker-like targets are tailor-made for JDAM's and smart artillery rounds are on the near horizon, cutting into any CAS aircrafts workload.

As far as expanding Army posts, I didn't make my point clear enough. So an example: say we keep the Army at its current size, but with a Marine branch. We would simply convert, say an existing heavy BCT into several battalion-sized task forces. Manpower wouldn't be the significant expense, re-equipping would be.

I do believe the mission should at least be retained because it gives warplanners just one more tool. Who knows when it will again be the right one? What USMC has over any Army alternative is always-at-sea and bringing more combined arms together under as few ships as possible, as you pointed out already. I question the cost-efficiency of needing this bleeding-edge reaction time and independence of a carrier task force. It seems like an appendix considering wars of recent decades.

Lastly, we simply need more C-17's. It's like F-22 in that the factory's about to close (or just did?) but an increase in production is easily argued and desperately needed to prevent over-use and premature aging of the fleet. WRT landing forces in Africa though it wouldn't take all of AMC's muscle since the threat there means lighter forces are viable, like air assault forces with viable light tanks and fire support, like 120mm on M113's, HIMAR's or N-LOSC. But no, we opted for the short-bus brigade of modern warfare, weighing in at over 20 tons, being paved-road restricted (or hard desert floor) and bringing only an 80mm mortar on a vehicle.

Now I'm getting dangerously close to arguing for a light-first Army because I believe it, too, is an option we should look to keep. We went wrong in stuffing AFV's full of electronics in a vain attempt to make them survivable in full-spectrum ops when we should just procure simpler, off-the-shelf designs and save money.