Commentary over the The Tragedy of the American Military by The Atlantic

(Inside of 4 years, WWII America made 175 Fletcher-class
destroyers.)

This is a good read on the U.S. Military and how the nation as a whole, helped to break it. I can only point to a few things as the article covers a large cross-section of multiple, gigantic problems.

I. Chickenhawk Nation

If I were writing such a history now, I would call it Chickenhawk Nation, based on the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long as someone else is going. It would be the story of a country willing to do anything for its military except take it seriously. As a result, what happens to all institutions that escape serious external scrutiny and engagement has happened to our military. Outsiders treat it both too reverently and too cavalierly, as if regarding its members as heroes makes up for committing them to unending, unwinnable missions and denying them anything like the political mindshare we give to other major public undertakings, from medical care to public education to environmental rules. The tone and level of public debate on those issues is hardly encouraging. But for democracies, messy debates are less damaging in the long run than letting important functions run on autopilot, as our military essentially does now. A chickenhawk nation is more likely to keep going to war, and to keep losing, than one that wrestles with long-term questions of effectiveness.

The author did stumble a bit.

Ours is the best-equipped fighting force in history, and it is incomparably the most expensive.

That "best-equipped" meme needs to die.

I am curious how significant cuts in operations and sustainment funding including much needed training days/hours per year for all parts of the service in order to pay for gold-plated failures like the Stryker, Bradley, M-1 tank, LCS, $3B flat-tops for the USMC mission without a well deck. $6B glass-jaw dreadnoughts called "destroyers", $15B aircraft carriers (the coming JFK being stripped not equipped), the Super Hornet, the F-35 Just So Failed and several other examples makes us, "best-equipped"? You can add having soldiers equipped with a short-barrelled carbine firing a varmint round that has trouble knocking down an enemy past 200 yards; that is when it fires. (Note: I like the M-4. I just don't want our Infantry and Marines armed with it unless maybe it is door-kicking.)

It is the total of low spending on training and sustainment and massive spending on gold-plated, faulty, military equipment that has built a paper-tiger force structure.

It will lose us major wars.

I am also OK with a draft...when needed for big... all-out....justified  wars. Consider that we did in fact, stay in Afghanistan and Iraq for years and use a lot of new recruits fresh off the street that were not career troops. Trained up and deployed in less than a year. Yes they did volunteer. But with a good military justice system and a situation where the nation, as a whole, feels that a war is needed to protect America, and well, we did fight and win WWII. Yet somehow, today, a draft for a real...justified war... is evil. For war, America has to have skin in the game. I am all for officers, NCOs and troops that want to make the military a career. We need that cadre in case we have to stand up 40-50 divisions over a war lasting years. A war that may determine our national survival.

"Better disciplined?" Maybe not so much. Today, an obvious case of desertion in combat exists. Searching for that person caused half-a-dozen KIA. Yet, the Army leadership performs their own brand of cowardice by not staging an easy, slam-dunk, UCMJ Article 32 Hearing.

We had a representative from the religion of peace gun down several soldiers at Fort Hood. Yet to date, he has not been executed.

Another? Jill Metzger.

There is only one kind of discipline: perfect discipline. If soldiers are not executed and jailed for massively serious crimes...to set the object-lesson..., you will not be able to keep unit cohesion in a war. A bad military justice system, that does not deal harshly with serious crimes,  along with many other things already mentioned, can, and will, lose wars.

The military is not to be a test tube for social feelgoodism.  Example: the Navy, (and other services) practice discrimination that has nothing to do with making a proper, able-to-kill, military. That distinction is important. The military discriminates all the time to get the right killer or trades-person to the right billet. Discrimination that is value-negative needs to be eliminated.  The military is there for government sponsored deterrence and killing of our nation's enemies.

What is "justified war"? Probably not Operation:USELESS DIRT 1, 2, 3 and so-on.

Our generous tax-dollars, help make sure 900-some flag ranks have nice comfort castles. The current environment is great at creating, as the late-great Col Hackworth would say  "perfumed princes".

"The most curious thing about our four defeats in Fourth Generation War—Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan—is the utter silence in the American officer corps. Defeat in Vietnam bred a generation of military reformers … Today, the landscape is barren. Not a military voice is heard calling for thoughtful, substantive change. Just more money, please."

No-tin-foil-hat-needed. The military-industrial-congressional-complex is destroying our military deterrent capability. The MICC is not there to help win wars. It is there to make for good stock values. And to hell with the warfighter. Or as the recently fired Secretary of Defense said after walking out of a meeting, "Those people don't know what it is like to have your face down in the mud with bullets whizzing over your head."

America, and a corrupt, bought and paid for corporate sponsored, Congress enables the poor state of the state of our military leadership today.

A-10? It is bad because it doesn't have gallactically expensive government contracts tied to it. How the hell are flag-ranks supposed to live after going through the post-retirement revolving door if they can't find placement in the mafia-crime-family-business model?

Do budget yourself some time to read the whole article. Take some notes and base it against what you know. It is expansive and for the readership of this blog covers some known, existing issues. The Atlantic article could also easily be titled, "We followed the Constitution once."