Backtalk: Saving the military

[unhappycamper]

Saving the military
By George C. Wilson

The stage is set for our armed services to relive the worst days of the 1970s, when discipline broke down, crime ran rampant, race relations soured, many of the best and brightest in the junior officer corps left the military in disgust, planes couldn’t fly and ships couldn’t sail for want of spare parts and technical specialists.

Generals, admirals and defense secretaries favored buying new over fixing up the old, generating a readiness crisis.

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to make those predictions, just time in grade.

I saw all that happen from up close in the 1970s as a military correspondent for The Washington Post. The same dynamics that almost ruined the American military for good in the 1970s are in play right now. The relevant congressional committees — Armed Services, Budget, Appropriations, Oversight and Government Reform — need to take a hard look next year at the health of the armed services and either make some quick fixes or watch a rerun of that tragic Vietnam-era movie.

“I don’t know how I can save the Army as an institution,” Gen. William Westmoreland, the Army’s chief of staff, lamented to Post Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee in 1971. The justifiably alarmed Bradlee ordered Haynes Johnson and me to interview Army people at all levels in the U.S. and overseas to find out what the problems were and describe them in print.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/community/opinion/navy_backtalk_military_071224/

[Kolesar]

1. I hope they can keep the white supremicist/Tim McVeigh movement suppressed

...in this decade.

This arguement about appropriations was interesting:

• Procurement death spiral.

How bad is it? Because the cost of weapons — like the Air Force F-22, Marine V-22 Osprey and Navy ships — has skyrocketed, fewer can be afforded, raising their individual price tag as savings from a big order are lost. Old weapons have to stay in service longer, perhaps dangerously long.