Its been widely reported this morning that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001.
The Army would drop to under 440,000 active, which isn’t really an issue if we aren’t mired down in Afghanistan and Iraq. You can bet that the SF boys and RDF ‘leg’ style units (82nd, 101st, Rangers, 173rd, 10th Mountain) will be saved at current levels while the heavies will be gutted and amalgamated, with more being pushed to the reserves. The Army has long wanted to cut tank numbers anyway since the Fulda Gap went away. Speaking of reserves, the Apaches are going to the active army in exchange (they say) for Blackhawks. Hold your breath. No mention of the Kiowas but those have been rode hard and put up wet in the GWOT so they could be quietly phased out as part of this plan.
The USAF would lose the A-10 (which personally I think is the only other aircraft in the current inventory that could be a 100-year aircraft like the B-52 series, plus the boys in blue have hated close air support for years unless it could be done from 30,000 feet). Which would leave the Army with a better case to keep (and maybe expand) their ‘Green Predator’ the MQ-1C Gray Eagle. Also USAF is giving up the ghost on the U-2 spyplane, to be replaced by something better (Global Hawk). Yeah, we’ve heard that before– they’ve been trying to do that since 1960, so don’t hold your breath. They do get to keep blowing money on the F-35 however. After all, you can only batch upgrade the F-16 and F-15 for so long right?
The Navy will come out smelling like roses on this. We guess someone is still freaked out by China. Hagel is asking for two SSNs (Virginia class) and two more DDGs per year (Burke Flight III) for the next few years and keeping carrier numbers at 11 (which is still better than 1941, and still more than the rest of the entire globe put together). However the USN will be forced to mothball 11 early Tico class CGs– which are pushing 30 years old anyway.
The Navy currently has 75 Burkes at sea or in the works, and it looks like there will be another half-dozen at least. Unlike the Flight IIA USS Spruance (DDG-111) seen here, they will likely be the newer Flight III mod. Plus it gives me an excuse to put up a gnarly ship pic.
So you can expect lots of media pundits ranting about how disastrous this is.
But in reality, it’s just a draw-down from the end of WWII that was put off by a 45-year cold war (that included hot parts in Korea and Vietnam), followed by 25-years in the desert fighting first Saddam and then the Tally and Iranian proxies. So by coincidence, Pre-WWII troop levels seem almost like right– and the Joint Chiefs are cool with it.
So long as we can stay out of the desert in the future and that nutcase in the DPRK sticks to whacking his family and courting basketball players, we should be fine. Oh yeah, and China. But hey they already own our ass anyway.
