oh good, by dint of presidential fiat my country's military is being gutted today

[dragoon500ly]

Originally Posted by ShadoWarrior

No cost overruns. Nice in theory. Not so easy in practice. What do you do when the unexpected happens? Kill the program(s)? There goes your "best, most advanced aircraft that we can field and in such numbers" such as the F-35. Killed by a budget axe because it went over-budget. Ditto almost every completely new weapon system. Missile defense? Over-budget. New ships? Over-budget. (Well, most of them. IIRC there's one class that came in under budget.)

Want to cut waste in the DOD? Cut out 99% of the nukes. Damned things are obscenely expensive to build and more so to maintain. We could do just fine with a tiny fraction of the inventory that we have. The hundreds of billions saved could go towards other, better weapon systems. But any time that anyone even hints at reducing the absurdly large stockpile that the U.S. has the right-wingnuts cry that whomever is suggesting it is a commie or some such nonsense.

Never made any claim that controlling overruns would be easy. But the entire process that DOD uses to buy equipment needs to be cleaned up, and preferably with C-4 and flamethrowers!!!! And a lot of the so-called contractors need to be guests of honor at an old style lynching!

The whole process of getting "the best price for our equipment" is insane. Take a look through the Congessional Records, look at what the winning bids were for virtually every weapons system used by the US in the last 40 years and you will see a cost overrun (and for every reason under the sun!). I accept that there can be overruns for legitimate reasons...but I also state that every possible effort should be made to keep the overruns to a minimum.

I agree that the nuclear arsenal is a waste of defence dollars. But the world is a harsh place and with nations like North Korea and possibly Iran getting their hands on nukes...if you believe that their current leadership won't hesitate to use them on US troops given half a chacne...then there is some prime farmland in the Everglades that I'd like to sell you!

Still, does the Air Farce need to maintain an aging arsenal of ICBMs. Nope, decommission them. Cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are a more efficient use.

Do we need a large arsenal of aircraft-deleivered nuclear bombs, nope, decommission them.

Does the Navy need to maintain its SLBM fleet. I'd have to agree with that, SSBNs are a hell of a lot harder to track and destroy than a static ICBM field in the Dakotas.

Does the Army need a stockpile of artillery-delivered nuclear missiles...nope. I'd even go as far as turning over the remaining Pershing fleet to the Air Force....in return for the A-10s that they don't want!