For a couple of decades I covered the military for various publications, as for example the Washington Times and Harper’s,
and wrote a military column for Universal Press Syndicate. I was
following the time-honored principle of sensible reporters: “Ask not
what you can do for journalism, but what journalism can do for you.” The
military beat was a great gig, letting you fly in fighter planes and
sink in submarines. But if you take the study seriously, as I did, you
learn interesting things. Such as that a war with a real country, such
as Russia, China, or even Iran, would be a fool’s adventure. A few
points:
Unused militaries deteriorate
The
US fleet has not been in a war since 1945, the air forces since 1975.
nor the Army in a hard fight since Vietnam. Bombing defenseless
peasants, the chief function of the American military, is not war.
In
extended periods of peace, which includes the bombing of peasants, a
military tends to assume that no major war will come during the careers
of those now in uniform. Commanders consequently do what makes their
lives easy, what they must do to get through the day and have reasonable
fitness reports. This does not include pointing out inadequacies of
training or equipment. Nor does it include recommending large
expenditures to remedy deficiencies. Nor does it include recommending
very expensive mobilization exercises that would divert money from new
weapons.
Thus
an armored command has enough replacement tracks for training, but not
enough for tanks in hard use in extended combat. When the crunch comes,
it turns out that getting more track requires a new contract with the
manufacturer, who has shut down the production line. The same is true
for air filters, there not being much sand at Fort Campbell but a lot in
Iraq. Things as mundane as MRATs and boots are not there.in real-war
quantities.........http://www.unz.com/freed/unused-militaries/
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