Hard Power and Soft Power

[Spekkio]

There is zero worlds where the 8% cuts don’t come from our compensation and from services that benefit our quality of life.

It’s been laid out, they are coming for base services, commissaries, schools, BAH and military healthcare among other cuts.

So if the DoD cut 2 Army divisions and 5% of DoD civilians, that's a cut of ~$6B for the divisions, about $2B is personnel costs and the other $4B is O&M. Laying off 5% of DoD civilians save another $7B. That's $9B of personnel costs out of a ~$180B, or 5%.

Assuming we want to cut each category evenly, there's still 3 percentage points, or $5B, to find in personnel costs to cut.

I think they're going to revisit dependent and retiree healthcare costs per the attached report from 2015 that led to the BRS retirement system. I don't think anything as drastic as completely nixing Tricare Select will come to pass, but there likely will be increased cost sharing for dependents and retirees when the dust settles.

Yes, that study was under a Democrat administration, throwing that in there to note that slashing mil benefits is a bipartisan initiative on the hill and only took a pause specifically under the Biden administration.

People are speculating about returning to a use / lose BAH system because the Heritage Foundation was advocating for it prior to publishing Project 2025, but I think when the analysis is done we will find that such a policy won't move the budget needle, similar to what was concluded in 2015.

Disclaimer: I'm rounding, so please don't come at me with decimal point errors.

 

[Spekkio]

To argue that the European members of NATO are carrying their share of their own defense simply is not correct. Certainly they (European nations) have amped up their spending since 2014 (by about 18%) but that’s not much when the starting point was -1%. But, these are additions to their OWN defense spending. Each NATO nation needs to spend more than the current $430 billion on their OWN defense rather than rely on the remaining $700 + billion the U.S. spends on its OWN defense - especially if we are honestly contemplating a war with China and Russia (because Russia would take advantage of a Chinese war…by attacking Europe).

I agree with your first sentence, but a point of contention:

We don't spend $800B on defense. We spend $800B to have a global, expeditionary military force capable of rapidly projecting power. Were we to focus solely on homeland defense, we could probably quarter our budget thanks to exceptionally favorable geography.

To that end, I agree that Flash is misrepresenting things with the NATO budget. Part of our force structuring requirements involves a 2-front war with Russia and China... one which we would be hard-pressed to win right now thanks to severe military under-spending by our NATO allies in terms of GDP.

 

[Griz882]

I agree with your first sentence, but a point of contention:

We don't spend $800B on defense. We spend $800B to have a global, expeditionary military force capable of rapidly projecting power. Were we to focus solely on homeland defense, we could probably quarter our budget thanks to exceptionally favorable geography.

To that end, I agree that Flash is misrepresenting things with the NATO budget. Part of our force structuring requirements involves a 2-front war with Russia and China... one which we would be hard-pressed to win right now thanks to severe military under-spending by our NATO allies in terms of GDP.

I use the term “defense” broadly, as in Department of…but I get what you mean. I am not an isolationist but I don’t think it is too much of an ask for other allies to pick up some of the slack in their war-making capabilities.

 

[Spekkio]

I use the term “defense” broadly, as in Department of…but I get what you mean. I am not an isolationist but I don’t think it is too much of an ask for other allies to pick up some of the slack in their war-making capabilities.

Yep. I guess what I'm trying to get at is... let's say Trump wasn't trying to play 'let's appease Putin,' and strictly wanted to cut the DoD budget to $500B because we weren't going to pick up 80% of the burden for defending Eastern Europe.

Would the churn from NATO allies be any less?

 

[robav8r]

The chow hall (sorry, DFAC) on the army side is entirely unacceptable. Some general walked into the food court at an Exchange and saw a bunch of guys at McDonalds or whatever and said, “This is where soldiers want to eat….not the DFAC.” while thinking….Nice, I can redirect those funds!

Camp Humphreys in ROK has the nicest PX/Commissary I have ever seen, complete with a Texas Roadhouse. The Army made a very deliberate decision to provide the best possible QOL to those soldiers and their dependents. Other places around the globe? Not so much . .