The US budget is how many times that of the Taliban? How did that turn out?
Our enlisted army is basically made up of people who didn't feel like delivering pizzas, flipping burgers, or driving an Uber any longer. Overweight, lazy, uneducated, unmotivated, and soft. Just think of the people in your high school class that enlisted in the Army. Were they the members of the National Honor Society or the guys sitting outside the principal's office waiting for their next detention? The ones who were on the athletic field representing their school or the ones standing on the corner smoking a cigarette because they are just "so cool?" Way too many of them are looking for a quick payout from Uncle Sam for "disabilities" they received after two years of service sitting in the motor pool looking at their phones.
Money and technology can only get us so far. Men with the willingness to endure hardships and do bad things to people are needed. The US just doesn't have enough of them anymore. Look at the technological advantage we had in Iraq and Afghanistan. We just steamrolled right over them, didn't we? Twenty years in Afghanistan and we still got chased out with our tails between our legs like Vietnam.
I served my time, patrolled the $hitholes of Iraq in an infantry company, and know as well as anyone here what our capabilities are. We might fight to a stalemate with Russia. China? I don't even want to think about it. Our best play is to avoid a war with either of them at all costs.
You are vastly overrating the Chinese army. Word from many sources indicate Chinese soldiers are like the old German Hanoverian mercenaries: great on parade and missing from battle (the Hanoverians were famous for quitting when their employers went to war, they would take their gold and march back home.) People in the know predict that if China goes to war there will be many battlefield surrenders, defections and acts of cowardice.
In general, young Chinese men are physically weak but more importantly are emotionally weak and soft and spoiled. This happened because the past two generations of Chinese boys were coddled by their parents. Boys were favored over girls, to the point where China was practicing infanticide against female babies. This has now become a huge problem in China because they have too many men and not enough women, which is why the Chinese government recently lifted the two child ban and is encouraging people to have three children (and not kill the girl babies anymore.)
I still would not underestimate the Chinese. Quantity is a quality of its own.
I'm grateful the US spends $$$$ on the military--better to be over-prepared than caught with our pants down.
In the '60s and '70s we were falling BEHIND the Soviet Union. They had better weapons and more troops than we did until the Reagan buildup (God Bless President Reagan) came online from '81 to '88.
The US has a great military--yeah, you have slackers in it, of course (to the poster who mentioned the kids in HS being crappy) but by and large our NCO corps is THE BEST in the world!
This post was edited 3 minutes after it was posted.
China has billions of people. America is gonna need bodies. Will there be a draft? If so, what ages will they draft or let join. Will 60 year olds be allowed to enlist?
I believe theres a pretty good chance. Especially if Kamala becomes president. She is incredibly irresponsible and wouldnt be surprised if she plunges the world into war. The military is only hitting 60% of its recruiting targets and if we got thrust into war we would suddenly find all this magic drone technology doesnt work as well as promised and we need reinforcements. So yes there would be a draft. Im trying to be more positive and not fret about this stuff too much but its always in the back of my mind
I wish the US also had not gotten rid of some of its surplus M60s and M113 APCs...we need to get back to a wartime footing just in case and produce more equipment to help Ukraine. The Russians have a numbers advantage right now.
The US defense budget and capabilities is double China and Russia combined.
Budget? Yes.
Capabilities? Not even close.
The US budget is how many times that of the Taliban? How did that turn out?
Our enlisted army is basically made up of people who didn't feel like delivering pizzas, flipping burgers, or driving an Uber any longer. Overweight, lazy, uneducated, unmotivated, and soft. Just think of the people in your high school class that enlisted in the Army. Were they the members of the National Honor Society or the guys sitting outside the principal's office waiting for their next detention? The ones who were on the athletic field representing their school or the ones standing on the corner smoking a cigarette because they are just "so cool?" Way too many of them are looking for a quick payout from Uncle Sam for "disabilities" they received after two years of service sitting in the motor pool looking at their phones.
Money and technology can only get us so far. Men with the willingness to endure hardships and do bad things to people are needed. The US just doesn't have enough of them anymore. Look at the technological advantage we had in Iraq and Afghanistan. We just steamrolled right over them, didn't we? Twenty years in Afghanistan and we still got chased out with our tails between our legs like Vietnam.
I served my time, patrolled the $hitholes of Iraq in an infantry company, and know as well as anyone here what our capabilities are. We might fight to a stalemate with Russia. China? I don't even want to think about it. Our best play is to avoid a war with either of them at all costs.
I think if we had to use the draft at some point we could...
Russia outnumbered us for 60 years in the Fulda. OPLAN 4102 and AirLand Battle was a way for us to negate that a little bit and make it a fairer fight. REFORGER gave us a fighting chance if we could keep the North Atlantic open. Clancy's Red Storm Rising is the gold standard of this in action.
I will never underestimate the Russians and Chinese. There are so many of them. We have great troops but can we win a long slog with NATO against the bad guys?
The Fulda Gap (German: Fulda-Lücke), an area between the Hesse-Thuringian border (the former Inner German border) and Frankfurt am Main, contains two corridors of lowlands through which tanks might have driven in a surprise a...
Young Americans are too weak to accept it. And tech is so much more important now that dealing with unwilling draftees wouldn't be worth the effort. For Americans to provide real value in defense of Taiwan would require so much training that a draft wouldn't be useful.
Maybe we should be very seriously trying to get more volunteer reservists so more Americans are ready to train Taiwanese soldiers and potentially operate equipment from safe havens far from the island. But there just doesn't seem like any realistic situation where we're gonna need hundreds of thousands of untrained Americans to serve.
Russia hasn't even been able to successfully conquer significant territory in a non-NATO country. If they put a toe across the line of NATO, we would easily destroy them with no need for a draft
I do worry, if China imposed a blockade on Taiwan, would the American public freak out at even a low number of American casualties if we tried to escort an oil tanker, for example, into a Taiwanese port, and it got shot down? I guess the flip side is that if Americans were killed by China for "peacefully" trying to deliver oil and food to Taiwan, maybe the American public would start to rally more around the war effort?
This post was edited 11 minutes after it was posted.
The US defense budget and capabilities is double China and Russia combined.
Budget? Yes.
Capabilities? Not even close.
The US budget is how many times that of the Taliban? How did that turn out?
Our enlisted army is basically made up of people who didn't feel like delivering pizzas, flipping burgers, or driving an Uber any longer. Overweight, lazy, uneducated, unmotivated, and soft. Just think of the people in your high school class that enlisted in the Army. Were they the members of the National Honor Society or the guys sitting outside the principal's office waiting for their next detention? The ones who were on the athletic field representing their school or the ones standing on the corner smoking a cigarette because they are just "so cool?" Way too many of them are looking for a quick payout from Uncle Sam for "disabilities" they received after two years of service sitting in the motor pool looking at their phones.
Money and technology can only get us so far. Men with the willingness to endure hardships and do bad things to people are needed. The US just doesn't have enough of them anymore. Look at the technological advantage we had in Iraq and Afghanistan. We just steamrolled right over them, didn't we? Twenty years in Afghanistan and we still got chased out with our tails between our legs like Vietnam.
I served my time, patrolled the $hitholes of Iraq in an infantry company, and know as well as anyone here what our capabilities are. We might fight to a stalemate with Russia. China? I don't even want to think about it. Our best play is to avoid a war with either of them at all costs.
You can't compare defeating a country to handling an insurgency. We crushed the Afghanis and Iraqi governments and eliminated any effective territorial control the Taliban had in Afghanistan in months with pretty low casualties. The problem was trying to maintain control of territory where the public was hostile for over a decade. In defending Taiwan or eastern europe from chinese or russian aggression, we wouldn't have this problem. All we have to do is work with allies to repel a technologically inferior enemy force from taking over territory that would be hostile TO THEM if they claimed it
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22% of 12- to 19-year-old Americans are obese, and that percentage only climbs with age. SAT and ACT scores have also fallen in recent years, some of that being attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption of schools and poor access to quality education resources for children from low-income households.
As test scores have plummeted and the obesity crisis has grown only more severe in the last decade, the Army has required soldiers to be more technically savvy. Noncommissioned officers are also increasingly expected to have a college degree and writing skills. And the Army Combat Fitness Test, or ACFT, is widely seen as the most comprehensive and difficult fitness test in the service's history, demanding troops diversify workout routines.
The Army does not expect to hit its ambitious recruiting goal of 65,000 new soldiers this year as the pool of young Americans eligible to serve continues to shrink.
You are vastly overrating the Chinese army. Word from many sources indicate Chinese soldiers are like the old German Hanoverian mercenaries: great on parade and missing from battle (the Hanoverians were famous for quitting when their employers went to war, they would take their gold and march back home.) People in the know predict that if China goes to war there will be many battlefield surrenders, defections and acts of cowardice.
In general, young Chinese men are physically weak but more importantly are emotionally weak and soft and spoiled. This happened because the past two generations of Chinese boys were coddled by their parents. Boys were favored over girls, to the point where China was practicing infanticide against female babies. This has now become a huge problem in China because they have too many men and not enough women, which is why the Chinese government recently lifted the two child ban and is encouraging people to have three children (and not kill the girl babies anymore.)
I still would not underestimate the Chinese. Quantity is a quality of its own.
I'm grateful the US spends $ on the military--better to be over-prepared than caught with our pants down.
In the '60s and '70s we were falling BEHIND the Soviet Union. They had better weapons and more troops than we did until the Reagan buildup (God Bless President Reagan) came online from '81 to '88.
The US has a great military--yeah, you have slackers in it, of course (to the poster who mentioned the kids in HS being crappy) but by and large our NCO corps is THE BEST in the world!
Actually, the so-called Reagan buildup began under Jimmy Carter, especially the naval buildup. Carter's grasp of military matters was orders of magnitude beyond that of Reagan.
I still would not underestimate the Chinese. Quantity is a quality of its own.
I'm grateful the US spends $ on the military--better to be over-prepared than caught with our pants down.
In the '60s and '70s we were falling BEHIND the Soviet Union. They had better weapons and more troops than we did until the Reagan buildup (God Bless President Reagan) came online from '81 to '88.
The US has a great military--yeah, you have slackers in it, of course (to the poster who mentioned the kids in HS being crappy) but by and large our NCO corps is THE BEST in the world!
Actually, the so-called Reagan buildup began under Jimmy Carter, especially the naval buildup. Carter's grasp of military matters was orders of magnitude beyond that of Reagan.
This tabulation was compiled from such sources as the Navy Directory (issued at varying intervals to 1941); the Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Navy (issued annually to 1931); Comptroller of the Navy (NAVCOMPT) compila...
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