The Size of the US Military

In the October 22, 2012 debate moderator Bob Schieffer asked – you want a bigger military and don’t want to cut defense spending - where are you going to get the money? Mitt Romney said – were going to cut 5% in discretionary spending, excluding the military; Schieffer interrupted and Romney said to look at his website-he’d see how we get to a balanced budget within 8-10 years, we go through each program and get rid of those we don’t need like ObamaCare, those we keep like Medicaid that’s for the poor we give it to the states because they run it more efficiently – they’re proving it; by doing these 2 things we’ll have a balanced budget. Romney wanted to get back to the military and Obama wanted to respond - he talked about Romney’s budget plan; the President said we spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and so on; he said he worked with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to determine the budget needed - Romney’s budget numbers don’t work – when it comes to the military we need to think about capabilities, not just the budget, we need to be thinking about cyber security, space; Obama said his budget is driven by a strategy to keep Americans safe - not politics – it allows us to reduce the deficit which is a national security concern, we have to have a strong economy so we can project military power overseas.

Romney responded – he’s pleased that in his experience he has balanced budgets, the President hasn’t; he went on to say – our Navy is smaller than it has been since 1917, the Navy said it needed 313 ships to carry out its mission, we’re now at 285 and headed to a low 200 with sequestration-he wants to make sure we have the ships we need; our Air Force is smaller than when it was founded in 1947; since FDR we’ve always had the strategy that we could fight in 2 conflicts at once, now we can only fight one; in his view the safety of the American people is number one. Obama’s response – the sequestration cuts weren’t something he put forward and he’s maintaining the military budget and not reducing it; he said Romney hasn’t looked at how our military works, in regard to the Navy we also have fewer horses and bayonets, the nature of our military has changed – we have aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, the question is not a game of battleship, it’s about our capabilities and the best way to meet all of our defense needs in a way that keeps faith with our troops and takes care of our veteran and that’s not reflected in Romney’s budget.

On January 5 the Pentagon said it was cutting about $450 billion (8%) of its budget in the next decade; Panetta said our forces would be agile, flexible and ready; we’ll use fewer ground troops and more air/naval attacks, robots and drones. On September 12 the military revealed a robot dog that goes about 3mph and can carry about 400 pounds of equipment through rough terrain; October 15 we heard we had robot squirrels. In checking recent legislation, Congress approved money for equipment but reduced personnel spending. Taking Romney’s approach, more ships etc, means more troops to man them. I like using more technology and fewer troops in an effort to reduce injuries and loss of lives.