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I think his issue is that if they cannot deliver the systems that were paid for on time then it puts the Navy into a bind. The Navy stretched too far with the F

I think his issue is that if they cannot deliver the systems that were paid for on time then it puts the Navy into a bind. The Navy stretched too far with the Ford carrier and issues between contractors lead to components not working well together. Yet this is just the latest is screw ups in the Navy. The problem I have is this so called near balance that has be maintained in budgets between the services. The internal pissing match is what costs us so much as each tries to out do the other, mainly the Navy and Air Force cannot get along. This day and age concentrating so much wealth in such a vulnerable area as surface ships should have given them pause but the Navy has been wedded to the CV for too long because they are BIG and visible. The Air Force's folly is being stuck on manned air craft to the point they practically buried attempts at unmanned combat roles. The Army? If not to staff the bases around the world is simply a large force with little real mission. yet the end question is always the same, we know what US dominance in this area is like, the so called world policeman, is it worth the risk finding out what happens when someone else steps in if the US backs off? How would that look?

jjeaff 7y ago
I supposed due to branding and recruitment and legacy issues, this is a non-starter. But I see no need whatsoever to have separately named branches of the US military. It just gives people a reason to split into groups and compete and fight. They already have overlapping capabilities anyway. Seems like we should just get rid of the names and everyone is a part of the "U.S. Military".
- ethbro 7y ago
  I was thinking about this the other day. The reason to have separate branches of the military (if you can afford it) is to maintain organizational and doctrinal uniqueness. Think about it in evolutionary terms. Any hierarchical organization trends towards uniformity, especially one where promotion is conservative. E.g. most pyramidal organizations. The Marines fundamentally, organizationally, and tactically approach warfare different than the Army. The Army would have been incapable of fighting WWII in the Pacific. It's just not what it's designed to do. By maintaining five combat branches (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard), you maintain five unique approaches to warfare. Consequently, when the situation calls for it, you can apply any of those four unique approaches. Whether or not that's worth the cost of distinct services is debatable, but it's certainly a benefit from the approach.
  - namdnay 7y ago
    > The Marines fundamentally, organizationally, and tactically approach warfare different than the Army. The Army would have been incapable of fighting WWII in the Pacific. It's just not what it's designed to do. But is that still true?
    - ethbro 7y ago
      Arguably. I look at it as equipment vs training vs organization. The stuff can change, but it's even harder to change the way people think. And almost impossible to reorg and entire organization. And all militaries are very effective at making sure people think and behave in desirable ways -- kind of important when things start exploding around you. So a response that might be advantageous for pushing across continental Europe isn't optimal for a chaotic beach assault. You throw a Marine in the former, and they're still going to respond like a Marine.
    - treis 7y ago
      It never was true. The army played a bigger role in the Pacific than the Marines and pulled off D-Day.
  - greedo 7y ago
    "The Army would have been incapable of fighting WWII in the Pacific." You do realize the US Army was extensively involved in the amphibious operations in the Pacific? In the Southwest Pacific, it was almost all US Army in New Guinea/Papua, New Britain, the Admiralty Islands etc. Guadalcanal was the main USMC effort. All of the landings in the Philippines were Army, Okinawa was joint Army/USMC under Army command. Army divisions also fought on Iwo Jima, Tinian, Saipan, etc.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      My grandfather was a soldier in the Pacific theater in WWII and he was always quick to point out that the Army had many more troops in theater, killed many more enemies, and suffered many more dead than the Marines did. The Army could have still won that theater without the Marines, albeit more slowly. The opposite is not true.
- KineticLensman 7y ago
  > Seems like we should just get rid of the names and everyone is a part of the "U.S. Military" There are some real differences between and within the different single Services (Land, Air and Martitime), many of these differences exist for functional reasons (consider s/w devs, testers and ops). Forcing everyone into the same uniform doesn't make the differences go away. The Canadians tried this and reverted back after several years [0]. It turns out that what's important is to to ensure that operations are commanded Jointly, even if the forces are generated separately. It's also important to ensure jointness in training, e.g. for littoral ops and air/land integration, so that people know what to expect when they come together. Many countries rediscover the need for jointness the hard way, when the different components are forced to integrate during a war. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_the_Canadian_Armed_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_the_Canadian_Ar...
  - Faark 7y ago
    I don't think the parent was even talking about actually integrating organizations, but just building a shared identity. That starts with a name. A lot of googling showed there is actually a word for that: "United States Armed Forces". I don't remember it being used much in US media. At best in technically correct news articles, but I doubtful to have heard it in movies. Even the word being plural might make it hard for people to identify as such. The Wikipedia page doesn't even list an acronym, with USAF already being taken... We in germany have a "Bundeswehr". There obviously are separate branches and what not. I'm actually not familiar with the internals, since we from the public usually think of the military as a single entity. Doesn't matter if a trainee dies on a ship, a barrack has problems with nazi tokens or fighter jets colliding and dropping out of the sky during training, each of those events makes me think bad about our military in general (and sadly are not made up). So yeah, why not strengthen a joint identity?
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      Identity doesn't improve combat effectiveness. The Air Force doesn't need to share the Army's motivated esprit d'corps because most of them will sit at a desk or work as mechanics. > We in germany have a "Bundeswehr". There obviously are separate branches and what not. I'm actually not familiar with the internals, since we from the public usually think of the military as a single entity. So you're making a point about copying the Bundeswehr but don't actually know how the BW is set up? Everything you described already exists in the US: the Department of Defense (and, to some degree, NATO). They're the overarching coordinating civilian department that runs the military. But the US military is HUGE and each individual US military service is larger than most other countries combined militaries. Having some sort of combined bootcamp is nice, but as someone else mentioned, the Canadians already tried that and gave up on the idea. The hyper-fit Marines have a completely different lifestyle than an Airforce mechanic who will fix radars 13 hours a day -- the mechanic can get away with a 6 week "basic" training and then sent off to mechanic school, while the USMC grunt needs to have that discipline worked into them, and there is no way to do that except the hard way.
HillaryBriss 7y ago
> ...is it worth the risk finding out what happens when someone else steps in if the US backs off? How would that look? I think that's right question to ask nowadays. What can we learn by examining the areas of the world where the US is not so clearly dominant? (e.g. Tibet, Ukraine, South China Sea, Sub Saharan Africa) Can we compare the fate of the people in those places to the fate of people in places where the US is or was clearly dominant? (e.g. Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq, Central America, Okinawa, Philippines) Is the picture really so clear? Does US dominance guarantee a better outcome for the people in those places? Is it kind of a mixed bag? Sometimes there's a tendency to recoil in fear when we think of US acquiescence on the global stage, but, what if the changes would be less significant than we imagine?
- lurquer 7y ago
  >Does US dominance guarantee a better outcome for the people in those places? That's not the right question. This is the right question: Does US dominance guarantee a better outcome for the people in the US?
  - dwd 7y ago
    Pretty sure funnelling some of that money into health and education would be a better deal for the average US family. American multinationals would however argue more needs to be done to protect their overseas investments and access to markets. Just don't expect them to foot the bill. "For globalisation to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." - Thomas Friedman
    - mariuolo 7y ago
      > McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the F-15 And flying hamburgers?;)
- 7y ago

jjeaff 7y ago

I supposed due to branding and recruitment and legacy issues, this is a non-starter. But I see no need whatsoever to have separately named branches of the US military. It just gives people a reason to split into groups and compete and fight. They already have overlapping capabilities anyway. Seems like we should just get rid of the names and everyone is a part of the "U.S. Military".

ethbro 7y ago
I was thinking about this the other day. The reason to have separate branches of the military (if you can afford it) is to maintain organizational and doctrinal uniqueness. Think about it in evolutionary terms. Any hierarchical organization trends towards uniformity, especially one where promotion is conservative. E.g. most pyramidal organizations. The Marines fundamentally, organizationally, and tactically approach warfare different than the Army. The Army would have been incapable of fighting WWII in the Pacific. It's just not what it's designed to do. By maintaining five combat branches (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard), you maintain five unique approaches to warfare. Consequently, when the situation calls for it, you can apply any of those four unique approaches. Whether or not that's worth the cost of distinct services is debatable, but it's certainly a benefit from the approach.
- namdnay 7y ago
  > The Marines fundamentally, organizationally, and tactically approach warfare different than the Army. The Army would have been incapable of fighting WWII in the Pacific. It's just not what it's designed to do. But is that still true?
  - ethbro 7y ago
    Arguably. I look at it as equipment vs training vs organization. The stuff can change, but it's even harder to change the way people think. And almost impossible to reorg and entire organization. And all militaries are very effective at making sure people think and behave in desirable ways -- kind of important when things start exploding around you. So a response that might be advantageous for pushing across continental Europe isn't optimal for a chaotic beach assault. You throw a Marine in the former, and they're still going to respond like a Marine.
  - treis 7y ago
    It never was true. The army played a bigger role in the Pacific than the Marines and pulled off D-Day.
- greedo 7y ago
  "The Army would have been incapable of fighting WWII in the Pacific." You do realize the US Army was extensively involved in the amphibious operations in the Pacific? In the Southwest Pacific, it was almost all US Army in New Guinea/Papua, New Britain, the Admiralty Islands etc. Guadalcanal was the main USMC effort. All of the landings in the Philippines were Army, Okinawa was joint Army/USMC under Army command. Army divisions also fought on Iwo Jima, Tinian, Saipan, etc.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    My grandfather was a soldier in the Pacific theater in WWII and he was always quick to point out that the Army had many more troops in theater, killed many more enemies, and suffered many more dead than the Marines did. The Army could have still won that theater without the Marines, albeit more slowly. The opposite is not true.
KineticLensman 7y ago
> Seems like we should just get rid of the names and everyone is a part of the "U.S. Military" There are some real differences between and within the different single Services (Land, Air and Martitime), many of these differences exist for functional reasons (consider s/w devs, testers and ops). Forcing everyone into the same uniform doesn't make the differences go away. The Canadians tried this and reverted back after several years [0]. It turns out that what's important is to to ensure that operations are commanded Jointly, even if the forces are generated separately. It's also important to ensure jointness in training, e.g. for littoral ops and air/land integration, so that people know what to expect when they come together. Many countries rediscover the need for jointness the hard way, when the different components are forced to integrate during a war. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_the_Canadian_Armed_Forces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_of_the_Canadian_Ar...
- Faark 7y ago
  I don't think the parent was even talking about actually integrating organizations, but just building a shared identity. That starts with a name. A lot of googling showed there is actually a word for that: "United States Armed Forces". I don't remember it being used much in US media. At best in technically correct news articles, but I doubtful to have heard it in movies. Even the word being plural might make it hard for people to identify as such. The Wikipedia page doesn't even list an acronym, with USAF already being taken... We in germany have a "Bundeswehr". There obviously are separate branches and what not. I'm actually not familiar with the internals, since we from the public usually think of the military as a single entity. Doesn't matter if a trainee dies on a ship, a barrack has problems with nazi tokens or fighter jets colliding and dropping out of the sky during training, each of those events makes me think bad about our military in general (and sadly are not made up). So yeah, why not strengthen a joint identity?
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Identity doesn't improve combat effectiveness. The Air Force doesn't need to share the Army's motivated esprit d'corps because most of them will sit at a desk or work as mechanics. > We in germany have a "Bundeswehr". There obviously are separate branches and what not. I'm actually not familiar with the internals, since we from the public usually think of the military as a single entity. So you're making a point about copying the Bundeswehr but don't actually know how the BW is set up? Everything you described already exists in the US: the Department of Defense (and, to some degree, NATO). They're the overarching coordinating civilian department that runs the military. But the US military is HUGE and each individual US military service is larger than most other countries combined militaries. Having some sort of combined bootcamp is nice, but as someone else mentioned, the Canadians already tried that and gave up on the idea. The hyper-fit Marines have a completely different lifestyle than an Airforce mechanic who will fix radars 13 hours a day -- the mechanic can get away with a 6 week "basic" training and then sent off to mechanic school, while the USMC grunt needs to have that discipline worked into them, and there is no way to do that except the hard way.

HillaryBriss 7y ago

> ...is it worth the risk finding out what happens when someone else steps in if the US backs off? How would that look? I think that's right question to ask nowadays. What can we learn by examining the areas of the world where the US is not so clearly dominant? (e.g. Tibet, Ukraine, South China Sea, Sub Saharan Africa) Can we compare the fate of the people in those places to the fate of people in places where the US is or was clearly dominant? (e.g. Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq, Central America, Okinawa, Philippines) Is the picture really so clear? Does US dominance guarantee a better outcome for the people in those places? Is it kind of a mixed bag? Sometimes there's a tendency to recoil in fear when we think of US acquiescence on the global stage, but, what if the changes would be less significant than we imagine?

lurquer 7y ago
>Does US dominance guarantee a better outcome for the people in those places? That's not the right question. This is the right question: Does US dominance guarantee a better outcome for the people in the US?
- dwd 7y ago
  Pretty sure funnelling some of that money into health and education would be a better deal for the average US family. American multinationals would however argue more needs to be done to protect their overseas investments and access to markets. Just don't expect them to foot the bill. "For globalisation to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." - Thomas Friedman
  - mariuolo 7y ago
    > McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the F-15 And flying hamburgers?;)
7y ago