Reply #39: the sustainable defense task force plan is so short sighted

[bossy22]

its not even funny. It trades future force structure for current structure- meaning you will have a procurement nightmare come 2020 when you have to replace almost ALL of your equipment. what we need is steady state procurement to stabilize the defense industry and bring costs down.

How long can we continue asking our pilots to fly fighter jets that fall apart due to old age?
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/06/nation/na-f156

our cold war era equipment is on the verge of just falling apart and needs to be replaced. it doesnt mean it needs to be replaced 1:1 but we still need new equipment. We are in the process of replacing 70 cold war era attack subs with 48 new ones. We are replacing 18 ballistic missle subs with 12. this needs to continue if we want to save money in the long run. Stopping such things as submarine production (which the task force suggests) will mean that it will cost triple to replace our current equipment when we absolutely have too. How much longer can we continue to operate ships that are well past their service life?

our procurement strategy needs to follow a general guidline of replacement- sort of like our air craft carriers- when 1 gets built, another one retires. This is so the fleet gets replaced over time and you arent stuck replacing 11 carriers all at once

on edit: the blame can be placed not with the military itself but with the clinton and bush II administrations- they continually underfunded procurement or wasted procurement money on these stupid "super weapons" that ended being too costly to actually produce