American Mercenary
Verbatim Post
So I'd like to think that at the sunset of an Empire the United States will follow the same pattern as other declining empires. Particularly if we look to (formerly) Great Britain we can see some interesting parallels.
After WWII ended war rationing continued in Britain through the mid 1950's. Britain paid back the last of its "war debt" to the US not too long ago, more than five decades past the end of hostilities.
Today the American Empire has spent a decade fighting and largely funding (through NATO) two wars, and there is no telling how long it will take to pay off the "war debt" from these excursions. However, unlike Britain, the overall "war debt" is but a small portion of our overall debt.
But if history does indeed rhyme, we will see our land forces decrease to a very small, very competent fighting corps which will be used in a series of "police actions" throughout the world for the next few decades. We will see our Air and Naval forces continue to be "world class" but reduced in size and focused more on deterrence than any sort of force parity with potential rivals.
I can't predict the future, but I can see the past. And as Empire's fade into the sunset they have awesome might, like an old heavyweight boxer who still has a few rounds in him. However, like we found in Libya, there is not a whole lot of endurance behind those take down punches.
So as our ability to outfight opponents decreases, our focus will shift towards defeating opponents before they have the power to fight in any sort of parity. Smart policy would dictate more human intelligence collectors, more "Special Forces" working in conjunction with intelligence agencies, and a decreased conventional force. I think that we will see the US leave South Korea before I retire simply because the token forces we have on the peninsula wouldn't do any more good than an extra bomber wing stationed out of Japan. Our four remaining combat brigades in Europe offer no advantage in deployment time to those brigades housed at Fort Hood, or Fort Bragg.
So, for better or worse, the decline of conventional forces stationed overseas will continue. In the early 1990's we had 18 active Army Divisions. By the year 2000 we had 10. If you reconstitute our "modular brigades" back into Divisions then we could still field 10 Divisions worth of combat power. That each Brigade is around 5,000 people and there are 4 brigades in each Division, simple math tells us that 200,000 Soldiers are part of the Army's "combat power."
What that doesn't tell us is what the jobs are of the other 280,000 Soldiers. Obviously some are part of combat formations such as Fires Brigades (bringing the big guns and rocket artillery) or Engineer Brigades (providing mobility, counter-mobility, and survivability services) or whether they are part of something like a Theater Sustainment Command. You can look it up if you like.
But my point is that for the size of the Army there is a lot of "tooth to tail" going on (hence the need for so many contractors to free up "fighting power" that would be otherwise sucked into logistics). So expect the Army to get downsized but have more "fighters" and fewer "fuelers" and many more "contractors" to fill in for the lost logistic support.
In short, America's Army will get leaner, meaner, and much more "mercenary" in terms of how business is conducted. However I could be completely wrong and we could go to the "strategic" Army of the 1930's where an active duty cadre provided the "skeleton" of a unit to be filled out by draftees, although in this case the draftees would come from an enlarged Reserve and National Guard. We didn't get into too many "brushfire wars" in the 30's, discounting some actions by the Marine Corps. However, the threat of a 12 million man Army wasn't enough to keep the peace with Germany and Japan.
We truly do live in interesting times.
Verbatim Post
So I'd like to think that at the sunset of an Empire the United States will follow the same pattern as other declining empires. Particularly if we look to (formerly) Great Britain we can see some interesting parallels.
After WWII ended war rationing continued in Britain through the mid 1950's. Britain paid back the last of its "war debt" to the US not too long ago, more than five decades past the end of hostilities.
Today the American Empire has spent a decade fighting and largely funding (through NATO) two wars, and there is no telling how long it will take to pay off the "war debt" from these excursions. However, unlike Britain, the overall "war debt" is but a small portion of our overall debt.
But if history does indeed rhyme, we will see our land forces decrease to a very small, very competent fighting corps which will be used in a series of "police actions" throughout the world for the next few decades. We will see our Air and Naval forces continue to be "world class" but reduced in size and focused more on deterrence than any sort of force parity with potential rivals.
I can't predict the future, but I can see the past. And as Empire's fade into the sunset they have awesome might, like an old heavyweight boxer who still has a few rounds in him. However, like we found in Libya, there is not a whole lot of endurance behind those take down punches.
So as our ability to outfight opponents decreases, our focus will shift towards defeating opponents before they have the power to fight in any sort of parity. Smart policy would dictate more human intelligence collectors, more "Special Forces" working in conjunction with intelligence agencies, and a decreased conventional force. I think that we will see the US leave South Korea before I retire simply because the token forces we have on the peninsula wouldn't do any more good than an extra bomber wing stationed out of Japan. Our four remaining combat brigades in Europe offer no advantage in deployment time to those brigades housed at Fort Hood, or Fort Bragg.
So, for better or worse, the decline of conventional forces stationed overseas will continue. In the early 1990's we had 18 active Army Divisions. By the year 2000 we had 10. If you reconstitute our "modular brigades" back into Divisions then we could still field 10 Divisions worth of combat power. That each Brigade is around 5,000 people and there are 4 brigades in each Division, simple math tells us that 200,000 Soldiers are part of the Army's "combat power."
What that doesn't tell us is what the jobs are of the other 280,000 Soldiers. Obviously some are part of combat formations such as Fires Brigades (bringing the big guns and rocket artillery) or Engineer Brigades (providing mobility, counter-mobility, and survivability services) or whether they are part of something like a Theater Sustainment Command. You can look it up if you like.
But my point is that for the size of the Army there is a lot of "tooth to tail" going on (hence the need for so many contractors to free up "fighting power" that would be otherwise sucked into logistics). So expect the Army to get downsized but have more "fighters" and fewer "fuelers" and many more "contractors" to fill in for the lost logistic support.
In short, America's Army will get leaner, meaner, and much more "mercenary" in terms of how business is conducted. However I could be completely wrong and we could go to the "strategic" Army of the 1930's where an active duty cadre provided the "skeleton" of a unit to be filled out by draftees, although in this case the draftees would come from an enlarged Reserve and National Guard. We didn't get into too many "brushfire wars" in the 30's, discounting some actions by the Marine Corps. However, the threat of a 12 million man Army wasn't enough to keep the peace with Germany and Japan.
We truly do live in interesting times.
No comments:
Post a Comment