I’ve already suggested many reforms (like radically reducing the number of generals and selling old aircraft carriers to India) in my article titled, “Military Procurement Investments Should Grow” and in my comment criticizing Robert Gates. Besides the reforms suggested in those posts, there are also dozens of other savings that could be made in non-procurement areas in order to decrease DOD costs, which in turn would enable the US military to order more weapons (Arleigh Burke class warships, F-35 and C-17 planes, etc.). In this article, I’m presenting all the reform proposals that I have devised to date:

A)    Healthcare cost and benefits reforms

1)      American troops should be immediately withdrawn from Iraq.

2)      The DOD should stop sending ordinary MRAP vehicles and conventional armored vehicles (tanks, IFVs, APCs, Humvees) to Afghanistan and start using small MRAP vehicles there instead (because ordinary MRAP vehicles, AKA big MRAP vehicles, often roll over). This will radically reduce healthcare costs for the DOD and the DVA, and reduce the costs of replacing vehicles that have been written off.

3)      As for other IED-intensive theaters, the only vehicles sent by the US military to those theaters should be mine resistant vehicles such as RG-32s, RG-33s, Stryker-based ambulances, Cougars, Casspirs, etc. (but not RG-31s).

4)      M113s, including M113-based ambulances, must be immediately withdrawn from all theaters and retired, and replaced with Strykers and Stryker-based ambulances. These four reforms would protect American soldiers from getting wounded by mines, thus reducing healthcare and vehicle costs.

5)     Military housing projects should be built, whenever possible, on lands already owned by the Federal Government.

6)     The bureaucratic labyrinth that harms many wounded soldiers should be radically reduced; the budget of the DVA (Department of Veterans’ Affairs) should be reduced (if possible) – DVA should provide good services to American vets at a low cost.

7)      Backlogs of claims of DVA benefits must be eliminated and so should be the bureaucracy that created them.

8)      The bureaucratic hurdles and long waits that American vets complain about should be eliminated; the waits should be short.

9)      The DOD and the DVA should have a unified benefits-for-vets system.

10)  VA hospitals should be privatized if this would reduce VA healthcare costs.

11)  Only military personnel, their relatives, veterans, DOD officials and the President should be allowed to use DVA and DOD hospitals. (Currently, Members of the Congress are also allowed to use these hospitals, with the DVA or the DOD paying the costs.)

12)  All DVA and DOD hospitals must adopt electronic health records to reduce costs.

Aside from these 12 cost-controlling methods, the DOD and the DVA could certainly devise additional ways of healthcare cost reduction if they wanted to.

Awards policy:

1) American soldiers shall be allowed to wear all of the medals awarded by NATO countries.

2) A Cold War Victory Medal should be authorized. However, several other medals (including the Air Medal and the DSSM) should be abolished.

3) The eligibility for the National Defense Service Medal should be extended (in terms of the Vietnamese War period) from 1974 to the end of the SS Mayaguez incident. People who served with the US military during the Iranian hostage crisis (4th November 1979 – 20th January 1981), and people who served during the Berlin crisis of 1948 should also be eligible for the NDSM.

B)     Procurement methods

1)      Economies of scale should be implemented. Large quantities of ships and planes (e.g. Virginia class submarines and F-35 jets) should be ordered to bring prices down.

2)      The DOD (and all other governmental departments) should _always_ sign fixed-price contracts (they don’t do that now, the grim result being that contractors hike prices after contracts are signed).

3)      Whenever a contractor of any governmental department (e.g. the DOD) allows a large-cost overrun to happen, the guilty contractor should be punished (the US government does not do that at present even though it legally could).

4)      The US government should sign free trade agreements with raw material supplier countries (including titanium producing countries) to bring the prices of raw materials (including titanium, which is used to produce F-22s among other things) down.

5)      The Defense Business Board (a subversive, traiterous organization) and the Office of Net Assessment should be abolished.

6)      The procedure for the acquisition of military equipment by the DOD should be as follows: when the DOD decides to order a new weapon type, it should first send RFPs and tell candidates what the exact requirements of the DOD are. After candidate corporations submit their proposals, the DOD should objectively evaluate them according to the requirements earlier stated to these candidates, and choose the best offer, regardless of local politics. For example, in the KC-X program, the DOD should choose whichever tanker type is the best one, regardless of the protests of trade unions and certain regionalist members of the Congress.

7)      Program requirements should never change (except for exceptional circumstances) after the deadline for candidate corporations to submit bids. Poland committed this mistake several times.

8)      The Congress should reintroduce, and approve, the Defense Acquisition Reform Act of 2007. (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d110:2:./temp/~bdJicf:@@@L&summ2=m&)

9)      To further drive weapon costs down, the DOD, the DOS and the White House should permanently conduct a huge campaign of promoting American weapons abroad in order to receive foreign contracts for American weaponry. Currently, foreign orders are small. For example, in Poland, which has thousands of various obsolete Soviet weapons (e.g. An-2 and An-28 utility planes, Su-22 and MiG-29 fighterplanes, Mi-2 and Mi-8 transport helicopters, Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters, and BMP-1 IFVs), the US government should offer Poland replacements for those weapons (e.g. M1 tanks, F-35 jets, M2 IFVs, M1 tanks and AH-64 helicopters). All other Eastern European NATO countries, as well as Georgia and Ukraine, should also be offered American weapons as replacements for their Soviet weapons. For Britain, the UK MOD should be invited to participate in the SSGN-X program, allowed to buy new SLBMs in America, asked to order additional F-35s, and given a complete TOT of F-35 technology. In France, America should offer KC-767 tankers as replacements for France’s obsolete B707-derived tankers. Finland and Spain should be offered F-35s. As for Taiwan, it should be allowed to buy whatever conventional weapons it wants to buy (incl. F-35s), and required to buy large quantities of American weaponry. The US government should lobby heavily on behalf of American corporations bidding for Indian military contracts. In Israel, the Israeli MOD should be asked to buy hundreds of American jets, and American armored vehicles as replacements for Soviet vehicles. Japan should be asked to significantly increase its military spending and order dozens of new ships and aircraft. America should offer to sell Brazil aircraft to replace obsolete Brazilian AF training gliders, tankers, Hercules transport planes, fighterplanes and helicopters. Italy should be asked to enlarge its carrier fleet and its orders for F-35s. Super Hercules planes should be offered to the Saudis and the Israelis so that they would be able to replace their Hercules-E and Hercules-H planes; their old Hercules planes should be sold to the US military for reclamation. The RSAF should also be offered replacements for its other obsolete aircraft. At all times, unless otherwise stated here, America should export newly-made equipment, not used military gear. Equipment should never be given as FMF aid – only money should be.

10)  The US military must never decrease the number of weapons it has and must never trade quantity for quality.

11)  The US military should have a multi-service CSAR helicopter program (instead of a single-service CSARH program) and should conduct it together with the Polish AF in order to 1) reduce unit costs (and total program costs) and 2) ensure the commonality of Polish and American CSAR helicopters.

12)  America should ratify DTCTs with the UK and Australia; and negotiate, sign and ratify DTCTs with Denmark, Holland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Chile, Panama, Norway, the Philippines, Ukraine, Georgia, Colombia, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, and Eritrea, and possibly other countries as well.

13)  No-bid contracts should be banned.

14)  The Congress should repeal “Buy American laws” across the board (not just the Buy American laws related to defense).

15) America should sign titanium purchase agreements with the Russian state-owned titatium producing corporation and establish a vertical supply chain for titanium.

16) Ramp up the production rates of F-22s and F-35s, and order hundreds of additional F-22s and F-35s to reduce the price per plane (i.e. to implement economics of scale).

These reforms would truly reform the procurement division of the DOD, unlike the McCain-Levin legislation, which would not reform, but sabotage, DOD procurement (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/24/congress.pentagon/index.html). Levin is the same anti-military liberal who, during the Clinton era (and during other times), argued against military procurement and against increases in military spending.

There are only a few “military” procurement programs which should be closed. Here are those programs:

C) PROGRAM CLOSURES

1)      If the FCS program’s aim is to institute a SINGLE line of armored vehicles for the Army and they are to be the Army’s only armored vehicles, then the FCS program should be ended immediately.

2)      The VH-71 program should be closed.

3)      The Humvee program should be ended and replaced with the two military truck programs the DOD plans to replace it with (one being the JLTV program).

4)      The LCS program should be ended after the 3^rd littoral combat ship is built; the remaining 52 vessels of the planned 55 LCSes should be Holland class ships (which are cheaper than LCSes) or French-produced avisos or British-produced offshore patrol vessels. A competition should be held between the producers of these 3 vessel types.

D) BUREAUCRACY REDUCTION

1) The US military should transport only the necessary WH staff (e.g. the Secret Service), medical staff and military staff during official tours; only such staff should be allowed to make tours on any DOD-owned aircraft; all in all, an American delegation for a summit should number no more than 250 people.

2) All public affairs and PR officials at the Pentagon should be sacked and their posts abolished. The DOD does not need such officials.

3) Reduce the staff of the Office of the SECDEF by 75%.

 4) The DOD Police should be merged with the Pentagon Police, and should become responsible for the Pentagon in Arlington (VA).

5) The Office of the Under SECDEF for Policy should be abolished.

6) The number of Naval Districts should be reduced from 10 to 7 by: a) merging the DC Naval District with the 5th Naval District; b) merging the 13th Naval District with the 17th Naval District (and the HQ should be in Juneau); c) merging the 8th Naval District with the 7th Naval District. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_district)

E) FUEL COST REDUCTION

1) By 2060 every aircraft bought by the DOD must be able to use not only kerosene, but also: a 50/50 blend of kerosene and Fischer-Tropsch fuel, 100% Fischer-Tropsch fuel, B100 biodiesel (100% biodiesel) and a 50/50 blend of kerosene and biodiesel; by 2080, every vehicle in the US military’s arsenal (i.e. every conventional ship, plane, helicopter and ground vehicle) must be able to use such fuel (every time the price of oil goes up, so does the price of fuels).

2) Require that all American military installations be powered by nuclear reactors or coal EPs.

3) The DOD should begin research on solar-powered planes.

4) The US military should encourage the construction of synthethic fuel factories around the country, ignore environmentalists’ protests, and deny that global warming is happening.

5) All BMD cruisers of the US Navy should be propelled by nuclear reactors rather than diesel engines.

6) The US military should start recycling nuclear fuel.

7) All civilian employees of the DOD should use laptops rather than stationary PCs (laptops are 11 times more  electricity-efficient than stationary computers).

 8) The DOD should stop buying solar panels and stop building solar electric plants. The Army’s electric plant project should be cancelled.

9) The DOD should stop trying to “green” the US military.

F) PERSONNEL REDUCTION

1) Reduce the number of civilian employees of the three service departments by 50%;

2) Radically reduce the number of generals (Russia plans to reduce the number of serving Russian generals from 1100 to 900);

3) Withdraw America from the useless NATO alliance and from the Rio Pact (and discharge all American personnel currently serving at NATO HQ);

4) Dual-hat some commands and merge others (e.g. the US Army’s FORSCOM should be merged with the Army’s SDDC, and the Army’s Materiel Command should be merged with the Army’s AASC);

4)      Replace all C-5s with C-17s (the crew of a C-17 consists of 3 people; the crew of a C-5 jet consists of 9 folks) (update: Bob Gates has decided to shut down the C-17 program);

5)      Replace the 3 Seawolf-class SSNs with 3 Virginia-class submarines when the Seawolf-class retires;

6)      Cap the salaries of all civilian employees of the DOD;

7)      Require that every new ship program reduce the number of personnel required for 1 ship in comparison to the ship program it is replacing (the Gerald R Ford class is supposed to require 25% fewer crewmen than the Nimitz class); and

8)      Replace M1 Abrams tanks with AMX-56 Leclerc tanks (thus reducing the number of tankmen in the US military by 25%).

9)      The posts of the Vice Chairman of the JCS, and the Administrative Advisor of the SECAF should be abolished as should be the entire Environmental Division of the CNO’s Office, the AFIS and the AFPS; the military bands of the USAF, of the USMC, of the USN and of the US Army (except their central bands) should be dissolved.

10)  The Honor Guards of the four services of the DOD should be reduced by 50%.

11)  The presidential helicopter fleet should be reduced to 2 helicopters.

12)  The aggregate number of soldiers and marines should be capped at the 2009 treshold.

13)  The US Army’s NASCAR team should be abolished. (http://www.army.mil/-images/2009/07/13/44751/army.mil-44751-2009-07-14-070737.jpg)

14)  The US government should abolish the CIA and assign its functions to other intel agencies. It should also create a dedicated counterintel agency at the DOD.

15)  Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Asian part of Russia should be added to the AO responsibility of the USPACOM; afterwards, the USEUCOM should be merged with the USCENTCOM; consequently, the Naval Forces Europe command and the European commands of the US Army, the USMC and the USAF should be abolished.

16)  The presidential helicopter fleet should be replaced with 2 VH-60 helicopters. No separate program for that purpose is needed, these 2 VH-60s should be derivates of H-60s.

17)  The Naval Historical Center and the Army Historical Center shall be abolished, and all historians employed by the DOD except the historians at military universities shall be retired and not replaced. The DOD needs weapons and soldiers, not historians.

18)  The Joint Staff’s personnel should be reduced by at least 25%; the Air Staff’s personnel and the Naval Staff’s personnel should both be reduced by 10%. The personnel of the Directorate for Strategic Plans and Policy of the JCS should be reduced by at least 25%.  (http://www.af.mil/information/bios/bio.asp?bioID=6545)

19)  The US Strategic Command’s Center for Combating WMDs should be abolished.

20)  The staff of every Marine and Army division should be reduced by at least 10%, as should be the number of personnel at each geographic AF command and at each Numbered Air Force except the 18^th AF.

21)  The staff of each task force should be reduced by at least 10%. The staff of the Joint Command should be reduced by 25% (including a 25% reduction of the Strategy and Policy Directorate).

22) The number of officers should be reduced if it can be done in a way that would ensure that this policy doesn’t weaken the US military. The current number of American military officers who are not generals or warrant officers is 209,878. The total current number of American military officers is 226,565. (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/ranks.htm)

23)  On top of the above reductions, the DOD should retire the 14,650 Air Force personnel and 2,477 Navy sailors hired in 200, and reverse the Bush expansion of the military by 100,000 men.

24) On top of the above reductions, the increase of the number of military personnel proposed by Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2009 should be reversed.

25)  On the whole, the number of military personnel (counting Guardsmen, Reservists and AC personnel together) should not exceed 2.2 million, and should be reduced to 2 million if it can be.

G) SHIP AND PLANE RETIREMENTS

1)      Retire all obsolete aircraft as soon as their replacements arrive. By “obsolete aircraft” I mean aircraft that can neither fly nor fight. For example, the USAF’s entire Hercules fleet of the non-Super-Hercules variants should be replaced by Super Hercules planes (as should be the Hercules planes of the non-Super-Hercules variants owned by foreign AFs); the USMC’s KC-130 tanker fleet should be replaced by tankers derived from Super Hercules planes. The USAF’s obsolete CSAR helicopters should be replaced with new MH-53 or new MH-60 helicopters, or other CSAR or multi-purpose helicopters, but these must be new. All E-3 AWACSes should be replaced with E-10 jets. The Army should reclaim all H-57 helicopters parked at AMARC for spare parts.

2)      Offer the aircraft carriers Forrestal, Saratoga, Independence, Constellation and John F Kennedy to India (or any other country) if India (or any other country) pays for these ships and refits them.

3)      Strip the two remaining reserve battleships of the USN, the USS Iowa and the USS Wisconsin (and two decommissioned battleships, USS Alabama and USS Massachusetts) of their guns, then sell the 2 reserve battleships (Iowa and Wisconsin) to scrappers.

4)      All KA-planes, A-4 jets and F-4 planes parked at AMARC should be sold to the IAF. All SH-2 helicopters parked at AMARC should be sold to the RNZAF. All C-9 and DC-9 planes parked at AMARC should be sold to Third World airlines.

5)      The Spruance class vessel still moored in a reserve fleet should be sold, not sunk; CG-47-49 and CG-51 should be sold or scrapped rather than sunk; no American ships should be sunk by the USN; the USN must not donate any ships to museums.

6)      All obsolete ships in American reserve fleets (i.e. all ships in those fleets except modern ones like those of the Ticonderoga class and submarines) should be sold or scrapped to earn money for new weapons. The USN’s reserve fleets (mothballed fleets) currently number 251 ships.

7)      As many of the F-16s parked at AMARC as possible (but not too many, so as not to deprive the USAF of spare parts) should be offered and sold to foreign countries in order to raise money for the purchase of new weapons.

8)      All S-2s parked at AMARC should be sold to Taiwan, as should be some S-3s parked at AMARC. All T-2s parked at AMARC should be sold to Greece.

9)      The USS Tarawa (LHA-1) should be sold, not sunk. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tarawa_(LHA-1) )

10) All S-2 planes should be sold to the Government of California. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X721NfyQTQo) 

H) VARIOUS OTHER REFORMS

1) The Secretary of Defense should rank in the American order of precedence ahead of all other Cabinet secretaries.

2) The 11^th Wing of the USAF and all ceremonial units should be assigned to Andrews AFB and leave Bolling AFB (as should all other agencies based at Bolling AFB except the DIA). Bolling AFB should be separated from Naval Facility Anacostia. Eventually, a new DIIAC should be built somewhere else and Bolling AFB should be closed and sold. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolling_AFB)

3) The exploration of Outer Space should be conducted jointly by the US, Britain, Canada, India, France (an EU member) and the EU. The US should work on its Moon program together with these countries.

#4-6 – Stricken.

7) All USAF commands and all US Army commands should be commanded by 3-star generals.

The requirements of the budget calendar should never marginalize the defense policy-making process.

9) No F-22s should serve with the ANG of any leftist state (including Hawaii).

10) Any savings in the DOD must be invested in the DOD.

11) Every USS Arizona veteran should have the right to be buried in the wreck of that ship if he wants to be; his family members should have such a right, too, if they want; but the spill of oil from Arizona’s tank must be stopped and the oil must eventually be pumped out of the tank of the USS Arizona.

12) Other than classified projects, budget gag rules should be banned.

13) The DOD should withdraw all American troops from Iraq and all other Persian Gulf countries, and bring 60% of American troopers in Afghanistan home.

14) The war on drugs should be ended.

15) All members of the JCS should become members of the NSC.

16) All RIMPAC exercises and all NATO exercises should be ended (because NATO should be abolished).

17) The USAF should establish an Air Force Cyber Command to fight hackers.

18) B-1 bombers should be subordinated to the USAF’s Global Strike command (just like B-2s, B-52s and ICBMs are).

19) American nuclear weapons, and the funding for them, and the role of the caretaker of nukes, should be given to the DOD.

20) The Pentagon should give 12 of the Hercules planes parked at AMARC to the RAF; it should then reclaim (i.e. use for spare parts) all other aircraft (incl. B-1s, B-52s, C-5s, F-16s and A-10s) parked at AMARC (except F-15s and A-6s, which should be recommissioned and kept in service as interim aircraft until additional F-35s are ordered, if they are ever ordered) to keep the US military’s aircraft flyable. (Note: the currently planned Pentagon figure of 2443 F-35s for the entire military is woefully inadequate, as was the previous DOD figure of 2543 F-35s.) At the same time, the DOD should continually buy spare parts and upgrades for F-16s, taking advantage of the still-open F-16 production line.

21) Stricken.

22) Deploy the two F-16 wings stationed in Europe (the one currently stationed at Spangdahlem AFB and the one currently stationed at Aviano AFB) to Poland, as per the recommendation of LTCOL Chris Sage.

23) The four-star rank should be reserved only for the Chairman of the JCS, Service Chiefs (and their deputies), commanders of Combatant Commands, commanders of geographic fleets/armies/marine corps groups/fleets (e.g. the US Pacific Fleet), the commander of American troops in Afghanistan and the commanders of American troopers in whatever country America might invade in the future.

24) It must be made certain that all American troopers will be able to vote.

25) Arms reduction treaties should be rejected; the START-1, START-2, SALT-1, SALT-2, SORT, CFE-1, CFE-2 and CTBT treaties should be repealed.

26) The Vice President should fly commercial airliners, not military jets.

27) The USAF’s crucial CSAR-X program (which was supposed to yield replacements for the USAF’s Combat Search And Rescue Helicopter Fleet) was cancelled in April 2009 by Bob Gates. I have developed an alternative way to replace the USAF’s vintage CSARH fleet: buy 141 (or more) MH-60 Pave Hawk CSAR helicopters or buy H-60 Black Hawk helicopters and modify them for the CSAR role (as was done with the USAF’s first MH-60 helicopters – they weren’t purpose-built CSAR aircraft, but rather modified H-60 helicopters). Black Hawks (not CSAR helicopters) are currently being procured by the US Army anyway, and have been procured for many years. As interim helicopters, the 27 H-1 Iroquis helicopters currently parked at AMARC, all H-34 helicopters currently parked at AMARC, all H-46 helicopters parked at AMARC, and all H-53 helicopters currently parked at AMARC, should be recommissioned and modified for the CSARH role. These helos should also become available to the governors of Gulf Coast states.

28) Globalsecurity.org complains that the Navy has no ship naming regulations and that this is bad for the Navy; I agree on that issue. Therefore, I recommend the adoption of the following ship naming standards: 1) Ship names should not (with exceptions granted by the SECNAV) repeat themselves, so if a ship name has already been used once, it should never be used again. 2) Ships should, with few exceptions, be named only after American figures and American cities. 3) Ships should receive the names of American figures or American cities regardless of what ship category they represent.

29) The USS Utah (BB-31), sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, should be raised and scrapped. The dead sailors who are still aboard that ship should be transported from that ship to a military cemetery and buried there with military honors.

30) All DOD and USCG aircraft shall be banned from participating in air shows.

31)  All B-52s parked at AMARC should be reclaimed to provide spare parts for the rest of the B-52 fleet before B-3 replacements arrive. The same applies to B-1s parked at AMARC. Enlarging the bomber fleet should be done solely by buying new bombers (e.g. B-3s).

32)  Cannibalising any aircraft not retired by the DOD shall be banned. There is an abundant supply of spare parts at AMARC – use that supply.

33)  Denying spare-parts from AMARC to in-service planes when in-service planes need spare parts can result in either the grounding and mothballing of those in-service planes which need spare parts but lack them, or the cannibalizing of some in-service planes for spare parts, both of which is unacceptable.

34)  The only solution to prevent the disasters spoken of in #33 from happening is to maintain an adequate supply of spare parts at AMARC or other aircraft maintenance centers.

35)  America should guarantee TOT whenever bidding for Indian and British contracts.

36)  As many scientists as possible should be allowed to immigrate to the US and recruited to work in American governmental laboratories – a total mobilization of the global scientific workforce should be conducted.

37)  No flyovers.

38)  All exquisite pictures on the Pentagon’s walls, all luxury furniture items, all luxury lamps, all sculptures and all luxury carpets at the Pentagon should be sold and replaced with non-luxury, cheap items (http://www.defenselink.mil/dodcmsshare/photoessay/2006-12/hires_061215-D-7203T-041.JPG).

39)  The former Fort Missoula and the former Camp Lockett should be sold, and a new BRAC round should be implemented (Henderson Hall, Cannon AFB, Camp Kilmer, NSF Thurmont (AKA Camp David), the DC Naval Observatory,Fort Myer, NIMSF Philadelphia, Fort Lawton, Fort McPherson, Fort Gillem and Fort Hamilton should be closed during that round and sold). Fort Gillem was recommended for closure as early as 2005, and Fort Chaffee no longer houses any military units. Units stationed at Fort Lawton should be assigned to other military installations. This article recommends the closure of 1 USAF, 6 Army and 3 Navy big installations, a total of 10 big military installations, plus 1 small USMC installation (Henderson Hall).

40)  A new training base should be built to replace Camp Kilmer. The site of Camp Kilmer itself should be cleaned – currently it is environmentally hazardous.

41)  All retired ships mothballed at NIMSF Philadelphia should be moved to other NIMSFs.

42)  Supervising America’s participation in conventional arms control treaties (which treaties should be repealed) shall be removed from the DTRA’s list of responsibilities.

43)  The White House should house the Vice President of the US as well as the President of the US. The DC Naval Observatory should be closed during a BRAC round.

44)  Except the two fighterplane wings mentioned above, and the personnel of the Landstuhl hospital and Ramstein AFB, all American units stationed in Europe should be brought back to America and stationed at American bases (new bases should be built or leased for them if need be). Their bases in Europe should be given to host countries.

45)  The DOD should stop writing and conducting Nuclear Posture Reviews, and should start issuing annual reports on the North Korean, Iranian, Russian and Venezuelan militaries.

46)  A new National Defense Strategy – one that will treat conventional and irregular warfare equally and reject the numerous ridiculous notions (such as the claim that there will never again be a conventional war involving America) that the Pentagon subscribes to today – should be issued. The Joint Doctrine For Operations (which wrongly says that “that irregular warfare in the later phases of a campaign could require a level of military effort as great as—and perhaps greater than—what is needed for so-called major combat operations”) should be amended accordingly.

47)  The National Security Council shall be stripped of its right to issue directives binding on the DOD.

48)  M9 pistols should be retired and replaced with M1911 pistols; M16s should be replaced with M14s; M240 SAWs should be replaced with Ma Deuce machineguns.

49)  America should withdraw from the UN and the UN Disarmament Conference and refuse to send its representatives to any disarmament conferences.

50)  No military parades involving any military vehicles should be organized.

51)  The military retirement age should be increased to 75 years of age.

52)  All contracts – even small contracts – must be competitive, that is, contractors must compete for it. (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2009807689_apusstimulusfactcheck.html)

53)  Like the Schwarzenegger Administration of California, the DOD should organize a garage sale of all of its exquisite equipment (e.g. furniture, cars and lamps).

54)  All units and persons based at Fort Myer should be moved to Fort Belvoir or Fort Meade. Afterwards, Fort Myer should be closed and sold during a BRAC round. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Myer)

55)  The NSA and the Defense Logistics Agency should, like agencies of the USDOD, sell their exquisite equipment, including exquisite cars. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fort_Belvoir_DLA_building.jpg)

56)  The US Army’s Reserve Command, Forces Command and Central Command, and the IMC for the Southeast should be moved to Fort Stewart. Afterwards, Fort McPherson shall be closed during a BRAC round and sold.

57) All units stationed at Cannon AFB should be moved to the Hurlburt base (FL), which should be renamed Hurlburt-Johnson AFB (after Donald Hurlburt and Clarence Johnson). Subsequently, Cannon AFB should be closed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_Air_Force_Base#BRAC_2005)

58) The unit stationed at Henderson Hall should be moved to Quantico (VA).  Afterwards, Henderson Hall should be closed.

59) All units and equipment based at Cheyenne Mountain Station should be moved to Peterson AFB. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_Air_Force_Station)

60) The DOD should never pay the Taleban to escort American convoys or protect American supply lines; instead, it should hire private contractors or local militias (or ask NATO allies) to provide escorting troops. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/us-trucks-security-taliban)

How the numbers add up

It is impossible for me to estimate the total savings that my reforms would yield, but some reforms would certainly yield large financial savings for the DOD. The table below outlines those savings.

A final note for this article:

There are many politicians (e.g. Bob Gates, Obama, Levin, McCain) who claim that they honor American vets and want to give them all the benefits they deserve and that they respect them, yet they deny them the equipment that they need. Their claims are ridiculous. They praise American vets for heroism and give them free socialized medicine, yet they deny them the equipment which they need to win wars and defend America. If you do not want to give American servicemen and servicewomen the tools they need to keep America safe, or if you’re unwilling to invest in it, you are an anti-military liberal dishonoring the members of the US military, period. What are troopers going to defend America with if procurement funding is reduced or abolished? Muskets? I have proposed a better path: radically reducing the healthcare, personnel, procurement and bureaucracy costs and holding contractors accountable while at the same time protecting genuine military procurement programs from any reductions and closures. The US military must be armed with whatever weapons it needs, whatever the cost of those weapons is.

I told you folks MANY TIMES that Obama’s appeasement policy towards Russia would fail. I told you that I’m an enemy of Vladimir Putin, and that Obama is the 21st century counterpart of Neville Chamberlain.

Yet very few people listened to me.

On the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland (i.e. on 17th September 2009), Obama surrendered the missile shield (and sold Poland and the Czech Rep. out to Moscow) because his Russian master ordered him to do so. He also agreed to gut the US military and to reduce the US nuclear arsenal to just 1000 nuclear warheads. Obama naively expected a Russian vote for a package of new anti-Iranian UN sanctions. Russia, however, REFUSED to endorse this package of sanctions, as did China and France. All these three countries are veto-right-wielding members of the UNSC. So Obama surrendered the missile shield and two allied states, and got nothing as a reward. His appeasement policy failed abysmally.

But the Kremlin isn’t just content with what Obama surrendered. It has refused to withdraw Iskander (SS-26) missiles from Kaliningrad and recently, it has decided to arm the Cuban military with new weapons and to use Cuba as a base for its Navy and AF.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=114080

It even plans to send nuclear-armed bombers to Cuba and rebuild an eavesdroping station in Cuba to spy on the US military.

Obama’s appeasement policy has failed. Instead of Russian quid pro quos, it has produced DISASTROUS RESULTS.

Obama’s appeasement policy is a recipe for disaster. My prediction that it would fail was based on history.

During the 1930s, Neville Chamberlain conducted a policy of appeasement towards Germany. Like most European politicians of the time, he believed that his appeasement policy would prevent war. On 29th September 1938, he signed the cretinous Munich Agreement, which gave the Sudetenland to Germany. He then went to London with the Treaty and claimed he had saved “peace in our time”. (Churchill, whom Obama disdains, rightly claimed that Britain was humiliated by Hitler, but many Brits and Frenchmen called him a warmonger.) Hitler claimed that the Sudetenland claim was his last territorial demand.

But on 15th March 1939, Hitler violated the Munich Agreement and made ridiculous demands towards Czechoslovakia and Lithuania. Then, Germany annexed Klaipeda (a city in Lithuania) and split Czechoslovakia. Thus, just like Obama’s surrender of the missile shield, the surrender of Sudetenland proved to be an idiotic policy.

Less than 6 months later, the bloodiest war of all wars, WW2, began.

Pacifists and the proponents of disarmament are THE folks responsible for WW2. They are the ones who provoked Hitler to commit aggression.

Yet, Obama did not learn the WW2 lesson, and neither did most American politicians (including HK, Bob Gates, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, George Shultz and William Perry).

On Nov. 4th, 2008, conservatives, disenfranchised with the GOP, angry at that Party because of its liberal policies, stayed at home. Thus, Obama won by a landslide. The GOP suffered its worst presidential election defeat since 1964, when LBJ trounced another Arizonian Senator. Virginia – a conservative state – voted for a Dem presidential candidate for the first time since 1964. And despite McKennedy’s amnesty policy, most Hispanics voted for Obama.

What caused this disaster? Firstly, the Republican Party establishment and the media chose a strident liberal, John McAmnesty, as the Party’s nominee. McLame advocates amnesty, a crap-and-trade system, the progressive income tax, CAFE standards, nuclear disarmament, and socialized medicine. He was the chief sponsor of McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman and McCain-Feingold.

Secondly, the GOP enacted liberal policies (e.g. nuclear arms reduction, big government programs, a rejection of the Federal Marriage Amendment, etc.) when the Congress and the White House were in its hands. So it’s no wonder that the GOP was trounced.

Thirdly, the Republican Party adopted a liberal platform.

Fourthly, Obama had all the assets that every Dem presidential candidate gets for a presidential election: the media, Hollywood, academia and money from America’s enemies (e.g. George Soros).

Unsurprisingly, the GOP was trounced a year ago by a political novice. For the same reasons, it was humiliated 2 years earlier by liberal Democrats.

Unfortunately, GOP leaders and Establishment guys haven’t learned that lesson. They STILL advocate the disastrous policy of “transforming the GOP” – that is, remolding it into a liberal party. They are still trying to court liberals by betraying conservative principles. They still claim that the GOP must do this to remain relevant and to win elections. They STILL fight conservatives and deny nominations to them. They still refuse to make all primaries “closed primaries”. They are still advocating a liberal agenda (nuclear disarmament, defense cuts, the Marxist progressive income tax, universal insurance, growing entitlement programs, etc.).

Who are these Establishment guys? Who are these “GOP leaders”? Well, they’re the same people who caused the GOP’s two most recent humiliations. They’re the ones responsible for the GOP’s worst presidential election defeat since 1964.

The DOD needs not only to safeguard its current military procurement programs (other that the VH-71 program), but also to expand them. Unfortunately, because of the current economic crisis, the federal government is cash-strapped, and therefore, although I oppose military spending reductions, I also believe that even now, during the economic crisis, America can afford to increase the defense budget, but the DOD could make better use of the money that it already has.

But rather than make real reforms of the Pentagon, its chief, Robert Gates, has enacted pseudo-reforms – closures of dozens of crucial weapons programs, re-fighting yesterday’s wars, and a huge growth of the Pentagon bureaucracy. The current US SECDEF, who lives in a fantasy world, has denied that there is even any conventional threat to the US and any significant likelihood of a conventional war involving the US (de jure, such a war is currently ongoing – the Korean War, because North Korea repealed the 1953 armistice in May 2009). He is also irresponsibly neglecting the wars of the future. Although the future is unpredictable, it is possible to discern what the most likely war scenarios will be for the US, and these scenarios involve conventional militaries (of China, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran and Syria), not insurgencies.

I’ve already suggested many reforms (like radically reducing the number of generals and selling old aircraft carriers to India) in my article titled, “Military Procurement Investments Should Grow” and in my comment criticizing Robert Gates. Besides the reforms suggested in those posts, there are also dozens of other savings that could be made in non-procurement areas in order to decrease DOD costs, which in turn would enable the US military to order more weapons (Arleigh Burke class warships, F-35 and C-17 planes, etc.). In this article, I’m presenting all the reform proposals that I have devised to date:

A)    Healthcare cost and benefits reforms

1)      American troops should be immediately withdrawn from Iraq.

2)      The DOD should stop sending ordinary MRAP vehicles and conventional armored vehicles (tanks, IFVs, APCs, Humvees) to Afghanistan and start using small MRAP vehicles there instead (because ordinary MRAP vehicles, AKA big MRAP vehicles, often roll over). This will radically reduce healthcare costs for the DOD and the DVA, and reduce the costs of replacing vehicles that have been written off.

3)      As for other IED-intensive theaters, the only vehicles sent by the US military to those theaters should be mine resistant vehicles such as RG-32s, RG-33s, Stryker-based ambulances, Cougars, Casspirs, etc. (but not RG-31s).

4)      M113s, including M113-based ambulances, must be immediately withdrawn from all theaters and retired, and replaced with Strykers and Stryker-based ambulances. These four reforms would protect American soldiers from getting wounded by mines, thus reducing healthcare and vehicle costs.

5)     Military housing projects should be built, whenever possible, on lands already owned by the Federal Government.

6)     The bureaucratic labyrinth that harms many wounded soldiers should be radically reduced; the budget of the DVA (Department of Veterans’ Affairs) should be reduced (if possible) – DVA should provide good services to American vets at a low cost.

7)      Backlogs of claims of DVA benefits must be eliminated and so should be the bureaucracy that created them.

8)      The bureaucratic hurdles and long waits that American vets complain about should be eliminated; the waits should be short.

9)      The DOD and the DVA should have a unified benefits-for-vets system.

10)  VA hospitals should be privatized if this would reduce VA healthcare costs.

11)  Only military personnel, their relatives, veterans, DOD officials and the President should be allowed to use DVA and DOD hospitals. (Currently, Members of the Congress are also allowed to use these hospitals, with the DVA or the DOD paying the costs.)

12)  All DVA and DOD hospitals must adopt electronic health records to reduce costs.

Aside from these 12 cost-controlling methods, the DOD and the DVA could certainly devise additional ways of healthcare cost reduction if they wanted to.

B)     Procurement methods

1)      Economies of scale should be implemented. Large quantities of ships and planes (e.g. Virginia class submarines and F-35 jets) should be ordered to bring prices down.

2)      The DOD (and all other governmental departments) should _always_ sign fixed-price contracts (they don’t do that now, the grim result being that contractors hike prices after contracts are signed).

3)      Whenever a contractor of any governmental department (e.g. the DOD) allows a large-cost overrun to happen, the guilty contractor should be punished (the US government does not do that at present even though it legally could).

4)      The US government should sign free trade agreements with raw material supplier countries (including titanium producing countries) to bring the prices of raw materials (including titanium, which is used to produce F-22s among other things) down.

5)      The Defense Business Board (a subversive, traiterous organization) and the Office of Net Assessment should be abolished.

6)      The procedure for the acquisition of military equipment by the DOD should be as follows: when the DOD decides to order a new weapon type, it should first send RFPs and tell candidates what the exact requirements of the DOD are. After candidate corporations submit their proposals, the DOD should objectively evaluate them according to the requirements earlier stated to these candidates, and choose the best offer, regardless of local politics. For example, in the KC-X program, the DOD should choose whichever tanker type is the best one, regardless of the protests of trade unions and certain regionalist members of the Congress.

7)      Program requirements should never change (except for exceptional circumstances) after the deadline for candidate corporations to submit bids. Poland committed this mistake several times.

8)      The Congress should reintroduce, and approve, the Defense Acquisition Reform Act of 2007. (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d110:2:./temp/~bdJicf:@@@L&summ2=m&)

9)      To further drive weapon costs down, the DOD, the DOS and the White House should permanently conduct a huge campaign of promoting American weapons abroad in order to receive foreign contracts for American weaponry. Currently, foreign orders are small. For example, in Poland, which has thousands of various obsolete Soviet weapons (e.g. An-2 and An-28 utility planes, Su-22 and MiG-29 fighterplanes, Mi-2 and Mi-8 transport helicopters, Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters, and BMP-1 IFVs), the US government should offer Poland replacements for those weapons (e.g. M1 tanks, F-35 jets, M2 IFVs, M1 tanks and AH-64 helicopters). All other Eastern European NATO countries, as well as Georgia and Ukraine, should also be offered American weapons as replacements for their Soviet weapons. For Britain, the UK MOD should be invited to participate in the SSGN-X program, allowed to buy new SLBMs in America, asked to order additional F-35s, and given a complete TOT of F-35 technology. In France, America should offer KC-767 tankers as replacements for France’s obsolete B707-derived tankers. Finland and Spain should be offered F-35s. As for Taiwan, it should be allowed to buy whatever conventional weapons it wants to buy (incl. F-35s), and required to buy large quantities of American weaponry. The US government should lobby heavily on behalf of American corporations bidding for Indian military contracts. In Israel, the Israeli MOD should be asked to buy hundreds of American jets, and American armored vehicles as replacements for Soviet vehicles. Japan should be asked to significantly increase its military spending and order dozens of new ships and aircraft. America should offer to sell Brazil aircraft to replace obsolete Brazilian AF training gliders, tankers, Hercules transport planes, fighterplanes and helicopters. Italy should be asked to enlarge its carrier fleet and its orders for F-35s. Super Hercules planes should be offered to the Saudis and the Israelis so that they would be able to replace their Hercules-E and Hercules-H planes; their old Hercules planes should be sold to the US military for reclamation. The RSAF should also be offered replacements for its other obsolete aircraft. At all times, unless otherwise stated here, America should export newly-made equipment, not used military gear. Equipment should never be given as FMF aid – only money should be.

10)  The US military must never decrease the number of weapons it has and must never trade quantity for quality.

11)  The US military should have a multi-service CSAR helicopter program (instead of a single-service CSARH program) and should conduct it together with the Polish AF in order to 1) reduce unit costs (and total program costs) and 2) ensure the commonality of Polish and American CSAR helicopters.

12)  America should ratify DTCTs with the UK and Australia; and negotiate, sign and ratify DTCTs with Denmark, Holland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Chile, Panama, Norway, the Philippines, Ukraine, Georgia, Colombia, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, and Eritrea, and possibly other countries as well.

13)  No-bid contracts should be banned.

14)  The Congress should repeal “Buy American laws” across the board (not just the Buy American laws related to defense).

15) America should sign titanium purchase agreements with the Russian state-owned titatium producing corporation and establish a vertical supply chain for titanium.

These reforms would truly reform the procurement division of the DOD, unlike the McCain-Levin legislation, which would not reform, but sabotage, DOD procurement (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/24/congress.pentagon/index.html). Levin is the same anti-military liberal who, during the Clinton era (and during other times), argued against military procurement and against increases in military spending.

There are only a few “military” procurement programs which should be closed. Here are those programs:

C) PROGRAM CLOSURES

1)      If the FCS program’s aim is to institute a SINGLE line of armored vehicles for the Army and they are to be the Army’s only armored vehicles, then the FCS program should be ended immediately.

2)      The VH-71 program should be closed.

3)      The Humvee program should be ended and replaced with the two military truck programs the DOD plans to replace it with (one being the JLTV program).

4)      The LCS program should be ended after the 3^rd littoral combat ship is built; the remaining 52 vessels of the planned 55 LCSes should be Holland class ships (which are cheaper than LCSes) or French-produced avisos or British-produced offshore patrol vessels. A competition should be held between the producers of these 3 vessel types.

D) BUREAUCRACY REDUCTION

1) The US military should transport only the necessary WH staff (e.g. the Secret Service), medical staff and military staff during official tours; only such staff should be allowed to make tours on any DOD-owned aircraft; all in all, an American delegation for a summit should number no more than 250 people.

2) All public affairs and PR officials at the Pentagon should be sacked and their posts abolished. The DOD does not need such officials.

3) Reduce the staff of the Office of the SECDEF by 75%.

 4) The DOD Police should be merged with the Pentagon Police, and should become responsible for the Pentagon in Arlington (VA).

5) The Office of the Under SECDEF for Policy should be abolished.

6) The number of Naval Districts should be reduced from 10 to 7 by: a) merging the DC Naval District with the 5th Naval District; b) merging the 13th Naval District with the 17th Naval District (and the HQ should be in Juneau); c) merging the 8th Naval District with the 7th Naval District. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_district)

E) FUEL COST REDUCTION

1) By 2060 every aircraft bought by the DOD must be able to use not only kerosene, but also: a 50/50 blend of kerosene and Fischer-Tropsch fuel, 100% Fischer-Tropsch fuel, B100 biodiesel (100% biodiesel) and a 50/50 blend of kerosene and biodiesel; by 2080, every vehicle in the US military’s arsenal (i.e. every conventional ship, plane, helicopter and ground vehicle) must be able to use such fuel (every time the price of oil goes up, so does the price of fuels).

2) Require that all American military installations be powered by nuclear reactors or hydroelectric powerplants.

3) The DOD should begin research on solar-powered planes.

4) The US military should encourage the construction of synthethic fuel factories around the country, ignore environmentalists’ protests, and deny that global warming is happening.

5) All BMD cruisers of the US Navy should be propelled by nuclear reactors rather than diesel engines.

6) The US military should start recycling nuclear fuel.

7) All civilian employees of the DOD should use laptops rather than stationary PCs (laptops are 11 times more  electricity-efficient than stationary computers).

 8) The DOD should stop buying solar panels.

F) PERSONNEL REDUCTION

1) Reduce the number of civilian employees of the three service departments by 50%;

2) Radically reduce the number of generals (Russia plans to reduce the number of serving Russian generals from 1100 to 900);

3) Withdraw America from the useless NATO alliance and from the Rio Pact (and discharge all American personnel currently serving at NATO HQ);

4) Dual-hat some commands and merge others (e.g. the US Army’s FORSCOM should be merged with the Army’s SDDC, and the Army’s Materiel Command should be merged with the Army’s AASC);

4)      Replace all C-5s with C-17s (the crew of a C-17 consists of 3 people; the crew of a C-5 jet consists of 9 folks) (update: Bob Gates has decided to shut down the C-17 program);

5)      Replace the 3 Seawolf-class SSNs with 3 Virginia-class submarines when the Seawolf-class retires;

6)      Cap the salaries of all civilian employees of the DOD;

7)      Require that every new ship program reduce the number of personnel required for 1 ship in comparison to the ship program it is replacing (the Gerald R Ford class is supposed to require 25% fewer crewmen than the Nimitz class); and

8)      Replace M1 Abrams tanks with AMX-56 Leclerc tanks (thus reducing the number of tankmen in the US military by 25%).

9)      The posts of the Vice Chairman of the JCS, and the Administrative Advisor of the SECAF should be abolished as should be the entire Environmental Division of the CNO’s Office, the AFIS and the AFPS; the military bands of the USAF, of the USMC, of the USN and of the US Army (except their central bands) should be dissolved.

10)  The Honor Guards of the four services of the DOD should be reduced by 50%.

11)  The presidential helicopter fleet should be reduced to 2 helicopters.

12)  The aggregate number of soldiers and marines should be capped at the 2009 treshold.

13)  The US Army’s NASCAR team should be abolished. (http://www.army.mil/-images/2009/07/13/44751/army.mil-44751-2009-07-14-070737.jpg)

14)  The US government should abolish the CIA and assign its functions to other intel agencies. It should also create a dedicated counterintel agency at the DOD.

15)  Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and the Asian part of Russia should be added to the AO responsibility of the USPACOM; afterwards, the USEUCOM should be merged with the USCENTCOM; consequently, the Naval Forces Europe command and the European commands of the US Army, the USMC and the USAF should be abolished.

16)  The presidential helicopter fleet should be replaced with 2 VH-60 helicopters. No separate program for that purpose is needed, these 2 VH-60s should be derivates of H-60s.

17)  The Naval Historical Center and the Army Historical Center shall be abolished, and all historians employed by the DOD except the historians at military universities shall be retired and not replaced. The DOD needs weapons and soldiers, not historians.

18)  The Joint Staff’s personnel should be reduced by at least 25%; the Air Staff’s personnel and the Naval Staff’s personnel should both be reduced by 10%.

19)  The US Strategic Command’s Center for Combating WMDs should be abolished.

20)  The staff of every Marine and Army division should be reduced by at least 10%, as should be the number of personnel at each geographic AF command and at each Numbered Air Force except the 18^th AF.

21)  The staff of each task force should be reduced by at least 10%. The staff of the Joint Command should be reduced by 25% (including a 25% reduction of the Strategy and Policy Directorate).

22) The number of officers should be reduced if it can be done in a way that would ensure that this policy doesn’t weaken the US military. The current number of American military officers who are not generals or warrant officers is 209,878. The total current number of American military officers is 226,565. (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/ranks.htm)

23)  On top of the above reductions, the DOD should retire the 14,650 Air Force personnel and 2,477 Navy sailors hired in 2009.

24) On top of the above reductions, the increase of the number of military personnel proposed by Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2009 should be reversed.

25)  On the whole, the number of military personnel (counting Guardsmen, Reservists and AC personnel together) should not exceed 2.2 million, and should be reduced to 2 million if it can be.

G) SHIP AND PLANE RETIREMENTS

1)      Retire all obsolete aircraft as soon as their replacements arrive. By “obsolete aircraft” I mean aircraft that can neither fly nor fight. For example, the USAF’s entire Hercules fleet of the non-Super-Hercules variants should be replaced by Super Hercules planes (as should be the Hercules planes of the non-Super-Hercules variants owned by foreign AFs); the USMC’s KC-130 tanker fleet should be replaced by tankers derived from Super Hercules planes. The USAF’s obsolete CSAR helicopters should be replaced with new MH-53 or new MH-60 helicopters, or other CSAR or multi-purpose helicopters, but these must be new. All E-3 AWACSes should be replaced with E-10 jets. The Army should reclaim all H-57 helicopters parked at AMARC for spare parts.

2)      Offer the aircraft carriers Forrestal, Saratoga, Independence, Constellation and John F Kennedy to India (or any other country) if India (or any other country) pays for these ships and refits them.

3)      Strip the two remaining reserve battleships of the USN, the USS Iowa and the USS Wisconsin (and two decommissioned battleships, USS Alabama and USS Massachusetts) of their guns, then sell the 2 reserve battleships (Iowa and Wisconsin) to scrappers.

4)      All KA-planes, A-4 jets and F-4 planes parked at AMARC should be sold to the IAF. All SH-2 helicopters parked at AMARC should be sold to the RNZAF. All C-9 and DC-9 planes parked at AMARC should be sold to Third World airlines.

5)      The Spruance class vessel still moored in a reserve fleet should be sold, not sunk; CG-47-49 and CG-51 should be sold or scrapped rather than sunk; no American ships should be sunk by the USN; the USN must not donate any ships to museums.

6)      All obsolete ships in American reserve fleets (i.e. all ships in those fleets except modern ones like those of the Ticonderoga class and submarines) should be sold or scrapped to earn money for new weapons. The USN’s reserve fleets (mothballed fleets) currently number 251 ships.

7)      As many of the F-16s parked at AMARC as possible (but not too many, so as not to deprive the USAF of spare parts) should be offered and sold to foreign countries in order to raise money for the purchase of new weapons.

8)      All S-2s parked at AMARC should be sold to Taiwan, as should be some S-3s parked at AMARC. All T-2s parked at AMARC should be sold to Greece.

9)      The USS Tarawa (LHA-1) should be sold, not sunk. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tarawa_(LHA-1) )

10) All S-2 planes should be sold to the Government of California. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X721NfyQTQo) 

H) VARIOUS OTHER REFORMS

1) The Secretary of Defense should rank in the American order of precedence ahead of all other Cabinet secretaries.

2) The 11^th Wing of the USAF and all ceremonial units should be assigned to Andrews AFB and leave Bolling AFB (as should all other agencies based at Bolling AFB except the DIA). Bolling AFB should be separated from Naval Facility Anacostia. Eventually, a new DIIAC should be built somewhere else and Bolling AFB should be closed and sold. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolling_AFB)

3) The exploration of Outer Space should be conducted jointly by the US, Britain, Canada, India, France (an EU member) and the EU. The US should work on its Moon program together with these countries.

4) American soldiers shall be allowed to wear the following medals besides those already authorized: the Order of the White Eagle, the Order of Restored Poland, the Order of the Military Cross, the Order of Merit of Poland and all other Polish medals, as well as French medals.

5) A Cold War Victory Medal should be authorized. However, several other medals (including the Air Medal and the DSSM) should be abolished.

6) The eligibility for the National Defense Service Medal should be extended (in terms of the Vietnamese War period) from 1974 to the end of the SS Mayaguez incident. People who served with the US military during the Iranian hostage crisis (4th November 1979 – 20th January 1981), and people who served during the Berlin crisis of 1948 should also be eligible for the NDSM.

7) All USAF commands and all US Army commands should be commanded by 3-star generals.

The requirements of the budget calendar should never marginalize the defense policy-making process.

9) No F-22s should serve with the ANG of any leftist state (including Hawaii).

10) Any savings in the DOD must be invested in the DOD.

11) Every USS Arizona veteran should have the right to be buried in the wreck of that ship if he wants to be; his family members should have such a right, too, if they want; but the spill of oil from Arizona’s tank must be stopped and the oil must eventually be pumped out of the tank of the USS Arizona.

12) Other than classified projects, budget gag rules should be banned.

13) The DOD should withdraw all American troops from Iraq and all other Persian Gulf countries, and bring 60% of American troopers in Afghanistan home.

14) The war on drugs should be ended.

15) All members of the JCS should become members of the NSC.

16) All RIMPAC exercises and all NATO exercises should be ended (because NATO should be abolished).

17) The USAF should establish an Air Force Cyber Command to fight hackers.

18) B-1 bombers should be subordinated to the USAF’s Global Strike command (just like B-2s, B-52s and ICBMs are).

19) American nuclear weapons, and the funding for them, and the role of the caretaker of nukes, should be given to the DOD.

20) The Pentagon should give 12 of the Hercules planes parked at AMARC to the RAF; it should then reclaim (i.e. use for spare parts) all other aircraft (incl. B-1s, B-52s, C-5s, F-16s and A-10s) parked at AMARC (except F-15s and A-6s, which should be recommissioned and kept in service as interim aircraft until additional F-35s are ordered, if they are ever ordered) to keep the US military’s aircraft flyable. (Note: the currently planned Pentagon figure of 2443 F-35s for the entire military is woefully inadequate, as was the previous DOD figure of 2543 F-35s.) At the same time, the DOD should continually buy spare parts and upgrades for F-16s, taking advantage of the still-open F-16 production line.

21) Ramp up the production rates of F-22s and F-35s, and order hundreds of additional F-22s and F-35s to reduce the price per plane (i.e. to implement economics of scale).

22) Deploy the two F-16 wings stationed in Europe (the one currently stationed at Spangdahlem AFB and the one currently stationed at Aviano AFB) to Poland.

23) The four-star rank should be reserved only for the Chairman of the JCS, Service Chiefs (and their deputies), commanders of Combatant Commands, commanders of geographic fleets/armies/marine corps groups/fleets (e.g. the US Pacific Fleet), the commander of American troops in Afghanistan and the commanders of American troopers in whatever country America might invade in the future.

24) It must be made certain that all American troopers will be able to vote.

25) Arms reduction treaties should be rejected; the START-1, START-2, SALT-1, SALT-2, SORT, CFE-1, CFE-2 and CTBT treaties should be repealed.

26) The Vice President should fly commercial airliners, not military jets.

27) The USAF’s crucial CSAR-X program (which was supposed to yield replacements for the USAF’s Combat Search And Rescue Helicopter Fleet) was cancelled in April 2009 by Bob Gates. I have developed an alternative way to replace the USAF’s vintage CSARH fleet: buy 141 (or more) MH-60 Pave Hawk CSAR helicopters or buy H-60 Black Hawk helicopters and modify them for the CSAR role (as was done with the USAF’s first MH-60 helicopters – they weren’t purpose-built CSAR aircraft, but rather modified H-60 helicopters). Black Hawks (not CSAR helicopters) are currently being procured by the US Army anyway, and have been procured for many years. As interim helicopters, the 27 H-1 Iroquis helicopters currently parked at AMARC, all H-34 helicopters currently parked at AMARC, all H-46 helicopters parked at AMARC, and all H-53 helicopters currently parked at AMARC, should be recommissioned and modified for the CSARH role. These helos should also become available to the governors of Gulf Coast states.

28) Globalsecurity.org complains that the Navy has no ship naming regulations and that this is bad for the Navy; I agree on that issue. Therefore, I recommend the adoption of the following ship naming standards: 1) Ship names should not (with exceptions granted by the SECNAV) repeat themselves, so if a ship name has already been used once, it should never be used again. 2) Ships should, with few exceptions, be named only after American figures and American cities. 3) Ships should receive the names of American figures or American cities regardless of what ship category they represent.

29) The USS Utah (BB-31), sunk by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, should be raised and scrapped. The dead sailors who are still aboard that ship should be transported from that ship to a military cemetery and buried there with military honors.

30) All DOD and USCG aircraft shall be banned from participating in air shows.

31)  All B-52s parked at AMARC should be reclaimed to provide spare parts for the rest of the B-52 fleet before B-3 replacements arrive. The same applies to B-1s parked at AMARC. Enlarging the bomber fleet should be done solely by buying new bombers (e.g. B-3s).

32)  Cannibalising any aircraft not retired by the DOD shall be banned. There is an abundant supply of spare parts at AMARC – use that supply.

33)  Denying spare-parts from AMARC to in-service planes when in-service planes need spare parts can result in either the grounding and mothballing of those in-service planes which need spare parts but lack them, or the cannibalizing of some in-service planes for spare parts, both of which is unacceptable.

34)  The only solution to prevent the disasters spoken of in #33 from happening is to maintain an adequate supply of spare parts at AMARC or other aircraft maintenance centers.

35)  America should guarantee TOT whenever bidding for Indian and British contracts.

36)  As many scientists as possible should be allowed to immigrate to the US and recruited to work in American governmental laboratories – a total mobilization of the global scientific workforce should be conducted.

37)  No flyovers.

38)  All exquisite pictures on the Pentagon’s walls, all luxury furniture items, all luxury lamps, all sculptures and all luxury carpets at the Pentagon should be sold and replaced with non-luxury, cheap items (http://www.defenselink.mil/dodcmsshare/photoessay/2006-12/hires_061215-D-7203T-041.JPG).

39)  The former Fort Missoula and the former Camp Lockett should be sold, and a new BRAC round should be implemented (Carlisle Barracks, Camp Kilmer, NSF Thurmont (AKA Camp David), the DC Naval Observatory,Fort Myer, NIMSF Philadelphia, Fort Lawton, Fort McPherson, Fort Gillem and Fort Hamilton should be closed during that round and sold). Fort Gillem was recommended for closure as early as 2005, and Fort Chaffee no longer houses any military units. Units stationed at Fort Lawton should be assigned to other military installations. This article recommends the closure of 7 Army and 3 Navy big installations, a total of 10 big military installations.

40)  A new training base should be built to replace Camp Kilmer. The site of Camp Kilmer itself should be cleaned – currently it is environmentally hazardous.

41)  All retired ships mothballed at NIMSF Philadelphia should be moved to other NIMSFs.

42)  Supervising America’s participation in conventional arms control treaties (which treaties should be repealed) shall be removed from the DTRA’s list of responsibilities.

43)  The White House should house the Vice President of the US as well as the President of the US. The DC Naval Observatory should be closed during a BRAC round.

44)  Except the two fighterplane wings mentioned above, and the personnel of the Landstuhl hospital and Ramstein AFB, all American units stationed in Europe should be brought back to America and stationed at American bases (new bases should be built or leased for them if need be). Their bases in Europe should be given to host countries.

45)  The DOD should stop writing and conducting Nuclear Posture Reviews, and should start issuing annual reports on the North Korean, Iranian, Russian and Venezuelan militaries.

46)  A new National Defense Strategy – one that will treat conventional and irregular warfare equally and reject the numerous ridiculous notions (such as the claim that there will never again be a conventional war involving America) that the Pentagon subscribes to today – should be issued. The Joint Doctrine For Operations (which wrongly says that “that irregular warfare in the later phases of a campaign could require a level of military effort as great as—and perhaps greater than—what is needed for so-called major combat operations”) should be amended accordingly.

47)  The National Security Council shall be stripped of its right to issue directives binding on the DOD.

48)  M9 pistols should be retired and replaced with M1911 pistols; M16s should be replaced with M14s; M240 SAWs should be replaced with Ma Deuce machineguns.

49)  America should withdraw from the UN and the UN Disarmament Conference and refuse to send its representatives to any disarmament conferences.

50)  No military parades involving any military vehicles should be organized.

51)  The military retirement age should be increased to 75 years of age.

52)  All contracts – even small contracts – must be competitive, that is, contractors must compete for it. (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2009807689_apusstimulusfactcheck.html)

53)  Like the Schwarzenegger Administration of California, the DOD should organize a garage sale of all of its exquisite equipment (e.g. furniture, cars and lamps).

54)  All units and persons based at Fort Myer should be moved to Fort Belvoir or Fort Meade. Afterwards, Fort Myer should be closed and sold during a BRAC round. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Myer)

55)  The NSA and the Defense Logistics Agency should, like agencies of the USDOD, sell their exquisite equipment, including exquisite cars. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fort_Belvoir_DLA_building.jpg)

56)  The US Army’s Reserve Command, Forces Command and Central Command, and the IMC for the Southeast should be moved to Fort Stewart. Afterwards, Fort McPherson shall be closed during a BRAC round and sold.

How the numbers add up

It is impossible for me to estimate the total savings that my reforms would yield, but some reforms would certainly yield large financial savings for the DOD. The table below outlines those savings.

A final note for this article:

There are many politicians (e.g. Bob Gates, Obama, Levin, McCain) who claim that they honor American vets and want to give them all the benefits they deserve and that they respect them, yet they deny them the equipment that they need. Their claims are ridiculous. They praise American vets for heroism and give them free socialized medicine, yet they deny them the equipment which they need to win wars and defend America. If you do not want to give American servicemen and servicewomen the tools they need to keep America safe, or if you’re unwilling to invest in it, you are an anti-military liberal dishonoring the members of the US military, period. What are troopers going to defend America with if procurement funding is reduced or abolished? Muskets? I have proposed a better path: radically reducing the healthcare, personnel, procurement and bureaucracy costs and holding contractors accountable while at the same time protecting genuine military procurement programs from any reductions and closures. The US military must be armed with whatever weapons it needs, whatever the cost of those weapons is.

Sarah Palin has no Republcan competitor. She has 905,000 FB fans, compared to Huckabee’s 116,000 fans and Romney’s 76,000 fans.

But Palin is lagging behind Obama as of today (1/10/2009). The 44th President has 6,797,000 FB fans.

The Internet was one of the tools the Dems used to beat Republicans last year. Let’s make the Internet a tool that Republican candidates will use AGAINST their Democratic rivals.

A factually correct, well-researched, alarming article by John Griffing was published on AT yesterday.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/disarmament_for_all_except_the.html

It warns that Obama’s unilateral disarmament policy (from which his defense cuts stem) is NOT his unique policy, but rather one that has been pursued by most of the Administrations of the past 48 years, including the Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush-I, Clinton, and Bush-II Administrations.

Reagan pursued a policy of nuclear disarmament, but for him, conventional and irregular weapons and BMD equipment were off-limits to disarmers.

The disastrous, treasonous, flawed policy of disarmament has been pursued by the US government ever since 1961, and since then, it has led to dramatic reductions of America’s arsenals:

1) The American nuclear arsenal peaked at 33,000 warheads in 1966. Now it numbers merely ca. 2200 warheads.
2) The number of American SSBNs has shrank from 41 during the 1960s to 14 today.
3) The number of bombers has shrank from several hundred during the 1960s to fewer than 200 today.
4) The number of ICBMs has shrank from at least 1040 during the 1960s to just 450 today.
5) The number of USAF wings has shrank from 37 in 1990 to just 20 today.
6) Nowadays, the USAF has only 1975 fighterplanes (730 F-15s and 1245 F-16s), not counting F-22s.

As Kennedy himself admitted (as did the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and its former officials), the goal of the USACDA is to implement global, total, irreversible disarmament, a ban on all weapons except those owned by the UN, and a ban on all militaries except UN contingents, and the creation of a global government that would rule the entire world tyrannically. This implies the end of a sovereign America.

Of course, totalitarian countries like Russia, China, NK and Saudi Arabia will NEVER disarm themselves, so the result will not even be a UN dictatorship, but rather a multitude of wars that will be started by agggressors who will be happy to invade defenseless countries.

DISARMAMENT WILL NEVER PREVENT ANY WARS.

A plea to all Americans: please examine what are the opinions of your political candidates on disarmament and arms reduction, and vote against EVERY candidate who endorsed disarmament or arms reduction.

Last week (21/9-27/9) was, politically, an important week. 2 Republicans disappointed me, but 2 Republican politicians positively surprised me.

The first GOPer who disappointed me was, alas, the candidate who, until last week, I believed was the best GOP candidate for the presidency: Newt Gingrich. I found out from the Internet that not only did Gingrich endorse nuclear disarmament and the childish notion of “a world without nuclear weapons”, he also endorsed infrastructure megaprojects and federal funding for them. Gingrich is ignorant of the fact that such megaprojects are risky as well as costly.

The second Republican who disappointed me was Sarah Palin. Don’t get me wrong: I like Palin. I believe she was the best Alaskan governor ever. But her Hong Kong speech was a bitter disappointment.

1) She wrongly endorsed the Afghan surge proposal of the idiot general Stanley McChrystal, who believes that pouring gasoline into fire is the solution to the problem America is facing right now. America needs a light footprint and the Krulak strategy, not additional troopers.
2) She wrongly endorsed the policy of appeasement of China, and wrongly claimed that America must cooperate with China or the US will collapse.
3) She wrongly claimed that China is rising peacefully and that China’s rise is good for America.
4) She did not bother to mention China’s compulsory abortion program.
5) She wrongly claimed that China is a partner of the US.

The best part of her speech was the defense-related part. She defended weapons programs. But the speech as a whole was a disappointment to me. What could’ve been an excellent address was a bitter disappointment.

The 2 Republicans who positively surprised me were Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

During the VVS, Romney delivered a good speech, and on Sunday, I read the best speech he ever made – the 1st June 2009 address to the Heritage Foundation. That address was focused exclusively on defense. Mitt Romney researched this issue well, and presented the specific defense policies he favors. He presented the details of what the US military needs – that is, all kinds of weapons, so that it could defeat every potential adversary. And that includes fighterplanes, nuclear weapons, bombers, ships and missile defense. He also debunked myths such as “the American military budget is too big”, “the American military budget is excessive”, “America spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined”, and “America spends X times more on its military than China and Russia combined”.

The transcript of the speech: http://www.freestrongamerica.com/speeches/item/governor_romney_remarks_to_the_heritage_foundation_the_care_of_freedom

The other Republican who performed well, Huckabee, delivered a good speech during the VVS, and given that speech, I wasn’t surprised that he won the VVS Straw Poll (he got 28% of the votes; Palin, Romney, Mike Pence and Tim Pawlenty each received 12% of the votes). Huckabee not only presented a conservative agenda but also, as columnist Star Parker rightly wrote, presented a positive agenda. No wonder why Huckabee is liked by EVERY demographic group other than Catholics.

So, whereas Obama surrendered America’s nuclear deterrent to the UN during the UNSC session, Romney and Huckabee presented a conservative agenda for America.