A manpower shortage in the United States Armed Forces directly compromises national security.
According to 2017 Pentagon data, 71 percent of young Americans between 17 and 24 are ineligible to serve in the United States military.1
Put another way: Over 24 million of the 34 million people of that age group cannot join the armed forces—even if they wanted to. This is an alarming situation which threatens the country’s fundamental national security. If only 29 percent of the nation’s young adults are even qualified […]
Sunday, December 22nd, 2019
Kengo Tsutsumi, - ProPublica
Stephan:
In fiscal year 2015, military spending accounted for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, totalling $598.5 billion. On March 16, 2017 President Trump submitted his request to Congress for $639 billion in military spending—$54 billion—which represented a 10 percent increase.
And yet we have a military for which most Americans could not qualify (see the previous article), whose equipment is in poor condition, and service members who feel they are not properly trained.
The only winner in this deal are the corporations which profit from all this money.
Navy crew members of the USS Blue Ridge, the command ship of the 7th Fleet, stand on the deck as the ship is docked during a port call on April 20, 2019, in Hong Kong.
Credit: Anthony Kwan/Getty
The responses by the sailors — consistent, repeated — can be jarring to read:
Are you getting enough sleep? “No.”
Do you feel well-trained to do your job? “No.”
Have there been scenarios in which you or your bosses had concerns about the safety of the ship and crew but felt they could not say no to new tasking? “Yes.”
Please rate your confidence in Navy leadership in the Pentagon. “I am not confident.”
On Feb. 26, ProPublica published a callout aimed primarily at active-duty men and women in the U.S. Navy. We had published two stories about neglect, exhaustion and deadly mishaps in the 7th Fleet, the largest armada anywhere and once the Navy’s crown jewel. Now, we wanted to take a measure of the confidence […]
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Sunday, December 22nd, 2019
CAITLIN M. KENNEY, - Stars & Stripes
Stephan: I am focusing so intensively today on these military trends because the military consumes such a large percentage of our tax dollars, to a very compromised outcome, and we can't seem to stop the endless wars in which we are engaged for no good purpose I can see.
We need to be committing massive resources to address climate change, but we can't in part because the military consumes such a large percentage of our wealth. This should become a major issue in the 2020 election, but I doubt that it will.
In an August 10, 2019 photo, USS Connecticut departs Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility’s Dry Dock 4 in Bremerton, Wash., during a 5½-month period of maintenance and modernization that’s formally known as a docking continuous maintenance availability.
Credit: Max Maxfield/ U.S. Navy
WASHINGTON — During the last five years, Navy vessels have spent an additional, unplanned 33,700 days, or about 90 years, docked at shipyards for maintenance, according to a recent government report, raising concerns from senators Wednesday about the ability of the service to conduct its missions around the world.
“One effect of these delays is fewer ready ships, which places a greater stress on our fleet to meet all of its operational demands,” Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee subpanel on seapower, said during a hearing about maintenance delays.
Shipyard delays has been a known issue for years. A report published Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office found the Navy faces “persistent and substantial maintenance delays” that affects most of its maintenance efforts and […]
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OVERDIEPSE POLDER, NETHERLANDS — The local phonebook in the Dutch area of Noordwaard is a record of a community that no longer exists: Lists of numbers for homes that have been demolished, leaving just square patches in the grass where their foundations stood.
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