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Started By
Message
A 50% increase in military spending. Not fiscally sound but some possible positives
Posted on 4/3/26 at 10:42 pm
Posted on 4/3/26 at 10:42 pm
Not because military spending isn't important. It's pretty well known that defense contractors have been ripping us off for decades. So we've now stripped away any idea of "efficiency" with public funds.
But I think there are some possible strategic angles to this.
1. We could be utilizing a strategy that essentially forced the Soviets into trying to match out military spending and helped lead to their eventual collapse and ending their threats to us. Of course this time it's the Chinese and not the Soviets. We could be utilizing that familiar blue print. You can't just copy and paste an idea that worked once before but the whole thing about history rhyming and not repeating has plenty of truth to it. We appear to be utilizing the idea of "sequencing" to defeat the eastern axis. That's another discussion all together.
2. A lesson that could be learned from the first iteration of DOGE that I think should be taken into serious consideration. Elon and his team know a lot in one specific domain. Massive scale industrial manufacturing. A good idea would be to bring back Elon into DOGE 2.0: Department of war edition. The mission - hold the military industrial complex accountable. He and his companies already have real influence on warfare and could provide tremendous value in this regard. If a vendor is charging us obscene amounts of money for easily reproducible widgets we tell those people to frick off and let a team lead by Elon and his people reverse engineer the shite out of everything. Get in line and stop ripping off the public or get replaced.
Closing thoughts - if we're going to increase the shite out military spending let's get the most bang for the buck and utilize people friendly to the administration that could help streamline this. If the Chinese know that we're ramping up spending and stream lining efficiency that might make tactic # 1 significantly more efficient. (Assuming we're using that tactic) We could later dial back spending to more reasonable levels if the goals are achieved. Unleash people like Elon in the domain they best operate in and not worry about if we're spending too much money on national parks or whatever else. We can still have others audit those things but let people like Elon be more narrowly focused in domains where they can provide almost immediate value.
But I think there are some possible strategic angles to this.
1. We could be utilizing a strategy that essentially forced the Soviets into trying to match out military spending and helped lead to their eventual collapse and ending their threats to us. Of course this time it's the Chinese and not the Soviets. We could be utilizing that familiar blue print. You can't just copy and paste an idea that worked once before but the whole thing about history rhyming and not repeating has plenty of truth to it. We appear to be utilizing the idea of "sequencing" to defeat the eastern axis. That's another discussion all together.
2. A lesson that could be learned from the first iteration of DOGE that I think should be taken into serious consideration. Elon and his team know a lot in one specific domain. Massive scale industrial manufacturing. A good idea would be to bring back Elon into DOGE 2.0: Department of war edition. The mission - hold the military industrial complex accountable. He and his companies already have real influence on warfare and could provide tremendous value in this regard. If a vendor is charging us obscene amounts of money for easily reproducible widgets we tell those people to frick off and let a team lead by Elon and his people reverse engineer the shite out of everything. Get in line and stop ripping off the public or get replaced.
Closing thoughts - if we're going to increase the shite out military spending let's get the most bang for the buck and utilize people friendly to the administration that could help streamline this. If the Chinese know that we're ramping up spending and stream lining efficiency that might make tactic # 1 significantly more efficient. (Assuming we're using that tactic) We could later dial back spending to more reasonable levels if the goals are achieved. Unleash people like Elon in the domain they best operate in and not worry about if we're spending too much money on national parks or whatever else. We can still have others audit those things but let people like Elon be more narrowly focused in domains where they can provide almost immediate value.
This post was edited on 4/3/26 at 10:43 pm
11
Posted on 4/3/26 at 11:08 pm to Powerman
quote:Why don’t you take a look at the national debt then compared to now. We were around $900 billion in 1980 and increased it by 3.5x that amount in a decade. Our debt wasn’t at the unsustainable level in the 80’s as it is now.
1. We could be utilizing a strategy that essentially forced the Soviets into trying to match out military spending and helped lead to their eventual collapse and ending their threats to us. Of course this time it's the Chinese and not the Soviets. We could be utilizing that familiar blue print.
Posted on 4/3/26 at 11:12 pm to Tiger Prawn
quote:
Why don’t you take a look at the national debt then compared to now. We were around $900 billion in 1980 and increased it by 3.5x that amount in a decade. Our debt wasn’t at the unsustainable level in the 80’s as it is now.
That's not a trivial point. It's a very important one. We can't triple our national debt over the next decade and survive. The cold war came at a big price.
So if this can't be done quickly as in 3 years it's not a reasonable strategy to test .
#2 I think has some legs to it. We could potentially increase our defense capabilities without increasing the budget. I do think Elon and others would be extremely useful in this arena.
Posted on 4/3/26 at 11:15 pm to Powerman
quote:
DOGE
Post-DOGE, we are spending more money to deliver worse government services for the American people. That’s not efficiency. That’s a failure.
The military budget should be cut it half. No one is invading the US homeland in the next 50 years.
Posted on 4/3/26 at 11:16 pm to Tiger Prawn
They were asking for a 200 billion supplement to fund the war. Isn't that in addition to the 50% increase? The Ukraine and Iran were wars that never needed to happen. This is just way to much war money. Instead of an increase, they need to cut funding.
Posted on 4/3/26 at 11:18 pm to Powerman
Been watching a lot of the Ukraine war footage. I would invest in drones and weapons to fight drones. They are devastating on the battlefield. A $500 drone can take out units worth millions.
Posted on 4/3/26 at 11:20 pm to Neutral Underground
quote:
Been watching a lot of the Ukraine war footage. I would invest in drones and weapons to fight drones. They are devastating on the battlefield. A $500 drone can take out units worth millions.
Yes and the economics of modern warfare need to be part of our strategy.
Posted on 4/3/26 at 11:23 pm to ned nederlander
quote:
Post-DOGE, we are spending more money to deliver worse government services for the American people. That’s not efficiency. That’s a failure.
Agreed. Because we had the stupid idea that we could take someone that is brilliant in very narrow domains and apply it broadly. It "seemed like a good idea at the time" but in retrospect it looks pretty stupid.
quote:
The military budget should be cut it half. No one is invading the US homeland in the next 50 years.
And that's where some weird frick like Elon could actually provide benefits in efficiency. It's his lane. I don't give a shite about what Elon thinks about food stamps. Shut the frick up and help is reign in the exorbitant military spending or get fricked back to South Africa
Posted on 4/3/26 at 11:57 pm to Powerman
Seems like every veteran went to college using the GI bill ans every veteran collects military disability. Veterans collecting military disability get it for life and are allowed to work jobs/earn money without their disability being affected. Pretty nice setup. You just have to risk your life to enrich the loved ones of politicians to get it.
This post was edited on 4/3/26 at 11:58 pm
Posted on 4/4/26 at 12:22 am to Neutral Underground
I think the Era of aircraft carriers used to project power is over. They are too vulnerable to hypersonic missiles. It is going to be impossible to project power around the world like we have been doing.
Posted on 4/4/26 at 1:24 am to texas tortilla
quote:
I think the Era of aircraft carriers used to project power is over. They are too vulnerable to hypersonic missiles. It is going to be impossible to project power around the world like we have been doing.
Hegseth has acknowledged this. And he's not wrong. Carriers still have real purpose. The cost vs benefit analysis on that will degrade very rapidly.
An optimistic view of the future might be that the ability to inflict harm becomes so significantly cheaper that maybe that becomes its own deterrence and the world becomes more peaceful and cooperative. It's a naive idea of mine but it's actually a pretty good outcome.
frick the religious crazies for a minute and think of this thought experiment. What if the United States and China were actually allies and not adversaries? If we had the ability to cooperate and not "compete" it would be a huge win for the entire world. They're great at things. We're great at other things. If we got along as separate entities we would be an unstoppable force. But that's not reality unfortunately.
Posted on 4/4/26 at 5:52 am to Powerman
I can’t figure out how Trump has gotten so tone deaf. People have been begging him to address affordability issues since his administration started…. then he comes out with this
This post was edited on 4/4/26 at 8:27 am
Posted on 4/4/26 at 6:30 am to texas tortilla
quote:
I think the Era of aircraft carriers used to project power is over. They are too vulnerable to hypersonic missiles. It is going to be impossible to project power around the world like we have been doing.
I have been around long enough to have learned that defenses follow offenses. Will the aircraft carrier evolve? Certainly. Will the makeup and tactics of the carrier battle group change? Absolutely. That said we will still be able to project power across the globe unless me choose not to. The longbow made plate armor ineffective but modern US soldiers still strap on MSV. Battleships were dead but now we have the Trump class, we are now using the MQ-9 Reaper (prop plane) for anti-drone defense, I bet there will be a A-10 replacement in the not too distant future that won't be based on an F-35 analog.
Posted on 4/4/26 at 6:34 am to Powerman
quote:
1. We could be utilizing a strategy that essentially forced the Soviets into trying to match out military spending and helped lead to their eventual collapse and ending their threats to us
And if they choose not to, it will just accelerate our collapse.
The numbers are staggering:
242 US Presidents to amass 10T in debt
4 more US Presidents to get to 40T debt
Maybe someone will step up and be the adult here, and stop with the kindergarten tantrum “I want what I want when I want it”
Posted on 4/4/26 at 6:37 am to ned nederlander
quote:
Post-DOGE, we are spending more money to deliver worse government services for the American people. That’s not efficiency. That’s a failure.
Bingo.
DOGE uncovered 200B in waste. Congress cut 9B from that list.
We spend 9B every two days.
Posted on 4/4/26 at 6:39 am to Powerman
Strong defense first. Stay on the offense 24/7/365.
The rest of it: don't go into a deficit doing it.
The rest of it: don't go into a deficit doing it.
Posted on 4/4/26 at 6:59 am to Powerman
quote:
defense contractors have been ripping us off for decades.
Don't ignore the military in this blame. The procurement process (maybe outside of JSOC) sucks royally. One example:
quote:
…the United States Navy’s Constellation-class frigate program (was) not as a case of technical failure or flawed contracting, but as a breakdown in sustained stewardship over a sound acquisition construct. The program was conceived to adapt a mature, serially produced parent design; expand the U.S. surface-combatant industrial base; and impose cost discipline through a fixed-price structure that depended on preserving design stability and commonality. That construct remained coherent through early execution and even through extraordinary external disruption during the Covid-19 pandemic. The program did not fail because it proved infeasible. It became vulnerable when the continuity of senior ownership eroded. During a narrow period between mid-2022 and mid-2023, the program’s central premise—reliance on a proven parent design to control risk, cost, and schedule—was no longer actively defended as directed changes accumulated to comply with historical Navy shipbuilding specifications. Absent deliberate reconstitution of that premise, contractual and technical alignment degraded, and the program’s recovery pathways narrowed.
…
What ultimately undermined the Constellation class program was not insufficient compliance, but the Navy’s subsequent pursuit—particularly within NAVSEA—of near-total clean sheet design specification conformance after contract award. That shift displaced the program’s foundational premise, transforming a heritage-based adaptation into a de facto new-design effort without a corresponding reset of cost, schedule, or governance.
Posted on 4/4/26 at 7:10 am to Powerman
quote:
50% increase in military spending
Why not make it a 100% increase. Nobody even thinks about money anymore.
Why not make money fairy dust.
Posted on 4/4/26 at 7:40 am to 4cubbies
quote:
Seems like every veteran went to college using the GI bill ans every veteran collects military disability. Veterans collecting military disability get it for life and are allowed to work jobs/earn money without their disability being affected. Pretty nice setup.
We’ll just say someone close to me went into the Army for 1.5 years, got hammered pretty much every night. Crashed this person’s truck 3X, injured their hip bone but not enough to not be able to walk normally NOR not able to work a full time EMT job in an ER.
And yet collects a check for life @ 100% disabled.
What in the mf’ing frick is that about. I’m pissed and embarrassed. Investigators and the subsequent doctors all need to be thrown in a gulag somewhere. Makes my blood boil yugely.
Posted on 4/4/26 at 7:40 am to boogiewoogie1978
quote:
A 50% increase in military spending. Not fiscally sound but some possible positives
There is nothing positive about this.
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