Does the USA need a military as big as it has now?

[Isvataan]

Not gonna lie that having real life mechas sounds pretty cool to see. Especially if they're effective in action

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

I don't know what's a stronger case against the military budget, the enemies the USA makes and then subsequently fights, or the vast fields of hardware that don't get used at all.

You never heard of reserves?

So they're about to get used for realsies in the near future? Or is this, too, supposed to be a "deterrence" thing? How could one even test one's claims about deterrence value or lack thereof?

[Neutraligon]

Not gonna lie that having real life mechas sounds pretty cool to see. Especially if they're effective in action

Don't think mechas would be all that great combat wise, exo-suits though,those could be awesome.

[The Republic of Fore]

No, we don't. We have the greatest invasion deterrent there is. Thousands of nuclear missiles. We should stay out of foreign wars as well.

We also got a couple oceans. But thousands of nukes? You'd have to be M.A.D. to use them on our own land! Also, the "staying out of wars" ship has long passed sailed with a little thing called 9/11.

The teat of them being used on who ever invaded us. Also, we can't stay out of foreign wars because of something that was caused by getting involved in foreign wars? I'd rather we not continue to waste money in the middle. And hey, maybe we can prevent a new major terror attack.

[Rusozak]

I don't think we need enough nukes to kill the planet several times over.... or as many forces we have now. I support having a strong military force as a deterrent against aggression and the occasional foreign conflict, but unless an actual war against an established power that can compete with us (versus anti-insurgency campaigns against terrorist groups and surgical strikes in small nations), I don't think we need everything we currently have.

[Len Hyet]

I don't think we need enough nukes to kill the planet several times over.... or as many forces we have now. I support having a strong military force as a deterrent against aggression and the occasional foreign conflict, but unless an actual war against an established power that can compete with us (versus anti-insurgency campaigns against terrorist groups and surgical strikes in small nations), I don't think we need everything we currently have.

That's the problem. The days of "well lets just scale up for a big war" are over. You need a standing professional military capable of taking and throwing the first punches in a full-scale conflict, because scaling up takes time and money that will not be available.

[Napkiraly]

You never heard of reserves?

So they're about to get used for realsies in the near future? Or is this, too, supposed to be a "deterrence" thing? How could one even test one's claims about deterrence value or lack thereof?

Better to be prepared for the worst than caught with your pants down.

[Napkiraly]

The military armaments industry is one of the few remaining industrial behemoths in the United States. If America were to scale down this would be lost, either through converting to the civilian market or folding up. America would not be able to scale up again simply because it would not have the industrial capabilities and worker training to do so. The ability to adequately build an Abrams tank requires a lot more than the ability to build a Sherman did. That's also another reason why America continuously builds and buys shit it doesn't need - you can replace a young soldier far more easily than you can replace those skilled workers building the sophisticated equipment of the modern American military.

[Rectification Government]

Also we need to rein in the federal reserve, which is something Trump has hinted at a few times.

"We shall make the central bank oriented towards political bias so to create the great inflation once again"

[Page]

This whole meme needs to die. Since 9/11, defense spending has only grown by 38% as compared to 61% for other types of spending; Defense outlays are at around 15% of federal spending, which is actually lower than it was before September 11th. Since 2010, defense spending as % of GDP has declined from 4.7% to 3.3% in 2015.

Well then shouldn't spending as a whole be reduced? Also we need to rein in the federal reserve, which is something Trump has hinted at a few times.

As if Trump even knows what the federal reserve is. That's just one of the many bones he threw to his followers, someone told him that some people like to hear things like "audit the fed" and he ran with it.

[Rectification Government]

Well then shouldn't spending as a whole be reduced? Also we need to rein in the federal reserve, which is something Trump has hinted at a few times.

As if Trump even knows what the federal reserve is. That's just one of the many bones he threw to his followers, someone told him that some people like to hear things like "audit the fed" and he ran with it.

He knows what the fed is, he knows what they're doing. This rapid increase of interest rates has to be stopped. I would be perfectly fine voting for a Democrat if they promised to audit the federal reserve and stop the increase of interest rates.

[Isvataan]

Not gonna lie that having real life mechas sounds pretty cool to see. Especially if they're effective in action

Don't think mechas would be all that great combat wise, exo-suits though,those could be awesome.

You be right, Exos would be really cool to see that in action. Especially with some metal protection and boom power armor