The U.S. Army is slashing the size of its force by about 24,000, or almost 5%, and restructuring to be better able to fight the next major war, as the service struggles with recruiting shortfalls that made it impossible to bring in enough soldiers to fill all the jobs.
The cuts will mainly be in already-empty posts — not actual soldiers — including in jobs related to counterinsurgency that swelled during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars but are not needed as much today. About 3,000 of the cuts would come from Army special operations forces.
At the same time, however, the plan will add about 7,500 troops in other critical missions, including air-defense and counter-drone units and five new task forces around the world with enhanced cyber, intelligence and long-range strike capabilities.
Removed by mod
Something something consolidation of responsibilities, something something consolidation of power.
i would never join or send my children to serve in an Army that might be commanded by Trump or anyone like him
The US military is famous for retiring soldiers, then rehiring them as contract mercenaries.
Nationally trained soldiers in the national military are bound by many restrictive national and international laws and regulations.
Hired guns are not. And hired guns have more incentive to fight because they get paid more and have more freedom to do whatever they please.
The more you look at the way America is evolving as an empire like entity with its military at it’s core … the more their history is playing out like ancient Rome.
This is not accurate. It’s a provacative narrative, but the heyday for private military contractors passed a decade ago. Blackwater was such a disaster for the military, they relegated 99% of contractor jobs to BDOC/BOSI (tower guards etc) roles ages ago.
This move is almost certainly related to transitions from limited counterterrorism structures to great power conflict Army force design. The military has missed it’s recruitment goals by massive numbers in the past couple years, and filling obsolete positions is actually impacting Forces Command from meeting their manning strength mandates.
I fully expect to see more of these changes announced over the next 3-5 years as military procurement and restructuring guidelines catch up with implementation timelines. But this is categorically not evidence of a large scale plan to turn active soldiers into PMC personnel (to work around rules of engagement restrictions). There’s manpower shortages as it is, and there’s no institutional incentive to make those shortages more drastic than they already are.
deleted by creator
They probably raise more soldiers than that in one monster-truck season.
Why? Future War was a terrible movie!
Pretty solid la dispute song though so it evens out
It looks like the Russia-Ukraine war is getting Western countries to reevaluate their current military readiness. It looks like they’re collectively still very far behind in getting ammo production going compared to Russia.
Russia is getting ammo from NK. I wouldn’t call their production ability far ahead by any means
