ACP45 Loc: Rhode Island

In a time when the Air Force is scavenging parts from grounded air planes because they don't have the money to adequately stockpile replacement parts, the issue of "Base Closings" becomes more important than ever. Here is a novel idea, why not let the respective arms of our military make these decisions without interference from the politicians, who are motivated more by "pork barrel" concerns than proper military readiness.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/02/08/america-has-too-many-military-bases.html

"The Defense Department now estimates that nearly one-quarter of its current bases serve no military need. This is true even if the Army and Marine Corps remain at their current size. The billions of dollars wasted on overhead could be put to far better use, especially at a time when the services claim that they lack the resources to pay for essential functions such as training and equipment maintenance.

So why isn’t there an overwhelming push to close unneeded bases? The resistance is grounded in pork-barrel politics, not a careful assessment of the nation’s defense needs. Too many members of Congress believe that they were elected to put the interests of their state or district over that of the country. They believe that they are doing their duty by blocking any base closures.

In fact, these representatives are actually doing harm to the nation and their constituents. Their stubborn refusal to allow the military to use its resources efficiently also prevents defense communities from taking advantage of land and property currently trapped behind chain-link fences and razor wire."

funguy1949

CP45 for one economical wealth for the state and cummunities that serrounds these base's without them they would be nothing there/no job's for civilians /no business's / nothing but a dust bowel for most. That is why representatives fight so hard to keep base's open in their states.

silvereagle

Look at it this way over half of the U.S. budget goes to the military.When they pay $600.00 for a damn hammer and $1000.00 for a toilet seat what do you expect? Lobster!😭

silvereagle

What's so bad about using parts from planes that aren't flyable.You got to junkyards for used car parts.Right?

missinglink Loc: Tralfamadore

I understand your sentiment but here are the facts worldwide.
Military expenditure (% of GDP) http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS

funguy1949

It's called K balling this takes place even on new aircraft all the time,If supply doesn't have the part it's K balled off another aircraft that's has parts on back order. this happens when supply and demands out sorccess the company's out put on parts. This has been going on since air craft was in the inventory.

missinglink Loc: Tralfamadore

When I was in military aviation we were constantly cannibalizing aircraft to meet mission demands .

pafret Loc: Northeast

I believe your last paragraph because there have been many instances of exactly this occurring with the politician involved, bragging about saving local jobs. The Defense Department's claim to lack resources, i.e. money is total BS. The DOD gets 55% of the total annual income of our nation. How much more should be dev**ed to a shrunken military force? The fat cats who staff the never ending defense bureaucracy are sucking up the needed resources. They should be making cuts to overhead, non combatant, non hardware expenses, that is to say useless bureaucrats. They could moth-ball the bases and retain them for any future expansion needed.

private

Funguy has it. I'm outside the gates at Ft. Bragg and the post controls the economy. That's a good thing and a bad thing at the same time. When we pick a fight, my business struggles. When everybody is home traffic is a nightmare and I sit smiling in jams the whole time. Not only are there more customers, there's fewer soldiers risking their lives in some s**t hole in the sand. A strong, efficient, technologically superior military is key to our security and the security of our allies. So there are a lot of things to consider w/regard to base realignment and closure (BRAC). And as usual, congress is the last place I'd go to for discussion on the matter.

pafret Loc: Northeast

These facts, if they are facts, indicate Military expenditures. Our costs exceed fifty percent of GDP for DEFENSE. The DOD sucks up the other, roughly 50%, of GDP. No other nation spends this amount of their GDP on defense.

missinglink Loc: Tralfamadore

Here ya go pafret . Follow this link . I googled ( percentage of gdp spent for defense ) .
All of these search responses exhibit like findings . Currently 3.5% of GDP for the U.S.
http://www.google.com/search?q=percentage+of+gdp+for+defence&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Comparison
When you have a lot of gold you better have one hell of a safe or some thief
will relieve you of it.

BTW
I am not following your statement.
50% plus 50% = 100%.

pafret Loc: Northeast

The last site I looked at had a pie chart allocating expenditures to various sectors of the economy. The Defense sector was approximately 56 % of the total. The article indicated that about 5.6% was for the "Military", hence the difference of 50 % which since it is not military is consumed by the DOD.

Your links indicate a lower number (3.5 %) for the military but, this is the tip of the ice berg as far as expenditures on defense related costs go. I did a quick search and found this site:
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/

The charts here break down spending into interest on debt, mandatory (SSI, Medicare, SNAP) and discretionary spending which includes the military. The discretionary spending amounts to 29 % of the total expenditures and the Military portion of this is 53 % of total discretionary spending. So I was misled because the other site I looked at two days ago did not make the distinction.

However, it is not 56 % of GDP, I was wrong. On this site it is indicating somewhere around 15 %, viscerally 3.5 % seems low but, with government creative accounting who knows what the true numbers are?. My point is that the overhead of the Dept of Defense accounts for the lions share of the cost and the military gets short straw.

Again, confusion is probable because of the interchangeable use of the terms military and defense. They are not the same thing and without specific breakouts, of where they money is going, it is difficult for an outsider to know who got the money.

Scavenging parts is a practice that is as old as flying and makes sense, most of these planes are out of production and if the parts on grounded aircraft are still good it makes economic sense to use them instead of selling them for scrap.

ACP45 Loc: Rhode Island

_________
Several commenters raised the issue of "what is wrong with using parts from planes that are flyable". Answer, nothing is wrong with that, but perhaps I did not adequately explain the problem. Here are a couple of segments from a Fox News article, but you can find the same information in many other places if you simply google "air force readiness problems". http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/14/wiped-out-air-force-losing-pilots-and-planes-to-cuts-scrounging-for-spare-parts.html

[EXCLUSIVE: It was just a few years ago, in March 2011, when a pair of U.S. Air Force B-1 bombers – during a harsh winter storm – took off from their base in South Dakota to fly across the world to launch the air campaign in Libya, only 16 hours after given the order.

Today, many in the Air Force are questioning whether a similar mission could still be accomplished, after years of budget cuts that have taken an undeniable toll. The U.S. Air Force is now short 4,000 airmen to maintain its fleet, short 700 pilots to fly them and short vital spare parts necessary to keep their jets in the air. The shortage is so dire that some have even been forced to scrounge for parts in a remote desert scrapheap known as “The Boneyard.”

“It's not only the personnel that are tired, it's the aircraft that are tired as well,” Master Sgt. Bruce Pfrommer, who has over two decades of experience in the Air Force working on B-1 bombers, told Fox News.

Fox News visited two U.S. Air Force bases – including South Dakota’s Ellsworth Air Force Base located 35 miles from Mount Rushmore, where Pfrommer is stationed – to see the resource problems first-hand, following an investigation into the state of U.S. Marine Corps aviation last month.

Many of the Airmen reported feeing “burnt out” and “exhausted” due to the current pace of operations, and limited resources to support them. During the visit to Ellsworth earlier this week, Fox News was told only about half of the 28th Bomb Wing’s fleet of bombers can fly.

“We have only 20 aircraft assigned on station currently. Out of those 20 only nine are flyable,” Pfrommer said.

“The [B-1] I worked on 20 years ago had 1,000 flight hours on it. Now we're looking at some of the airplanes out here that are pushing over 10,000 flight hours,” he said.]

The other issue I wanted to comment upon was raised by fundguy1949 involving the health of communities surrounding military bases that are dependent upon the spending from the various activities that go on at that base. While I understand the concern of members of the community that have grown dependent upon such spending, and politicians who want to bring home the "pork", is that ample justification for wasting money that should be better used for the intended purpose, i.e. national defense. If the military feels that they do not need a base and could better use that money, recruiting, and training pilots and repair technicians, and giving the pilots more flight time, and being able to field more than 9 airplanes out of 20 to be combat ready, should that not be the priority?

What happens when a factory shuts down for cost reasons? The community is affected, and makes the necessary adjustments. It is not pretty or painless, but national defense should be just that. It should not be a social program for the benefit of a local community. This should be a separate issue, and perhaps other federal business could be directed to said community. But let's not loose sight of the main purpose of our military.

funguy1949

Hey dippy do dah when Reagan was spending more on our military weapons than any other president before him it had a very big in pack on the Soviet Union, it banked rupted the nation ; trying to keep-up with our weapon technology.Why most nations don't spend more than we do is they count on us to come bail them out,they rather spend their money on better health care among other things that money can buy,

funguy1949

You can blame this all on obama and his democratic congress for all the shortages of money/ aircraft & personnel. After my combat in the army I enlisted in the Air Force for 24 years till my retirement. Most air craft structures are only good for so many flight hours due to military standards,which far exceed civilian standards, but take the B52 fortress that bird flew more hours than any other aircraft, and it's still flying today and the air craft structures were desinged back in the 50's & yes most of them have been retired from the inventory,so has most of the older model B1's. As we always said most of today's aircraft are all weather birds most are flown by fair weather pilots,if theirs anything wrong with a plain they want fly it off the ground if it's not a combat mission. At 30,000 feet there is no place to pull to the side to check your vehicle.The Air Force is our only first strike world wide service,with out them there is no other.So I say to you ACP45 get off your soap box, your talking to Death ears.