Obama, Now Biden, Guts the Military

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US air force fires two more nuclear commanders amid leadership crisis

Third officer disciplined as repercussions continue over failures of discipline and morale in squadrons responsible for arsenal


Test launch of an unarmed Minuteman missile. Photograph: Bill Morson/AP Associated Press
Monday 3 November 2014 23.07 EST

The US air force has fired two more nuclear commanders and disciplined a third, fresh evidence of leadership lapses in a nuclear missile corps that has suffered several recent setbacks including the removal of its top commander.

The most senior officer to be relieved of command was Colonel Carl Jones, second in command of the 90th Missile Wing at FE Warren air force base, Wyoming, in charge of 150 of the air force’s 450 Minuteman 3 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. He was dismissed on Monday “for a loss of trust and confidence in his leadership abilities” and reassigned as a special assistant to the wing commander.

At the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, which also is responsible for 150 Minuteman 3 missiles, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy “Keith” Brown was relieved of command “because of a loss of confidence in Brown’s ability to lead his squadron”, the air force said.

Lieutenant Colonel John Sheets – a spokesman for Global Strike Command, which is in charge of the Air Force Minuteman 3 force as well as its nuclear bomber fleet – said an investigation “substantiated that Brown engaged in unlawful discrimination or harassment”. He added that the probe found that Brown “made statements to subordinates that created a perception within his squadron that pregnancy would negatively affect a woman’s career”.

Sheets said Jones’s immediate superior, Colonel Tracey Hayes, removed Jones following an internal investigation that substantiated allegations of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and cruelty and maltreatment of a subordinate.

“In four separate instances Jones acted in a manner that degraded his status as a senior officer and wing leader, including maltreating a subordinate,” Sheets said.

The most recent incident involving Jones was in September and occurred at a thrift store operated at FE Warren by volunteers, Sheets said. According to the investigation report as described by Sheets, Jones went to the shop, called Airman’s Attic, to discuss shopping hour policies.

“He hit the sign on the Airman’s Attic door and repeatedly hit the shop’s front counter while raising his voice, using profanity” and threatening to shut down the place, Sheets said.

It was this incident that prompted a complaint to the 90th Missile Wing’s inspector general, leading to the investigation and the decision by Hayes to remove Jones.

Three other incidents of allegedly inappropriate actions on base by Jones were substantiated in the investigation, including one in May in which his behaviour was described by one officer and a witness as shocking.

Sheets said the disciplinary actions at Minot and Warren reflected an effort to ensure that commanders did not behave in ways that detracted from their mission.

“Our people must treat each other with dignity and respect,” Sheets said. “That applies up and down the chain of command.”

Also at Minot, Colonel Richard Pagliuco, commander of the 91st Operations Group, which is in charge of three missile squadrons including Brown’s, received administrative punishment in the form of a letter on his file for “failing to promote and safeguard the morale, wellbeing and welfare of the airmen under his command”.

It is unusual for disciplinary action to be taken against commanders at two of the air force’s three nuclear missile bases on the same day. Officials said the timing was a coincidence. It extends a pattern of leadership failures in the ICBM force over the past year.

Last March nine officers were fired at Malmstrom air base, Montana, the third of the three nuclear missile bases, in response to an exam-cheating scandal. In 2013 Major General Michael Carey, commander of the entire ICBM force, was fired after an investigation into a drinking binge and other misconduct while he was in Russia as head of a visiting US government delegation.

The nuclear missile force has been beset with problems in discipline, training, leadership and morale. In February the defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, set up an independent review that is expected to announce its results in coming weeks.

There are three missile squadrons at each of the three nuclear missile wings. Each squadron is responsible for 50 missiles supervised by officers in five underground launch control centres.


http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...dership-crisis

[American Patriot]

Lieutenant Colonel John Sheets – a spokesman for Global Strike Command, which is in charge of the Air Force Minuteman 3 force as well as its nuclear bomber fleet – said an investigation “substantiated that Brown engaged in unlawful discrimination or harassment”. He added that the probe found that Brown “made statements to subordinates that created a perception within his squadron that pregnancy would negatively affect a woman’s career”.

I fucking KNEW this was a Leftist plot. I FUCKING KNEW IT.

Since when does pregnancy NOT AFFECT a woman, her career, her body, her LIFE?????????????????????????????????????????

Because a bunch of God Damned Feminist Leftists are involved in trying to run the military.

Ladies. Let me be blunt with your stupid asses. The military, and war are a MAN's WORLD. Not a woman's "prerogative".

[Avvakum]

I fucking KNEW this was a Leftist plot. I FUCKING KNEW IT.

Since when does pregnancy NOT AFFECT a woman, her career, her body, her LIFE?????????????????????????????????????????

Because a bunch of God Damned Feminist Leftists are involved in trying to run the military.

Ladies. Let me be blunt with your stupid asses. The military, and war are a MAN's WORLD. Not a woman's "prerogative".

Absolutely. The Military should be the last place for any kind of bullshit cultural marxist social engineering-it will effect and degrade the ability of the US Military to successfully defend this country in a National/World crisis.

Hmm.... Maybe that's been the idea all along?

[Toad]

Living in Minot, just 10 miles south of Minot AFB, a town swarming with Airmen, Lt Col Brown isn't spoke of very kindly. Apparent abrasive personality.

[American Patriot]

Colonels aren't supposed to be nice, supple, kind fellows who say "Thank you Airman, by your leave airman".

They are supposed to be assripping, macho men.

LOL

[American Patriot]

But... let me state, I've known a LOT of Colonels and most of them are decent guys. There's the occasional asswipe - but if he is trying to maintain discipline and something else is going on in the area... maybe there's just a little too much of this "being gentle" stuff going on?

[Toad]

Understood. Just tough to be an effective efficient leader when no one cares to follow. You want loyalty, you need people skills.

[American Patriot]

In my time, many moons ago, they didn't need people skills. lol

You respected the rank, you might hate the man to death, but you did what you were told because it was your JOB to do so. In the 1970s a LOT of faith was put into our enlisted guys. Overall, and compared to any foreign military (including the Soviet Union at the time) we had the highest education levels for even E1 through E4, and in MOST cases we could put our Privates and Airmen up against even very high ranking military of most other military personnel around the world.

In other words... even if a young Sgt. had little strategic training, we considered our guys to be good enough to lead platoons and flights in combat conditions. Whereas foreign forces use the lowest rank of Lt. or equivalent.

A Colonel wasn't expected to have to be an asshole to get his job done. He said "Jump" and we said "Yes Sir".

During my time we started "questioning orders" often. If we didn't like something (and I'm as guilty as anyone in the 70s and 80s) and I think it became a movement. That movement turned into "soldier's rights" and other BS.

Eventually, it was more of a "feminist" infiltration. Believe me, I've worked with women and some of them were damned good at their jobs. None I worked with during combat though - so I can't speak to that. I KNOW a few who have nowadays seen combat and their statements would probably make some men look like sissies, as well as the opposite; those women who couldn't wouldn't and never wanted to pull their weight.

Even in the 70s, women were using the pregnancy thing to get away with never working on "hard stuff" (eg lifting, moving, pushing, picking up and carrying heavy gear). In my combat unit we did all that shit, and we had women. Because we were "combat communications" we had a lot of "chicks" and 90% of them were hell bent on getting pregnant and getting OUT of the service.

Most expected some kind of benefits if they were "booted out because of pregnancy" (and I think there were rules to that effect then).

So - for a Colonel to be badly spoken of says two things to me. 1) He's either a complete asshole and even corrupt or 2) the people just don't like him because of their sissified attitudes these day.

People skills? Who needs them? LOL

[Ryan Ruck]

Even in the 70s, women were using the pregnancy thing to get away with never working on "hard stuff" (eg lifting, moving, pushing, picking up and carrying heavy gear). In my combat unit we did all that shit, and we had women. Because we were "combat communications" we had a lot of "chicks" and 90% of them were hell bent on getting pregnant and getting OUT of the service.

This is a chronic problem to this day.

I've been told it is amazing how many pregnancies pop up prior to a deployment.

[American Patriot]

That is a true statement. Pregnancy just before deployment. In unmarried women. It happens a LOT.

And so do abortions.

[Ryan Ruck]

Army Cuts Hit Officers Hard, Especially Ones Up From Ranks

November 12, 2014

For all the insecurities of war, Capt. Elder Saintjuste always figured the one thing he could count on from the Army was job security.

A Haitian immigrant who enlisted as a teenager, he deployed three times to Iraq, missing so many birthdays and Christmases that he sometimes felt he barely knew his four children. He hid symptoms of post-traumatic stress so he could stay in the Army, because he loved his job and believed that after 20 years he could retire with a captain’s pension.

Then this summer, on the day Captain Saintjuste reached his 20 years, the Army told him that as part of the postwar downsizing of the force he would have to retire. And adding insult to injury, he would have to retire as a sergeant, earning $1,200 less per month, because he had not been a captain long enough to receive a captain’s pension.

“I worked, I sacrificed, I risked my life, and they took it away like it didn’t matter,” Captain Saintjuste said as he brought groceries into his house near Fort Bragg. “It wasn’t just losing a job. It was like having your wife leave you suddenly and not tell you why. It’s your whole life.”

For the first time since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the Army is shrinking. Faced with declining budgets, the Army, the largest of the services, cut its force this year to 508,000 soldiers from 530,000, with plans to trim an additional 20,000 troops next year. If funding cuts mandated by Congress continue, the Army could have fewer than 450,000 soldiers by 2019 — the smallest force since World War II.

The cuts have largely come through attrition and reductions in recruiting, and have, so far, mostly affected low-ranking enlisted soldiers who have served only a few years. But this summer, the cuts fell on officers as well, 1,188 captains and 550 majors, many who were clearly intending on making a career of the military. More are expected to lose their jobs next year.

And for reasons the Army has not explained, the largest group of officers being pushed out — nearly one in five — began as enlisted soldiers.

For many of those officers, being forced out of a life they have known for a decade or more has been a disruption as shocking and painful as being laid off. They are losing jobs, and in many cases, receiving smaller pensions than they had expected — or no pensions at all. They are being forced to give up their identities as soldiers. Some are losing their ranks or status as officers. All must be out by April.

“It’s our culture, it’s our family, it’s our language,” said Bill Moore, a captain working in intelligence at Fort Bragg. “A lot of us have been in since high school. We feel like we’ve given everything, our families have given everything, and they just give us a handshake and say ‘Thank you for your service.’ ”

Many are being pushed out despite having good records. When the Army announced the impending officer cuts a year ago, officials said they would target officers with evidence of poor performance or misconduct.

But an internal Army briefing disclosed by a military website in September showed the majority of captains being forced out had no blemishes on their records. The briefing, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, also showed that officers who had joined the Army as enlisted soldiers, then endured the demanding process required to rise into the officer corps, were three times as likely as captains who graduated from West Point to be forced to retire.

Many of those former enlisted officers had been encouraged to make the jump to the officer corps between 2006 and 2009 when the Iraq war was raging and the Pentagon was struggling to replace junior officers who were leaving the Army as soon as their initial commitments were over, often because they were worn out by multiple deployments.

The soldiers who volunteered to fill the gap — older than most junior officers because they had already served in the enlisted ranks — were picked from the best of the ranks, and some had to earn bachelor’s degrees to make the cut. Many said in interviews they believed they were being pushed out because they were entitled to more pay and were eligible for retirement earlier, since they had been in the Army longer than other commissioned officers.

“The Army knew we had more years and they could save money by cutting us,” said Capt. Tina Patton, 43, a combat medic who became an officer in 2007. “Looking back at our records, a lot of us can’t figure out why else we would be cut.”

The Army declined to discuss in detail its criteria for trimming the officer corps. “Selections for separation are based on a soldier’s manner of performance relative to their peers while serving as a commissioned officer,” Lt. Col. Benjamin Garrett, an Army spokesman, said in an email. “The boards retained those with the highest demonstrated levels of performance and the most potential for future contributions on active duty.”

Though the United States military has drawn down after every war, this one may seem more painful for many because they were not drafted but volunteered, often looking to make military service a career.

“They recruit with all kinds of promises, whether it’s career benefits or something more amorphous like being part of something bigger,” said Beth Bailey a professor at Temple University who studies the Army. “They support families in a way that makes it a whole lifestyle. People become part of an insulated Army culture. For that to suddenly be taken away, I’m not surprised they feel betrayed.”

The Army has tried to ease the transition, offering separation pay — a cash buyout of sorts — sometimes amounting to more than $100,000, and months of notice to give officers time to find other work.

Captains who served more than 20 years get a full pension, and those who served more than 15 years get a prorated pension. But many of those getting pensions — about a third — have not served the eight years required to retire as captains, according to Army data. When they leave the Army, those soldiers revert to their previous highest enlisted rank, often sergeant, with lower retirement pay.

Capt. Tawanna Jamison, 43, who served 22 years in the Army but only seven as a captain, will get a sergeant’s retirement pay of $2,200 per month, less than half of what a retired captain receives, which is about $4,500.

“I could be facing bankruptcy,” she said. “I was helping my daughter pay for college. Now she’s on her own. I couldn’t have planned for this. It’s hard not to feel like the Army isn’t trying to save money on our backs.”

Several officers said they neglected their home lives during the wars, believing they would eventually be repaid.

“Iraq, Afghanistan, jumping out of airplanes, doing all the training, leaving for work so early and coming home so late that I wouldn’t even see my family during the week, and I get nothing,” said Capt. Nathan Allen, who served more than 14 years as a linguist and intelligence officer and was awarded a Bronze Star.

As an officer, he worked 15-hour days, studying the latest intelligence for impending deployments while going through parachute and weapons training. He left for Iraq two weeks after the birth of his first child, and was in Afghanistan for the birth of his third. In seven years the family moved 10 times. Counting deployments and training, he estimated that he spent a third of his marriage away from his family.

“The whole time I told myself to just keep running and worry about the family later,” Captain Allen, who is stationed at Fort Meade, Md., said in an interview.

After he learned he was being forced out, he said, “I fell into a deep despair.” He started having chest pains and body aches that made it hard to get out of bed. In October, he and his wife started seeing a counselor.

“I’m a mess right now,” he said. “They took away who I am. I’m a soldier.”

Captain Allen and a number of other captains have urged members of Congress to pass legislation that could save their jobs, or at least their pensions. But no such bills have been introduced.

“They needed us to fight the Taliban,” Captain Allen said. “Now they don’t, so they pull the rug out from under us. Loyalty here seems like a one-way street.”

[Ryan Ruck]

Air Force Says Mideast Bombing Worsens Maintenance-Staff Shortage

Gap Rekindles Tensions With Congress Over How to Manage Nation’s Combat Aircraft

October 29, 2014

The Air Force says the U.S. bombing campaign against Islamic extremists is exacerbating its shortage of plane-maintenance experts—a gap that is rekindling tensions with Congress about how to manage the nation’s combat aircraft.

To keep U.S. planes flying over Syria and Iraq, Air Force officials said they have had to deploy hundreds of midlevel maintenance personnel to the overseas missions.

The development has forced officials to block a planned transfer of maintenance staff from other aircraft to the military’s newest plane, the F-35, officials said. That means a possible delay in the deployment of the new-generation fighter jet so older planes can keep flying at a high tempo.

“We believed we were going to have a bit of a pause coming out of Afghanistan,” said Deborah Lee James, secretary of the Air Force. “Now we are flying the pants off those aircraft with no end in sight.”

The resulting pinch has exposed the strains resulting from budget squeezes and competing views of spending priorities.

The Air Force had planned to move a squadron of older F-15s to the Air National Guard, freeing up 350 maintenance experts to join the F-35 program.

But when the Obama administration expanded air policing operations in Europe earlier this year following Russian aggression in Ukraine, the Air Force was forced to hold on to the F-15 squadron and keep maintenance personnel in that program.

The deployment of additional F-16s to the Middle East has further pressured maintenance crews.

The Air Force has said it intends to declare the F-35 operational in 2016. But the shortage of maintenance experts could push back that target by two years or more, officials say.

The Air Force also must now devote a larger portion of its maintenance force to the older A-10 “Warthog” fleet. Officials had planned to retire the A-10s and retrain experienced maintenance staff to work on the F-35s. But Congress blocked retirement of the A-10 last year, and both the House and Senate have readied measures requiring the Air Force to keep flying the A-10s.

But, facing the shortage of maintenance personnel, Air Force officials have renewed their push to retire the A-10. But congressional defenders of the A-10 said the force is unnecessarily pitting aircraft types against each other.

“Suggesting that we must prematurely retire the A-10 to fulfill long-anticipated maintenance requirements for the F-35A is a false choice,” said Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.).

Congressional experts say it is a short-term problem because midlevel experts can be trained in a couple of years. The Air Force could step up recruiting while contractors are used to fill the gap. The Air Force says that solution is unworkable.

Other congressional staffers say the problems are in part the Air Force’s own making, as it has cut its maintenance staff too deeply.

Air Force officials said in 1994 they had some 88,000 maintainers, down to 64,000 currently. Air Force officials said limited defense funding doesn’t allow them to fly both the F-35 and the A-10.

“If you have to make choices, gradually retiring the A-10 is the right choice,” Ms. James said. “We need the capability of the F-35.”

Winslow Wheeler, a defense analyst with the liberal-leaning Project on Government Oversight, says the pitting the A-10 against the F-35 is a ploy by the service to rid itself of an older, unwanted plane.

The flip side is that the A-10 has proved its value supporting troops in combat more effectively than other aircraft, Mr. Wheeler said, and will be needed to combat Islamic State militants in the future.

Todd Harrison, a defense analyst with the centrist Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, says retiring the A-10 fleet makes financial sense. The Air Force has said retiring the plane will save $4.2 billion over the next five years.

The aging plane will need to be retired in the years to come, anyway, Mr. Harrison said, and beginning the retirement now will free up money for other priorities.

“The Air Force is going to get smaller, if you have to get smaller the smart way to do it is retire an entire fleet,” he said.

While Air Force officials say delaying procurement of the F-35 will increase costs, Mr. Harrison said it might not be so bad to delay deployment of the F-35. If the Air Force also chose to slow production of the plane, it could continue testing and work out design problems that will cost millions to fix later.

“It would be better to wait and not buy as many aircraft now until we a have gotten further through the test program so we can be more confident the aircraft we are buying are not going to need expensive retrofits,” he said.

[vector7]

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Military Challenged to Maintain Decades-Old Aircraft

January 2015

By Sandra I. Erwin

The U.S. military operates fleets of Cold War-era aircraft that will not be replaced any time soon. For the Pentagon, this creates daunting challenges, experts warn. Airplanes will have to fly much longer than planned and, at a time of tight budgets, the cost of maintaining aging equipment is projected to soar.

The Defense Department is slowly coming to grips with the situation, said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Donald J. Wetekam. “We are in unknown territory” on how to keep aircraft flying indefinitely, he said. The Air Force, the branch of the military most affected by aging planes, expects to operate many of its aircraft well beyond their original design service lives. But it does not necessarily know how long components will last, if replacements will be available or if they can be remanufactured, said Wetekam, a senior vice president of AAR Corp., a logistics company that does business in military and commercial aviation.

“We’re in areas where we have not gone before,” he said in a recent interview. When Wetekam first became an officer in the Air Force, the average age of the fleet was nine years. When he retired as deputy chief of staff for installations and logistics, that number had reached 24. Since then, the average age has inched up to 27. “That is three times what it was when I was commissioned. And at the time we didn’t think we had a particularly modern fleet.”

The Defense Department has a fleet of 14,800 aircraft, according to new data by Bloomberg Government. The Air Force has the largest number of fixed-wing aircraft, followed by the Navy. The Army has the largest number of helicopters and surveillance drones.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh sounded alarms in September. “Airplanes are falling apart,” he said. “There are too many things happening because our fleets are too old.”

In a 30-year aircraft procurement plan the Defense Department submitted to Congress three years ago, the Pentagon projected it would be at least 10 years before new strategic airlifters and long-range bombers are produced and delivered. The KC-46A would be the only new airplane procurement though 2025, and the next-generation tactical fighter, the F-35, will not meet required force levels until 2035 at best.

A panel of experts in 2011 warned the Air Force that, in order to cope with its rapidly aging fleet, it needed to revamp aircraft maintenance to make it more efficient and less costly.

“The sustainment of aging aircraft like those in the U.S. Air Force fleet is likely to become a more expensive activity in the next few decades,” said the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. “It will be important for the Air Force to become as efficient as possible in maintaining and upgrading these aircraft.”

The AFSAB suggested one approach might be to emulate commercial airline practices. “Commercial airlines maintain aircraft much differently than the Air Force,” the panel noted. “They maintain aircraft at flight-capable rates exceeding 90 percent, they do as much repair and maintenance in the field as possible and attempt to minimize depot maintenance.” Unlike the military, commercial airlines have as few aircraft on the ground at the depot as possible because aircraft on the ground do not earn money. “It is a different paradigm than the Air Force where every aircraft costs the service money, whether it flies or not.”

Wetekam agreed that a more commercial approach to aircraft maintenance could save the Pentagon billions of dollars over time, even though there are obvious, fundamental differences between operating military and commercial fleets.

“It would benefit the Defense Department to learn how airline supply chains work,” he said. Airlines have very stringent requirements and, in many cases, they use the exact same equipment that the military employs. Engines are one example. “There are inventive approaches in supporting aircraft and engines that DoD could take better advantage of.” The Air Force has similar engines as commercial airlines but manages its supply chain very differently, Wetekam said. Airlines have a more competitive supply chain for the same type of engine, he added. “Cost is lower based on the fact that they have more competition.”

The Air Force has anywhere from 1,600 to 2,000 CFM56 engines that are widely used around the world, but it maintains a separate supply chain. “There’s an opportunity to adapt a commercial supply chain approach,” he said. The military is beginning to move in that direction, but at a slow pace. “We should leverage the global competitive supply chain marketplace that already exists based on numerous airlines that fly that engine.”

More Boeing 737 derivatives are being used in the military, he said. “Thousands of components in many combat systems are commercial. There should be greater awareness of what systems and components are commercial derivatives,” Wetekam said. “Yes, there are mission differences, but they don’t drive differences in how fleets are sustained.” Too often the mission becomes a scapegoat for adding cost and requirements. An opportunity for savings is when government mechanics are employed to maintain commercial equipment. “Could that be commercialized? Yes, and it could free up more people to work on military-unique equipment.”

The military, nonetheless, will never be as efficient at maintaining airplanes as commercial airlines, for valid reasons, Wetekam said. The Defense Department tends to “over-inspect” aircraft at military bases, and that costs more money and time. “I don’t see that changing.”

Aerospace and defense executives for years have prodded the Pentagon to outsource the maintenance of weapon systems, with promises of huge cost savings. They contend that, if the government provides the right incentives, contractors are able to maintain and upgrade equipment at a much lower cost. One example is the use of “performance based logistics” where the government pays to have “ready to fly” aircraft and it is up to the contractor to make it happen.

Under traditional maintenance contracts, “We get paid to manage the supply chain and to provide parts. But in a performance-based logistics model, we get paid to provide readiness. So the government customer tells us what level of readiness they want and we provide that, and we assume all the risks and all the costs associated with that,” explained Jay DeFrank, vice president of communications and government relations at engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney.

A study by the consulting firm Deloitte estimated the Pentagon could reduce costs by up to 20 percent by shifting to this model.

In aircraft maintenance alone, the savings could exceed a billion dollars. According to Bloomberg Government, the Defense Department awarded $6.2 billion worth of contracts for aircraft maintenance in fiscal 2013 — $3.7 billion for the Air Force, $1.4 billion for the Army, $1.1 billion for Navy and $31 million for other defense agencies.

Wetekam agrees with proponents of performance-based logistics that it could save money, but the data is fuzzy. “With confusion comes reluctance to come forward with potential savings. These contracts become very difficult to price,” he said. “The value is there. But there’s confusion.

Todd Harrison, senior defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the Pentagon has yet to figure out how to get more efficiency from its contractors. “Under traditional contracts, we pay contractors every time something breaks. Is the incentive for things to break more?” Under a performance-based contract, suppliers would be motivated to invest in components that break less, said Harrison. “It’s a matter of setting up the incentives right.”

[Ryan Ruck]

17th Airlift Squadron To Inactivate As Part Of FY15 President's Budget

December 22, 2014

The 17th Airlift Squadron, one of Charleston's four active-duty C-17 Globemaster III flying squadrons, will inactivate in 2015 as part of the President's Defense Budget for FY15.

The 10th Airlift Squadron, based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, was also selected for inactivation in 2016.

The Air Force plans to make adjustments over the next few years to the active duty, Reserve, and Guard components to ensure successful transitions to a leaner force that remains ready for future operations. The FY15 President's Budget converts 16 Air Mobility Command C-17s (eight from each base) from primary mission aircraft inventory to backup aircraft inventory, resulting in the inactivation of both airlift squadrons. These inactivations are not new actions, but additional detail on the previously announced budget submission released in March.

Backup aircraft inventory are assigned with no manpower or flying hours. However, the wing will continue to receive funding needed to support weapon system sustainment. Converting 16 aircraft to BAI removes funding for the personnel and flying hours associated with those aircraft, for a savings of approximately $110 million per year.

"In this fiscally constrained environment, we have to balance readiness, capability and capacity," said Major Gen. Michael S. Stough, AMC's Director of Strategic Plans, Requirements and Programs. "To best preserve this capability, the intent is to fund these aircraft back into primary mission aircraft inventory in future years, and transfer them to the Reserve Component - and we're working with our Air National Guard partners to do that, perhaps even as early as FY16. We rely on our Total Force partners every day to meet our global mobility requirements; we couldn't do the mission without them. Our goal is to continue to leverage the unique strengths and characteristics of the active and Reserve components to meet current and future requirements with available resources."

Here in Charleston, Air Force leaders reflected on the challenges of maintaining a superior military force in the present fiscal climate.

"We understand the difficult choices our leaders have had to make in this fiscal environment and we support those choices," said Col. John Lamontagne, 437th Airlift Wing commander.

Lt. Col. Paul Theriot, 17th AS commander, discussed the impact on his squadron.

"The 17th Airlift Squadron has an outstanding record of performance over many years," he said. "We received the news of the inactivation with heavy hearts as we have all come to identify ourselves with our beloved mascot, the Moose, and the rich heritage of the 17th. However, it isn't the number '17' that gets the mission done, it's the people. When the closure happens, we will continue accomplishing that awesome mission, just wearing different patches."

Theriot underscored his squadron's determination to finish strong.

"The next year will be very busy for us as we continue flying missions around the world, and we certainly will not be pulling the throttles back," he said. "On the contrary, we will continue to build on our legacy and finish on an extremely high note."

Lamontagne took the announcement of the 17 AS's upcoming inactivation as a moment to reflect on the history and future of the C-17 and those who operate it.

"The C-17 entered the airlift world in the 17th Airlift Squadron on July 14, 1993," he said. "Although the C-17 will continue to fly for many years beyond the squadron's inactivation next summer, we will preserve the squadron's rich tradition for a long, long time. More importantly, we will continue to take care of our finest American Airman and their families, as they transition from one squadron to another."

[Ryan Ruck]

Exclusive: U.S. Drone Fleet at ‘Breaking Point,’ Air Force Says

January 4, 2015

Too many missions and too few pilots are threatening the ‘readiness and combat capability’ of America’s unmanned Air Force, according to an internal memo.

The U.S. Air Force’s fleet of drones is being strained to the “breaking point,” according to senior military officials and an internal service memo acquired by The Daily Beast. And it’s happening right when the unmanned aircraft are most needed to fight ISIS.

The Air Force has enough MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones. It just doesn’t have the manpower to operate those machines. The Air Force’s situation is so dire that Air Combat Command (ACC), which trains and equips the service’s combat forces, is balking at filling the Pentagon’s ever increasing demands for more drone flights.

“ACC believes we are about to see a perfect storm of increased COCOM [Combatant Commander] demand, accession reductions, and outflow increases that will damage the readiness and combat capability of the MQ-1/9 enterprise for years to come,” reads an internal Air Force memo from ACC commander Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, addressed to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh. “I am extremely concerned.”

“ACC will continue to non-concur to increased tasking beyond our FY15 [fiscal year 2015] force offering and respectfully requests your support in ensuring the combat viability of the MQ-1/9 platform,” Carlisle added.

In other words, the Air Force is saying that its drone force has been stretched to its limits. “It’s at the breaking point, and has been for a long time,” a senior service official told The Daily Beast. “What’s different now is that the band-aid fixes are no longer working.”

In the internal memo, Carlisle noted that the Air Force’s current manning problem is so acute that the service will have to beg the Pentagon to reconsider its demand for 65 drone combat air patrols, or CAPs, as early as April 2015. (Each CAP, also known as an “orbit,” consists on four aircraft.)

But senior military leaders in the Pentagon have been pushing back hard against any reduction in the number of drone orbits, particularly as demand has surged in recent months over Iraq and Syria because of the war against ISIS. In fact, the Pentagon is so fervent in its demand for more Predator and Reaper patrols that the top military brass made an end run to bypass regular channels to increase the number of drone orbits, the ACC alleges.

“The reduced offering of 62 CAPs (plus a 60-day Global Response Force) has been submitted to the Joint Staff; however, the Joint Staff has indicated their desire to circumvent normal processes while proposing their own offering of 65 MQ-1/9 CAPs,” Carlisle wrote. “This simply is not an option for ACC to source indeterminately.”

Carlisle writes that the Air Force would want a crew ratio of 10 to one for each drone orbit during normal everyday operations. During an emergency that ratio could be allowed to drop to 8.5 people per orbit. However, the Air Force is so strapped for people that the ratio has dropped below even that reduced level.

“ACC squadrons are currently executing steady-state, day-to-day operations (65 CAPs) at less than an 8:1 crew-to-CAP ratio. This directly violates our red line for RPA [remotely pilot aircraft] manning and combat operations,” Carlisle wrote. “The ever-present demand has resulted in increased launch and recovery taskings and increased overhead for LNO [liaison officer] support.”

The Air Force has been forced to raid its schools for drone operators to man the operational squadrons that are flying combat missions over places like Iraq and Syria. As a result, training squadrons—called Formal Training Units (FTU)—are being staffed with less than half the people they need. Even the Air Force’s elite Weapons School—the service’s much more extensive and in-depth version of the Navy’s famous Top Gun school—course for drone pilots was suspended in an effort to train new rookie operators.

Overworked drone crews have had their leaves canceled and suffered damage to their careers because they could not attend required professional military education courses.

The result is that drone operators are leaving the Air Force in droves. “Pilot production has been decimated to match the steady demand placed upon the RPA community by keeping ‘all hands’ in the fight,” Carlisle wrote. “Long-term effects of this continued OPSTEMPO are manifested in declining retention among MQ-1/9 pilots, FTU manning at less than 50%, and enterprise-wide pilot manning hovering at about 84%.”

The Air Force has about seven pilots for every eight drone pilot slots, in other words.

But it takes more than just pilots to operate the drone fleet. In addition to the pilots who “fly” the MQ-1s and MQ-9s, there are sensor operators who work the cameras and other intelligence-gathering hardware onboard the unmanned aircraft. Further, there are maintenance crews who have to fix those drones. Perhaps most crucially, drones require hundreds of intelligence analysts who have to comb through thousands of hours of video surveillance footage to understand what the flight crews are watching.

“Some have looked at this as a problem with just RPA pilots and the number of them required for these CAPs, but that ignores the tail required for supporting RPA operations,” a senior Air Force official said. “This tail requires hundreds of man-hours to support every hour of flight in forward operations, maintenance, and most starkly in the processing, exploitation, and dissemination of the intelligence that RPAs create.”

The problem for Carlisle and the Air Force is that even as the demand increases on the drone fleet, fewer new troops enter the ranks while more and more veteran operators vote with their feet.

[Ryan Ruck]

U.S. Military Decimated Under Obama, Only ‘Marginally Able’ To Defend Nation

February 24, 2015

The U.S. military is shedding so many troops and weapons it is only “marginally able” to defend the nation and falls short of the Obama administration’s national security strategy, according to a new report by The Heritage Foundation on Tuesday.

“The U.S. military itself is aging. It’s shrinking in size,” said Dakota Wood, a Heritage analyst. “And it’s quickly becoming problematic in terms of being able to address more than one major conflict.”

President Obama’s latest strategy is to size the armed forces so that the four military branches have sufficient troops, ships, tanks and aircraft to win a large war, while simultaneously acting to “deny the objectives of — or impose unacceptable costs on — another aggressor in another region.”

In other words, the Quadrennial Defense Review says the military can essentially fight two major conflicts at once. It could defeat an invasion of South Korea by the North, for example, and stop Russia from invading Western Europe or Iran from conquering a Persian Gulf state.

But Heritage’s “2015 Index of U.S. Military Strength” took a look, in detail, at units and weapons, region by region, and came to a different conclusion.

“The U.S. military is rapidly approaching a one-war-capable force,” said Mr. Wood, a former Marine Corps officer and strategic planner. “So [it is] able to handle a major war and then having just a bit of residual capability to handle other minor crises that might pop up. … But it is a far cry from being a two-war force.”

“The consistent decline in funding and the consequent shrinking of the force are putting it under significant pressure,” the report concluded. “The cumulative effect of such factors has resulted in a U.S. military that is marginally able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.”

The index report is part scorecard, part research tool.

It grades the Army, which is shrinking from 570,000 soldiers to 440,000 or lower, and the Navy, which is failing to achieve a 300-ship force, as only “marginal” in military power. The Air Force’s fleet of fighters and long-range bombers is judged “strong.”

Heritage says the military cannot fight two wars at once.

The report said the Army historically commits 21 brigade dombat teams to one war. Several years ago, that left just 21 more brigades for a second war and none for strategic reserve.

But the problem is more acute. The Army announced in 2013 it may go as low as 33 brigades, far short of the 50 brigades Heritage says are needed.

The Army has been battered by automatic budget cuts known as “sequestration.” A bipartisan budget deal provided some relief last year, but the slashing could come back in 2016 without another agreement.

Gen. Raymond Odierno, Army chief of staff, has said that if the active force is squeezed down to 420,000 soldiers, it could not carry out all global commitments.

The Navy would need 346 ships to carry out two large campaigns, Heritage said, but its fleet is only 284.

At the report’s release, Rep. J. Randy Forbes, Virginia Republican, talked of all the technological advancements that led to complete air superiority in the 1991 Desert Storm operation over Iraq.

Today, the House Armed Services Committee member said the Air Force “would say we are dangerously close to no longer being able to guarantee that air dominance that we could guarantee in Kuwait.”

“If you listen to the Army, they will give testimony they can no longer guarantee. You talk about two wars — they testified they can’t guarantee that we could win one war,” Mr. Forbes said. “The Navy will tell you if we get to 260 ships, we cease to be a superpower; we become a regional power.”

The Pentagon’s base budget, minus overseas war costs, has decreased under Mr. Obama, from $527 billion in 2010 to about $496 billion in each of the last three budgets. The president is asking for an increase in 2016 to $534 billion.

“The enemies that we have out there, and competitors, are making very smart investments accounting for their strategic objectives and interests,” Mr. Wood said.

[Ryan Ruck]

Navy Wants To Shutter Its Only Two Special Operations Chopper Squadrons

March 9, 2015

Even some military aficionados would be surprised to know that the Navy has dedicated special operations helicopters squadrons. The Air Force's Pave Hawk and Osprey communities and the Army's notorious Night Stalkers take up much of the limelight. But now, the Navy's two reclusive squadrons are set to stand down due to a budget crunch.

The HSC-84 "Redwolves" and HSC-85 "Firehawks," are both part of the shrinking band of U.S. Naval Reserve aviation units. HSC-84 in particular can trace its roots back to the famous Huey gunship flying Light Attack Helicopter Squadron Three (HAL-3) "Seawolves," which heroically provided special operations airlift and fire support during the Vietnam War.

Currently these two squadrons alone, HSC-84 located on the east coast at NAS Norfolk in Virginia and HSC-85 located at NAS North Island, California, make up the entire contingent of dedicated US Navy special operations helicopter support capability. With specialized gear and training, both of these squadrons are masters at special forces insertions and extractions, along with the critical combat search and rescue (CSAR) mission.

Beyond that, they can also provide more rudimentary capability when tasked, such as support for counter-insurgency operations, counter-WMD missions, basic logistical transport, armed over-watch and vertical replenishment, but seeing how busy these two high-demand units are, they rarely go about such tasks.

Part of the issue is that the Navy, the Joint Special Operations Command and the other services squabble over who should foot the bill for dedicated special operations support squadrons that fly operators from all the services, not just Navy SEALs in this case. Just a couple of years ago, with both wars supposedly winding down, and the Navy under a hard fiscal pinch, getting rid of their only special operations squadrons and migrating the mission to fleet MH-60 Sea Hawk squadrons was a very enticing, albeit possibly an unrealistic, prospect.

Still, many would say that the HH-60H Rescue Hawk's unique capabilities and especially their crew's specialized training, makes the mission nearly impossible for fleet pilots to assume at anywhere near the same quality as their highly experienced and special operations focused Naval Reserve counterparts.

In fact, fleet MH-60 crews already have so many missions to train for that it is questionable as to how good they can be at any one of them, this is before the possibility of stacking the demanding special operations mission on top. As a result, there is little doubt that by pushing the special operations mission off onto fleet crews, the Navy and Special Operations Command is assuming much greater risk when compared to sticking with specialized units to provide this capability.

The cost of the HH-60s vs the fleet's newer MH-60s is also an issue, with the older and specialized HH-60s costing close to double per hour to operate over their more modern MH-60 counterparts. Then there is the issue of who "owns" the squadrons and thus who can dictate their schedule. HSC-84 and HSC-85 are owned by Special Operations Command and Naval Special Warfare Command so their tasking is focused accordingly.

If the Navy were to move the special operations mission to fleet MH-60 units, fighting with the myriad of other 'customers' that also utilize the MH-60s will undoubtedly be an issue, especially considering how time sensitive special operations missions can be.

The Navy's push to unload their dedicated special warfare helicopter support units all together is an interesting one. Although these squadrons do not exclusively fly US Navy SEALs they work with them very closely and over the last few decades Naval Special Warfare has been fairly flush with money. Exotic vessels and technologies have been financed regularly and the SEALs semi-dedicated boat service, the SWCCs, remains a financially healthy facilitator for the SEALs and other special operations units. So how is the Navy's similar special warfare helicopter service any different?

The answer may be found in the fact that 'jointness' has become so ingrained in the special operations aviation community that it may end up working against HSC-84 and HSC-85 in the long run. Special Operations Command's (SOCOM) air support component has become widely 'platform and service agnostic,' with SEALs flying on Army choppers regularly and Delta Force doing the same on Navy choppers. Still, losing these two highly trained Naval Reserve Squadrons will not only decrease America's overall dedicated spec ops air support capacity, but if fleet units are to really assume this highly demanding role on top of all their other missions it leaves the quality of the crews and their gear that the they will provide for such demanding missions up for debate.

Under such a scheme, the Navy's diffused special operations helicopter support apparatus will most likely become a 'lower tier' capability, and will be passed over by SOCOM for anything but the lowest threat combat scenarios or simple training missions.

According to the Navy Times, the 160th SOAR Night Stalkers, along with their HSC-84 and HSC-85 counterparts, make up about 70% of the spec ops airlift missions around the globe, and about 30% of the training missions here at home. Maybe one alternative would be to only use fleet assets for special operations training and add funding to the 160th SOAR to help lessen the blow of losing HSC-84 and HSC-85.

But still, this would mean the Navy will be out of the front-line special operations helicopter mission for good, yet this may be better than relying on crews with questionable training and gear for such a demanding mission set.

Another idea would be to shutter HSC-84 and HSC-85 and have Navy crews, along with funding, be integrated into the 160th SOAR. This is a similar concept as what happened when the USAF gave up their EF-111 Ravens along with the fast-jet electronic warfare mission in the 1990s. Today, a small portion of the VAQ community (Navy's EA-6B/EA-18G community) is made up of USAF personnel who are concentrated more on land-based expeditionary operations. An opposite concept could possibly work in this case, where a portion of the 160th SOAR are Navy personnel that focus more on maritime operations. How a highly elite and storied unit like the 160th SOAR would take to becoming a Navy half-breed is a whole other issue though.

In all honesty, considering that we remain in an expanding battle against a new form of brutal terrorism, one where special operations assets have never been more important as large conventional forces have vacated the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, paying to retain both of these squadrons should probably be a priority for the US Navy and the DoD as a whole.

Sure, HSC-84 and HSC-85s helicopters may cost more to operate per hour than newer models but that is not the squadron's nor the missions' fault, it is the Navy's fault for not updating their gear sooner. Considering these helicopters are already owned, they would have to accrue roughly 10,000 hours at their higher operating cost each to total the purchase price of a $20M new MH-60 alternative anyway.

Once again, with ISIS on the rise around Middle East and Africa, the DoD seems in denial of the realities of the "low-end" war it is in while desperately wanting to pour funds into a more glamorous peer-state conflict of the future. In the end, adding more training to an already over tasked fleet multi-role helicopter units, and diffusing a critical and unforgiving mission set among a much less trained but more voluminous force sounds like a very bad idea. As a result, the Navy would be smart to keep this unique and not easily replaced capability and find the savings they seek somewhere else.

Let's be honest, if the Navy were to cut the procurement of one F-35C squadron and buy Super Hornets in their place, they could very likely fund both of these special operations squadrons for decades to come. With this in mind, the actual hard questions that the DoD needs to be asking itself relates to which of these capabilities is more likely to make a bigger impact on America's national security?

I think arguing that buying a few more F-35Cs instead of just offering stabilized funding to an already established pocket fleet of highly trained and battle hardened special operations helicopters and crews would be a very hard sell to any logical person who watches the news on a daily basis.

There are many places for the Navy to find savings, especially when it comes to procurement, and the F-35C is just one example out of many. But the continued sacrifice of proven and highly relevant capabilities when it comes to the dire fight we are currently in today, not a fantastical fight we could potentially be in decades in the future, is not the way to go about doing it. The Pentagon needs to learn to balance its techno-lust for future wartime applications against the active battlefield we are on today. Just like keeping the already paid for A-10 Warthog and providing it with plentiful funding to go after ISIS, keeping HSC-84 and HSC-85 flying should be part of this rationalization.

Then again these are relatively small units that operate in the shadows, they don't make the news and they are not making any defense contractors rich, nor are they gaining big votes back home in the Representatives Congressional Districts or in Senators states.

So who is looking out for them no matter how important they are or how much value they provide? It seems like next to nobody and that is a symptom of a much larger disease in itself.

[Ryan Ruck]

The U.S. Air Force Is Determined to Junk Half Its Best Jammers

But the savings wouldn’t pay for a single new bomber

February 4, 2015

The U.S. Air Force is winnowing down its fleet of EC-130H Compass Call electronic attack planes.

The 15 high-tech jammers belong to the 55th Electronic Combat Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. But if the flying branch has its way, it will retire seven at the turn of the fiscal year in October, according to the Pentagon’s latest budget request.

They’re few in number, but highly important planes. These are same EC-130Hs that twice shut down Saddam Hussein’s air defenses, and helped American pilots and troops return home alive from the conflicts in Kosovo, Haiti, Panama, Serbia and more recently Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Compass Calls are heavily-modified C-130s that carry advanced jammers and counter-radar equipment to shut down just about any wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum.

This allows U.S. warplanes to penetrate sophisticated air-defense systems and avoid detection by early warning radars. The EC-130H can even take down enemy command-and-control networks.

According to one former crew member, the Compass Calls can do things that the Navy’s Growler squadrons can’t, although the plane’s exact capabilities are classified.


Above—a Compass Call takes off from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base on July 10, 2014.

Lynn Berg, a former EC-130H crew member and staff member at the Pentagon’s Joint Electronic Warfare Center, said eight airframes won’t be enough to fulfill requirements from the military’s combatant commanders.

“That should greatly concern the joint warfighting community,” Berg wrote in an email. “It’s widely acknowledged that military operations everywhere are growing increasingly reliant on electromagnetic energy for communications, sensing, satellite navigation, battlefield awareness and command and control.”

For the eight remaining aircraft, some will remain stateside for aircrew training, depot maintenance and modification.

Berg commended the Navy, Marine Corps and the Army for boosting their electronic warfare divisions. But he added that the Compass Calls are a lot more powerful than relatively newer jammers like the EA-18G Growler.

The Air Force appeared to agree in a carefully-worded report to the Senate Armed Services Committee last September. Even though the first EC-130H entered service in 1983, the service has regularly upgraded its electronic warfare systems.

The report came in response to concerns by the Senate about the fleet cut. The aircraft “has proven its value in every major combat operation since Operation Just Cause in 1989 through today’s conflict in Afghanistan,” the lawmakers wrote in its 2015 defense spending authorization.

According to the report, the Air Force estimates it would save approximately $300 million over four years by moving half of the Compass Call fleet to its aircraft boneyard in Arizona.

“The concerns of the Senate are appropriate,” the service wrote in the response, signed by Air Force Under Secretary Eric Fanning. “The decision to retire seven EC-130H aircraft was one not made lightly, but was driven by financial constraints and the needs of the Air Force to modernize in other areas.”

Those same budgetary concerns didn’t seem to apply for other missions, though. The Air Force requested $167 billion for fiscal year 2016—well above the sequester limit—to boost spending on new fighters, bombers, tankers, cyber forces, nuclear weapons, space launches, missiles, bombs and other programs.

The Air Force also pushed back retirement of the E-8 ground-surveillance planes, E-3 radar planes and U-2 spy planes due to “combatant commander requirements.”

Half of those fleets would have begun retiring from service in the 2016 fiscal year—if it wasn’t for pressure from Congress. The Air Force would have scrapped the U-2 entirely.

The $300 million—or $75 million per year—in savings isn’t much, either.

Retiring half the Compass Call fleet would pay for less than a single Long-Range Strike Bomber—which will cost $550 million a piece once it enters production. One KC-46 tanker costs $180 million. One Global Hawk costs $95 million. One F-35 Joint Strike Fighter costs $88 million.

Those are conservative figures from the Pentagon’s 2013 selected acquisition reports, and do not account for development costs.

The Compass Call reduction would also come ahead of any plan to replace the aircraft with anything new. Air Combat Command has commissioned a series of studies to look at the service’s next airborne electronic attack aircraft.

The report indicated that the remaining EC-130s will receive upgrades through 2025. A report due in 2017 will explain what the follow-on jammer should be.

In an interview in December, the commander of the 55th Wing headquartered at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, said there has been no action taken yet to retire any planes, but the wing is developing plans to comply with the force reduction.

“Now that we know we would have the same capability with our airframes, we just have to figure out what we’d do with less capacity,” Brig. Gen. Gregory Guillot said.

The general said the electronic combat group has a new Compass Call flight deck simulator, and two mission crew simulators at David-Monthan Air Force Base that should free up some airplanes that were previously kept back for training purposes.

“I think that will help us with a small force so more aircraft will be able to devote to the operational mission,” Guillot said.

John Knowles, editor of the Journal of Electronic Defense and a Compass Call advocate, said in 2013 that cutting the fleet was a game of “budget jeopardy” with Congress—when the Air Force first floated the idea.

Knowles wrote that Congress could block the retirement and approve extra cash to keep all 15 aircraft flying through 2016.

He added that the aircraft’s ability has grown beyond the original mission of jamming datalinks and integrated air-defense systems, to include disrupting radio-controlled improvised explosive devices, voice communications and long-range radars.

“The Air Force didn’t play this game with the F-22 fleet or the C-17 fleet,” Knowles wrote. “It targeted the EC-130H fleet, and that speaks volumes about how [Electronic Warfare] is perceived within the Pentagon.”

According to an Air Force fact sheet updated last November, Compass Call airplanes carry 13 airmen—two pilots, one navigator, one flight engineer, two electronic warfare officers, one mission crew supervisor, four cryptologic linguists, a target acquisition operator and an airborne maintenance technician.

Congressional defense committees will consider the budget proposal during the next few months, and Congress has to eventually approve it. If lawmakers want to keep the aircraft around, they’ll have until next January at the latest.

[Ryan Ruck]

Obama: Reallocate Defense Resources to Foreign Aid

February 9, 2015

President Obama says the United States should reallocate defense resources to foreign aid efforts. He also added that most Americans misunderstand how much of the federal budget goes to diplomacy.

"[I]f you look at our foreign assistance as a tool in our national security portfolio, as opposed to charity, and you combine our defense budget with our diplomatic budget and our foreign assistance budget, then in that mix there's a lot more that we should be doing when it comes to helping Honduras and Guatemala build an effective criminal-justice system, effective police, and economic development that creates jobs," Obama said in an interview with Vox.com, a liberal news site.

"So you're saying it would make sense to reallocate those resources?" asks Matthew Yglesias of Vox.com.

"Well, and part of the challenge here is just public awareness. Time and time again, when they do surveys, and they ask people what proportion of the foreign budget is spent on foreign aid, they'll say, '25 percent.' They're pretty sure all their hard-earned money that they pay in taxes is somehow going to other folks. And if we can say, it varies between 1-2 percent depending on how you define it," Obama responds. "And if we were to make some strategic investments in countries that really could use our help, we would then not have to deploy our military as often and we would be in a better position to work with other countries to stand down violent extremism."

Watch the video of the exchange below:

[American Patriot]

Actually, Obama doesn't understand how much funding it takes to run a military.

What he THINKS he knows is how to make a Socialist-Marxist-Utopian-Progressive society love him and want him to remain in office, and that the Constitution is outdated.