What About the Defense Budget?

...any step away from spending that much money on weapons is a step in the right direction. I'm not 100% against it but I think more money could be spent on "other, better" things.

PS, when last did a missile save any bodies live...?

If a missile had hit Osama Bin Laden before 9/11, plenty of lives would have been saved.

Obscene is the word that comes to mind.

To put our spending in perspective see this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

Who the hell are we "defending" ourselves against anyway?

Why US calls it as Defence budget. It should be called Attack budget.

Defence is one, when someone attacks. In history, you find no attack by who so ever on US. All wars are attacks by US.

With 47% of world military spending, who will dare to attack. Pie chart is self explainatory.

You have no idea of what you're talking about. I tend to forgive ignorance, but I ought to give you an answer, because you mouthed your ignorance. Have you heard of Pearl Harbor? Probably not. Oh, what the hell, you don't deserve more than this...

Like it or not, the US is the worlds cops. If we didn't spend a large amount of money on the military, fanatics like asoma and saddam would kill a lot more people than they have. If we didn't monitor and correct some situations, they would turn into a much larger problem than they started out being.

Dude,

the United States trained and armed afghanistan, iraq, iran, israel, et al... for one reason.. to create reasonable enemies, so that when the time comes, they can justify the entire expenditure, and the warlards can be filthy rich... the rest is the purest sort of bullshit. It is all part of the NWO plan to create a one-world fascist government. full stop. Nothing else makes sense!

Chris

Most of the proposed changes actually seems reasonable except for the F22. The F22 is an air supremacy fighter and the F35 is a mixed mission which means it must be all things to all people, which does not happen. You must make compromises.

My opinion is that you can build unmanned bombers at less cost if you want but you cannot remote fly a fighter. One on several the F22 will win against the F35, it is proven in production and is the better aircraft for what needs to be done with a man in the cockpit.

The only cost savings you will get by making this change is that the costs are born by more than the US; meaning the UK which is not much of an offset. Add in we are going to export the F35 to our friends (currently) we could in the future have to send an F35 against an F35.

In history you may find references to Pearl Harbor and Timothy McVeigh.

You said it. Pearl harbour is a gone history, when American had not self declared the world cop.

See the recent hsitory.

For want of oil, Americans have declared saddam a devil and killed him. Do not forget the progress he did in his own country.

Every time, America will creat a devil, then support some devil and then kill him assuming cops position.

Now, same thing is going on in Pakistan. America fully supported Pakistan and now it is on the verge of total collapse. But Obama seems a hope, as compared to Bush.

America didn't create saddam. He did it all on his own. The same with hitler. There are people out there that don't think like you do. They want to kill you. They were raised that way. If you want to prove it, go on to a al qaeda web site and give them your address.

No but he was America's ally during the irak-iran war

Cat.....

What guest says has surely some sense. Yes, Hitler was not creation of America. But Saddam was creation of America. Besides, America fought with Saddam just for wining oil. No other single reason. It was prooved when America (sorry, Bush... I am sure whole America was not behind Bush.. you may be... must be) could not find a single war head not nuclear nor chemical is Iraq. The fear of warheads was just a propoganda of Bush.

Besides, we should admit the progress done by Iraq. It was different than many other muslim countries. Saddam was the hero of the progress.

Al qaeda is generation of Afganistan, which is again a creation of America, to oppose USSR. Just get to know, how Al Qaeda (or we may say Afgan fudamentalist) was supported by America (again I repeat, majority of American citizens should not be supporting the government for all these and such moves)

Imperialism costs money.

But what really ticks me off is all the secondary money spending on outside contracts with questionable results, To have a good army is one thing, but to enrich some Catering CEO with the people money is ludicrous IMO. Why is the USA Army outsourcing so much for higher prices?

Regarding post 4.

Surprising to see that USA was always hostile to Cuba with defence budget of just $1 billion, as compared to $522 billion of US!!!

Epke:

With this outsourcing Japan and many more countries (and even we in India) must be benefiting!

as far as i know most contracts go to American firms so Bummer

As far as I understand China (and even other countries) have more soldiers than the USA army. Should'nt they then have bigger budgets for weapons and equipment than America...?

AK47's are cheap.

America's army is a High tech army, most of their weapons are next generation weapons, that means a hefty price tag. Also almost no country has a large surface fleet like America , that also is a large cost post

Ask the Chinese...

Thank God they don't.

Increasing the defense budget can seem useful because it can save/generate jobs but the long term effect is dangerous so I think they should find different ways to speed the economy up.

You said it Qq.

US has prospered by more and more wars. At least we many non-US people have this feeling.

We need more and more people of your thought in US.

Thats why US always look for newer and newer wars.

But one day, this may lead to disaster fro US.

Thanks to OBAMA, he has started the process of good path, which is visible through his recent moves about Cuba.

..."children" needs to be protected. To protect those "children", believe it or not, you need weapons. I just feel that america spent so much on defending "children" that "children" do not get the opportunities anymore to eat, stay in houses, be educated and loved. Reason:

The money needed for that is being over spent on the weapons. I think America just need to find a balance.

more money should be spent on the security of the USA. Less could be spent on outside interests such as humanitarian efforts in the third world and defense of third world non-contributers to the success of the USA. Let's make America stronger defensively. Yes we Can.

Why not spend 100% of the budget buying weapons!!! Yaaaah! even more robotic weapons that can kill towelheads while we focus on pumping their oil!! Woohoo!!! then we can go in with chainsaws and kill whoever is left, just fer fun.