The U.S. Military’s Force Structure: A Primer | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. Military’s Force Structure: A Primer

cbo.gov

19 pointstacon9 comments

There's a nifty interactive tool for playing with costs! https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54351

I gave it a whirl. There are some built-in constraints. For instance, you can't take away minuteman missiles. Nor can you cancel dental insurance for servicemembers.

Also, you are not allowed to entirely disband any component. There must be at least one aircraft carrier, one army brigade, etc. Force reductions in general staff are limited to 50%.

But I tried. I took away everything I could. Cranked every slider to its minimum value.

For a total reduction in personnel of 1,071,000.

For a grand total annual savings of...$184 billion.

That savings is roughly 30% of the actual us military budget (depending on what year you compare with)

In other words, if the US military shrinks to its absolute minimum level, it somehow still costs 2/3 of the money. According to the CBO's online slider tool, at least.

Good find! But I am struggle to understand how come this sensitive information available wide open in public to whole world with convenient download buttons.

Most of it comes from the regular budget docs. Classified spending is only reported in aggregate. But most of the time, you could come up with pretty good estimates of how much a brigade of infantry soldiers costs, especially if you already have one or more. So what's the point in trying to hide that?

Does it work well other way around? If you wanted to massively increase the capability, does it scale up well?

...checked, it does... just +120B makes a force that really kicks ass, +50-100% of the current. why not just do it, then regularly practice overseas deployments to seriously scare shit out of the Arabs and get better oil deals for everyone, doesn't it save money in the end?

That’s a good point. Marginal increases can provide out of proportion value.

> then regularly practice overseas deployments to seriously scare shit out of the Arabs and get better oil deals for everyone, doesn't it save money in the end?

No. Pulling tax money out of everyone's wallets to make gas at the pump cheaper doesn't save everyone money.

It does. Money spent on the military is spent domestically with only a small fraction of them leaving the country, the rest being spent inside and boosting the economy; the money spent buying all foreign oil is all just going away... so even if we are to spend somewhat more than $1 for the military to reduce oil spending by $1 that will make perfect sense, net result for the economy overall will be positive.

But, if the US is a net exporter of oil [1], where is all that $1 going, really?

1. https://www.ft.com/content/9cbba7b0-12dd-11ea-a7e6-62bf4f9e5...

You're misunderstanding the tool. It's only calculating a small part of total costs. "These values account for only the O&S costs of units (not acquisition costs or other costs)."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com