| From: | WILLIAM FRIERSON <will1am@*****.ASU.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Desert Wars |
| Date: | Tue, 6 Jun 1995 05:00:59 -0700 |
>I've always thought of the Wars as the ultimate testing ground. The
>corps get out their new weapons, set up in the middle of the desert
>and test them on each other. Presuming weaponary is going to have to
>be tested anyway this eliminates the ordinance costs. Secondly the
It also costs big bucks to replace those weapons and equipment. And
ammo costs a _lot_. And what if it screws up there in front of God
and everyone? That would tend to have a negative effect.
>huge. Finaly pay? pensions? benifits? since when did the corps have
>to worry about people? People are cheap I imagine the corps would
>have little trouble recruiting thousands of people if all they
>offered was food add a little pay and they'll sell their souls.
>Training? on the job. Send the initial batch of recruits onto the
>field in canvis sacks with obslete weapons (there must be tons of
>ex-cold war weaponary sitting arround at bargin prices) Those that
Well, I would think that gutter gregs and untrained troops would end up
costing money as they quickly died and fumbled around with your military
hardware.
Soldiers have to be trained and motivated. High tech weaponry increases
the learning curve. And not only do they have to be able to do the
technical side of fighting, they have to do the tactical side of operations
as well. And they have to do it as a cohesive unit, and be better trained
than their oppenents. All of this training takes lots of money (doubt that,
look at the military budgets of modern countries). And your soldier has to
believe that he will survive the battlefield. I'm not going to die for
some TV commercial. If you casually wrote off 90 percent of your troops,
you wouldn't have anyone left. And you would find that your recruiting
dropped drastically once word got around (and it would).
Training and equiping armies is a very expensive venture, and one that has
considerable art as opposed to science to it. It takes years to train
tank crews to be proficient _as_ a crew. You're not going to throw one
together in less than that time.
One of the reasons that Desert Storm came off so well, was that the
training American units recieve at the NTC (National Training Center) is
as close to combat without actually killing people as you can get. They
are, in effect, veteran by the time they finish. But it _costs_. And to
throw them away in a "commercial" war fought every year seems kind of
ludicrous. The cost would be prohibitive.
Like they say to pilots, they are the most expensive part of the fighter.
Years and millions of dollars get invested in their training. Sure, lives
are cheap to corps, but training is a very expensive investment.
Later
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William Frierson Internet: WILL1AM@*****.asu.edu
