Our Defense budget is $600 billion. How large of a military budget do we "need"? Are we massively underfunded?

Is it true that the Army, Air Force, the Navy in the Marine Corps have 40% of their Aviation assets grounded due to lack of spare parts not to mention for a shortage of Pilots?

I guess we can have a few F-35 "junk" strike Fighters but we don't need to have as many hundred as they want because that takes away from readiness from the rest of the Air Force, Navy and Marines. We should build up our armored units again.

We should modify the Florida agreement so Army Pilots can fly the A-10 Warthog instead of the USAF that wants to get to get rid of that flying tank so they can free up money to pay for the F-35 black hole budget. We should re-wing all of the warthogs. I've read stories that there is money to fund the last third of them who don't have new or wings. I called the junk Strike Fighter because it cannot be a jack-of-all-trades. It cannot be the F-105 thud(so many shot down in vietnam) of the 21st Century. We can have our priorities reversed.

We seem to be relying too much on contractors and not on having actual active-duty assets. I remember when the towel man at the gym or the laundry man on the base was making more( $100k) than I was as a lieutenant in Iraq and as a captain in Afghanistan! There is too much waste going on with contractors.

We had almost a decade is sequestration. Our war stock is very depleted. We gave away most of our war stock that we once had in Western Europe after 1991 and I don't think we have replenished it that much yet. We need to go back to Soviet or similar-type Warsaw Pact force-on-force battles and training like reforger like we used to have prior to 1992. We need to have our tanks upgraded. We need to do large force on Force battles. We need to have the armored Cavalry Regiment come back. We spent too much money on g-wiz Fighters like the junkie F-35 or like the overpriced littoral combat ship. Our combat forces been gutted for over a decade. Our army is finally starting to get smart and get rid of the people who are non Deployable. We have a limited budget and we can't be putting all the money into overpriced research and development. We need to have force- on-force training. Even the Canadians, who have almost no money, have force on force training. I am trying to get on this mission instead of going to Korea. Russia, Iran, China and other countries have large standing armies. Operations other than war is still relevant but we need to go to the Warsaw Pact style of warfare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJzItA92av8&t=37s

CSM Charles Hayden LTC Stephen C. LTC Stephen F. SPC Andrew Ross SFC William Farrell COL M Stock COL Mikel J. Burroughs COL (Join to see) COL Charles Williams MSG (Join to see)
CDR (Join to see) MAJ Sheldon Smith SFC Shirley Whitfield
PVT James Strait MAJ David Potter 1LT Sandy Annala PO1 William "Chip" Nagel LT Brad McInnis Maj Marty Hogan TSgt Joe C.

There are two parts to this for me:

1.) Irresponsible spending and no accountability. This happens from the top down. We are building buildings, spaces, coffee bars, buying new computer monitors because the newer ones are bigger etc versus allocating the money for equipment and training. And I mean it, this is from the 5 sided puzzle palace all the way down to the barracks. We spend money at the end of the year because we have to or we won’t get that budgeted amount the next year…what kind of sense does that make??? What they ought to do is reward those who have money left over by allowing them another year to spend the previous year’s money and when it is gone move on to the next year’s budget. That wouldn’t rush people to buy crap to buy crap. We are also forced by law to spend our dollars with certain vendors that provide a "cost savings" when I can get the same stuff at Office Depot or somewhere else for half the price. Those rule need to change.

With major systems acquisition we have requirements creep. I know threats change over the life cycle but most of the main requirements don’t and you build that into your cost model up front. We have major weapons systems with cost overruns that are ridiculous because we change the requirement and put the system down the line several months or years. There is no accountability for this creep as people get promoted out of the Program Office and keep going. There is a lot of savings there to be had in those programs if they are managed right.

2.) We are underfunded as well. Do we need a full up military to charge across the Fulda Gap??? No but we need a sizable military to be able to carry out our nations charges. We aren’t there. When I have one guy or gal now doing the job of 6 or 8 without dated equipment that has to be held together with bubble gum and bail wire to keep running…that is not efficient. We need modernized weapon systems…the Marines and Air Force are cannibalizing parts to keep old airplanes flying…and we need the people to operate and maintain those systems with spare parts. We need programs that take care of families and those are being cut at the expense of operations. We need training dollars that are being cut.
BOTTOM LINE FOR ME: We are underfunded and need more dollars but I do believe we could help ourselves some by how we spend on other programs. We won’t be able to pay our own way but we certainly could help the cause with responsible spending.

I've heard the comment tossed around from a few people..."The US spends as much on it's military as the next five countries combined". That may be true but we're also doing the job of those five countries.

We need to either fund for resupply, refit, and replace or we need to stop being the world's police officer.