What's the most important thing the military should do while going through this downsizing period?

Put the military to work in the fields for which they were trained. There is so much money that is wasted every year on "contracted workers" when the military already has trained personnel. For example, when my husband was active duty Navy, stationed on a ship that was in dry dock, he had no work to do because the yard workers did all the work on the ship. So all the trained HT welders, ship fitters, pipe fitters, carpenters on the ship sat and stared at the walls from 7:30 to 4:30 every day while the yard workers came on to the ship by the dozens and completed all the work and the Navy paid them each $28.50 - $38.50 an hour! Why on earth would the military spend that kind of money when there are plenty of fully qualified HT's on the ship?? Let's just say that none of them were making more than $28.50 an hour, that is still $27, 360 a WEEK! (over $1,400,000 per year) that is being spent on workers when there are already workers on the ship. (24 workers x 28.50 x 40 work week) This was in the early 1990's, so heaven only knows how much the military spends on contracted workers now. And this is only ONE Navy ship, multiply this times the number of Navy ships in dry dock. Millions of dollars spent to pay these contracted workers to do the work of the fully trained military personnel. That is not only a HUGE waste of money, it is horrible for shipboard morale. How do they think it makes Navy personnel feel when they are forced to go to "work" day in, day out for months on end, and there is no work for them to do, because these contracted workers are getting paid double or triple the amount of money to do their jobs for them??? If you want my idea, get rid of the contracted workers, and put our men and women back to work in their fields of expertise. This not only saves millions of dollars, it builds morale, and the Navy personnel actually get to do their jobs and hone their skills to become more and more proficient in their respective fields. 

Service members that are part of the downsizing have to given ample time to ACAP, there is a lack of knowledge/enforcement regarding the 1 year to ACAP.  This does not just happen to enlisted but to officers as well, and there is no accountability or oversight.   

I feel that the military should shut down just like the government did and see how fast a solution is forth coming. I remember when serving in the military gave someone a sense of pride. nowadays all you here about is how there is a shooting here or there and it ends up being some serviceman or woman that has ptsd. this wasn't the case when I served, because we had sufficient pay and benefits. along with sufficient number of servicemen and women.

Retain the brain trust of the Senior leadership, too often in a downsizing, it is the senior members who are asked to take severance or retirement.  When you do this you lose the knowledge base that they have earned and developed throughout their careers.  Don't lose the seasoned Senior Enlisted and Officers to imposed budget cuts.

For the Army as a whole, we need to make sure that while we're rushing to "get back to basics" that we don't forget the lessons we have learned during the last 13 years at war. We need to make sure that we are retaining the best personnel. We have a great opportunity to push out the bottom feeders. We need to make sure that we don't cut funding so much that Soldiers are not able to train. That being said, we need to make sure that since our funding is going to be cut that we as leaders get creative in the way we train. Finally, we need to train our Soldiers on TTP's from the pre 9/11 era. We don't know where our next fight will take us so we need to make sure we're ready to take the fight to the enemy.

Now looking at this from a purely tactical intel point of view, we need to make sure we're continually updating our various intel systems. That we're ensuring that we have the right technology to locate the enemy. What worked in this war may be out of date for whatever technology that we face 10 years from now. Once we ensure that the technology is in place we need to make sure the elements that will have intel assets at their disposal need to be educated on those assets and how they can best be utilized.

Everyone sees waste in their organization, the key to downsizing is eliminating that waste whether its spending or people that don't contribute to the overall mission.

Require annual grammar along all the other classes.

okay, we all know the drill. . . . . we have to maintain a "don't tread on me position" , so we go to what we know best. . . .  the good, the bad and the ugly.  The good, to keep the playing field even, the bad, to ensure the things we need to get done get done and not just happen and the ugly, to get the things done we don't want to do or here about being done. Keep It Stupidly Simple!!! (KISS) 

Put the military to work in the fields for which they were trained. There is so much money that is wasted every year on "contracted workers" when the military already has trained personnel. For example, when my husband was active duty Navy, stationed on a ship that was in dry dock, he had no work to do because the yard workers did all the work on the ship. So all the trained HT welders, ship fitters, pipe fitters, carpenters on the ship sat and stared at the walls from 7:30 to 4:30 every day while the yard workers came on to the ship by the dozens and completed all the work and the Navy paid them each $28.50 - $38.50 an hour! Why on earth would the military spend that kind of money when there are plenty of fully qualified HT's on the ship?? Let's just say that none of them were making more than $28.50 an hour, that is still $27, 360 a WEEK! (over $1,400,000 per year) that is being spent on workers when there are already workers on the ship. (24 workers x 28.50 x 40 work week) This was in the early 1990's, so heaven only knows how much the military spends on contracted workers now. And this is only ONE Navy ship, multiply this times the number of Navy ships in dry dock. Millions of dollars spent to pay these contracted workers to do the work of the fully trained military personnel. That is not only a HUGE waste of money, it is horrible for shipboard morale. How do they think it makes Navy personnel feel when they are forced to go to "work" day in, day out for months on end, and there is no work for them to do, because these contracted workers are getting paid double or triple the amount of money to do their jobs for them??? If you want my idea, get rid of the contracted workers, and put our men and women back to work in their fields of expertise. This not only saves millions of dollars, it builds morale, and the Navy personnel actually get to do their jobs and hone their skills to become more and more proficient in their respective fields.

Put the military to work in the fields for which they were trained. There is so much money that is wasted every year on "contracted workers" when the military already has trained personnel. For example, when my husband was active duty Navy, stationed on a ship that was in dry dock, he had no work to do because the yard workers did all the work on the ship. So all the trained HT welders, ship fitters, pipe fitters, carpenters on the ship sat and stared at the walls from 7:30 to 4:30 every day while the yard workers came on to the ship by the dozens and completed all the work and the Navy paid them each $28.50 - $38.50 an hour! Why on earth would the military spend that kind of money when there are plenty of fully qualified HT's on the ship?? Let's just say that none of them were making more than $28.50 an hour, that is still $27, 360 a WEEK! (over $1,400,000 per year) that is being spent on workers when there are already workers on the ship. (24 workers x 28.50 x 40 work week) This was in the early 1990's, so heaven only knows how much the military spends on contracted workers now. And this is only ONE Navy ship, multiply this times the number of Navy ships in dry dock. Millions of dollars spent to pay these contracted workers to do the work of the fully trained military personnel. That is not only a HUGE waste of money, it is horrible for shipboard morale. How do they think it makes Navy personnel feel when they are forced to go to "work" day in, day out for months on end, and there is no work for them to do, because these contracted workers are getting paid double or triple the amount of money to do their jobs for them??? If you want my idea, get rid of the contracted workers, and put our men and women back to work in their fields of expertise. This not only saves millions of dollars, it builds morale, and the Navy personnel actually get to do their jobs and hone their skills to become more and more proficient in their respective fields.