69.5: Conventional Forces
Other Information:
Conventional Forces in Decline -- More than a century ago, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt predicted that America’s
future was in the Pacific. That future is here today, but it can develop peacefully only under the shield of American Naval
and Air power. Yet the current Administration plans to significantly curtail production of our most advanced combat aircraft,
decommission 6 of 60 Air Force tactical squadrons, and eliminate critical air mobility assets, including 27 giant C-5As and
65 C-130s, while divesting the nation of the brand new C-27. The President plans to reduce our naval forces by retiring seven
cruisers and slowing work on amphibious ships and attack submarines, further reducing the Navy that already has the smallest
fleet since the early years of the twentieth century. And he will reduce ground forces by separating 100,000 soldiers and
Marines – many of whom will be discharged after recently returning from combat – and another 100,000 under the sequester.
These plans limit our strategic flexibility in an increasingly dangerous world. The current President is repeating the disastrous
cuts of the post-Vietnam war era, putting our nation in danger of returning to the “hollow force” of the Carter Administration,
when the U.S. military was not respected in the world.
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