Military Force Structure Presentation 2009

The Big Picture features a strong presentation from the USMC that discusses the funding requirements and program/force changes required as a result of impending budgetary reprioritization. Whoever put this together deserves high marks for good strategic thinking (no surprise) for making three hard choices:

• Block reductions, instead of "salami slicing" (which they also refer to as the Colin Powell "share the pain" approach), maintaining "full capability with smaller capacity".
• Reductions targeted at expensive programs, leading to a more cost effective force with most of its capabilities preserved.
• Maintenance of unique capabilities (night carrier, shore assault, close force support)

I wish, though, that someone over there would read some Edware Tufte. The slide designs give me headaches. I also wonder what the big unspoken problem is--whose sacred cow didn't make it up onto the butcher's table?

They've also nailed the one big consideration: what exactly do we want our military to be able to do? We have no coherent strategy on this, despite huge outlays. This lack of a plan encourages bad uses of our resources (see also: Iraq), and we must get this fixed.