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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:https://www.statista.com/statistics/239290/budget-of-the-us-navy-and-the-us-marine-corps/ We are not talking about other countries. We are talking the other armed services of the US. From 2017's budget. US Army: 148,033,950,000 US Air Force: 166,879,239,000 US Navy: 164,861,078,000 From the US Navy number, 23 billion is for the USMC.
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Jan 7, 2019 16:32
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EvilMerlin posted:We are not talking about other countries. Then again, the US Army is like 1,000,000 men or something in total (I think about 400,000 are active duty, the rest being reserves and National Guard) and has heavy artillery and armor divisions and poo poo. I imagine the Army has light infantry formations as well, are those much more expensive to field and maintain than equivalent Marine formations?
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Jan 7, 2019 17:22
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:
It was almost certainly a prop placed their by Miller, probably the statue as well. I can just see her now looking at the tub and thinking "hmm, needs more HItler."
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Jan 7, 2019 17:47
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Cessna posted:The rest of the USMC gets by with less than their army equivalents. They deliberately run things on the cheap (again, comparatively) to help reduce the calls to get rid of the USMC and make it part of the army. Occasionally they get some nice, better stuff. The SMAW was better than anything the Army had when the USMC adopted it, and the Marines were running around with the M47 Dragon II while the Army was still stuck with unupgraded Dragons.
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Jan 7, 2019 17:55
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You know, I read a book once where Congress passed legislation declaring that one of the four major branches of the US military would be abolished in five years, so the Navy built a planet-killer bomb to threaten to detonate if Congress tried to make them the loser. Then the Air Force, Army, and Marines all took turns stealing it.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:02
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Randarkman posted:Then again, the US Army is like 1,000,000 men or something in total (I think about 400,000 are active duty, the rest being reserves and National Guard) and has heavy artillery and armor divisions and poo poo. I imagine the Army has light infantry formations as well, are those much more expensive to field and maintain than equivalent Marine formations? US Army is 471513 Active, with 336879 total in the National Guard, 190699 in the Army Reserve, so yeah not that far off, so yeah like a million or so. The USMC is 184427 Active, with 38473 in the Reserve. Or lets say 220,000. So the USMC is 1/4 the size of the US Army. But its budget is 1/6th the size. I keep forgetting about the Coast Guard too. Those poor bastards have a budget of around 11 billion dollars.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:11
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Cythereal posted:You know, I read a book once where Congress passed legislation declaring that one of the four major branches of the US military would be abolished in five years, so the Navy built a planet-killer bomb to threaten to detonate if Congress tried to make them the loser. Then the Air Force, Army, and Marines all took turns stealing it. And the whole time the USCG was still doing it's job...
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Jan 7, 2019 18:12
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LatwPIAT posted:Occasionally they get some nice, better stuff. The SMAW was better than anything the Army had when the USMC adopted it, and the Marines were running around with the M47 Dragon II while the Army was still stuck with unupgraded Dragons. The M39 and the M27 are nice rifles too, the Army has neither.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:15
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EvilMerlin posted:US Army is 471513 Active, with 336879 total in the National Guard, 190699 in the Army Reserve, so yeah not that far off, so yeah like a million or so. Yes, but you should probably also account for the Army having a much greater number of heavy equipment compared to the Marines. What I was wondering, was if a Marine formation is really that much more cheap to field than a lightly equipped Army formation? Then again the Marines probably have some pretty expensive poo poo themselves, amphibious assault equipment and such probably doesn't come too cheap, so maybe they still compare favorably. e: Also, I reckon that with the Army it's likely that the active service troops consume a far greater proportion of the budget than the National Guard and reserve units, so most of those funds is paying for the 470,000 dudes and their stuff.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:24
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EvilMerlin posted:Rub-a-dub-dub. A picture of the head Nazi in a tub... Imagine that bit with Buffalo Bill with Silence Of The Lambs but in German and it makes more sense.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:27
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EvilMerlin posted:And the whole time the USCG was still doing it's job... Yup. IIRC the end boss of that book was an Army general who had defected to a domestic terrorist group that had merged with a Japanese doomsday cult and wanted to detonate the planet-killer to destroy the world for giggles.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:28
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EvilMerlin posted:The M39 and the M27 are nice rifles too, the Army has neither. Yes, the Army has a different marksman's rifle made from the hollowed-out corpse of an M14... The M27 is a really nice rifle, I'm not quite so sure it's a nice machine gun, though. (Though at least it's better suited for that role than the M16A2, eh US Army?)
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Jan 7, 2019 18:29
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LatwPIAT posted:Occasionally they get some nice, better stuff. The SMAW was better than anything the Army had when the USMC adopted it, and the Marines were running around with the M47 Dragon II while the Army was still stuck with unupgraded Dragons. Yes, but this is a rarity. The vast majority of USMC stuff is old former Army gear, and there is a long history of this. Randarkman posted:Then again the Marines probably have some pretty expensive poo poo themselves, amphibious assault equipment and such probably doesn't come too cheap, so maybe they still compare favorably. There's a bit of slight-of-hand there, because most of the amphibious stuff is paid for by the navy. The ships and most of the landing craft - pretty much anything bigger than an AAV - are navy.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:31
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Cythereal posted:You know, I read a book once where Congress passed legislation declaring that one of the four major branches of the US military would be abolished in five years, so the Navy built a planet-killer bomb to threaten to detonate if Congress tried to make them the loser. Then the Air Force, Army, and Marines all took turns stealing it. Hmm, so which branches of the US military have nukes?
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Jan 7, 2019 18:36
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If the coast guard don't, then should anyone
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Jan 7, 2019 18:41
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bewbies posted:One of the things you see consistently from the most successful pilots is that they tended to engage at very, very close range. Krupinski was particularly noted for this...he lost a bunch of planes to debris from a target that exploded right in front of him....he tried to be within 100 yards before he took a shot. He in turn was the one who taught Hartmann to get that close. Allied aces stood off a bit more, as their guns were a bit better suited for shooting at distance, but Gabreski and Malan were both advocates of 200 yard harmonization for wing guns. I think overall the engagement distances are likely to be longer than either gun cameras or pilot testimony would show because, in short, the vast majority of pilots weren't aces. You can look at the stuff you've quoted as "aces tended to shoot from relatively short range" but you can also look at it as "pilots that closed to very short range tended to become aces". I'm not going to go full SLA Marshall here but I suspect that a not insignificant number pilots went up, panicked, hosed off all of their ammo on a stupid deflection shot from 400m and then either went home or got killed by someone who was skilled enough to get close and brave enough to press the attack that far. LatwPIAT posted:The SMAW was better than anything the Army had when the USMC adopted it.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:47
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Milo and POTUS posted:If the coast guard don't, then should anyone Neutron bombs kill the traffickers and leave the cocaine untouched.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:49
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EvilMerlin posted:We are not talking about other countries. My only point is that your frame of reference is insane. The marines got more money than the entire bundeswehr in 2010. I'm not saying they're wasteful, just that they're "making do" with a global top-15 budget.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:49
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FrangibleCover posted:German aces definitely had some of the longer ranged kills, both Marseille and Hartmann definitely managed to score some air kills from literal miles away. While not in their aircraft on that day. Against enemy aircraft that were down for maintenance in the British or Soviet logs. Yes, noble knights of the air, the German aces. Not that closely related but I once remember reading something along the about the Red Army Air Force in WWII, it was a quote that they "did not really train their pilots as throw them into combat and find out who had a talent for killing" (like most of the issues of the Red Army in WWII the possible lack of training, probably results from purges causing lack of trained officers, massive losses in 1941 and massive expansion of the armed forces from 1941 afterwards as well as a continued high casualty rate). Essentially what they did was put the greenest pilots into the fastest aircraft they had available, often they would also be accompanied by more experienced pilots. While the risk of getting shot down was high, particularly as training was often rushed, the fast aircraft often allowed them to get out of trouble, survivors, particularly survivors who had displayed aggression or gotten kills were then transferred into other units who typically used slower but more agile planes. Marxist-Jezzinist posted:My only point is that your frame of reference is insane. The marines got more money than the entire bundeswehr in 2010. I'm not saying they're wasteful, just that they're "making do" with a global top-15 budget. I'm pretty sure that unless given time to mobilize that very few Western European militaries are really worth much in the end. Maybe France's. But Germany as far as I'm aware is pretty much a non-factor except in terms of arms production and development.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:58
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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:I'm not saying they're wasteful, just that they're "making do" with a global top-15 budget. The USMC had a Commandant back in the late 80's names Al Gray. He used to emphasize a "back to basics" approach. At one point in a speech he pointed to a nearby shiny new F/A-18 and said, "for the price of that one plane, we could buy every single Marine two drat good pairs of boots." You could just hear the Air-Wingers flinch.
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Jan 7, 2019 19:04
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I’m assuming the USMC isn’t actually strapped for boots like it’s 1942 Red Army.
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Jan 7, 2019 19:06
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I’m assuming the USMC isn’t actually strapped for boots like it’s 1942 Red Army. He sold that plane so they're good now
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Jan 7, 2019 19:07
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I’m assuming the USMC isn’t actually strapped for boots like it’s 1942 Red Army. Obviously not, but I don't think that's a realistic standard of comparison. (I will also point out that the USMC makes individual Marines buy their own boots. (And uniforms, etc.))
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Jan 7, 2019 19:10
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Cessna posted:(I will also point out that the USMC makes individual Marines buy their own boots. (And uniforms, etc.)) What? Seriously?
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Jan 7, 2019 19:14
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Randarkman posted:Not that closely related but I once remember reading something along the about the Red Army Air Force in WWII, it was a quote that they "did not really train their pilots as throw them into combat and find out who had a talent for killing" (like most of the issues of the Red Army in WWII the possible lack of training, probably results from purges causing lack of trained officers, massive losses in 1941 and massive expansion of the armed forces from 1941 afterwards as well as a continued high casualty rate). Essentially what they did was put the greenest pilots into the fastest aircraft they had available, often they would also be accompanied by more experienced pilots. While the risk of getting shot down was high, particularly as training was often rushed, the fast aircraft often allowed them to get out of trouble, survivors, particularly survivors who had displayed aggression or gotten kills were then transferred into other units who typically used slower but more agile planes. I'm... not sure about this. Like, I don't think the VVS really had the range of aircraft to make this decision, unless they were transferring veteran pilots out of Yaks and into I-16s
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Jan 7, 2019 19:16
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Randarkman posted:What? Seriously?
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Jan 7, 2019 19:16
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FrangibleCover posted:[Incandescent M67-related rage] The M67 is not a terrible weapon, but by 1966 the only thing it has going for it compared to what's available on the international market is the canister round. By 1984... OK so by 1984 much hasn't actually changed, but everyone else are playing catch-up to the Swedes and the Swiss have figured out how to squeeze the same kind of performance out of superbazooka-knockoffs.
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Jan 7, 2019 19:22
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Hey thread. Been a long time. Been working on a new infodump that TBH I may be showing people here ahead of time as a bastard peer review But I have questions in the meantime. I've gotten myself a temporary job at a museum, and my main purpose is to scan a large run of newspapers and turn them into a searchable archive. So far the museum has gotten me an external HD, a Scansnap scanner that has many neat but unknown to me features, and a laptop. I'm now at the point where I just wing it The ultimate goal, as I've said, is to turn these scanned PDFs into a database that is searchable. While PDF seems likely for the actual files, I know nothing about databases. What should the museum be using? Also, for putting together newspapers, the scanner seems slightly problematic as it cannot do a full length page at once. Will this scanner automatically mash images together into pages for me, or is that another bit of software, or is that even a thing?
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Jan 7, 2019 19:24
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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:My only point is that your frame of reference is insane. The marines got more money than the entire bundeswehr in 2010. I'm not saying they're wasteful, just that they're "making do" with a global top-15 budget. There are also more US Marines than members of the entire bundeswehr (all branches).
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Jan 7, 2019 19:24
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SeanBeansShako posted:Imagine that bit with Buffalo Bill with Silence Of The Lambs but in German and it makes more sense. I just snorted green tea out my nose...
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Jan 7, 2019 19:24
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Cessna posted:Obviously not, but I don't think that's a realistic standard of comparison. Well to be honest all Officers are required to buy their own uniforms in all branches, unless they are rapid assigned to a duty post where the uniform is different and then they are issued the common utility uniform.
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Jan 7, 2019 19:26
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EvilMerlin posted:There are also more US Marines than members of the entire bundeswehr (all branches). It is kinda humbling when you realize that the Marines are by themselves one of the largest militaries on earth. I think they also outnumber the IDF or if you prefer the entire enlistment of the Canadian Forces.
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Jan 7, 2019 19:26
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:I'm... not sure about this. Like, I don't think the VVS really had the range of aircraft to make this decision, unless they were transferring veteran pilots out of Yaks and into I-16s I'm not quite sure I remember where I read it, but I'll see if I can track it down and find out what the source was. That said the VVS operated quite a number of different aircraft, especially fighter models, as they were supplied with quite a number of British and American fighter models as well as their domestic variants and used them alot, including some aircraft that were little used by the Western Allies, such as the P-39 Airacobra (which a number of Soviet aces flew, supposedly it was much better suited for the relatively low altitude engagements of the Eastern Front than the air theater of the Pacific), later improved models of this aircraft were produced solely for export to the Soviet Union. e: Even France's entire armed forces is barely larger than the USMC, and that's the largest military in Western Europe. And they're reserves are only like 20,000 men. EvilMerlin posted:yeah they outnumber the Active IDF (but not combined active with reserves). IDF has a pretty large reserve though. IIRC one of the things that really threw a wrench into the Arab countries' war effort in 1973 was that the IDF mobilized its reserves far faster than any of them had considered likely. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Jan 7, 2019 |
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Jan 7, 2019 19:26
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Nebakenezzer posted:It is kinda humbling when you realize that the Marines are by themselves one of the largest militaries on earth. I think they also outnumber the IDF or if you prefer the entire enlistment of the Canadian Forces. yeah they outnumber the Active IDF (but not combined active with reserves). There are not even 100k active Canadian war fighters in all branches combined...
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Jan 7, 2019 19:27
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Randarkman posted:What? Seriously? Yes. In Boot Camp you are issued a "full seabag," a full issue of uniforms and other associated crap like rank insignia, neckties, dress shoes, undershirts, etc. The cost of this is deducted from your pay and takes up most of what you were paid in boot camp. Once you get to the FMF you will quickly find that these uniforms aren't good enough and you will be de facto required to buy all new uniforms. Over time you will wear out your uniforms at a rapid pace, and will be required to replace them with your own pay. You are given a "Clothing Allowance" on an annual basis, but this barely covers a fraction of the expense; it's maybe good for a new pair of shoes or a new set of utilities per year. You will also need inspection-quality uniforms to wear for personnel inspections every Monday morning (at minimum). It's a well-rehearsed drill - you come into work, put on your "inspection" uniform, your platoon commander looks at it and sees that it is shiny and that you have a new haircut, then you change into your work uniform and take your "inspection" uniform back to the dry cleaners to get it ready for next Monday. You are also required to keep a full set of inspection-quality uniforms, which are to be brand new, perfectly labeled, pressed, and prepared - only to be hung in your wall-locker for inspections and never worn. And if you're thinking of going for a high-profile job like Drill Instructor/Recruiter/Embassy Guard plan on having multiple full sets of these uniforms for these billets. All told I spend several thousand dollars on uniforms I never wore a single time over the course of my time in.
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Jan 7, 2019 19:37
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EvilMerlin posted:Well to be honest all Officers are required to buy their own uniforms in all branches, unless they are rapid assigned to a duty post where the uniform is different and then they are issued the common utility uniform. In the USMC this applies to everyone, officer and enlisted alike. And if you're required to have a new uniform, well, plan on paying for it. The only "uniforms" I didn't pay for myself were (fuel-soaked) coveralls and (rare, maybe twice in my whole career) field replacements for desert cammies in war zones.
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Jan 7, 2019 19:40
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Cessna posted:In the USMC this applies to everyone, officer and enlisted alike. And if you're required to have a new uniform, well, plan on paying for it. Yeah I understand that. It was the same for me, the only uniform I was even "given" was a set of chocolate chips during GW1. REquired to buy my own ABU's/BDU's, two types of Service Dress, including the three-button coat, a mess dress uniform (worn if LUCKY once a year, and cost me well over 500 bucks), two different flight suits, three different flight jackets, a poo poo load of different covers... that doesn't cover any footwear (three different pairs of boots, two different shoes and the mess dress poo poo), all the insignia bullshit (which for mess dress and full service dress wasn't cheap). But I feel for any enlisted, that has to buy uniforms, as they ain't cheap, and E-1 to E-6 don't get paid jack poo poo. More or less you poor bastards had to buy all the poo poo I did, and get paid 1/4 of what I did. EvilMerlin fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jan 7, 2019 |
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Jan 7, 2019 19:49
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Cessna posted:Yes, but this is a rarity. The vast majority of USMC stuff is old former Army gear, and there is a long history of this. in that case isn't some of the USMC cost savings predicated on the Army's relatively profligate spending in the first place?
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Jan 7, 2019 20:24
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LatwPIAT posted:Yes, the Army has a different marksman's rifle made from the hollowed-out corpse of an M14... The M27 is basically the RPK being recycled decades later. It sounds like the Marines decided that the amount of fire an M16 with a 100-round drum can put out is enough to justify not carrying a 20-pound LMG with a box holding the same amount of ammo that can't use M16 magazines without jamming.
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Jan 7, 2019 20:53
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:in that case isn't some of the USMC cost savings predicated on the Army's relatively profligate spending in the first place? Yes. Don't tell anyone.
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Jan 7, 2019 20:54
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