The Corps can't get anywhere by sea without hitching rides on foreign ships, and now their air arm is about to be grounded before it can crash and burn:
The Marine Corps' aviation service is being stretched dangerously thin, with an aging fleet largely grounded by the toll of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the fight against ISIS and budget cuts, Fox News reports.
According to Fox News, out of 276 F/A-18 Hornet strike fighters....
First deployed in the late 1980s, for the record.
....only about 30% are ready to fly, and only two of 147 heavy-lift helicopters are airworthy.
That's 1.4%, if you're keeping score at home.
In addition, highly trained mechanics in the aviation depots left for jobs in the private sector.
Military spending has dropped from $691 billion in 2010 to $560 billion in 2015, Fox News notes – cuts that include those made by the Obama administration as well as the sequestration cutbacks agreed to by Congress....
A 19% cut at the same time that the Obama Doctrine has been multiplying and strengthening our enemies, who are arming themselves to the teeth, with global ambitions and opportunities to match.
Cannibalization, or taking parts from one multi-million dollar aircraft to get other multi-million dollar aircraft airborne, has become the norm, Fox News reports.
"Imagine taking a 1995 Cadillac and trying to make it a Ferrari," Sergeant Argentry Uebelhoer tells the news outlet. "You're trying to make it faster, more efficient, but it's still an old airframe … [and] the aircraft is constantly breaking." [emphasis added]
These stories of a demolished U.S. military in every branch keep piling up, and at an accelerating rate. We're under constant cyberattack, the Russians regularly conduct war games using our warships and coastlines as targets, the Iranians capture our sailors with impunity, the ChiComms annex the entire South China Sea, North Korea launches "satellites" in polar orbits that come right over our territory from the undefended south side, gender quotas in combat units are almost here, and now the branch of the service that is so badass that they have no need for a special forces branch because they ARE their own special forces branch can't fly over the Hills of Montezuma or reach the shores of Tripoli.
Remember what U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley and Air Force Commissar Deborah James told a House Armed Services Committee hearing a month ago:
[I]f the Army were to fight a "great power war" with any one of four major potential foes, he had "grave concerns" about the readiness of his forces.
"(The Army) is not at the levels that can execute satisfactorily ... in terms of time, cost in terms of casualties or cost in terms of military objectives," Milley said.
Also speaking at the hearing, about the Fiscal 2017 budget request for the military, Air Force [Commissar] Deborah James said half of her combat forces were not "sufficiently ready" for fighting against a country like Russia.
"Money is helpful for readiness but freeing up the time of our people to go and do this training is equally important," James said.
Earlier this month Air Force officials said they were facing a shortage of more than five hundred fighter pilots, a gap expected to widen to more than eight hundred by 2022. [emphasis added]
The Army can't fight, half the Air Force is falling apart and the other half is running out of pilots, the Navy is a hundred ships, including at least two aircraft carrier battle groups, short of being able to carry out its global responsibilities, the Marines are stranded and anywhere from nearly three quarters to ALL of its air support is disintegrating, our latest ICBM is almost half a century old....and a majority of Americans wants it all cut back and dismantled even more.
Never mind the nightmare of a defenseless America, we're living in the reality of it.
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