Should the Army/Air-force be a mostly part-time force?

[Anonymous]

Should the Army/Air-force be a mostly part-time force?

There are many considerations here:

Pros:
1: A full time army is more combat effective.

2: A full time Army/Air Force is more politically reliable, its less likely they will object to what politicians who pay All their bills ask them to do. This comes at the cost of Con #1.

Cons:
1: A full time standing army is inherently one of if not the biggest threats to any free country. They are a always ready and easily made willing to go means to seize power. This is how most free countries fall most of the time in fact.

2: A full time Army/Air-force is drastically more expensive than a part time force.
This is true not merely in what we pay in Taxes but what our economies suffer for want of the same skilled labor used elsewhere (like policing) during the 90% of the time they are NOT AT WAR.

In Federal systems like America we have additional concerns:

3: A Full time Army/Air-force as opposed to National Guard offers little emergency support for domestic crisis natural (hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, etc..), or civil (Riots, insurrection, etc..) Granted this law is in part to help mitigate Con #1.

The video kind of talks about this:

[RebelinSteel]

What are the running costs of an Air Force base running part time versus full time

well you need the heating, you need the infrastructure, you need the support personnel.

How do you keep night flying currency and combat currency in date with a part time force, there are a bunch of other currencies.

How do you keep weapons current with latest tactics.

The largest costs are systems, infrastructure, logistics, training, pensions.

You still have to pay people to retain the right skill types and levels.

Things like fuel and hydraulic seals will fail more when an aircraft is not being used.
Even though an aircraft is not being flown, it needs to have routine maintenance, needs engine runs, system checks etc.

Runways need maintained.

You still need QRA crews, which need their pyramid of support personnel.

While you can force mobilise someone to hold a rifle and have a very basic level of combat skills, it takes far longer to train someone to carry out fault investigations and repairs on an F15, F35 etc.

A full time Air Force keeping the same numbers is not drastically more expensive, a lot of those saved expenses will be used on a generation of squadrons from non operations to operational and combat ready,

[Asker]

Some of your questions are answered in the video, others your right you bring up valid issue.

While I agree there are a lot of cost associated with maintaining modern military equipment, and some higher training requirements to use it.

We have a wide range of options in addressing said issue ranging from keeping those roles professional to contracting out maintenance tasks as the U. S. military already does. (hence the high share of support costs).

We also have many cross over professions you can recruit from, Civil aircraft maintenance, law enforcement, Computer techs, doctors, etc.. personnel can make extra money if they join the State National Guard (militia).

This is already done to a significant extent and of course allows the economy to benefit greatly from private sector work when not in use.

That said there is a real issue in having a military that is too complicated and difficult to use as we see in wars against near peer enemies today can very much be about our ability to mobilize ever larger numbers of people and equipment.

The less user friendly we make such equipment or difficult to manufacture the longer it will take us and thus less likely we will win the war.

China for example is at least as many times larger and more capable in the area of manufacturing over the U. S. as Russia is over the Ukraine.

If we have to fight a war with China the cost and complexity of our own military equipment might cost us the war.

[RebelinSteel]

Do you know how much the costs are to have a dentist deployed to Al Udeid contractor versus serving…
It’s fairly heavy.
It’s numbers not if they are professional or part time personnel.

If you need to get soldiers generated quickly, it’s fairly straightforward
Completely different if you need to generate personnel with technical skills
A carrier pilot has a fair bit of stuff to qualify for and really to keep current needs to do yearly

www.key.aero/.../us-navy-pilot-carrier-ops-training-behind-scenes

Imagine waiting 2 months or possibly longer to get a carrier out at sea, then another month getting ready for combat ops.

To quote one bit
We have a wide range of options in addressing said issue ranging from keeping those roles professional to contracting out maintenance tasks as the U. S. military already does. (hence the high share of support costs).

The way that works is the government gives a contract to a private organisation to keep its service people trained up, they pay the contractor a support costs to cover basic wages etc. the contractor then pays for any uplift in wages such as flying pay, however the contractor is now really valuable to the government, so it pays the contractor to cover various exercises using those ex service people.
Then when the government requires them, they keep paying the contractor and now also the service people.
The government basically pays twice.
I know this as it’s a fairly common model

[Drewtate]

The US military is 35-50 % part time between the national guard and army reserves and if you add the individual ready reserves, it's like 1 million part timers retired service people.

The national guard and reserves are a major part of the us military and are very well trained & skilled with many vetreans and are a lot more professional and effective than many military professionals around the world but the reason they are so good is because the US military has such a strong core of full time professionals.

I think the us has the right policy on part timers. It allows them to retain a lot of military trained and vetrean personel in case of war but not having to pay them as full timers in times of peace allows the us military to be much much larger. And of course the national guard are invaluable in state security and disaster relief matters. I think the US airforce has 330,000 personal with 105,104 Air National Guard and 495,879 Airforce reserve so they've clearly more part timers than regular full timers which makes some sense because say a vetrean f16 pilot can go into semi retirement in the national guard and fly for an airliner while for a few days per year fly an f16 for the national guard and the airforce doesn't lose that experience and skill set.