Vice Chairman turns Salamander

From the lips to Gen. James E. Cartwright, USMC, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to great Neptune's ear....

The military must end its quest for “exquisite” weapon systems that are too costly, take years to design and build, and don’t reach troops fast enough, or in quantities large enough, to address ever-changing threats.
...
Cartwright recalled the wry observation made by some critics of current weapon-buying practices that, by 2015, America’s armed forces will have one airplane and one ship operating in the Pacific, one airplane and one ship in the Atlantic and a single space vehicle orbiting the Earth.

“What they’re really saying, in my mind, is we have gone overboard with exquisite” ships and aircraft, Cartwright said, and “that we have got to get back to scale [and] platforms that are adaptable and flexible.”

If the Vice Chairman isn't a reader of this blog - well he hangs out with some right thinking folks anyway.

You have no idea how if feels for me to hear this from a 4-Star - I am as giddy as a school girl,

He said making better choices in buying weapon platforms becomes more critical when growth in defense budgets slows, as Cartwright believes it soon will. A slowdown shouldn’t be allowed to affect force quality or the military’s ability to operate in multiple theaters simultaneously. He suggested pressure will be on the military, Congress and industry to make smarter, more efficient choices in weapons procurement.

Does he read The Long Game series .... is he a believer of "the future belongs to those who show up" Mark Steyn school of reality ...

Regarding worldwide threats, Cartwright said he and other members of the Joint Chiefs believe “we are entering an era of persistent conflict,” stirred by the world’s rising populations seeking shares of “finite resources” such as water, energy and irrigable land.

“Today, in any given minute in the United States, 40 babies are born. In China, it’s 160. In India, it’s 280. When you look at the population of age 18-to-35 males, there’s an explosion in southern Asia, in the Middle East, in Africa, in South America.” Persistent conflicts will be “broadly spread across the planet. So it’s not like we can go to one place, focus on a problem, solve it while the rest of the world waits for us to finish there and then move on.”

And I ask you - what ship does not fit this bill?

“Building platforms that can have multiple purposes, that can modify very quickly with software, that consume minimal amounts of energy for extended periods of time … are critical,” the vice chairman said.

...and don't feed my that "Mission Module" BS. That is not a multi-mission platform. Missions can change in minutes. Changing Mission Modules will take days to weeks depending on where you are and what you need to do.

War waits for no fools.

I have said it before, I will say it again - give us a Marine as the next CNO - one picked by the Vice Chairman and Gen Mattis. Change I can believe in.