Our military growth has room for improvement. The US military budget is pretty big. Our military outspends any other country. But our military is only a small proportion of our country’s population. China has the largest number of military personnel at almost 2.5 million while the United States only has 1.4 million. Our military focuses on being a superpower in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. But our military is understaffed to fight more than one conflict at any time in other regions. We currently have over 200,000 active troops deployed in over 170 countries, a mind-boggling amount. But if we are spread so thin worldwide, how effective are we at protecting our own borders and our allies? We are the only country that spends billions of dollars a year and deploys our personnel to so many regions.
We invest billions of dollars on technology, but a minimal amount on military personnel. We continue to weaken our combat troops by regularly reducing the number of ground forces. What will happen with all our military tech if there aren’t enough people to operate it? The military should invest an equal amount of time and money in actual personnel. We continue to lose great military personnel every day, and while there are various reasons it usually comes down to money. People come into the military, gain valuable experience, then four or five years later leave and join the civilian sector making much more money. Retention of our military personnel will allow us to truly be the best and strongest military in the world.
Military Growth and Technology
Our technology is the greatest strength of our military, and it continues to make our military the strongest and best in the world. However, other countries continue to develop new technology that closes the gap between their military and ours. Again, a weakness of technology is that there still needs to be highly trained individuals to operate it. But some of our technology keeps our military personnel out of harm’s way. The use of unmanned drones allows us to strike within seconds accurately on a target no matter its location. We continue to develop even smarter weapons that allow military personnel to remain safe, far away from enemy contact. However, we still must develop the personnel along with the technology.
Military Trained Combat Troops
You will never be able to succeed in any conflict, battle, or war without effective, highly trained, combat troops on the ground. For ground troops to be effective, they need proper equipment. In my time in combat, we were given sub par weapons and equipment. It is my honest opinion that there are better weapons and equipment available than what is currently used by our troops. Even civilians have access to better weapons. A perfect example is the M4, which needs to be replaced with a more powerful, more accurate, and easier to maintain weapon. We need to move back to a 7.62 rather than the smaller 5.56.
The 9mm handgun also needs to be replaced, and the military should return to using the more effective and powerful .45. And the same goes for the heavy armor worn by combat troops. There is armor that is much lighter and more protective available than what is worn by our personnel. Our most important and valued asset should be our military personnel. It’s time for our military to invest equally in our troops as we do our technology.
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