The future size and shape of the U.S. Military

Via Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture comes this item, reportedly a USMC brief (unclassified) on options for the military force structure in FY09 and beyond:

Force Structure FY09 Beyond

View/download the presentation here.

From Barry Ritholtz's summary and commentary:

This is a USMC brief on the next coming fiscal years for them but applicable to much of DOD (at least the military services portion) and probably a lot of the rest of the Federal govt as well. Pretty bleak.

This brief (attached) was originated at JFCOM and has made the rounds in OSD, Joint Staff, all Service headquarters, and the QDR. It has also been briefed to the Obama transition team who has scheduled two follow-up sessions with the authors.

Bottom line:

1. Supplementals will end, AND the defense budget has to go down in the next 4 years to pay for domestic programs.

2. Current Force structure and readiness plans are inadequately funded even at their current levels.

3. Force structure is severely imbalanced to accomplish the current ops tempo and there is no significant effort to realign the current force.

4. Even with resetting force structure across all the Services, fiscal realities will drive DOD into an undetermined end state based on fiscal realities and with no long-term plan.

5. “The Obama administration has the opportunity to set the stage for US military forces for the next 50-100 years”.

Read the rest of Barry's summary and commentary on the presentation here.