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[Strife26]

The main thread with my plans is here. You may want to read it to get the whole scope.
<http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=37645.msg612373#msg612373>

This thread is for discussing the way that I feel are current institutions should be changed.

3)   Intelligence Apparatuses (the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency)
Must be redone to a large extent. I’ll describe them part by part.
   FBI:
      Currently more or less national police force. Doesn’t change much. Keep on the lookout for home-grown crazies. Then arrest them and interrogate them.
   CIA:
      Traditionally the ‘spies.’ Must be changed to a large extent. The CYA crowd must be slashed and burned. CYA stand for Cover Your Ass. Spineless bureaucrats. The CIA must work on getting human intelligence above most other tasks. Get guys in the cells. Then kill said cells. I’d rant more, but don’t have the inclination to do the research I’d need to do it properly.
   NSA:
      Traditionally electronic espionage (my dad was ‘volunteered’ into it) they’re the guys who do Clancyish spying on cell phones. Must be bulked up considerably. I listened to an address from a guy who is an expert on Al Qaeda’s internet programs. Find and kill those servers if possible, analyze the holy fuck out of what they put up. Bulk up language services (not the way that’s happening now, I heard a pitch to join a Latin class based on the idea that it will help the government. Fuck. That. Shit.) Learn thy enemy above all else. Get American ideals out there. Spy on whoever we suspect of anything too. If you have dealings with a suspected terrorist, then tap your lines even if you’re an American (with the caveat that they can not be disclosed to anyone, or used in a court case if it isn’t terror-related).

4)   Procurement
God-damned awfully expensive weapon systems must be looked at. Give wasteful military spending trial by media if need be. Weapons come in two flavors. Fucking up Mahkmude the terrorist and killing a traditional enemy (call it a Lion of Babylon tank). Both have to be remembered. Raptors are fine (who knows when we’ll have to fuck a minor or major power up, the military is designed for air superiority). The Joint Strike Fighter isn’t. It’s here already, but it should NOT have been as expensive as it was. If we pretend that there is a metaphysical guy of the Air Force, we slap him here. Keep the money going to the people who need it (read the Corporal with a M-4). Take the Key West Agreement (army may keep fixed wing air craft ONLY for recon (barely that) and medical evac purposed) and tear it up. Then burn it. Then shoot it into the sun if need be. If the Air Force feels that ground support doesn’t matter (fuck them), then you should sure as hell let the Army take over the Warthogs. If you want to restrict all air superiority and strategic bombing to the airheads, feel free (probably necessary from a political capital view).
Bone yards need much more money. It’s often claimed that, if need be, the Sovie Russians could pull out their WWII artillery pieces if they wanted. Can we? If we have to, we should be able to pull up all of that generation old equipment (the M60 tanks, the F15 and 16’s, the varks (god I hope not). Stuff like the Blackbird shouldn’t EVER be thrown away. Recon is everything (the key west limits weight, so that the army couldn’t even use the super-fast recon Blackbird WTF?!).
Keep the usefulness FIRST. Don’t spend craploads of money on theoretical projects. Do not get rid of the tried and true things.

5)   Space and NASA
If we are slapping the air force, then we are tackling NASA. We need to reprioritize our space program. Why do we give a damn about mars right now? We might need the space? In a couple of hundred years. Worry about the here and now.
More satellites of all shades. Get a program up for many more recon birds. Kill-sats. Get anti-laser measures. Look into Star-wars again. Rods from fucking God.
The more recon birds we have the better. This is pretty simple. Get the information to the grunt on the ground (in this case it’s more for his Captain and General, but you know).
Kill-sats: (a satellite that runs into and blows up another satellite) If we get into World War three (against the EU, Russia, or China (god forbid them all), can we blast their sats? Can they blast ours? America should get space superiority.
Anti laser- measures: Some people (read China) apparently like to blind our recon birds with lasers. Try to find a way around this. If we can’t defeat them, then figure out how to plot the station’s location (so we can blast them if the war starts). Build our own stations as well (but don’t use them on their sats, test them on our own). They get to be a stop gap if the war starts before we have good enough kill-sats.
Look into Star Wars: (while keeping costs in mind). An anti-ballistic missile screen would be pretty cool, you know? Don’t break the bank on it though. We can’t depend on our enemies going broke trying to keep up again.
Rods from God (basically, if you take anything in orbit and drop it on someone, it does lots of damage): Get kinetic strike platforms of all sizes (telephone sized rods that are the equivalent of an unblockable, fast nuke to baseball bat sized rods that’ll just mess up a city block). It serves double duty. First of all, you have a super weapon that’s on par with an ICBM (deterrent must be kept up at all times, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s cheaper to keep kinetic strike platforms then hardened silos). More importantly, you have a replacement (to some extent) of artillery, tactical bombing, and strategic bombing. We have to keep all those specialties of course. We can’t get the sheer mass of fire down that arty provides, or the flexibility of airpower, but we can have similar artillery strikes almost anywhere we want at short notice (depending on the number of stations), or strike anywhere with impunity (Spirit and Bone bombers are god-awfully expensive to replace if they get shot down).

6)   Global disengagement/ legacy garrisons
We still have stuff from the cold war (why are there Abrams based in Germany?). To a large extent, they’re all in Iraq right now, but when (if?) we leave that pit, we shouldn’t be putting them back. Obviously, we keep our NATO pledges intact, but we can decrease our funding and equipment costs of overseas bases.
Don’t get involved if it doesn’t affect us, basically. That’s the UN’s job (we could probably be part of UN missions, just not unilateral stuff). Notable exceptions though.
First, we sure as hell don’t abandon South Korea. Keep our boys planted on the DMZ.
Second, keep supporting Israel. We like the Jews, you know? If need be, I suppose that Israel could be abandoned for political capital, but there should always be the knowledge that, if they need us, we’ll be there. We sure as hell don’t want them to have to pop off nukes.
I’ll put non-proliferation here as well. Try to keep anyone else from getting the bomb, and from its use. Deterrent forces (once again) stay in place though.
We can save lots of money by not protecting people who don’t need our protection. It’s good for political capital in a lot of places as well.

[Grek]

The only good thing that has ever come out of the CIA is the CIA world fact book. Gathering information and statistics is the only thing they should be doing, because they have screwed everything else up and half the time they don't even bother to check in with the other agencies or ask permission.

[Strife26]

Bit of a blanket claim.
It's true that the CIA has done some REALLY stupid things over the years, but they've done some good as well.

[Frelock]

As a man working in the Mars Program, I'd like to inform you of something, Strife.  The entire NASA Mars program gets $700M a year.  That's enough to train seven Navy SEALS, or to launch one mission to Mars every two years.  Do you really think it's that great of a waste?  Sure, it's not producing weapons, it's discovering new territories, and understanding the secrets of the universe.  I'll even pull out what Mars scientists like to call the "L" word: Life.  Is there life on Mars?  Probably not.  I'd give it a 1 in 10 shot, and it would be bacterial life at best.  Still, the possibility of life, and understanding of the processes that go on in small planets like ours is more than enough reason to explore Mars.

Just defending what I do.  Your "why do we care about Mars" speech is kind of a slap in the face to scientists worldwide, although I'm sure the Europa and Titan people would agree with you (we're stealing their funding, or so they claim).  If the military is all a nation has, that's what they call a Fascist State.   It needs scientists and engineers working for the good of humanity, not just the nation of which they happen to be a part of.  Your suggestion to put weapons in space is very troubling, and I believe an international agreement has been signed regarding that point (though I'm too tired to look it up at the moment, so take it with a grain of salt).  In my opinion, any space fleet that's going to be built should be an international operation, and for use of exploration only (possibly defense against a xeno threat, but that's just sci-fi). 

Finally, if you keep saying "worry about the now," we'll never get to the future.  We need people to look past the next hundred years or so and the future of the American Empire, and think about humanity in general.  In my opinion, we're destined for the stars, which won't happen if we're stuck looking at earth.

[Muz]

Lol, the Mars project reminds me of the Colonial Age. Spain had a huge military and navy but some argued that their downfall was in focusing too much into the New World. Though the USA doesn't have that many competition for Mars colonization these days, except maybe China, the former Soviet countries, and Brazil.

[Rilder]

Lol, the Mars project reminds me of the Colonial Age. Spain had a huge military and navy but some argued that their downfall was in focusing too much into the New World. Though the USA doesn't have that many competition for Mars colonization these days, except maybe China, the former Soviet countries, and Brazil.

Well if we colonize mars we'll have to fight the natives just like spain!

[WorkerDrone]

Yes, the many (possibly) dangerous (possibly) bacteria (possibly) that will eat our flesh the moment we step foot on mars (unlikely).

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Yes, the many (possibly) dangerous (possibly) bacteria (possibly) that will eat our flesh the moment we step foot on mars (unlikely).

Ironic, considering your avatar.
I mean, what if the TYRANIDS hide in Mars?

[florian]

I'll give you a quick answer why Mars is important: Because exploring space could unite the people. In space, there's no possibility for war, because space warfare would be insanely expensive. Space exploration is so costly that nations who hate each other cooperate from time to time. Space is the only border everybody faces. Space exploration could bring us a future without war, but I'm not sure if you could accept that. What you want is a huge fascist country, enslaving and controlling its neighbours and the rest of mankind, waging war against anything foreign. And if the US goes that way, they won't advance.

[Asheron]

Strife, you seem to be thinking the entire world is going to invade the USA.
You do know that attitude actually makes the entire world want to invade the USA.
And, anyhow, you don't need to worry about changing the military if world war three comes. It'll be just M.A.D.

Also, Mars. We You ( ESA ftw ) are not anywhere near thinkeable ways to colonize anything, it would be like investing in to boats that can find new continents without having a compass invented.

[Muz]

I'll give you a quick answer why Mars is important: Because exploring space could unite the people. In space, there's no possibility for war, because space warfare would be insanely expensive. Space exploration is so costly that nations who hate each other cooperate from time to time. Space is the only border everybody faces. Space exploration could bring us a future without war, but I'm not sure if you could accept that.

Yeah, right Normal warfare is already insanely expensive. Trillions of dollars. That doesn't stop anyone. People will work together at first. Once it comes to splitting the bounty, that's when the wars start. It's called space race for a reason.

Hmm... on everything else, one problem with the USA as it is the military industrial complex. It dedicated itself to producing a huge amount of weapons. To recoup the costs, they have to sell off those weapons elsewhere. Some people argue that's why the USA promotes war. Conspiracy theory aside, it's part of the mess that the USA got itself into. It helps in a world war, but right now, being peaceful is a huge waste of money.

[DJ]

I bet that space program has produced more useful inventions per dollar than any military research program.

[Muz]

I bet that space program has produced more useful inventions per dollar than any military research program.

ARPAnet. 'Nuff said.
Arguably, it's used more for porn than anything.

[Nilocy]

Well, we know all the prophecies about the future when Earth becomes the evil overbaring dictatorship planet controlling the galaxy. Well I say we go ahead and nuke mars before humans ever get there. That'll solve all our future problems for EVER.

p.s instead of colonising mars, why not go for the Moon first, its closer and alot easier to get to.

[florian]

I bet that space program has produced more useful inventions per dollar than any military research program.

ARPAnet. 'Nuff said.
Arguably, it's used more for porn than anything.

Well, porn really took off with the web, which was neither made in a space program nor in a military research program.