Liberal Talk Radio

So a few of Democrats want to increase the Army by 80,000 troops. Obviously this is a good idea. We need more troops to win in the various Middle East conflicts in which we’re enmeshed.

According to this, the Army went from 2.2 million troops (18 divisions) during the 80s, to 1.6 million (12 divisions) under Bush I, to 1.4 million (10 divisions) under Clinton. Back-of-the napkin math suggests that this is about the size of half a division.

It costs $1.2 Billion for 10,000 troops, the article says. So that’s $9.6B for the 80,000 the Dems want to add. A drop in the bucket for a Defense budget that could exceed $500B this year by the time the Iraq supplementals are added in.

This chart (available here) shows the DoD budgets for the last 50 years or so:

You can see that the size of the army is not really the driving factor here in terms of cost. It’s the pricey weapons systems. Fred Kaplan makes that case here and here.

So, if we set our spending priorities, we can easily afford the new troops. The real question is where will they come from? Already the military keeps missing its recruitment targets. And it seems like the only way to hit them is to lower the bar, both in terms of numbers and quality of candidates. Getting an extra 80,000 troops in these conditions seems really daunting. So what’s the plan there? Or is this just a show pony so the Dems can sound hawkish without having to actually do anything?