But their justifications have been discussed in this thread. They are envisioning a Cold War era confrontation between major armed powers conducted by massed armed forces using conventional tactics and weaponry.
That is false. They are envisioning a future conflict that may include a major rival. That isn't the same thing. You have attempted to create the strawman, and to be fair, you are not the only critic of the DoD who does this, that this is the same as a Cold War era confrontation.
That scenario is a "worst case" capability requirement, with all others, to include the standard expeditionary warfare capability of the Joint Forces down to mundane humanitarian assistance role, as lesser included cases. Even the worst case had, last I was involved in such matters, assumed some risks that reduce, not increase, the forces agreed upon to deal with such a contingency. (The posture was eloquently if somewhat innacurately described by the US Army in the late 90's as "CONUS based, globally deployable")
We are discussing the justifications for that worldview especially as pertains to throwing away over a billion dollars in pursuit of it.
You are apparently discussing a strawman, then.
This has expanded into a larger issue of generalized justifications for the large levels of military spending in the US (47% of the world's budget).
Indeed. It is expensive to fund a military establishment that involves itself in global security, not just local security. And once again, that has been American policy, in varying forms, since WW II ended, as that policy has as one of its intents the deterrent to wars via capability (credible strength) and presence. You could argue that we've been that globally engaged since 1898 and the end of the Spanish American War, but I don't think the scales compare favorably, particularly as other Powers were all over the globe as well.
ETA: I had 1898 as 1989, bad.
As before, could the size of the force be smaller?
Sure.
One of the ways to reduce the budget was bandied about by Admiral Clarke when he was CNO. Cut the carrier force to 8 from 12, and keep the carriers deployed for longer periods, with the Blue and Gold crew rotation scheme used for SSBN's. That cuts about 5-10,000 from the navy manpower bill, and cuts the O & M budget for the CV force by a third. It also reduces somewhat the final tallly of escorts, though not by much due to the increasingly dispersed nature of using maritine forces for policy ends.
This approach was an intriguing idea on paper. I only say it reducing two wings of CAS aircraft, and thus cut the JSF buy by a few hundred. It did run into a training and readiness limitation, in terms of shipyard repair and upgrade cycles, and the continued deployment cycles for the current war. As Iraq winds down, you may see this arise again. If that is the case, you can expect to see the size of the JSF buy decrease.
The real problem with JSF was the USAF. Even though they were getting the F-22, they refused to take the performance penalty on JSF for their requirements, and forced a land only based variant into the mix. Had the JSF actually been a Joint Fighter, the only variant built would have been the CV capable variant: you can operate off shore with a plane made to carrier ops specs. The inverse is not true. Building the JSf that way would, IMO, have made each cheaper and probably decreased the buy due to overlapping capabiilities being met.
If you are going to complain, a complaint about parochial thinking might be more in line with how the program actually got justified.
But, with a smaller force, you still have to deal with the political reality: when cutting the force, what do the politicans
not want to be able to do on the global stage that they can now do? A bit of overlapping capability is good insurance against surprises, or simple screw ups in the field, which do happen.
DR
