OK, good examples. But do we need 350,000 people in air force uniforms to fly Predator drones and be "all over the Middle East"?

The U.S. Air Force has about 5,600 airplanes in it's fleet. Of that number, there are only 180 unmanned drones. There are only 94 creaky old B-52's and 21 B-2 Stealth bombers which carry only one bomb--a nuke. Oh, and the Air Force is also responsible for the remaining 450 nuclear ICBM's that are housed in various locations around the U.S. Does this in any way justify keeping 350,000 men and women in Air Force blue?

That's the problem, I think. If it were a business, the top managers would be thinking about how to combine operations, multi-task facilities, find multiple uses for both men and machines etc. And they'd be incented to do that. The problem we have with the military is that they top officers are incented (thru promotions) to make the military bigger, more bloated, more specialized, and more expensive.

As much as I disliked Donald Rumsfeld, he had it right when he almost single-handedly took on the military-industrial establishment and was well along towards forcing them, thru his own steel will, to get smaller, more flexible and cheaper.

As much as there are lots of things I think Rumsfeld did wrong, we need more thinking like his if we are to reduce our military expenditures while maintaining a proper amount of military capability. I'm glad that we're not going to put David Petraeus in as Defense Secretary. As smart as he is, I'm convinced he'd be more of the same old "get stronger by getting bigger" mentality that has dominated in the Pentagon for decades.