JSA wrote:
At least get the quote right: "you go to war with the army you have---not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time."
The military doesn't have a problem going to war with the forces it has. That war might be much more difficult to fight and win at the present materiel, equipment and force manning (and 'woman-ing' ;-) levels, though. Perversely, we'd lose more men and women and equipment and materiel fighting a war or a conflict, or whatever contingency situation you might want to call what we'd find ourselves in, at present force size and disposition because we'd be spreading ourselves across too-wide a swath of territory, globally speaking, in order to deal with a given contingency situation.
It also takes time to surge reserve units and the reservists themselves and I don't know that we've gotten any better at doing that since Iraq/Kuwait in 1990/1991, where it took months for some units to be ready to deploy. Theoretically, we're supposed to be able to pour reserve units into not only backfill roles but directly into theater-wide conflict situations. Certainly, many Guard and reserve units are training at a much more effective pace, from what I've observed, but budgetary constraints and cutbacks are also beginning to impact that aspect of Guard and reserve activities as well.
We're told that conflicts as we might see them today will be handled at least in part by coalition-style aggregations of various nations' military forces. Again; I'm not sure such coalitions can be as quickly effective as we'd need them to be in order to efficiently deal with a conflict situation as it might be presented to us. We're still looked to to provide the bulk of such forces, though, and I certainly wouldn't be counting on much support from many of our Western allies, outside of the traditional friends and allies that operate with us on a regular basis.
Mr. SeaDog made an excellent point about the 'true' size of our fleet (I'd add Fleet Marine Forces to the 'fleet'), which is actually woefully undersized when you start excluding ships kept on our books that are unsuited to modern warfare requirements, those in extended yard periods (we'll soon be down to 8 aircraft carriers actually available for operational deployments while three of their brethren are either still in yard periods or moving into them) and those that aren't combatant men of war-type ships. Though recommended fleet size varies by expert, 322 to 346 could work under present contingency requirements. It's a far cry from the 600 ships we hit in the mid-to-late 1980s but the world is also different, too.
One last thing: Mr. SeaDog correctly pointed out training and maintenance shortfalls, which is where you always see budget cutbacks hit first. If you can't train to fight a war, no matter the kind of 'army' you go to war with, you simply can't win that war. And if your equipment isn't ready to go to war when you need it to go to war, you're doubly hurt.