US Army plans to cut 40,000 jobs by September 2017

#barackobama #Pentagon #ISIS The US Army now has a strength of around 490,000 and this is planned to be reduced to 450,000 by September 2017 – or, a cut of 40,000 soldiers from its ranks over the next two years. There are also plans to further reduce 17,000 civilian job cuts as part of the cost-saving initiative.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 8th July 2015.

Once implemented, it would make the US army the smallest it has been since just before it entered the Second World War.
These plans have raised concerns over the country's defense capabilities because it had been argued in budget documents in 2013 that going below 450,000 troops could mean the US could not win a war. Incidentally, at the peak of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Army had some 570,000 soldiers.
Moreover, this revelation just when US President Barack Obama has said the US should step up its campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, is a bit strange, especially when the President has indicated that a long battle lay head.
What he probably meant was the fight with the ISIS. He had said that it will not be quick and it would be a long-term campaign because it would take time to root them out. That should be the job of local forces on the ground with training and air support from the US coalition. It may be recalled that only last month the Pentagon had announced it was sending a further 450 US troops to act as advisors to Iraqi troops in their efforts to seize back the western city of Ramadi from the IS militants.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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