[politician]

Those sorts of wars are largely in America's past. The real money is made in high-tech munitions: cruise missiles, anti-missile missiles, and drones with missiles.

If you're a defense contractor, you're not interested in selling "hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground," but rather guns (weapons systems) and ammo.

As a corollary, no one is lobbying politicians on behalf of a force increase at the scale you're suggesting. Private military contractors just don't operate at the "give the hoards of unemployed young men some plausible way to die" scale.

The situation you're referring to is more of an issue in countries with weaker economies and geographically close potential enemies.

[petre]

What I was saying was give the hoards of men games to play: piloting drones, UUVs, playing Red Alert with robotic infantry, mostly against a weaker economy, the real victims. And let's not forget the amount of jobs created to build those drones.

[mjevans]

I find your lack of imagination disturbing. There are more types of games out there, others can be based around finding the best designs, or alternate fulfillment for a standard interface if materials are short.

We have entire video-games, and mods for games, that revolve around setting up factories and designs.