[_heimdall]

I agree with you here, that maps to my understanding of what they're intending to do as well.

I'm of the opinion that standing militaries are almost never justifiable at scale. A country may need a skeleton crew keeping some semblance of military infrastructure functional, but we should never need a military scaled up for a fight during peacetime.

We need a populace that is healthy and skilled enough to enlist with basic training should a war break out. We don't need to fully arm up and constantly be on the lookout for war.

[nradov]

That's a quaint idea but the notion of having a small cadre of experienced professional personnel who could rapidly train up new recruits in wartime stopped being relevant in the 1980s. The complexity of equipment and doctrine has increased so much that it now takes years to train people. Too long to wait in a crisis.

[_heimdall]

Its into quaint, there have been plenty of times in history where countries either (a) didn't exist as they do today or (b) didn't have standing militaries.

The standing military the US maintains today only dates back to WWII, and is exactly what Eisenhower was warning us against.

Equipment complexity is theoretical at best. I'm not aware of a war between comparable militaries since WWII. My expectation is that if or when that happens, equipment ceases being the determining factor pretty quickly in favor of boots on the ground and logistics. History, at least, supports those being the deciding factors.