IS RUMMY’S “TRANSFORMATION” REAL?

When Don Rumsfeld first became Defense Secretary, he pledged to push mil­i­tary “trans­for­ma­tion” — turn­ing heavy-​​footed American forces into lighter, quicker, smarter squads. During the debates, President Bush men­tioned “trans­for­ma­tion” as the rea­son the U.S. would be able to bring troops home from Europe and Korea — and stave off a draft, as well.
But have Bush and Rummy done much to “trans­form” the mil­i­tary? Not really, says Slate’s Fred Kaplan.

The mil­i­tary estab­lish­ment has become more expen­sive to main­tain its bud­get has risen from $362 bil­lion to $420 bil­lion (not includ­ing the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) but the extra money has pur­chased lit­tle in the way of “trans­for­ma­tional” com­bat power.
Rumsfeld has changed a few things. He can­celed the Army’s Comanche heli­copter. With the enthu­si­as­tic back­ing of President Bush, he’s added bil­lions of dol­lars to mis­sile defense. And he has pur­chased a lot of drones and smart bombs. Beyond that, in the words of a report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments a Washington think tank directed by Andrew Krepinevich, a for­mer Pentagon offi­cial who invented the phrase “mil­i­tary transformation“Rumsfeld’s pro­grams “fairly closely resem­ble those of pre­vi­ous years and the plan inher­ited from the Clinton admin­is­tra­tion.“
Nearly all the big-​​ticket items in the fis­cal year 2005 mil­i­tary bud­get which a House-​​Senate con­fer­ence com­mit­tee approved this month have noth­ing to do with trans­for­ma­tion, noth­ing to do with any threat on the hori­zon. Look at them:

* $4.1 bil­lion for 24 F-​​22 stealth fighter planes at a time when our prospec­tive ene­mies can barely fly fighter planes, much less shoot down our non-​​stealth air­craft;
* $4.3 bil­lion for con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of the F-​​35 Joint Strategic Fighter, a smaller ver­sion of the F-​​22;
* $2 bil­lion for a new “Super Hornet” ver­sion of the F/​A-​​18 fighter plane;
* $2.3 bil­lion for a new Virginia-​​class nuclear-​​powered attack sub­ma­rine, at a time when our Navy faces vir­tu­ally no threat and pos­sesses more subs than it knows what to do with.

All true. But I don’t think Kaplan has it quite right. It’s not that Rumsfeld has cho­sen old-​​school mil­i­tary gear over trans­for­ma­tion. It’s that he hasn’t cho­sen at all. Old and new school projects — like the Army’s ginor­mous trans­for­ma­tion effort, Future Combat Systems — are being funded to the hilt, all while burn­ing bales of cash in the Middle East. That can’t con­tinue. As Kaplan notes:

Rumsfeld or who­ever replaces him needs to think about a dif­fer­ent sort of trans­for­ma­tion, one that empha­sizes bet­ter plan­ning, train­ing, mobi­liz­ing, and equip­ping for the kinds of wars we’re really fight­ing now.

THERE’S MORE: “As reliance on for­eign bases is reduced, the car­rier bat­tle group becomes more impor­tant to the pro­jec­tion of our power. The increas­ing pur­chas­ing of Diesel subs by poten­tial ene­mies promises that the ASW [anti-​​submarine war­fare] func­tion of our Navy is alive and grow­ing,” says Defense Tech reader WW. “As a grand­fa­ther and grandun­cle of troop­ers cur­rently in Iraq I do not begrudge any reduc­tion in can­non fod­der in exchange for mechan­i­cal force pro­jec­tion and pro­tec­tion.“
AND MORE: Reader RT also wants us to reme­ber that –

1. Some of these sys­tems have been pushed by Congress, not the Pentagon.
2. Some have been kept active in order to keep the at infra­struc­ture at some
amount of via­bil­ity (Atomic/​Diesel Submarines, ect.)
3. The air­craft presently in use are in most cases over 25 years old
(min­i­mum) and push­ing 50 years in the case of the B-​​52. Retrofits will only
go so far. Talk to the main­tain­ers, it will give you some per­spec­tive on
real­ity.
4. A bal­anced force should not focus only on an “Iraq” sce­nario. The
reluc­tance to address what is not pop­u­lar (that we may some­day have to face
an enemy with advanced weapons sys­tems and forces) is wish­ful think­ing that
will leave our forces in dire straits when the “fit hits the shan”. 

October 20th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.