Four of the nations top military strategists told Congress this week what modernization plans theyd scrap and how theyd change military priorities.
These arent the dried up formers who populate the news talk shows with punditry based on a limited rolodex of graying colleagues, but men who have been there and done that. The panel of experts included former military brass and Pentagon officials who are involved in policy-making today — giving their opinions greater weight than those from the cable channels.
The list included former 24th Infantry Division commander and Clinton-era Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey; former commandant of the Army War College and a man who knows military history better than the back of his hand, Maj. Gen. Robert Scales; former Reagan-era Pentagon official and oft-consulted GWOT critic Lawrence Korb and head of the Center For Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Andy Krepinevich.
Scales is heavily involved in current Army war planning and in the development of new counterinsurgency doctrine. Korb is someone the DoD often talks to for his counterpoints of the Iraq war. McCaffrey has a key to the Oval Office — often providing his insight to administration planners and the president. And Krepinevich had been involved in writing the Quadrennial Defense Review and works on a range of strategic planning for the Army and other services.
In a wide-ranging and fascinating hearing this week, the four told lawmakers what theyd do to change the current DoD modernization plans, realigning resources to areas they say will better position America for the conflicts of the future. Their views were sometimes in conflict, but overall, they were remarkably concurrent and at times, quite radical.
Heres a synopsis of their views:
Krepinevich:
Take a sizable number of the current Army brigade structure and create irregular warfare units capable of counterinsurgency and humanitarian operations.
Create an advisor corps.
Create a Multi-National Security Transition Corps-Iraq (MNSTCI) in a box to quickly train indigenous forces to take over security in a counterinsurgency/guerrilla environment.
Build a Joint Urban Warfare Training Center that takes the current National Training Center adaptations to the next level.
Need to re-evaluate the Armys nearly $200 billion Future Combat System program. Thats an awfully expensive way to deal with irregular forces.
McCaffrey:
Disagreed with Krepinevich on creating counterinsurgency forces and going light. The U.S. may have to confront China at some point, he explained.
Didnt think bringing U.S. forces back from bases in Europe and Okinawa was a good idea, but said since thats a done deal, America needs to invest heavily in re-constituting its strategic airlift capability. He called the C-17 Globemaster III a national asset.
I love the C-17 as much as the M-1 [Abrams] tank, he said.
Thinks the future of FCS needs to be figured out by the beginning of 2009 or it should be turned into a semi-permanent R&D program.
Believes foreign language training is so important that the military should pick out service members by threes and say youre going to 90 days of language training.
Said the U.S. needs to properly equip the Afghan and Iraqi army with modern gear. Quit pawning off junk Soviet armor and sell them equipment that can help them win, including a fleet of modern helicopters. The Iraqis are getting 70 helos which arent enough for them to control the country, he said. We need a new lend-lease for our allies.
Korb:
Extend the purchase of Los Angeles class subs, pushing them off into the future.
Cut down on nuclear weapons stockpile and modernization which will save the Pentagon money for other, more pressing needs. We need to lead by example, he said.
Stop spending so much money on ballistic missile defense. The program is the least likely threat we spend more on missile defense than on the entire Coast Guard, Korb pointed out, adding that the Coast Guard deals with a much more realistic threat.
I cant understand FCS, he said. The Army has done a poor job explaining what it will do and what its for. The Pentagon should slow down its development.
Marines do not need a new amphibious vehicle, he said, referencing the Corps troubled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program.
Stop V-22 production and buy more helicopters.
Set a specific withdrawal date to get out of Iraq to help motive the Iraqi army to shape up for its own defense.
Need to continue supplemental spending bills to bring equipment levels back up to meet current needs.
Scales:
Scrapping the FCS program is dead wrong (Scales has been a longtime booster of FCS for the Army), though it needs some tweaking.
Need to continue to field heavy forces 81 percent of military deaths are with dismounted infantry, mounted infantry face a 10 percent greater chance of survival when mounted.
The U.S. needs a full spectrum force, he added, saying if abandon FCS then youre confining the military to purchase old Cold War gear.
Does not agree with Krepinevichs specialization theory, saying troops trained in a variety of missions can do full spectrum operations. Whats important are skills not structure. Brigades dont do that, people do that.
Need to focus on officer and NCO education by creating a soldier sabbatical program that allows them to take time off from the service to go to graduate schools and study alien cultures and the art of warfare.
I hope this provides a little food for thought as Congress and the administration consider the 2007 supplemental and 2008 base budgets.
They all have good points although they disagree somewhat (as experts almost always do…).
But I wonder why none of them has mentioned that the whole procurement system needs to be revolutionized (I mean like French revolution — exterminating all previously powerful guys and try something very different!).
The US forces are so ineffective in their money spending that they hurt their nation more than a doubled oil price would do.
The army could easily follow the FCS idea if the bureaucracy was able to do its job efficiently — quick and at reasonable costs.
Other than Scales obvious hard-on for FCS, looks like some really good ideas here. I like the idea of kicking up the NTC concept in particular.
“mounted infantry face a 10 percent greater chance of survival when mounted.“
I’m sure their survival rates are sky high when they go on leave too– the question is do they accomplish their mission? How do you check a house for insurgents from the turret of a tank?
Los Angeles class submarines? Does he mean Virginia? If you put it too far out in the future Electric Boat will go bust– the engineers will end up working on XBOX 3.
Contractor consolidation is the culprit, something like 85 different contractors in the 80’s, a good dozen of them majors. Now we have, what? Three? Lots of empty hallways in So Cal, the ghosts of TRW, Rockwell, MacDac and Hughes to name a few I did business with. No real competition going on.
If these four men are the best America has we are F’ed. No one under age 40 should be allowed for strategic planning. Still too much Vietnam and Cold War era thinking in the US Government.
The problem is not the US not being to easily kill enough of our enemies (regular or irregular). What is the objective of our military action? If it doesn’t accomplish anything positive, it is a waste of time, money and lives.
We easily removed the Saddam, Taliban, and if we want to, remove Iran, Syria, and DPRK. So what, that is only the beginning?
The FCS/“Cold War gear” false dilemma is particularly embarrassing. So our choice is between old stuff and a program whose PMs still can’t tell us when, if ever, it’s going to deliver? Right, got it. When you read advice like that, you really realize why Rumsfeld tuned Shinseki out.
I should add that the badness of some of these ideas isn’t really obvious to people who aren’t very familiar with the Defense Department and its culture. Take the “advisor corps” idea. Sounds great, doesn’t it? We’ll take a bunch of super guys, and make them advisors! That’ll fix the problem.
Except it won’t. The Army tried this with AC/RC in the Nineties, and guys treated it as a death sentence when it was a temporary assignment — make it a permanent assignment, and it won’t take people long to twig to the reality that it’s taking ambitious guys away from the experience and contacts they need to be considered for command slots — and you’ll be left with a foreign legion of throwouts, something that looks about as effective as any other portion of the military that’s staffed by the B-Team — like Public Affairs, or Psyops, or Civil Affairs — any of THOSE strike you as notable success stories?
But it briefs well.
“Los Angeles class submarines? Does he mean Virginia? If you put it too far out in the future Electric Boat will go bust– the engineers will end up working on XBOX 3.“
Yeah, and it’s a shame that we let all the trireme carpenters go, too. I think the Republic will survive if we cut off the expensive life support that the submarine “industry” “requires”.….
“Extend the purchase of Los Angeles class subs, pushing them off into the future.” Oh my god oh my god! They said Los Angeles class, when they should have said Virginia class. You think being military men that they would have noticed that…
So how did everyone like my impression of DefenseTech over the Boeing sponsored poster?
‘Cut down on nuclear weapons stockpile and modernization which will save the Pentagon money for other, more pressing needs.
FCS is a powerpoint wet dream, but beyond that its concept that lost touch with reality. The one good thing that Iraq did is force the army to begin to realize that situational awareness is not armor.
FCS should be turned into a R&D program and spiral out any good ideas. Incremental advances in the current systems (they work vs vaporware) And buy more sealift and airlift to cover the gaps.
>mounted infantry face a 10 percent greater chance of >survival when mounted.
When you read the complete text of Scales’ comments you find that what he actually claims is:
“when soldiers and Marines fight mounted in vehicles their chance of survival in battle increases an order of magnitude.” That’s a hell of a lot more than a mere 10%!!
Great stuff all around. Part of me is so thankful that the debate is ongoing, with well thought out points from all sides. I will say, I do not make a concrete link between well thought out ideas and the correct path.
The two pieces of this article that I agree with most are the reduction in spending for nukes. We have enough to destroy the planet three times over, yes, we still only have one planet, not three, and the point about the officer/nco sabbatical. I am a graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School, and it was an amazing experience. The ability to further my technical skill while also being briefed regularly by Flag officers and civilian leaders of equivalent standing (or higher) was absolutely wonderful and enlightening.
>Krepinevich:
>irregular warfare units
Bad. There is no frontline in assymetric warfare. Anyone can be a target, and everyone in the operation should be prepared for irregular warfare.
>Korb:
>Stop spending so much money on ballistic missile defense.
What an idiot! It’s not an immidiate threat, but China could someday be a real threat. Russia is modernizing its force. Several barbaric countries have desires to build nuclear weapons on its own. It’s too late by the time the enemy is in the final stage developing sgnificant numbers of nuclear weapons.
>Stop V-22 production and buy more helicopters.
Not until the offsprings of Sikorsky X2 are in service. How much money and time did we spend developing tiltrotors? 50, more than 50 years, and this man wants all the money wasted for nothing!?
To pedestrian
>irregular warfare units
>Bad. There is no frontline in assymetric warfare. Anyone can be a target, and everyone in the operation should be prepared for irregular warfare.
Yes, but there are definitely times and places with higher risks of asymmetric attacks. Post-invasion Baghdad requires a different force mix than, say, an assault on Pyongyang.
————–
To Nanonymous
That’s absolutely true, but civilian action can shape military culture. All you need is a strong president and SecDef to make it happen.
I may well be doing him an injustice, but it reads a lot like McCaffrey’s joined at the hip with the big contractors. “Tech! Gear! EVEN MORE TECH AND GEAR! For the Iraqis, too! And the Afghans!… oh, uh…and I guess language training as well. That might help.“
Don’t know a damn thing about the man, I’ll admit; I’m just saying that’s how it came across to me.
“That’s absolutely true, but civilian action can shape military culture. All you need is a strong president and SecDef to make it happen.“
Um — names “Donald Rumsfeld” and “George W. Bush mean anything to you? ‘Cause from where I sit, the former got all the support he asked for from the latter to make a full-frontal effort to change the Army’s culture. I can’t think of another secretary who went to the lengths he did to effect a change. Bringing in a retired SOCOM 4 star to head the Army is a good example; SOCOM is to some extent an unofficially recognized fifth service, and Schoomaker had spent most of his life there, returning to ordinary Army service only to get his ticket punched for promotion purposes. It was like bringing in a new CEO to change a company. The question of whether the physical and organizational changes he made will, over time, result in a cultural change remains to be seen, but I submit that it’s just plain impossible to set out to simply “shape” the culture of an institution like the Army. It’s too big, too complex, and too much a product of a million individual outlooks and decisions to change through blunt, social-engineering-type policy decisions.
It would seem (admittedly, based on your summary), that “new concepts” seem more and more like repackaged existing concepts.
Also, Krepinevich’s “Joint Urban Warfare Training Center” sounds like the MUTC that’s being setup by the Army and ANG in Indiana (MUTC.org).
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