Archive for the ‘Comments’ Category

Gates Calls for Delay in Pentagon Purchases of Lockheed F-35s

Tony Capaccio. Business Week, 07 January 2010.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-07/gates-calls-for-delay-in-pentagon-purchases-of-lockheed-f-35s.html

Excerpt:

One recent study agreed with a similar one from a year earlier that predicted a 2 1/2 year delay in development beyond the current target of October 2014 and an added cost of $16.5 billion. The new estimate recommended the Pentagon add $314 million to the five-year plan to beef up testing. Gates did so.

Editor’s Comment:

With Afghan war costs rising and political pressure to reign in the federal deficit mounting Gates needs to reduce the year to year Pentagon procurement budget for big ticket items. Postponing and stringing out the acquisition of major platform buys (such as a new fighter aircraft like the F-35) is one way to get some of those savings without having to take on the much harder political task of canceling programs or cutting structure. Unfortunately such an approach usually makes an acquisition program more costly when production efficiencies of scale are lost as fewer units are manufactured each year over a longer period.

This article says, “More than $2.8 billion that was budgeted earlier to buy the military’s next-generation fighter would instead be used to continue its development.” So it may seem that this decision simply shifts spending from production to development accounts with neutral effect on the Pentagon topline. However the article doesn’t adequately address whether Gates may have been facing increased development costs overlapping ambitious production schedules which would have cost much more in the next five years than had been previously planned. This decision delays the onset of large production costs to the years after 2014.

The Navy has indicated it will need to buy more F/A-18s if the F-35 doesn’t appear when it had previously been promised. But the Navy’s requirement assumes there are no carrier cuts (and associated Naval combat wing cuts) in this period. If there are, it will make those F/A-18s redundant.

And what if five years from now drones are proving themselves to be the combat craft of the future at the very time the F-35 is meant to start appearing in operational units in significant numbers? Maybe then the buy of the next generation manned fighter plane can be in the range of 1200 units instead of the 2400 units in the current plan. Then we could realize real savings in this acquisition program. (for some options on future fighter buys and program savings see: David Axe, “Congressional Budget Office’s Plans to Save the Air Force”, War is Boring, 18 May 2009.)

If five years from now drones play a more central role in air combat power and there are fewer carriers in the fleet the decision to slow the F-35 acquisition program down will prove to be a very practical one.

Budget Moves Buoy Defense Industry

Loren B. Thompson. Lexington Institute, 14 December 2009.
http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/budget-moves-buoy-defense-industry

Excerpt:

First, even before President Obama decided to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, the administration had already decided to spend more on overseas contingencies in 2011 that the $130 billion it planned to spend in 2010. Second, Jason Sherman of insidedefense.com reported this month that the White House will support increasing the regular defense budget (not including overseas contingencies) by $14 billion above what was planned for 2011, meaning it will rise from the $542 billion forecast in May to $556 billion. Third, Vago Muradian of Defense News reported this weekend that total increases above the May plan for the regular defense budget across the 2011-2015 spending period will reach $100 billion.

Editor’s Comment:

Looks as if the Obama administration’s plan to reduce Federal expenditures on war (contingency) operations and to hold increases in the base Pentagon budget to dollar inflation have come unraveled at less than a year into the budgeting plan and the administration. It is a shame, because it is so unnecessary.

Why they hate us?: How many Muslims has the U.S. killed in the past 30 years?

Stephen M. Walt. ForeignPolicy.com, 30 November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HRJEyM

Excerpt:

Yet if you really want to know “why they hate us,” … the fact remains that the United States has killed a very large number of Arab or Muslim individuals over the past three decades.

Editor’s Comment:

And no amount of “public diplomacy” or “American narrative” will win friends when the U.S. is responsible for killing sons and daughters of people in their home land. That is a basic piece of strategic wisdom!

Building on 2 blunders: the dubious case for counterinsurgency

Stephen M. Walt. Foreign Policy, 16 November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/Hc15bY

Editor’s Comment

Walt makes a fundamental strategic point. The Bush wars involved operational and grand strategic errors, so why institutionalize a shift in defense planning that in effect has the U.S. military prepare for more strategic errors by our leadership? Why not opt to correct the error? It is really an elemental point of strategy: Don’t compound error!

I understand how military professionals who have been ordered to take on foolish strategic missions might feel that counterinsurgency theory is an attractive way out of their tactical and operational dilemmas. But there is really no excuse for civilian leaders, including Sec Def Gates, chasing the mirage of COIN as if it were an answer for our current problems dealing with the consequences of a disastrous Bush national security strategy. Change the strategy and there will be no need for investments in COIN!

Ambassador Eikenberry’s Cables on U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan

Karl W. Eikenberry. The The New York Times has published two cables authored by the U.S. Ambassador to Kabul addressed to Secretary of State Clinton. The first is dated 06 November 2009 and is entitled “COIN Strategy: Civilian Concerns”. The second is dated 09 November 2009 and is entitled “Looking Beyond Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan”.
http://documents.nytimes.com/eikenberry-s-memos-on-the-strategy-in-afghanistan

Editor’s Comment:

Quibble: COIN is a tactic, not a strategy. Non-quibble: Wars are rarely decided at the tactical level.

Fixing a Failed Strategy in Afghanistan

Gilles Dorronsoro. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, November 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HdwsJ4

Excerpt:

…the International Coalition, with its limited resources and diminishing popular support, should focus on its core interests: preventing the Taliban from retaking Afghan cities, avoiding the risk that al-Qaeda would try to reestablish sanctuaries there, pursue a more aggressive counterinsurgency strategy in the North, and reallocate its civilian aid resources to places where the insurgency is still weak.

Editor’s Comment

Some would say that Pashtunistan is already a nation which can’t yet fully establish itself as a state (although there is already considerable local governance, both Pashtun tribal and Taliban.) Presently Punjabi (Pakistani) and US/NATO military intervention prevent the establishment of a state.

Dorronsoro’s Afghan war strategy would seem to be a step in moving the Pashtunistan national cause to within a decade or so of success. Of course, the cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad would have to fall under Pashtunistan governance eventually, even if Western forces resisted for some years.

Map of Pashtunistan

Keeping the aircraft carrier fleet afloat

Christopher M. Lehman. Boston Globe, 14 October 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HcpOCe

Editor’s Comment:
It has been several decades since simply counting the numbers of weapon systems or platforms has been anything like a reliable measure of military power. In a modern military effective power is achieved by the combination of well-trained men and women, advanced communications, agile allocation of forces, precision controls and, of course, good weapon systems and appropriate platforms for this complex package.

Christopher Lehman’s op-ed in defense of the eleven carrier fleet (Boston Globe 14 October 2009) fails to mention, let alone assess, any of these crucial aspects of the modern Navy. Nor does he mention the numerous expeditionary strike groups, surface action groups, and missile-armed submarines that also project American power around the globe. And he does not mention that a term of preference in today’s Navy is “network-centric.”

Although the number of platforms (ships) in today’s Navy is considerably fewer than during the Cold War, the firepower on today’s collection of ships has more than doubled, and is still growing. And that is only a starting place for measuring the effective power of the Navy. Reducing the size of the carrier fleet by one or two flattops is not a high risk proposition for the national security of the United States.

References:

Reader Comment from a letter to the Boston Globe:

Isn’t it inappropriate for the Globe to publish an oped advocating the construction of aircraft carriers when the author works at a consulting firm that represents Northrop Grumman, the company responsible for carrier construction? In Christopher Lehman’s Oct. 14 oped, “Keeping the aircraft carrier fleet afloat,’’ the Globe did not bother to disclose the author’s financial stake in the position he was arguing, which would have helped readers evaluate Lehman’s credibility (or lack thereof) as a dispassionate analyst.

Lehman doesn’t base his case on military or strategic grounds, conceding at the very beginning that “the United States does not need aircraft carriers to counter those of other countries.’’ Instead, he asserts that carriers are valuable as power projectors that the United States uses to affect crises “without releasing a single weapon.’’ In other words, while carriers might not actually do much militarily, they make us feel like we’re shaping outcomes. Proponents of building more carriers can then cite such shaping, which is impossible to prove or disprove, as evidence that we need more carriers.

Lehman also points out that carriers both act as “levers of American good will’’ and are being built by many other countries, including some considered potential future adversaries of the United States. On the first point, humanitarian missions are not sufficient justification to build $11-billion-per-ship carriers that spend most of their time floating around in the middle of the ocean. Other ships are more practical. A carrier is a weapon of war, and arguments that try to frame it as anything else are disingenuous. On the second point, Lehman implies that because other countries build carriers, the United States should build them, too. “Keeping up with the Joneses’’ is the antithesis of strategic thinking, particularly when the United States already maintains such a large advantage in military capability.

– Travis Sharp, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Washington, D.C.

How I learned to stop worrying and live with the bomb: neither terrorists nor rogue states like North Korea are likely to use nuclear weapons

Michael Lind. Salon, 13 October 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HaHZYv

Editor’s Comment:
Even if the nuclear abolition movement grows in power and is able to convince the governments of the U.S., France, and Great Britain to move toward abolishing their nuclear weaponry, there is little chance that other great powers such as Russia, China, and India will follow suit — not as long as any of those powers can imagine a conventional war against the U.S. (or against other countries with powerful conventional forces.) Unfortunately, there is no way to separate the problems of nuclear weaponry from the problems of international power politics and war. You can work hard to deny the connection in your mind, but in the end denial won’t help the cause of making the world safer. If there is to be really deep nuclear disarmament it must be in concert with conventional disarmament and new agency for international security.

A Strategy of Tactics: Population-centric COIN and the Army

Gian P. Gentile. Parameters, Autumn 2009.
http://www.public.navy.mil/usff/documents/gentile.pdf

Excerpt:

Population-centric COIN may be a reasonable operational method to use in certain circumstances, but it is not a strategy.

Editor’s Comment:

Agreed! COIN is a collection of tactics. What is missing in Afghanistan is a strategy with any credible chance of success … despite the lip-service to political solutions.

A clear and present danger: QDR must recognize need for two-war construct

Mackenzie Eaglen and Jim Talent. Armed Forces Journal, October 2009.
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/10/4262271

Editor’s Comment: Before launching into their polemic calling for even more investments in the military sector (on top of 40+% real growth in the last decade for the Pentagon base budget) Eaglen and Talent usefully point out that the forthcoming QDR is, in a formal sense, based on the last Bush administration National Security Strategy, now three years old.

Logically, if the QDR is to serve as an expression of how military planning, program and posture align with national security and defense strategy, then our current schedule for the production of these documents is seriously out of sync with political cycles. It is reasonable to expect that an incoming administration, such as Obama’s, might require eighteen months to review and craft a revision of the National Security Strategy.

Starting with a revised National Security Strategy (The White House) appearing in June 2011 a schedule for the derivative documents might then be:

National Defense Strategy (SecDef’s office) – January 2012
National Military Strategy (Joint Chiefs) – June 2012
Quadrennial Defense Review (SecDef’s office) – June 2012

Note the logic of this sequencing: The White House sets any considered changes in the broad strategy (the National Security Strategy) eighteen months after coming into office. The Secretary of Defense then leads the process of determining and announcing six months later refinements to the National Defense Strategy. The Joint Chiefs have six additional months to refine their National Military Strategy document which is published the same month as the DoD’s Quadrennial Defense Review (which puts the strategy, defense planning/posture and budget all together.)

Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy

Justin Kelly and Michael James Brennan. Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College, 16 September 2009.
http://defensealt.org/HdCbyw

Excerpt:

Recent western military exploits in Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and East
Timor, all represent, if not strategic failure, at least failures of strategy. The question we need to ask
ourselves is whether this weakness is endemic or at least partially a result of our own theoretical failings by
allowing operational art to escape from any reasonable delimitation and, by so doing, subvert the role of
strategy and hide the need for a strategic art?

Editor’s Comment:

In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, there emerged in this country a revisionist narrative of “meddling” by civilian leaders such as Johnson and McNamara which had “prevented” the military from winning the war. Although this narrative was almost entirely counter factual, it has had enough resonance in a nation deeply troubled by the war’s outcome that subsequent civilian leadership has opted to effectively “hand-off” wars to their generals and step back from responsibility for key strategic decisions.

Generals are, for the most part, skilled operational practitioners, but only sometimes do they have well-developed strategic skills or wisdom. As the authors point out, handing-off responsibility for strategic decisions to the generals is an error in the practice of grand strategy… and we should not be surprised with how often our subsequent wars have gone badly.

My hope is that President Obama will read this essay before making his decision about what to do next in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

U.S. Navy May Extend Some F/A-18s in Wait for F-35C

Antonie Boessenkool. Defense News, 03 August 2009.

excerpt:

“They must, they absolutely must, enter the fleet on time and on budget,” [Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations] said, stand­ing before a green-painted F-35C at Lockheed Martin’s assembly plant here. “If we don’t get this airplane on time, we’re going to realize a gap in the number of airplanes we take to sea.” Roughead said the Navy may ex­tend the service life of its older F/A-18 models as it waits.

Editor’s comment:

The Navy could relax its delivery schedule for the new fighter by five years or so if it downsizes its carrier fleet (without sacrificing strategic power projection) as recommended by the Project on Defense Alternatives. This would free up newer F/A-18s to replace older ones in the Navy’s remaining active air fleet.

See also: “No Navy Fighter Gap: PAE” — http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/05/05/no-navy-fighter-gap/

Is the QDR ‘a PR stunt’ or a sincere effort to reconcile posture and budget with strategy?

by Charles Knight

Last fall I attended a seminar at MIT entitled “Analytical Tools for the Next Quadrennial Defense Review” given by senior analyst who had worked on several QDRs. The QDR is an every-four-years Pentagon study mandated by Congress and meant to review how closely the defense posture and its supporting budget fits with the national strategy. The seminar presenter spent an hour detailing the analytical methods of those who worked on the “force structuring” and policy studies that provide the basis for the QDR review process. That process is ongoing this year in preparation for the release of fourth QDR in early 2010.

After the presentation a former member of the National Security Council who happened to be seated to my right turned to me and said, “[The QDR] seems like a fraud.”

More recently Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Chairman of the House Armed Services air and land forces subcommittee, referred to the QDR as a “PR stunt” and a “PR exercise” (as reported by Marjorie Censer, Inside the Pentagon, 18 June 2009.) Rep. Abercrombie then went on to offer a less than precise elaboration, saying, “It’s all Thunderbird stuff, booms and all that.”

I can not be all that sure what the former National Security Council member or Rep. Abercrombie meant by their characterizations of the QDR. But, having followed all four QDRs fairly closely, I can make an educated guess at what they are getting at.

Congress has intended that through the QDR the Pentagon will make a serious attempt to reconcile the national defense strategy to the defense posture of the services and from that presumed point of congruence reconcile it to the defense budget. Policy analysts frequently complain that strategy, posture and budget are dangerously out of whack. If the QDR process addresses this problem and then does the analytical and policy work required for making real advances toward reconciliation then we can judge that it is meeting its stated purpose. If it results in a public document that uses rhetorical flourish in order to mask disjuncture of ends and means and to perpetuate prior posture and budget directions, then it is something like a ‘fraud’ or ‘PR exercise.’

The unfolding 2010 QDR process gives us a good opportunity to look for evidence of either real reconciliation or PR exercise. A few pieces of evidence:

  • There are dozens of high level policy professionals and planners in the Pentagon who have more than a cursory responsibility for aspects of the QDR. They work with hundreds of others, some inside the military and many civilian consultants and contractors. Models are built and simulations are run. Task forces and issue teams work the results. No doubt many of these people would be indignant if you told them their work was simply serving public relations and had little effect on the direction of policy.
  • On the other hand, modeling output and even the output of task forces are quite sensitive to starting assumptions and specifications. Senior civilian and military leaders in the Pentagon carefully review input parameters and seek to influence how the particulars of output is summed up and presented to those responsible for the next steps in the process of getting to the final report. “Startling findings” and their policy implications are unlikely to find their way into the document drafts unless senior leadership wants them there.
  • Consider also that Defense News has reported that the Pentagon is moving ahead with the FY’11 budget process before the budget work on the 2010 QDR is completed. This is at least suggestive of prior budget and posture decisions running the QDR output rather than the other way around.

    • [This site will take note of what other evidence emerges pertaining to the question of whether the QDR is 'a fraud', 'a PR stunt', or a sincere effort to reconcile posture and budget with strategy? I invite your comments and viewpoints on this important question.]

    Air Guard Needs Newer Aircraft, Director Says

    Jon Soucy. American Forces Press Service, 29 July 2009.

    Editor’s comment: The Project on Defense Alternatives has recommended that the USAF reduce its tactical combat fleet by two wing equivalents. This reduction would allow for a considerable number of tactical aircraft to move over the the Air National Guard thus improving its fleet age composition. If the Air Guard still needs to replace old F-16s in the period 2015-2025 it should do so by a staged buy of the latest block F-16 C/D. Transition to the Joint Strike Fighter could begin in the 2020s.

    Global Poll Finds Widespread Belief that Afghans Want NATO Forces Out

    WorldPublicOpion.org. 23 July 2009.

    from WorldPublicOpinion.org 23 July 2009

    from WorldPublicOpinion.org 23 July 2009

    Editor’s comment: It is striking that almost 80% of Pakistanis want NATO and the US out of Afghanistan. This is evidence that they do not view the US/NATO counter-terror, counterinsurgency and stabilization campaign in Afghanistan as a likely solution to their troubles in Pakistan, but rather as a cause of those troubles.

    This is empirical evidence that US strategists should consider. Perhaps military intervention into a foreign country is a significant contributing factor to unrest and instability in that country and the region? How often do we hear of US national strategists seriously considering that factor in their strategic planning?

    It’s time to scrutinize the Pentagon

    Charles Knight, Carl Conetta, and James P. McGovern. Minuteman Media, 1 January 2009.

    excerpt:

    Any adjustment in national security planning is bound to be controversial – and it should be. But we can no longer afford to shy away from that controversy. Our current circumstance demands that we enter into a broad and deep discussion about national strategic priorities, including security priorities. And this necessarily entails looking behind the curtain that shields the defense budget from more serious scrutiny.

    Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States

    Do these folks look to you like America today?

    Is Worry about Pakistani Nukes Serving to Keep the U.S. in Iraq?

    Charles Knight. Project on Defense Alternatives Commentary, July 2007.

    excerpt:

    It is my best guess that we won’t see an Army/Marine Corps invasion of Iran or Pakistan or North Korea. If the ‘new center’ in Washington was seriously considering interventions abroad that might require deploying up to 3 million troops, they would need to start providing basic training to a significant portion of Americans between the ages of 18 and 28 — and that, of course, means conscription.

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