UQ WIRE EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the full text of the “secret report” referred to in an earlier UQ wire item today, “UQ Wire: Secret Bush Iraq Regime Change Blueprint” . The original in .pdf format is located at http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf …
Presented by… http://www.unansweredquestions.org/
UQ WIRE EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the full text of the “secret report” referred to in an earlier UQ wire item today, “UQ Wire: Secret Bush Iraq Regime Change Blueprint” . The original in .pdf format is located at http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf It is reproduced here in HTML for the purposes of archiving as such discoveries have an uncanny habit of disappearing as soon as they hit the headlines.
STANDARD DISCLAIMER FROM UQ.ORG: UnansweredQuestions.org does not endorse the views expressed in the following article. We present this in the interests of research -for the relevant information we believe it contains. We hope that the reader finds in it inspiration to work with us further, in helping to build bridges between our various investigative communities, towards a greater, common understanding of the unanswered questions which now lie before us.
AMERICA’S
DEFENSES
Strategy, Forces and Resources
For a New Century
A Report of
The Project for the New American Century
September 2000
ABOUT THE PROJECT FOR THE
NEW AMERICAN CENTURY
Established in the spring of 1997, the Project for the New American Century is a nonprofit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership.
The Project is an initiative of the New Citizenship Project. William Kristol is chairman of the Project, and Robert Kagan, Devon Gaffney Cross, Bruce P. Jackson and John R.
Bolton serve as directors. Gary Schmitt is executive director of the Project.
“As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world’s most preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievement of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?
“[What we require is] a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities.
“Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership of the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of the past century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.”
– From the Project’s founding Statement of Principles
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Suite 510, Washington, D.C. 20036
Telephone: (202) 293-4983 / Fax: (202) 293-4572
REBUILDING
AMERICA’S
DEFENSES
Strategy, Forces and Resources
For a New Century
DONALD KAGAN GARY SCHMITT
Project Co-Chairmen
THOMAS DONNELLY
Principal Author
REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES
Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Key Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv
I. Why Another Defense Review? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. Four Essential Missions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
III. Repositioning Today’s Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
IV. Rebuilding Today’s Armed Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
V. Creating Tomorrow’s Dominant Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
VI. Defense Spending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Project Participants
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page i
INTRODUCTION
The Project for the New American Century was established in the spring of 1997. From its inception, the Project has been concerned with the decline in the strength of America’s defenses, and in the problems this would create for the exercise of American leadership around the globe and, ultimately, for the preservation of peace.
Our concerns were reinforced by the two congressionally-mandated defense studies that appeared soon thereafter: the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review (May 1997) and the report of the National Defense Panel (December 1997). Both studies assumed that U.S. defense budgets would remain flat or continue to shrink. As a result, the defense plans and recommendations outlined in the two reports were fashioned with such budget constraints in mind. Broadly speaking, the QDR stressed current military requirements at the expense of future defense needs, while the NDP’s report emphasized future needs by underestimating today’s defense responsibilities.
Although the QDR and the report of the NDP proposed different policies, they shared one underlying feature: the gap between resources and strategy should be resolved not by increasing resources but by shortchanging strategy. America’s armed forces, it seemed, could either prepare for the future by retreating from its role as the essential defender of today’s global security order, or it could take care of current business but be unprepared for tomorrow’s threats and tomorrow’s battlefields.
Either alternative seemed to us shortsighted. The United States is the world’s only superpower, combining preeminent military power, global technological leadership, and the world’s largest economy. Moreover, America stands at the head of a system of alliances which includes the world’s other leading democratic powers. At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible. There are, however, potentially powerful states dissatisfied with the current situation and eager to change it, if they can, in directions that endanger the relatively peaceful, prosperous and free condition the world enjoys today. Up to now, they have been deterred from doing so by the capability and global presence of American military power. But, as that power declines, relatively and absolutely, the happy conditions that follow from it will be inevitably undermined.
Preserving the desirable strategic situation in which the United States now finds itself requires a globally preeminent military capability both today and in the future. But years of cuts in defense spending have eroded the American military’s combat readiness, and put in jeopardy the Pentagon’s plans for maintaining military superiority in the years ahead. Increasingly, the U.S. military has found itself undermanned, inadequately equipped and trained, straining to handle contingency operations, and ill-prepared to adapt itself to the revolution in military affairs. Without a well-conceived defense policy and an appropriate increase in
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page ii
At present the United States faces no global rival.
America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.
defense spending, the United States has been letting its ability to take full advantage of the remarkable strategic opportunity at hand slip away.
With this in mind, we began a project in the spring of 1998 to examine the country’s defense plans and resource requirements.
We started from the premise that U.S. military capabilities should be sufficient to support an American grand strategy committed to building upon this unprecedented opportunity. We did not accept pre-ordained constraints that followed from assumptions about what the country might or might not be willing to expend on its defenses.
In broad terms, we saw the project as building upon the defense strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush Administration.
The Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint for maintaining U.S. preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests. Leaked before it had been formally approved, the document was criticized as an effort by “cold warriors” to keep defense spending high and cuts in forces small despite the collapse of the Soviet Union; not surprisingly, it was subsequently buried by the new administration.
Although the experience of the past eight years has modified our understanding of particular military requirements for carrying out such a strategy, the basic tenets of the DPG, in our judgment, remain sound.
And what Secretary Cheney said at the time in response to the DPG’s critics remains true today: “We can either sustain the [armed] forces we require and remain in a position to help shape things for the better, or we can throw that advantage away. [But] that would only hasten the day when we face greater threats, at higher costs and further risk to American lives.”
The project proceeded by holding a series of seminars. We asked outstanding defense specialists to write papers to explore a variety of topics: the future missions and requirements of the individual military services, the role of the reserves, nuclear strategic doctrine and missile defenses, the defense budget and prospects for military modernization, the state (training and readiness) of today’s forces, the revolution in military affairs, and defense-planning for theater wars, small wars and constabulary operations. The papers were circulated to a group of participants, chosen for their experience and judgment in defense affairs.
(The list of participants may be found at the end of this report.) Each paper then became the basis for discussion and debate. Our goal was to use the papers to assist deliberation, to generate and test ideas, and to assist us in developing our final report.
While each paper took as its starting point a shared strategic point of view, we made no attempt to dictate the views or direction of the individual papers. We wanted as full and as diverse a discussion as possible.
Our report borrows heavily from those deliberations. But we did not ask seminar participants to “sign-off” on the final report.
We wanted frank discussions and we sought to avoid the pitfalls of trying to produce a consensual but bland product. We wanted to try to define and describe a defense strategy that is honest, thoughtful, bold, internally consistent and clear. And we wanted to spark a serious and informed discussion, the essential first step for reaching sound conclusions and for gaining public support.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page ——> Page iii
New circumstances make us think that the report might have a more receptive audience now than in recent years. For the first time since the late 1960s the federal government is running a surplus. For most of the 1990s, Congress and the White House gave balancing the federal budget a higher priority than funding national security. In fact, to a significant degree, the budget was balanced by a combination of increased tax revenues and cuts in defense spending. The surplus expected in federal revenues over the next decade, however, removes any need to hold defense spending to some preconceived low level.
Moreover, the American public and its elected representatives have become increasingly aware of the declining state of the U.S. military. News stories, Pentagon reports, congressional testimony and anecdotal accounts from members of the armed services paint a disturbing picture of an American military that is troubled by poor enlistment and retention rates, shoddy housing, a shortage of spare parts and weapons, and diminishing combat readiness.
Finally, this report comes after a decade’s worth of experience in dealing with the post-Cold War world. Previous efforts to fashion a defense strategy that would make sense for today’s security environment were forced to work from many untested assumptions about the nature of a world without a superpower rival. We have a much better idea today of what our responsibilities are, what the threats to us might be in this new security environment, and what it will take to secure the relative peace and stability. We believe our report reflects and benefits from that decade’s worth of experience.
Our report is published in a presidential election year. The new administration will need to produce a second Quadrennial Defense Review shortly after it takes office.
We hope that the Project’s report will be useful as a road map for the nation’s immediate and future defense plans. We believe we have set forth a defense program that is justified by the evidence, rests on an honest examination of the problems and possibilities, and does not flinch from facing the true cost of security. We hope it will inspire careful consideration and serious discussion. The post-Cold War world will not remain a relatively peaceful place if we continue to neglect foreign and defense matters. But serious attention, careful thought, and the willingness to devote adequate resources to maintaining America’s military strength can make the world safer and American strategic interests more secure now and in the future.
Donald Kagan Gary Schmitt
Project Co-Chairmen
Thomas Donnelly
Principal Author
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page iv
KEY FINDINGS This report proceeds from the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of U.S. military forces. Today, the United States has an unprecedented strategic opportunity.
It faces no immediate great-power challenge; it is blessed with wealthy, powerful and democratic allies in every part of the world; it is in the midst of the longest economic expansion in its history; and its political and economic principles are almost universally embraced. At no time in history has the international security order been as conducive to American interests and ideals.
The challenge for the coming century is to preserve and enhance this “American peace.”
Yet unless the United States maintains sufficient military strength, this opportunity will be lost. And in fact, over the past decade, the failure to establish a security strategy responsive to new realities and to provide adequate resources for the full range of missions needed to exercise U.S. global leadership has placed the American peace at growing risk. This report attempts to define those requirements. In particular, we need to:
ESTABLISH FOUR CORE MISSIONS for U.S. military forces:
- defend the American homeland;
- fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
- perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
- transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs;”
To carry out these core missions, we need to provide sufficient force and budgetary allocations. In particular, the United States must:
MAINTAIN NUCLEAR STRATEGIC SUPERIORITY, basing the U.S. nuclear deterrent upon a global, nuclear net assessment that weighs the full range of current and emerging threats, not merely the U.S.-Russia balance.
RESTORE THE PERSONNEL STRENGTH of today’s force to roughly the levels anticipated in the “Base Force” outlined by the Bush Administration, an increase in active-duty strength from 1.4 million to 1.6 million.
REPOSITION U.S. FORCES to respond to 21st century strategic realities by shifting permanently-based forces to Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia, and by changing naval deployment patterns to reflect growing U.S. strategic concerns in East Asia.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page v MODERNIZE CURRENT U.S. FORCES SELECTIVELY, proceeding with the F-22 program while increasing purchases of lift, electronic support and other aircraft; expanding submarine and surface combatant fleets; purchasing Comanche helicopters and medium-weight ground vehicles for the Army, and the V-22 Osprey “tilt-rotor” aircraft for the Marine Corps.
CANCEL “ROADBLOCK” PROGRAMS such as the Joint Strike Fighter, CVX aircraft carrier, and Crusader howitzer system that would absorb exorbitant amounts of Pentagon funding while providing limited improvements to current capabilities. Savings from these canceled programs should be used to spur the process of military transformation.
DEVELOP AND DEPLOY GLOBAL MISSILE DEFENSES to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world.
CONTROL THE NEW “INTERNATIONAL COMMONS” OF SPACE AND “CYBERSPACE,” and pave the way for the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control.
EXPLOIT THE “REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS” to insure the long-term superiority of U.S. conventional forces. Establish a two-stage transformation process which
- maximizes the value of current weapons systems through the application of advanced technologies, and,
- produces more profound improvements in military capabilities, encourages competition between single services and joint-service experimentation efforts.
INCREASE DEFENSE SPENDING gradually to a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually.
Fulfilling these requirements is essential if America is to retain its militarily dominant status for the coming decades. Conversely, the failure to meet any of these needs must result in some form of strategic retreat. At current levels of defense spending, the only option is to try ineffectually to “manage”
increasingly large risks: paying for today’s needs by shortchanging tomorrow’s; withdrawing from constabulary missions to retain strength for large-scale wars; “choosing” between presence in Europe or presence in Asia; and so on. These are bad choices. They are also false economies.
The “savings” from withdrawing from the Balkans, for example, will not free up anywhere near the magnitude of funds needed for military modernization or transformation. But these are false economies in other, more profound ways as well. The true cost of not meeting our defense requirements will be a lessened capacity for American global leadership and, ultimately, the loss of a global security order that is uniquely friendly to American principles and prosperity.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 1
I
WHY ANOTHER DEFENSE REVIEW?
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has struggled to formulate a coherent national security or military strategy, one that accounts for the constants of American power and principles yet accommodates 21st century realities. Absent a strategic framework, U.S. defense planning has been an empty and increasingly self-referential exercise, often dominated by bureaucratic and budgetary rather than strategic interests. Indeed, the proliferation of defense reviews over the past decade testifies to the failure to chart a consistent course: to date, there have been half a dozen formal defense reviews, and the Pentagon is now gearing up for a second Quadrennial Defense Review in 2001. Unless this “QDR II” matches U.S. military forces and resources to a viable American strategy, it, too, will fail.
These failures are not without cost: already, they place at risk an historic opportunity. After the victories of the past century – two world wars, the Cold War and most recently the Gulf War – the United States finds itself as the uniquely powerful leader of a coalition of free and prosperous states that faces no immediate great-power challenge.
The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable and durable. It has, over the past decade, provided the geopolitical framework for widespread economic growth and the spread of American principles of liberty and democracy. Yet no moment in international politics can be frozen in time; even a global Pax Americana will not preserve itself.
Paradoxically, as American power and influence are at their apogee, American military forces limp toward exhaustion, unable to meet the demands of their many and varied missions, including preparing for tomorrow’s battlefield. Today’s force, reduced by a third or more over the past decade, suffers from degraded combat readiness; from difficulties in recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines; from the effects of an extended “procurement holiday” that has resulted in the premature aging of most weapons systems; from an increasingly obsolescent and inadequate military infrastructure; from a shrinking industrial base poorly structured to be the “arsenal of democracy” for the 21st century; from a lack of innovation that threatens the technological and operational advantages enjoyed by U.S. forces for a generation and upon which American strategy depends. Finally, and most dangerously, the social fabric of the military is frayed and worn. U.S. armed forces suffer from a degraded quality of life divorced from middle-class expectations, upon which an all-volunteer force depends.
Enlisted men and women and junior officers increasingly lack confidence in their senior leaders, whom they believe will not tell unpleasant truths to their civilian leaders. In sum, as the American peace reaches across the globe, the force that preserves that peace is increasingly overwhelmed by its tasks.
This is no paradox; it is the inevitable consequence of the failure to match military means to geopolitical ends. Underlying the failed strategic and defense reviews of the past decade is the idea that the collapse of
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 2
The multiple challenges of the post-Cold War world.
the Soviet Union had created a “strategic pause.” In other words, until another greatpower challenger emerges, the United States can enjoy a respite from the demands of international leadership. Like a boxer between championship bouts, America can afford to relax and live the good life, certain that there would be enough time to shape up for the next big challenge. Thus the United States could afford to reduce its military forces, close bases overseas, halt major weapons programs and reap the financial benefits of the “peace dividend.” But as we have seen over the past decade, there has been no shortage of powers around the world who have taken the collapse of the Soviet empire as an opportunity to expand their own influence and challenge the American-led security order.
Beyond the faulty notion of a strategic pause, recent defense reviews have suffered from an inverted understanding of the military dimension of the Cold War struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. American containment strategy did not proceed from the assumption that the Cold War would be a purely military struggle, in which the U.S. Army matched the Red Army tank for tank; rather, the United States would seek to deter the Soviets militarily while defeating them economically and ideologically over time. And, even within the realm of military affairs, the practice of deterrence allowed for what in military terms is called “an economy of force.” The principle job of NATO forces, for example, was to deter an invasion of Western Europe, not to invade and occupy the Russian heartland. Moreover, the bipolar nuclear balance of terror made both the United States and the Soviet Union generally cautious. Behind the smallest proxy war in the most remote region lurked the possibility of Armageddon. Thus, despite numerous miscalculations through the five decades of Cold War, the United States reaped an extraordinary measure of global security and stability simply by building a credible and, in relative terms, inexpensive nuclear arsenal.
Over the decade of the post-Cold-War period, however, almost everything has changed. The Cold War world was a bipolar world; the 21st century world is – for the moment, at least – decidedly unipolar, with America as the world’s “sole superpower.”
America’s strategic goal used to be containment of the Soviet Union; today the task is to preserve an international security environment conducive to American interests and ideals. The military’s job during the Cold War was to deter Soviet expansionism. Today its task is to secure and expand the “zones of democratic peace;” to deter the rise of a new greatpower competitor; defend key regions of Europe, East Asia and the Middle East; and to preserve American preeminence through the coming transformation of war made Cold War 21st Century Security system Bipolar Unipolar Strategic goal Contain Soviet Union Preserve Pax Americana Main military mission(s) Deter Soviet expansionism Secure and expand zones of democratic peace; deter rise of new great-power competitor; defend key regions; exploit transformation of war Main military threat(s) Potential global war across many theaters Potential theater wars spread across globe Focus of strategic competition Europe East Asia
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 3
Today, America spends less than 3 percent of its gross domestic product on national defense, less than at any time since before the United States established itself as the world’s leading power.
possible by new technologies. From 1945 to 1990, U.S. forces prepared themselves for a single, global war that might be fought across many theaters; in the new century, the prospect is for a variety of theater wars around the world, against separate and distinct adversaries pursuing separate and distinct goals. During the Cold War, the main venue of superpower rivalry, the strategic “center of gravity,” was in Europe, where large U.S. and NATO conventional forces prepared to repulse a Soviet attack and over which nuclear war might begin; and with Europe now generally at peace, the new strategic center of concern appears to be shifting to East Asia. The missions for America’s armed forces have not diminished so much as shifted.
The threats may not be as great, but there are more of them.
During the Cold War, America acquired its security “wholesale” by global deterrence of the Soviet Union. Today, that same security can only be acquired at the “retail”
level, by deterring or, when needed, by compelling regional foes to act in ways that protect American interests and principles.
This gap between a diverse and expansive set of new strategic realities and diminishing defense forces and resources does much to explain why the Joint Chiefs of Staff routinely declare that they see “high risk” in executing the missions assigned to U.S. armed forces under the government’s declared national military strategy. Indeed, a JCS assessment conducted at the height of the Kosovo air war found the risk level “unacceptable.” Such risks are the result of the combination of the new missions described above and the dramatically reduced military force that has emerged from the defense “drawdown” of the past decade. Today, America spends less than 3 percent of its gross domestic product on national defense, less than at any time since before World War II – in other words, since before the United States established itself as the world’s leading power – and a cut from 4.7 percent of GDP in 1992, the first real post-Cold-War defense budget. Most of this reduction has come under the Clinton Administration; despite initial promises to approximate the level of defense spending called for in the final Bush Administration program, President Clinton cut more than $160 billion from the Bush program from 1992 to 1996 alone. Over the first seven years of the Clinton Administration, approximately $426 billion in defense investments have been deferred, creating a weapons procurement “bow wave” of immense proportions.
The most immediate effect of reduced defense spending has been a precipitate decline in combat readiness. Across all services, units are reporting degraded readiness, spare parts and personnel shortages, postponed and simplified training regimens, and many other problems. In congressional testimony, service chiefs of staff now routinely report that their forces are inadequate to the demands of the “twowar”
national military strategy. Press attention focused on these readiness problems when it was revealed that two Army divisions were given a “C-4” rating, meaning they were not ready for war. Yet it was perhaps more telling that none of the Army’s ten divisions achieved the highest “C-1” rating, reflecting the widespread effects of slipping readiness standards. By contrast, every division that deployed to Operation Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991 received a “C-1” rating. This is just a snapshot that captures the state of U.S. armed forces today.
These readiness problems are exacerbated by the fact that U.S. forces are poorly positioned to respond to today’s
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 4
crises. In Europe, for example, the overwhelming majority of Army and Air Force units remain at their Cold War bases in Germany or England, while the security problems on the continent have moved to Southeast Europe. Temporary rotations of forces to the Balkans and elsewhere in Southeast Europe increase the overall burdens of these operations many times.
Likewise, the Clinton Administration has continued the fiction that the operations of American forces in the Persian Gulf are merely temporary duties. Nearly a decade after the Gulf War, U.S. air, ground and naval forces continue to protect enduring American interests in the region. In addition to rotational naval forces, the Army maintains what amounts to an armored brigade in Kuwait for nine months of every year; the Air Force has two composite air wings in constant “no-fly zone” operations over northern and southern Iraq. And despite increasing worries about the rise of China and instability in Southeast Asia, U.S. forces are found almost exclusively in Northeast Asian bases.
Yet for all its problems in carrying out today’s missions, the Pentagon has done almost nothing to prepare for a future that promises to be very different and potentially much more dangerous. It is now commonly understood that information and other new technologies – as well as widespread technological and weapons proliferation – are creating a dynamic that may threaten America’s ability to exercise its dominant military power. Potential rivals such as China are anxious to exploit these transformational technologies broadly, while adversaries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea are rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they seek to dominate. Yet the Defense Department and the services have done little more than affix a “transformation” label to programs developed during the Cold War, while diverting effort and attention to a process of joint experimentation which restricts rather than encourages innovation. Rather than admit that rapid technological changes makes it uncertain which new weapons systems to develop, the armed services cling ever more tightly to traditional program and concepts. As Andrew Krepinevich, a member of the National Defense Panel, put it in a recent study of Pentagon experimentation, “Unfortunately, the Defense Department’s rhetoric asserting the need for military transformation and its support for joint experimentation has yet to be matched by any great sense of urgency or any substantial resource support.…At present the Department’s effort is poorly focused and woefully underfunded.”
In sum, the 1990s have been a “decade of defense neglect.” This leaves the next president of the United States with an enormous challenge: he must increase military spending to preserve American geopolitical leadership, or he must pull back from the security commitments that are the measure of America’s position as the world’s sole superpower and the final guarantee of security, democratic freedoms and individual political rights. This choice will be among the first to confront the president: new legislation requires the incoming administration to fashion a national security strategy within six months of assuming office, as opposed to waiting a full year, and to complete another quadrennial defense review three months after that. In a larger sense, the new president will choose whether today’s “unipolar moment,” to use columnist Charles Krauthammer’s phrase for America’s current geopolitical preeminence, will be extended along with the peace and prosperity that it provides.
This study seeks to frame these choices clearly, and to re-establish the links between U.S. foreign policy, security strategy, force planning and defense spending. If an American peace is to be maintained, and expanded, it must have a secure foundation on unquestioned U.S. military preeminence.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 5
None of the defense reviews of the past decade has weighed fully the range of missions demanded by U.S. global leadership, nor adequately quantified the forces and resources necessary to execute these missions successfully.
II
FOUR ESSENTIAL MISSIONS
America’s global leadership, and its role as the guarantor of the current great-power peace, relies upon the safety of the American homeland; the preservation of a favorable balance of power in Europe, the Middle East and surrounding energyproducing region, and East Asia; and the general stability of the international system of nation-states relative to terrorists, organized crime, and other “non-state actors.” The relative importance of these elements, and the threats to U.S. interests, may rise and fall over time. Europe, for example, is now extraordinarily peaceful and stable, despite the turmoil in the Balkans. Conversely, East Asia appears to be entering a period with increased potential for instability and competition. In the Gulf, American power and presence has achieved relative external security for U.S. allies, but the longer-term prospects are murkier.
Generally, American strategy for the coming decades should seek to consolidate the great victories won in the 20th century – which have made Germany and Japan into stable democracies, for example – maintain stability in the Middle East, while setting the conditions for 21st-century successes, especially in East Asia.
A retreat from any one of these requirements would call America’s status as the world’s leading power into question. As we have seen, even a small failure like that in Somalia or a halting and incomplete triumph as in the Balkans can cast doubt on American credibility. The failure to define a coherent global security and military strategy during the post-Cold-War period has invited challenges; states seeking to establish regional hegemony continue to probe for the limits of the American security perimeter. None of the defense reviews of the past decade has weighed fully the range of missions demanded by U.S. global leadership: defending the homeland, fighting and winning multiple large-scale wars, conducting constabulary missions which preserve the current peace, and transforming the U.S. armed forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs.”
Nor have they adequately quantified the forces and resources necessary to execute these missions separately and successfully.
While much further detailed analysis would be required, it is the purpose of this study to outline the large, “fullspectrum”
forces that are necessary to conduct the varied tasks demanded by a strategy of American preeminence for today and tomorrow.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 6
HOMELAND DEFENSE. America must defend its homeland. During the Cold War, nuclear deterrence was the key element in homeland defense; it remains essential. But the new century has brought with it new challenges. While reconfiguring its nuclear force, the United States also must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction that may soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action by threatening U.S. allies and the American homeland itself. Of all the new and current missions for U.S. armed forces, this must have priority.
LARGE WARS. Second, the United States must retain sufficient forces able to rapidly deploy and win multiple simultaneous large-scale wars and also to be able to respond to unanticipated contingencies in regions where it does not maintain forward-based forces.
This resembles the “two-war” standard that has been the basis of U.S. force planning over the past decade. Yet this standard needs to be updated to account for new realities and potential new conflicts.
CONSTABULARY DUTIES. Third, the Pentagon must retain forces to preserve the current peace in ways that fall short of conduction major theater campaigns. A decade’s experience and the policies of two administrations have shown that such forces must be expanded to meet the needs of the new, long-term NATO mission in the Balkans, the continuing no-fly-zone and other missions in Southwest Asia, and other presence missions in vital regions of East Asia. These duties are today’s most frequent missions, requiring forces configured for combat but capable of long-term, independent constabulary operations.
TRANSFORM U.S. ARMED FORCES. Finally, the Pentagon must begin now to exploit the socalled “revolution in military affairs,” sparked by the introduction of advanced technologies into military systems; this must be regarded as a separate and critical mission worthy of a share of force structure and defense budgets.
Current American armed forces are illprepared to execute these four missions.
Over the past decade, efforts to design and build effective missile defenses have been ill-conceived and underfunded, and the Clinton Administration has proposed deep reductions in U.S. nuclear forces without sufficient analysis of the changing global nuclear balance of forces. While, broadly speaking, the United States now maintains sufficient active and reserve forces to meet the traditional two-war standard, this is true only in the abstract, under the most favorable geopolitical conditions. As the Joint Chiefs of Staff have admitted repeatedly in congressional testimony, they lack the forces necessary to meet the twowar benchmark as expressed in the warplans of the regional commanders-in-chief. The requirements for major-war forces must be reevaluated to accommodate new strategic realities. One of these new realities is the requirement for peacekeeping operations; unless this requirement is better understood, America’s ability to fight major wars will be jeopardized. Likewise, the transformation process has gotten short shrift.
To meet the requirements of the four new missions highlighted above, the United States must undertake a two-stage process.
The immediate task is to rebuild today’s force, ensuring that it is equal to the tasks before it: shaping the peacetime environment and winning multiple, simultaneous theater wars; these forces must be large enough to accomplish these tasks without running the “high” or “unacceptable” risks it faces now. The second task is to seriously embark upon a transformation of the Defense Department. This itself will be a two-stage effort: for the next decade or more, the armed forces will continue to operate many of the same systems it now
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 7
A new assessment of the global nuclear balance, one that takes account of Chinese and other nuclear forces as well as Russian, must precede decisions about U.S. nuclear force cuts.
does, organize themselves in traditional units, and employ current operational concepts. However, this transition period must be a first step toward more substantial reform. Over the next several decades, the United States must field a global system of missile defenses, divine ways to control the new “international commons” of space and cyberspace, and build new kinds of conventional forces for different strategic challenges and a new technological environment.
Nuclear Forces Current conventional wisdom about strategic forces in the post-Cold-War world is captured in a comment made by the late Les Aspin, the Clinton Administration’s first secretary of defense. Aspin wrote that the collapse of the Soviet Union had “literally reversed U.S. interests in nuclear weapons”
and, “Today, if offered the magic wand to eradicate the existence and knowledge of nuclear weapons, we would very likely accept it.” Since the United States is the world’s dominant conventional military power, this sentiment is understandable. But it is precisely because we have such power that smaller adversarial states, looking for an equalizing advantage, are determined to acquire their own weapons of mass destruction. Whatever our fondest wishes, the reality of the today’s world is that there is no magic wand with which to eliminate these weapons (or, more fundamentally, the interest in acquiring them) and that deterring their use requires a reliable and dominant U.S. nuclear capability.
While the formal U.S. nuclear posture has remained conservative through the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review and the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, and senior Pentagon leaders speak of the continuing need for nuclear deterrent forces, the Clinton Administration has taken repeated steps to undermine the readiness and effectiveness of U.S. nuclear forces. In particular, it has virtually ceased development of safer and more effective nuclear weapons; brought underground testing to a complete halt; and allowed the Department of Energy’s weapons complex and associated scientific expertise to atrophy for lack of support. The administration has also made the decision to retain current weapons in the active force for years beyond their design life. When combined with the decision to cut back on regular, non-nuclear flight and system tests of the weapons themselves, this raises a host of questions about the continuing safety and reliability of the nation’s strategic arsenal.
The administration’s stewardship of the nation’s deterrent capability has been aptly described by Congress as “erosion by design.”
Rather than maintain and improve America’s nuclear deterrent, the Clinton Administration has put its faith in new arms control measures, most notably by signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The treaty proposed a new multilateral regime, consisting of some 150 states, whose principal effect would be to constrain America’s unique role in providing the global nuclear umbrella that helps to keep states like Japan and South Korea from developing the weapons that are well within their scientific capability, while doing little to stem nuclear weapons proliferation.
Although the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, the administration continues to abide by its basic strictures. And while it may
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 8
The administration’s stewardship of the nation’s deterrent capability has been described by Congress as “erosion by design.”
make sense to continue the current moratorium on nuclear testing for the moment – since it would take a number of years to refurbish the neglected testing infrastructure in any case – ultimately this is an untenable situation. If the United States is to have a nuclear deterrent that is both effective and safe, it will need to test.
That said, of all the elements of U.S. military force posture, perhaps none is more in need of reevaluation than America’s nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons remain a critical component of American military power but it is unclear whether the current U.S. nuclear arsenal is well-suited to the emerging post-Cold War world. Today’s strategic calculus encompasses more factors than just the balance of terror between the United States and Russia. U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals – from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq – and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force. Moreover, there is a question about the role nuclear weapons should play in deterring the use of other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological, with the U.S. having foresworn those weapons’ development and use. It addition, there may be a need to develop a new family of nuclear weapons designed to address new sets of military requirements, such as would be required in targeting the very deep underground, hardened bunkers that are being built by many of our potential adversaries.
Nor has there been a serious analysis done of the benefits versus the costs of maintaining the traditional nuclear “triad.” What is needed first is a global net assessment of what kinds and numbers of nuclear weapons the U.S. needs to meet its security responsibilities in a post-Soviet world.
In short, until the Department of Defense can better define future its nuclear requirements, significant reductions in U.S. nuclear forces might well have unforeseen consequences that lessen rather than enhance the security of the United States and its allies. Reductions, upon review, might be called for. But what should finally drive the size and character of our nuclear forces is not numerical parity with Russian capabilities but maintaining American strategic superiority – and, with that superiority, a capability to deter possible hostile coalitions of nuclear powers. U.S. nuclear superiority is nothing to be ashamed of; rather, it will be an essential element in preserving American leadership in a more complex and chaotic world.
Forces for Major Theater Wars The one constant of Pentagon force planning through the past decade has been the recognized need to retain sufficient combat forces to fight and win, as rapidly and decisively as possible, multiple, nearly simultaneous major theater wars. This constant is based upon two important truths about the current international order. One, the Cold-War standoff between America and its allies and the Soviet Union that made for caution and discouraged direct aggression against the major security interests of either side no longer exists. Two, conventional warfare remains a viable way for aggressive states to seek major changes in the international order.
Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait reflected both truths. The invasion would have been highly unlikely, if not impossible, within the context of the Cold War, and Iraq overran Kuwait in a matter of hours. These two truths revealed a third: maintaining or restoring a favorable order in vital regions in
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 9
The Joint Chiefs have admitted they lack the forces necessary to meet the twowar benchmark.
the world such as Europe, the Middle East and East Asia places a unique responsibility on U.S. armed forces. The Gulf War and indeed the subsequent lesser wars in the Balkans could hardly have been fought and won without the dominant role played by American military might.
Thus, the understanding that U.S. armed forces should be shaped by a “two-majorwar”
standard rightly has been accepted as the core of America’s superpower status since the end of the Cold War. The logic of past defense reviews still obtains, and received its clear exposition in the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, which argued: A force sized and equipped for deterring and defeating aggression in more than one theater ensures that the United States will maintain the flexibility to cope with the unpredictable and unexpected. Such a capability is the sine qua non of a superpower and is essential to the credibility of our overall national security strategy….If the United States were to forego its ability to defeat aggression in more than one theater at a time, our standing as a global power, as the security partner of choice and the leader of the international community would be called in to question. Indeed, some allies would undoubtedly read a onewar capability as a signal that the United States, if heavily engaged elsewhere, would no longer be able to defend their interests…A one-theaterwar capacity would risk undermining…the credibility of U.S. security commitments in key regions of the world. This, in turn, could cause allies and friends to adopt more divergent defense policies and postures, thereby weakening the web of alliances and coalitions on which we rely to protect our interests abroad.
In short, anything less than a clear twowar capacity threatens to devolve into a nowar strategy.
Unfortunately, Defense Department thinking about this requirement was frozen in the early 1990s. The experience of Operation Allied Force in the Balkans suggests that, if anything, the canonical twowar force-sizing standard is more likely to be too low than too high. The Kosovo air campaign eventually involved the level of forces anticipated for a major war, but in a theater other than the two – the Korean peninsula and Southwest Asia – that have generated past Pentagon planning scenarios.
Moreover, new theater wars that can be foreseen, such as an American defense of Taiwan against a Chinese invasion or punitive attack, have yet to be formally considered by Pentagon planners.
To better judge forces needed for building an American peace, the Pentagon needs to begin to calculate the force necessary to protect, independently, U.S. interests in Europe, East Asia and the Gulf at all times. The actions of our adversaries in these regions bear no more than a tangential relationship to one another; it is more likely that one of these regional powers will seize an opening created by deployments of U.S. forces elsewhere to make mischief.
Thus, the major-theater-war standard should remain the principal force-sizing tool for U.S. conventional forces. This not to say that this measure has been perfectly applied in the past: Pentagon analyses have been both too optimistic and too pessimistic, by turns. For example, the analyses done of the requirement to defeat an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia almost certainly overestimates the level of force required.
Conversely, past analyses of a defense of South Korea may have underestimated the difficulties of such a war, especially if North Korea employed weapons of mass destruction, as intelligence estimates anticipate.
Moreover, the theater-war analysis done for
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 10
The increasing number of ‘constabulary’ missions for U.S. troops, such as in Kosovo above, must be considered an integral element in Pentagon force planning.
the QDR assumed that Kim Jong Il and Saddam Hussein each could begin a war – perhaps even while employing chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons – and the United States would make no effort to unseat militarily either ruler. In both cases, past Pentagon wargames have given little or no consideration to the force requirements necessary not only to defeat an attack but to remove these regimes from power and conduct post-combat stability operations. In short, past Defense Department application of the two-war standard is not a reliable guide to the real force requirements – and, of course, past reviews included no analysis of the kind of campaign in Europe as was seen in Operation Allied Force. Because past Pentagon strategy reviews have been budget-driven exercises, it will be necessary to conduct fresh and more realistic analyses even of the canonical two-war scenarios.
In sum, while retaining the spirit of past force-planning for major wars, the Department of Defense must undertake a more nuanced and thoroughgoing review of real requirements. The truths that gave rise to the original two-war standard endure: America’s adversaries will continue to resist the building of the American peace; when they see an opportunity as Saddam Hussein did in 1990, they will employ their most powerful armed forces to win on the battlefield what they could not win in peaceful competition; and American armed forces will remain the core of efforts to deter, defeat, or remove from power regional aggressors.
Forces for ‘Constabulary’ Duties In addition to improving the analysis needed to quantify the requirements for major theater wars, the Pentagon also must come to grips with the real requirements for constabulary missions. The 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review rightly acknowledged that these missions, which it dubbed “smaller-scale contingencies,” or SSCs, would be the frequent and unavoidable diet for U.S. armed forces for many years to come: “Based on recent experience and intelligence projections, the demand for SSC operations is expected to remain high over the next 15 to 20 years,”
the review concluded. Yet, at the same time, the QDR failed to allocate any forces to these missions, continuing the fiction that, for force planning purposes, constabulary missions could be considered “lesser included cases” of major theater war requirements. “U.S. forces must also be able to withdraw from SSC operations, reconstitute, and then deploy to a major theater war in accordance with required timelines,” the review argued.
The shortcomings of this approach were underscored by the experience of Operation Allied Force in the Balkans. Precisely because the forces engaged there would not have been able to withdraw, reconstitute and redeploy to another operation – and because the operation consumed such a large part of overall Air Force aircraft – the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that the United States was running “unacceptable” risk in the event of war elsewhere. Thus, facing up to the realities of multiple constabulary missions will require a permanent allocation of U.S. armed forces.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 11
Nor can the problem be solved by simply withdrawing from current constabulary missions or by vowing to avoid them in the future. Indeed, withdrawing from today’s ongoing missions would be problematic. Although the no-fly-zone air operations over northern and southern Iraq have continued without pause for almost a decade, they remain an essential element in U.S. strategy and force posture in the Persian Gulf region. Ending these operations would hand Saddam Hussein an important victory, something any American leader would be loath to do. Likewise, withdrawing from the Balkans would place American leadership in Europe – indeed, the viability of NATO – in question. While none of these operations involves a mortal threat, they do engage U.S. national security interests directly, as well as engaging American moral interests.
Further, these constabulary missions are far more complex and likely to generate violence than traditional “peacekeeping”
missions. For one, they demand American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations, as the failure of the UN mission in the Balkans and the relative success of NATO operations there attests.
Nor can the United States assume a UN-like stance of neutrality; the preponderance of American power is so great and its global interests so wide that it cannot pretend to be indifferent to the political outcome in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf or even when it deploys forces in Africa. Finally, these missions demand forces basically configured for combat. While they also demand personnel with special language, logistics and other support skills, the first order of business in missions such as in the Balkans is to establish security, stability and order.
American troops, in particular, must be regarded as part of an overwhelmingly powerful force.
With a decade’s worth of experience both of the requirements for current constabulary missions and with the chaotic political environment of the post-Cold War era, the Defense Department is more than able to conduct a useful assessment to quantify the overall needs for forces engaged in constabulary duties. While part of the solution lies in repositioning existing forces, there is no escaping the conclusion that these new missions, unforeseen when the defense drawdown began a decade ago, require an increase in overall personnel strength and U.S. force structure.
Transformation Forces The fourth element in American force posture – and certainly the one which holds the key to any longer-term hopes to extend the current Pax Americana – is the mission to transform U.S. military forces to meet new geopolitical and technological challenges. While the prime directive for transformation will be to design and deploy a global missile defense system, the effects of information and other advanced technologies promise to revolutionize the nature of conventional armed forces. Moreover, the need to create weapons systems optimized for operations in the Pacific theater will create requirements quite distinct from the current generation of systems designed for warfare on the European continent and those new systems like the F-22 fighter that also were developed to meet late-Cold-War needs.
Although the basic concept for a system of global missile defenses capable of defending the United States and its allies against the threat of smaller and simpler ballistic missiles has been well understood since the late 1980s, a decade has been squandered in developing the requisite technologies. In fact, work on the key elements of such a system, especially those that would operate in space, has either been so slowed or halted completely, so that the process of deploying robust missile defenses remains a long-term project. If for no other reason, the mission to create such a missile defense system should be considered a matter of military transformation.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 12
For the United States to retain the technological and tactical advantages it now enjoys, the transformation effort must be considered as pressing a military mission as preparing for today’s theater wars.
As will be argued more fully below, effective ballistic missile defenses will be the central element in the exercise of American power and the projection of U.S. military forces abroad. Without it, weak states operating small arsenals of crude ballistic missiles, armed with basic nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction, will be a in a strong position to deter the United States from using conventional force, no matter the technological or other advantages we may enjoy. Even if such enemies are merely able to threaten American allies rather than the United States homeland itself, America’s ability to project power will be deeply compromised.
Alas, neither Administration strategists nor Pentagon force planners seem to have grasped this elemental point; certainly, efforts to fund, design and develop an effective system of missile defenses do not reflect any sense of urgency.
Nonetheless, the first task in transforming U.S. military to meet the technological and strategic realities of a new century is to create such a system.
Creating a system of global missile defenses is but the first task of transformation; the need to reshape U.S. conventional forces is almost as pressing.
For, although American armed forces possess capabilities and enjoy advantages that far surpass those of even our richest and closest allies, let alone our declared and potential enemies, the combination of technological and strategic change that marks the new century places these advantages at risk. Today’s U.S. conventional forces are masters of a mature paradigm of warfare, marked by the dominance of armored vehicles, aircraft carriers and, especially, manned tactical aircraft, that is beginning to be overtaken by a new paradigm, marked by long-range precision strikes and the proliferation of missile technologies. Ironically, it has been the United States that has pioneered this new form of high-technology conventional warfare: it was suggested by the 1991 Gulf War and has been revealed more fully by the operations of the past decade. Even the “Allied Force” air war for Kosovo showed a distorted version of the emerging paradigm of warfare.
Yet even these pioneering capabilities are the residue of investments first made in the mid- and late 1980s; over the past decade the pace of innovation within the Pentagon has slowed measurably. In part, this is due to reduced defense budgets, the overwhelming dominance of U.S. forces today, and the multiplicity of constabulary missions. And without the driving challenge of the Soviet military threat, efforts at innovation have lacked urgency.
Nonetheless, a variety of new potential challenges can be clearly foreseen. The Chinese military, in particular, seeks to exploit the revolution in military affairs to offset American advantages in naval and air power, for example. If the United States is to retain the technological and tactical advantages it now enjoys in large-scale conventional conflicts, the effort at transformation must be considered as pressing a mission as preparing for today’s potential theater wars or constabulary missions – indeed, it must receive a significant, separate allocation of forces and budgetary resources over the next two decades.
In addition, the process of transformation must proceed from an appreciation of American strategy and political goals.
For example, as the leader of a global
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 13
network of alliances and strategic partnerships, U.S. armed forces cannot retreat into a “Fortress America.” Thus, while long-range precision strikes will certainly play an increasingly large role in U.S. military operations, American forces must remain deployed abroad, in large numbers. To remain as the leader of a variety of coalitions, the United States must partake in the risks its allies face; security guarantees that depend solely upon power projected from the continental United States will inevitably become discounted.
Moreover, the process of transformation should proceed in a spirit of competition among the services and between service and joint approaches. Inevitably, new technologies may create the need for entirely new military organizations; this report will argue below that the emergence of space as a key theater of war suggests forcefully that, in time, it may be wise to create a separate “space service.” Thus far, the Defense Department has attempted to take a prematurely joint approach to transformation. While it is certain that new technologies will allow for the closer combination of traditional service capabilities, it is too early in the process of transformation to choke off what should be the healthy and competitive face of “interservice rivalry.” Because the separate services are the military institutions most attuned to providing forces designed to carry out the specific missions required by U.S. strategy, they are in fact best equipped to become the engines of transformation and change within the context of enduring mission requirements.
Finally, it must be remembered that the process of transformation is indeed a process: even the most vivid view of the armed forces of the future must be grounded in an understanding of today’s forces. In general terms, it seems likely that the process of transformation will take several decades and that U.S. forces will continue to operate many, if not most, of today’s weapons systems for a decade or more.
Thus, it can be foreseen that the process of transformation will in fact be a two-stage process: first of transition, then of more thoroughgoing transformation. The breakpoint will come when a preponderance of new weapons systems begins to enter service, perhaps when, for example, unmanned aerial vehicles begin to be as numerous as manned aircraft. In this regard, the Pentagon should be very wary of making large investments in new programs – tanks, planes, aircraft carriers, for example – that would commit U.S. forces to current paradigms of warfare for many decades to come.
In conclusion, it should be clear that these four essential missions for maintaining American military preeminence are quite separate and distinct from one another – none should be considered a “lesser included case” of another, even though they are closely related and may, in some cases, require similar sorts of forces. Conversely, the failure to provide sufficient forces to execute these four missions must result in problems for American strategy. The failure to build missile defenses will put America and her allies at grave risk and compromise the exercise of American power abroad.
Conventional forces that are insufficient to fight multiple theater wars simultaneously cannot protect American global interests and allies. Neglect or withdrawal from constabulary missions will increase the likelihood of larger wars breaking out and encourage petty tyrants to defy American interests and ideals. And the failure to prepare for tomorrow’s challenges will ensure that the current Pax Americana comes to an early end.
.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 14
Guarding the American security perimeter today – and tomorrow – will require changes in U.S. deployments and installations overseas.
III
REPOSITIONING TODAY’S FORCE
Despite the centrality of major theater wars in conventional-force planning, it has become painfully obvious that U.S. forces have other vital roles to play in building an enduring American peace. The presence of American forces in critical regions around the world is the visible expression of the extent of America’s status as a superpower and as the guarantor of liberty, peace and stability. Our role in shaping the peacetime security environment is an essential one, not to be renounced without great cost: it will be difficult, if not impossible, to sustain the role of global guarantor without a substantial overseas presence. Our allies, for whom regional problems are vital security interests, will come to doubt our willingness to defend their interests if U.S. forces withdraw into a Fortress America. Equally important, our worldwide web of alliances provides the most effective and efficient means for exercising American global leadership; the benefits far outweigh the burdens. Whether established in permanent bases or on rotational deployments, the operations of U.S. and allied forces abroad provide the first line of defense of what may be described as the “American security perimeter.”
Since the collapse of the Soviet empire, this perimeter has expanded slowly but inexorably. In Europe, NATO has expanded, admitting three new members and acquiring a larger number of “adjunct”
members through the Partnership for Peace program. Tens of thousands of U.S, NATO and allied troops are on patrol in the Balkans, and have fought a number of significant actions there; in effect, the region is on the road to becoming a NATO protectorate. In the Persian Gulf region, the presence of American forces, along with British and French units, has become a semipermanent fact of life. Though the immediate mission of those forces is to enforce the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, they represent the long-term commitment of the United States and its major allies to a region of vital importance.
Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein. In East Asia, the pattern of U.S. military operations is shifting to the south: in recent years, significant naval forces have been sent to the region around Taiwan in response to Chinese provocation, and now a contingent of U.S. troops is supporting the Australianled mission to East Timor. Across the globe, the trend is for a larger U.S. security perimeter, bringing with it new kinds of missions.
The placement of U.S. bases has yet to reflect these realities – if anything, the
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 15
worldwide archipelago of U.S. military installations has contracted as the perimeter of U.S. security interests has expanded.
American armed forces far from ideally positioned to respond to the needs of the times, but the Pentagon remains tied to levels of forward-deployed forces that bear little relationship to military capabilities or realities. The air war in Kosovo provides a vivid example: during Operation Allied Force, U.S. and NATO warplanes were spread out across the continent of Europe and even into Asiatic Turkey, forced into a widely dispersed and very complex pattern of operations – requiring extensive refueling efforts and limiting the campaign itself – by a lack of adequate air bases in southeastern Europe. The network of American overseas installations and deployments requires reconfiguration. Likewise, the structure of U.S. forces needs to be reconsidered in light of the changing mission of the American military. Overall U.S. military force structure must be rationalized to accommodate the fact that the presence of these forces in far-flung outposts or on patrol overseas may be as important as their theaterwarfighting missions, especially in Europe.
The requirements of Balkans stabilization, NATO expansion (including Partnership for Peace) and other missions within the theater render it unrealistic to expect U.S. forces in Europe to be readily available for other crises, as formal Pentagon planning presumes. The continuing challenges from Iraq also make it unwise to draw down forces in the Gulf dramatically. Securing the American perimeter today – and tomorrow – will necessitate shifts in U.S. overseas operations.
American armed forces stationed abroad and on rotational deployments around the world should be considered as the first line of American defenses, providing reconnaissance and security against the prospect of larger crises and conducting stability operations to prevent their outbreak. These forces need to be among the most ready, with finely honed warfighting skills – and only forces configured for combat indicate the true American commitment to our allies and their security interests – but they also need to be highly versatile and mobile with a broad range of capabilities; they are the cavalry on the new American frontier. In the event of a large-scale war, they must be able to shape the battlefield while reinforcing forces based primarily in the United States arrive to apply decisive blows to the enemy. Not only must they be repositioned to reflect the shifting strategic landscape, they also must be reorganized and restructured to reflect their new missions and to integrate new technologies.
Europe
At the end of the Cold War, the United States maintained more than 300,000 troops in Europe, including two Army corps and 13 Air Force wings plus a variety of independent sub-units, primarily based in Germany.
The central plain of Germany was the central theater of the Cold War and, short of an all-out nuclear exchange, a Soviet armored invasion of western Europe the principal threat faced by the United States and its NATO allies. Today Germany is unified, Poland and the Czech Republic members of NATO, and the Russian army has retreated to the gates of Moscow while becoming primarily engaged in the Caucasus and to the south more generally.
Though northern and central Europe are arguably more stable now than at any time in history, the majority of American forces in Europe are still based in the north, including a theater army and a corps of two heavy divisions in Germany and just five Air Force wings, plus a handful of other, smaller units.
But while northern and central Europe have remained extraordinarily stable, and the eastern Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic have become reintegrated into the mainstream of European political, economic and cultural life, the situation in southeastern Europe has been a tumultuous one.
The Balkans, and southeastern Europe more
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 16
The continuing deployment of forces in the Balkans reflects a U.S. commitment to the region’s security. By refusing to treat these deployments as a shift of the permanent American presence in Europe, the Clinton Administration has increased the burden on the armed services exponentially.
generally, present the major hurdle toward the creation of a Europe “whole and free”
from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The delay in bringing security and stability to southeastern Europe has not only prevented the consolidation of the victory in the Cold War, it has created a zone of violence and conflict and introduced uncertainty about America’s role in Europe.
At the same time, the continuing deployment of forces in the Balkans reflects what is in fact a long-term American commitment to the security of the region.
But by refusing to treat these deployments as an expansion – or shift – of the permanent American presence in Europe, reflecting an enduring interest, the Clinton Administration has increased the burden on the armed services exponentially. Rather than recognizing the need to reposition and reconfigure U.S. forces in Europe away from the north to the southeast, current policy has been to rotate units in and out of the Balkans, destroying their readiness to perform other missions and tying up an increasingly large slice of a significantly reduced force.
Despite the shifting focus of conflict in Europe, a requirement to station U.S. forces in northern and central Europe remains. The region is stable, but a continued American presence helps to assure the major European powers, especially Germany, that the United States retains its longstanding security interest in the continent. This is especially important in light of the nascent European moves toward an independent defense “identity” and policy; it is important that NATO not be replaced by the European Union, leaving the United States without a voice in European security affairs. In addition, many of the current installations and facilities provide critical infrastructure for supporting U.S. forces throughout Europe and for reinforcement in the event of a crisis. From airbases in England and Germany to headquarters and Army units in Belgium and Germany, much of the current network of U.S. bases in northern and central retains its relevance today as in the Cold War.
However, changes should be made to reflect the larger shift in European security needs. U.S. Army Europe should be transformed from a single corps of two heavy divisions and support units into versatile, combined-arms brigade-sized units capable of independent action and movement over operational distances. U.S. Air Force units in Europe need to undergo a similar reorientation. The current infrastructure in England and Germany should be retained. The NATO air base at Aviano, Italy, long the primary location for air operations over the Balkans, needs to be substantially improved. As with ground forces, serious consideration should be given to establishing a permanent and modern NATO and U.S. airfield in Hungary for support to central and southern Europe. In Turkey, Incirlik Air Base, home of Operation Northern Watch, also needs to be expanded, improved and perhaps supplemented with a new base in eastern Turkey.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 17
Almost a decade after the end of the Gulf War, no-fly-zone operations continue over northern and southern Iraq.
Although U.S. Navy and Marine forces generally operate on a regular cycle of deployments to European waters, they rely on a network of permanent bases in the region, especially in the Mediterranean.
These should be retained, and consideration given to establishing a more robust presence in the Black Sea. As NATO expands and the pattern of U.S. military operations in Europe continues to shift to the south and east, U.S. naval presence in the Black Sea is sure to increase. However, as will be discussed in detail below, this presence should be based less frequently on full-scale carrier battle groups.
Persian Gulf
In the decade since the end of the Cold War, the Persian Gulf and the surrounding region has witnessed a geometric increase in the presence of U.S. armed forces, peaking above 500,000 troops during Operation Desert Storm, but rarely falling below 20,000 in the intervening years. In Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other neighboring states roughly 5,000 airmen and a large and varied fleet of Air Force aircraft patrol the skies of Operation Southern Watch, often complemented by Navy aircraft from carriers in the Gulf and, during the strikes reacting to Saddam Hussein’s periodic provocations, cruise missiles from Navy surface vessels and submarines. Flights from Turkey under Northern Watch also involve substantial forces, and indeed more often result in combat actions.
After eight years of no-fly-zone operations, there is little reason to anticipate that the U.S. air presence in the region should diminish significantly as long as Saddam Hussein remains in power.
Although Saudi domestic sensibilities demand that the forces based in the Kingdom nominally remain rotational forces, it has become apparent that this is now a semi-permanent mission. From an American perspective, the value of such bases would endure even should Saddam pass from the scene. Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region.
In addition to the aircraft enforcing the no-fly zone, the United States now also retains what amounts to a near-permanent land force presence in Kuwait. A substantial heavy task force with almost the strength of a brigade rotates four times a year on average for maneuvers and joint training with the Kuwaiti army, with the result that commanders now believe that, in conjunction with the Southern Watch fleet, Kuwait itself is strongly defended against any Iraqi attack. With a minor increase in strength, more permanent basing arrangements, and continued no-fly and “nodrive”
zone enforcement, the danger of a repeat short-warning Iraqi invasion as in 1990 would be significantly reduced.
With the rationalization of ground-based U.S. air forces in the region, the demand for carrier presence in the region can be relaxed.
As recent strikes against Iraq demonstrate, the preferred weapon for punitive raids is
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 18
the cruise missile, supplemented by stealthy strike aircraft and longer-range Air Force strike aircraft. Carrier aircraft are most useful in sustaining a campaign begun with missiles and stealth strike aircraft, indicating that a surface action group capable of launching several hundred cruise missiles is the most valuable naval presence in the Gulf. With a substantial permanent Army ground presence in Kuwait, the demands for Marine presence in the Gulf could be scaled back as well.
East Asia
Current U.S. force planning calls for the stationing of approximately 100,000 U.S. troops in Asia, but this level reflects Pentagon inertia and the legacy of the Cold War more than serious thinking about current strategic requirements or defense needs. The prospect is that East Asia will become an increasingly important region, marked by the rise of Chinese power, while U.S. forces may decline in number.
Conventional wisdom has it that the 37,000-man U.S. garrison in South Korea is merely there to protect against the possibility of an invasion from the North. This remains the garrison’s central mission, but these are now the only U.S. forces based permanently on the Asian continent. They will still have a vital role to play in U.S. security strategy in the event of Korean unification and with the rise of Chinese military power. While Korea unification might call for the reduction in American presence on the peninsula and a transformation of U.S force posture in Korea, the changes would really reflect a change in their mission – and changing technological realities – not the termination of their mission. Moreover, in any realistic postunification scenario, U.S. forces are likely to have some role in stability operations in North Korea. It is premature to speculate on the precise size and composition of a postunification U.S. presence in Korea, but it is not too early to recognize that the presence of American forces in Korea serves a larger and longer-range strategic purpose. For the present, any reduction in capabilities of the current U.S. garrison on the peninsula would be unwise. If anything, there is a need to bolster them, especially with respect to their ability to defend against missile attacks and to limit the effects of North Korea’s massive artillery capability. In time, or with unification, the structure of these units will change and their manpower levels fluctuate, but U.S. presence in this corner of Asia should continue.
A similar rationale argues in favor of retaining substantial forces in Japan. In recent years, the stationing of large forces in Okinawa has become increasingly controversial in Japanese domestic politics, and while efforts to accommodate local sensibilities are warranted, it is essential to retain the capabilities U.S. forces in Okinawa represent. If the United States is to remain the guarantor of security in Northeast Asia, and to hold together a de facto alliance whose other main pillars are Korea and Japan maintaining forward-based U.S. forces is essential.
In Southeast Asia, American forces are too sparse to adequately address rising security requirements. Since its withdrawal from the Philippines in 1992, the United States has not had a significant permanent military presence in Southeast Asia. Nor can U.S. forces in Northeast Asia easily operate in or rapidly deploy to Southeast Asia – and certainly not without placing their commitments in Korea at risk. Except for routine patrols by naval and Marine forces, the security of this strategically significant and increasingly tumultuous region has suffered from American neglect.
As the crisis in East Timor demonstrated, even the strongest of our allies in the region – from Japan to South Korea to Australia – possess limited military capabilities and little ability to project their forces rapidly in a crisis or sustain them over time. At the same time, the East Timor crisis and the larger question of political reform in
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 19
In Southeast Asia, American forces are too sparse to address rising security requirements adequately.
Indonesia and Malaysia highlight the volatility of the region. Finally, Southeast Asia region has long been an area of great interest to China, which clearly seeks to regain influence in the region. In recent years, China has gradually increased its presence and operations in the region.
Raising U.S. military strength in East Asia is the key to coping with the rise of China to great-power status. For this to proceed peacefully, U.S. armed forces must retain their military preeminence and thereby reassure our regional allies. In Northeast Asia, the United States must maintain and tighten its ties with the Republic of Korea and Japan. In Southeast Asia, only the United States can reach out to regional powers like Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia and others. This will be a difficult task requiring sensitivity to diverse national sentiments, but it is made all the more compelling by the emergence of new democratic governments in the region. By guaranteeing the security of our current allies and newly democratic nations in East Asia, the United States can help ensure that the rise of China is a peaceful one. Indeed, in time, American and allied power in the region may provide a spur to the process of democratization inside China itself.
In sum, it is time to increase the presence of American forces in Southeast Asia.
Control of key sea lines of communication, ensuring access to rapidly growing economies, maintaining regional stability while fostering closer ties to fledgling democracies and, perhaps most important, supporting the nascent trends toward political liberty are all enduring security interests for America. No U.S. strategy can constrain a Chinese challenge to American regional leadership if our security guarantees to Southeast Asia are intermittent and U.S. military presence a periodic affair. For this reason, an increased naval presence in Southeast Asia, while necessary, will not be sufficient; as in the Balkans, relying solely on allied forces or the rotation of U.S. forces in stability operations not only increases the stress on those forces but undercuts the political goals of such missions. For operational as well as political reasons, stationing rapidly mobile U.S. ground and air forces in the region will be required.
Moreover, a return to Southeast Asia will add impetus to the slow process of alliance-building now afoot in the region. It is conventional wisdom that the nations of Southeast Asia are resistant to a NATO-like regional alliance, but the regional response to the East Timor crisis – including that of the new Indonesian government – has been encouraging. Indeed, forces from the Philippines have replaced those from Australia as the lead element in the UN peacekeeping mission there. And certainly efforts through the Asian Regional Forum suggest a trend to closer regional coordination that might develop into a more permanent, alliance-like arrangement. In this process, the United States has the key role to play. A heightened U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia would be a strong spur to regional security cooperation, providing the core around which a de facto coalition could jell.
Deployment Bases
As a supplement to forces stationed abroad under long-term basing arrangements, the United States should seek to establish a network of “deployment bases” or “forward operating bases” to increase the reach of current and future forces. Not only will such an approach improve the ability to project force to outlying regions, it will help circumvent the political, practical and financial constraints on expanding the network of American bases overseas.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 20
It would be wise to reduce the frequency of carrier presence in the Mediterranean and the Gulf while increasing U.S. Navy presence in the Pacific.
These deployment or forward operating bases can range from relatively modest agreements with other nations as well as modest improvements to existing facilities and bases. Prepositioned materiel also would speed the initial deployment and improve the sustainability of U.S. forces when deployed for training, joint training with the host nation, or operations in time of crisis.
Costs for these improvements can be shared with the host nation and be offset as part of U.S. foreign security assistance, and would help reduce the requirement for U.S. forces to deploy to “bare bones” facilities. Such installations would be a “force multiplier” in power projection operations, as well as help solidify political and security ties with host nations.
Currently, U.S. Southern Command, the Pentagon’s regional command for Latin America, is moving to implement a plan for “forward operating locations” to make up for the loss of Howard Air Force Base in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Panama and the return of the Canal Zone. Indeed, sustaining effective counterdrug air operations will be difficult after the loss of Howard until arrangements for the new locations are in place. To achieve full coverage of the region for counterdrug operations, the command plans to utilize airfields ranging from Puerto Rico to Ecuador.
In addition to securing agreements that permit adequate access for U.S. forces to airfields, the new locations must be capable of 24-hour, all-weather operations; have adequate air traffic control; have runways of at least 8000 feet that are capable of bearing heavy cargo aircraft; have modern refueling and emergency services; ramp space to park several AWACS-size planes and meet a variety of other requirements, including safe quarters and offices for American personnel.
Yet the command believes that for a relatively small cost – perhaps $120 million for the first two of three planned bases – and with minimal permanent manning it can offset the loss of a strategic asset like Howard.
A recent study done for the Air Force indicates that a worldwide network of forward operating bases – perhaps more sophisticated and suited for combat operations than the counterdrug locations planned by SOUTHCOM – might cost $5 billion to $10 billion through 2010. The study speculates that some of the cost might be paid for by host nations anxious to cement ties with the United States, or, in Europe, be considered as common NATO assets and charged to the NATO common fund.
While it should be a clear U.S. policy that such bases are intended as a supplement to the current overseas base structure, they could also be seen as a precursor to an expanded structure. This might be attractive to skittish allies – as in the Persian Gulf region, where a similar system is in operation – for whom close ties with America provokes domestic political controversy. It would also increase the effectiveness of current U.S. forces in a huge region like Southeast Asia, supplementing naval operations in the region. Such a network also would greatly increase U.S. operational flexibility in times of conflict.
Rotational Naval Forces
The size of today’s Navy and Marine Corps is driven primarily by the demands of current rotation policy; the requirement for 11-carrier Navy is a reflection of the perceived need to keep, on average, about
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 21
three carriers deployed at any one time. But because the carrier based in Japan is considered “deployed” even when in port and not at sea, the real ratio of total ships to ships at sea is closer to five- or six-to-one. Indeed, according to the Quadrennial Defense Review analysis, the requirements for Navy forces under “presence” missions exceeds the two-war requirement for Navy forces by about 20 percent.
Current rotation plans call for a continuous battle group presence in Northeast Asia and close to continuous presence in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea.
However, significant changes in Navy carrier presence and rotation patterns are called for. Given the ability to station landbased forces in Europe and the Gulf, and the size and nature of the East Asia theater, it would be wise to reduce the frequency of carrier presence in the Mediterranean and the Gulf while increasing U.S. Navy presence in the Pacific. Further, it is preferable, for strategic and operational reasons, to create a second major home port for a carrier battle group in the southern Pacific, perhaps in Australia or the Philippines. Generally speaking, the emphasis of Navy operations, and carrier operations in particular, should be increasingly weighted toward the western Pacific.
Marine deployments would follow suit.
Secondarily, the Navy should begin to consider other ways of meeting its vital presence missions than with carrier battle groups. As cruise missiles increasingly become the Navy’s first-strike weapon of choice, the value of cruise missile platforms as a symbol of American might around the world are coming to surpass the deterrent value of the carrier. Unfortunately, during the course of the post-Cold-War drawdown, the Navy has divested itself of relatively more surface combatants and submarines than aircraft carriers. Though this makes sense in terms of carrier operations – Aegisequipped cruisers and destroyers have far greater capabilities and range than previous generations of ships, for example – this now limits the Navy’s ability to transition to new ways of conducting both its presence and potential wartime missions.
Moreover, as the Navy introduces new classes of ships, its manpower requirements – one of the important factors in determining the length of deployments and thus overall Navy rotational policy – will be reduced.
The planned DD-21 destroyer will cut crew size from 300 to 100. Reduced crew size, as well as improved overall ship performance, will increase the opportunities to rotate crews while keeping ships deployed; the complexity of crew operations involving 100 sailors and officers is far less than, for example, the 6,000-man crew of a carrier plus its air wing. In sum, new capabilities will open up new ways of conducting missions that will allow for increased naval presence at a lower cost.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 22
Elements of U.S. Army Europe should be redeployed to Southeast Europe, while a permanent unit should be based in the Persian Gulf region.
IV
REBUILDING TODAY’S ARMED SERVICES
Executing the variety of missions outlined above depends upon the capabilities of the U.S. armed services. For the past decade, the health of the armed services has steadily declined. Not merely have their budgets been dramatically reduced, their force structures cut and their personnel strength sapped, modernization programs starved and efforts at transformation strangled, but the quality of military life, essential for preserving a volunteer force, has been degraded. From barracks to headquarters to maintenance bay, the services’ infrastructure has suffered from neglect. The quality of military housing, especially abroad, ill becomes a great nation.
The other sinews of a strong service, particularly including the military education and training systems, have been disproportionately and shortsightedly reduced.
Shortages of manpower result in soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines spending increased amounts of time on base maintenance – mowing grass, repairing roofs, “painting rocks.” Most disappointing of all, military culture and the confidence of service members in their senior leaders is suffering. As several recent studies and surveys have demonstrated, civil-military relations in contemporary America are increasingly tense.
Army: To ‘Complete’ Europe And Defend the Persian Gulf Of all the armed services, the Army has been most profoundly changed by the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. The Army’s active-duty strength has been reduced by 40 percent and its European garrison by three quarters. At the end of the Cold War, the Army budget was 50 percent higher than it is this year; its procurement spending almost 70 percent higher.
At the same time, the Army’s role in post-Cold-War military operations remains the measure of American geopolitical commitment. In the 1991 Gulf War, the limits of Bush Administration policy were revealed by the reluctance to engage in land combat and the limit on ground operations within the Kuwait theater.
In the Balkans, relatively short air campaigns have been followed by extended ground operations; even the 78 days of Operation Allied Force pale in comparison to the longterm effort to stabilize Kosovo. In short, the value of land power continues to appeal to a global superpower, whose security interests rest upon maintaining and expanding a world-wide system of alliances as well as on the ability to win wars. While maintaining its combat role, the U.S. Army has acquired new missions in the past decade – most immediately, missions associated with completing the task of creating a Europe “whole and free” and defending American interests in the Persian Gulf and Middle East.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 23
These new missions will require the continued stationing of U.S. Army units abroad. Although these units should be reconfigured and repositioned to reflect current realities, their value as a representation of America’s role as the prime guarantor of security is as great as their immediate war-fighting capabilities.
Indeed, the greatest problem confronting the Army today is providing sufficient forces for both these vital missions; the Army is simply too small to do both well.
These broad missions will continue to justify the requirement for a large active U.S. Army. The Army’s increasing use of reserve component forces for these constabulary missions breaks the implied compact with reservists that their role is to serve as a hedge against a genuine military emergency. As long as the U.S. garrisons in the Balkans, for example, require large numbers of linguists, military police, civil affairs and other specialists, the active-duty Army must boost its ranks of soldiers with these skills. Likewise, as high-intensity combat changes, the Army must find new ways to recruit and retain soldiers with hightechnology skills, perhaps creating partnerships with industry for extremely skilled reservists, or considering some skills as justifying a warrant-officer, rather than an enlisted, rank structure. In particular, the Army should:
- Be restored in active-duty strength and structure to meet the requirements of its current missions. Overall active strength should rise to approximately 525,000 soldiers from the current strength of 475,000. Much of this increase should bolster the overdeployed and under-manned units that provide combat support and combat service support, such as military intelligence, military police, and other similar units.
- Undertake selective modernization efforts, primarily to increase its tactical and operational mobility and increase the effectiveness of current combat systems through “digitization”
– the process of creating tactical information networks. The Army should accelerate its plans to purchase medium-weight vehicles, acquire the Comanche helicopter and the HIMARS rocket-artillery system; likewise, the heavy Crusader artillery system, though a highly capable howitzer, is an unwise investment given the Army’s current capabilities and future needs, and should be canceled.
- Improve the combat readiness of current units by increasing personnel strength and revitalizing combat training.
- Make efforts to improve the quality of soldier life to sustain the current “middle class,” professional Army.
- Be repositioned and reconfigured in light of current strategic realities: elements of U.S. Army Europe should be redeployed to Southeast Europe, while a permanent unit should be based in the Persian Gulf region; simultaneously, forward-deployed Army units should be reconfigured to be better capable of independent operations that include ongoing constabulary missions as well as the initial phases of combat.
- Reduce the strength of the Army National Guard and Army Reserve, yet recognize that these components are meant to provide a hedge against a genuine, large-scale, unanticipated military emergency; the continuing reliance on large numbers of reservists for constabulary missions is inappropriate and short-sighted.
- Have its budget increased from the current level of $70 billion annually to $90 to $95 billion per year.
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 24
Reimer
The Current State of the Army Measuring by its ability to perform any of the missions outlined above – overseas presence, fighting major theater wars, transforming for the future – the Army today is ill prepared. The most immediate problem is the decline in current readiness.
Until the spring of 1998, the Army had managed to contain the worst effects of frequent deployments, keeping its so-called “first-to-fight” units ready to react to a crisis that threatened to become a major theater war. But now, as recently retired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer explained to Congress: [C]ommanders Army-wide report that they are reducing the frequency, scope, and duration of their exercises….
Additionally, commanders are not always able to make training as realistic and demanding as they would like. In some cases, commands are not able to afford the optimum mix of simulations to live-fire training events, resulting in less-experienced staffs.
Several commands report that they are unable to afford the participation of their aviation units in Combat Training Center rotations. Overall, affordable training compromises are lowering the training proficiency bar and resulting in inexperience….Already, readiness at the battalion level is starting to decline – a fact that is not going unnoticed at our Combat Training Centers.
In recent years, both the quality and quantity of such training has diminished.
Typically, in prior years, a rotational unit might have eight battalion-level field training “battles” prior to its Fort Irwin rotation, and another eight while at the training center. Today, heavy forces almost never conduct full battalion field exercises, and now are lucky to get more than six at the National Training Center.
Like the other services, the Army continues to be plagued by low levels of manning in critical combat and maintenance specialties. Army leaders frankly admit that they have too few soldiers to man their current force structure, and shortages of NCOs and officers are increasingly common.
For example, in Fiscal Year 1997, the Army had only 67 percent to 88 percent of its needs in the four maintenance specialties for its tanks and mechanized infantry vehicles. In the officer ranks, there are significant shortfalls in the captain and major grades. The result of these shortages in the field is that junior officers and NCOs are being asked to assume the duties of the next higher grade; the “ultimate effect,”
reported Gen. Reimer, “is a reduction in experience, particularly at the…‘tip of the spear.’”
The Army’s ability to meet its majorwar requirements, particularly on the timetables demanded by the war plans of the theater commanders-in-chief, is uncertain at best. Although on paper the Army can meet these requirements, the true state of affairs is more complex. The major-theater-war review conducted for the QDR assumed that each unit would arrive on the battlefield fully trained and ready, but manpower and training shortages across the Army make that a doubtful proposition, at least without delays in deployment. Even could the immediate manpower shortages be remedied, any attempt to improve training – as was done even in the run-up to Operation Desert Storm – would prove to be a significant bottleneck. The Army’s maneuver training centers are not able to increase capacity sufficiently or rapidly enough.
Under the current two-war metric, highintensity combat is envisioned as a “comeas- you-are” affair, and the Army today is significantly less well prepared for such wars than it was in 1990.
Army Forces Based In the United States The primary missions of Army units based in the United States are to rapidly
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 25
The Army needs to restore units based in the United States – those needed in the event of a major theater war – to high states of readiness.
reinforce forward-deployed units in times of crisis or combat and to provide units capable of reacting to unanticipated contingencies.
In addition, the service must continue to raise, train and equip all Army forces, including those of the Army National Guard and Army Reserve. While the reforming the posture of its forces abroad is perhaps the largest task facing the Army for the immediate future, it is inevitably intertwined with the need to rebuild and reconfigure the Army at home.
The need to respond with decisive force in the event of a major theater war in Europe, the Persian Gulf or East Asia will remain the principal factor in determining Army force structure for U.S.-based units.
However one judges the likelihood of such wars occurring, it is essential to retain sufficient capabilities to bring them to a satisfactory conclusion, including the possibility of a decisive victory that results in long-term political or regime change. The current stateside active Army force structure – 23 maneuver brigades – is barely adequate to meet the potential demands. Not only are these units few in number, but their combat readiness has been allowed to slip dangerously over recent years. Manning levels have dropped and training opportunities have been diminished and degraded. These units need to be returned to high states of readiness and, most importantly, must regain their focus on their combat missions.
Because the divisional structure still remains an economical and effective organization in large-scale operations as well as an efficient administrative structure, the division should remain the basic unit for most stateside Army forces, even while the service creates new, smaller independent organizations for operations abroad. The Army is currently undergoing a redesign of the basic divisional structure, reducing the size of the basic maneuver battalion in response to the improvements that advanced technologies and the untapped capabilities of current systems permit. This is a modest but important step that will make these units more deployable, and the Army must continue to introduce similar modifications.
Moreover, Army training should continue its emphasis on combined-arms, task-force combat operations. In the continental United States, Army force structure should consist of three fully-manned, three-brigade heavy divisions; two light divisions; and two airborne divisions. In addition, the stateside Army should retain four armored cavalry regiments in its active structure, plus several experimental units devoted to transformation activities. This would total approximately 27 ground maneuver brigade-equivalents.
Yet such a force, though capable of delivering and sustaining significant combat power for initial missions, will remain inadequate to the full range of strategic tasks facing the Army. Thus, the service must increasingly rely on Guard units to execute a portion of its potential warfighting missions, not seek to foist overseas presence missions off on what should remain part-time soldiers. To allow the Army National Guard to play its essential role in fighting largescale wars, the Army must take a number of steps to ensure the readiness of Guard units.
The first is to better link the Guard to the active-duty force, providing adequate
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 26
Returning the National Guard to its traditional role would allow for a reduction in strength while lessening the strain of repeated contingency operation deployments.
resources to increase the combat effectiveness of large Guard units, perhaps to include the partial manning of the first-to-deploy Guard brigades with an active command cadre. Secondly, the Guard’s overall structure must be adjusted and the overall number of Army National Guard units – and especially Guard infantry divisions – reduced. This would not only eliminate unnecessary formations but would permit improved manning of the first-to-fight Guard units, which need to be manned at levels significantly above 100 percent personnel strength to allow for timely deployment during crises and war.
In addition, the Army needs to rationalize the missions of the Army Reserve. Without the efforts of Reservists over the past decade, the Army’s ability to conduct the large number of contingency operations it has faced would be severely compromised. Yet the effort to rationalize deployments, as discussed in the previous section, would also result in a reduction of demand for Army Reservists, particularly those with highly specialized skills. Once the missions in the Balkans, for example, are admitted to be long-term deployments, the role of Army Reserve forces should be diminished and the active Army should assume all but a very small share of the mission.
In sum, the missions of the Army’s two reserve components must be adjusted to post-Cold-War realities as must the missions of the active component. The importance of these citizen-soldiers in linking an increasingly professional force to the mainstream of American society has never been greater, and the failure to make the necessary adjustments to their mission has jeopardized those links. The Army National Guard should retain its traditional role as a hedge against the need for a larger-than-anticipated force in combat; indeed, it may play a larger role in U.S. war-planning than heretofore. It should not be used primarily to provide combat service support to active Army units engaged in current operations. A return to its traditional role would allow for a further modest strength reduction in the Army National Guard. Such a move would also lessen the strain of repeated deployments in contingency operations, which is jeopardizing the model of the part-time soldier upon which Guard is premised.
Similarly, the Army Reserve should retain its traditional role as a federal force, a supplement to the active force, but demands for individual augmentees for contingency operations reduced through improvements to active Army operations and deployments, organizations, and even added personnel strength. In the event that American forces become embroiled in two large-scale wars at once, or nearly at once, Army reserve components may provide the edge for decisive operations. Such a capability is a cornerstone of U.S. military strategy, not to be frittered away in ongoing contingency operations.
A second mission for Army units based in the United States is to respond to unanticipated contingencies. With more forward-based units deployed along an expanded American security perimeter around the globe, these unforeseen crises should be less debilitating. Units like the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions and the Army’s two light infantry divisions, as well as the small elements of the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division, that are kept on high alert, will continue to provide these needed capabilities. So will Army special operations units such as the 75th Ranger Regiment. Moreover, the creation of middle-weight, independent units will begin
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 27
the process of transforming the Army for future contingency needs. As the transformation process matures, a wider variety of Army units will be suitable for unanticipated contingency operations.
Forward-based Forces American military presence abroad draws heavily on ground forces and the Army, which is the service best suited to these long-term missions. In the post-Cold- War environment, these forward-based forces are, in essence, conducting reconnaissance and security missions. The units involved are required to maintain peace and stability in the regions they patrol, provide early warning of imminent crises, and to shape the early stages of any conflict that might occur while additional forces are deployed from the United States or elsewhere. By virtue of this mission, these units should be self-contained, combinedarms units with a wide variety of capabilities, able to operate over long distances, with sophisticated means of communication and access to high levels of U.S. intelligence. Currently, most forwardbased Army units do not meet this description.
Such requirements suggest that such units should be approximately brigade or regimental-sized formations, perhaps 5,000 strong. They will need sufficient personnel strength to be able to conduct sustained traditional infantry missions, but with the mobility to operate over extended areas.
They must have enough direct firepower to dominate their immediate tactical situation, and suitable fire support to prevent such relatively small and independent units from being overrun. However, the need for fire support need not entail large amounts of integral artillery or other forms of supporting firepower. While some artillery will prove necessary, a substantial part of the fire support should come from Army attack aviation and deeper fixed-wing interdiction. The combination of overwhelming superiority in direct-fire engagements, typified by the performance of the Bradley fighting vehicle and M1 Abrams tank in the Gulf War (and indeed, in the performance of the Marines’ Light Armored Vehicle), as well as the improved accuracy and lethality of artillery fires, plus the capabilities of U.S. strike aircraft, will provide such units with a very substantial combat capability.
These forward-based, independent units will be increasingly built around the acquisition and management of information.
This will be essential for combat operations – precise, long-range fires require accurate and timely intelligence and robust communications links – but also for stability operations. Units stationed in the Balkans, or Turkey, or in Southeast Asia, will require the ability to understand and operate in unique political-military environments, and the seemingly tactical decisions made by soldiers on the ground may have strategic consequences. While some of these needs can be fulfilled by civilians, both Americans and local nationals, units stationed on the American security frontier must have the capabilities, cohesion and personnel continuity their mission demands. Chief among them is an awareness of the security and political environment in which they are operating. Especially those forces stationed in volatile regions must have their own human intelligence collection capacity, perhaps through an attached special forces unit if not solely through an organic intelligence unit.
The technologies required to field such forces already exist and many are already in production or in the Army inventory. New force designs and the application of information technologies can give new utility to existing weaponry. However, the problem of mobility and weight becomes an even more pressing problem should ground forces be positioned in Southeast Asia.
Even forward-based forces would need to be rapidly deployed over very long distances in times of crisis, both through fast sealift and
Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century
——> Page 28
American landpower is the essential link in the chain that translates U.S. military supremacy into American geopolitical preeminence.
airlift; in short, every pound and every cubic foot must count. In designing such forces, the Army should consider more innovative approaches. One short-term approach could be to build such a unit around the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft now being built for the Marine Corps and for special operations forces. A second interim approach would be to expand the capabilities of current airmobile infantry, by adding refueling probes to existing helicopters, as on special operations aircraft. Another approach could involve the construction of truly fast sealift vessels.
In sum, it should be clear that these independent, forward-based Army units can become “change-agents” within the service, opening opportunities for transformational concepts, even as they perform vital stability operations in their regions. In addition, such units would need to train for combat operations on a regular basis, and will require new training centers as well as new garrisons in more relevant strategic locations. They will operate in a more dispersed manner reflecting new concepts of combat operations as well as the demands of current stability operations. In urban areas or in the jungles of Southeast Asia, they will operate in complex terrain that may more accurately predict future warfare. Certainly, new medium-weight or air-mobile units will provide a strong incentive to begin to transform the Army more fundamentally for the future. Not only would increased mobility and information capabilities allow for new ways of conducting operations, the lack of heavy armor would mandate new tactics, doctrines and organizations. Even among those units equipped with the current Abrams tank and Bradley fighting vehicle, the requirement for independent operations, closer ties to other services’ forces and introduction of new intelligence and communications capabilities would result in innovation. Most profoundly, such new units and concepts would give the process of transformation a purpose within the Army; soldiers would be a part of the process and take its lessons to heart, breaking down bureaucratic resistance to change.
In addition to these newer force designs for Europe, the Gulf, and elsewhere in East Asia, the Army should retain a force approximating that currently based in Korea.
In addition to headquarters units there, the U.S. ground force presence is built around the two brigades of the 2nd Infantry Division.
This unit is already a hybrid, neither a textbook heavy division nor a light division.
While retaining the divisional structure to allow for the smooth introduction of followon forces in times of crisis, the Army also should begin to redesign this unit to allow for longerrange operations.
Because of the massive amount of North Korean artillery, counterbattery artillery fires will play an important role in any war on the peninsula, suggesting that improving the rocket artillery capabilities of the U.S. division is a modest but wise investment. Likewise, increasing the aviation and attack helicopter assets of U.S. ground forces in Korea would give commanders options they do not now have. The main heavy forces of the South Korean army are well trained and equipped, but optimized for defending Seoul and the Republic of Korea as far north as possible.
In time, the 2nd Infantry Division’s two brigades might closely resemble the kind of independent, combined-arms forces needed elsewhere.
Army Modernization an