[Senate Hearing 114-527]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-527
REVISITING THE ROLES AND MISSIONS OF THE ARMED FORCES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
NOVEMBER 5, 2015
__________
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Chairman
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma JACK REED, Rhode Island
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama BILL NELSON, Florida
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri
KELLY AYOTTE, New Hampshire JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
TOM COTTON, Arkansas KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
JONI ERNST, Iowa JOE DONNELLY, Indiana
THOM TILLIS, North Carolina MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska TIM KAINE, Virginia
MIKE LEE, Utah ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
TED CRUZ, Texas
Christian D. Brose, Staff Director
Elizabeth L. King, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
november 5, 2015
Page
Revisiting the Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces............ 1
Deptula, Hon. Lieutenant General David A., USAF (Ret.), Dean, The
Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies....................... 4
McGrath, Bryan, Deputy Director, The Center for American
Seapower, The Hudson Institute, Washington, DC................. 22
O'Hanlon, Michael E., Ph.D., Co-Director, The Center for 21st
Century Security and Intelligence, The Brookings Institution,
Washington, DC................................................. 27
Martinage, Robert C., Senior Fellow, The Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments, Washington, DC.......................... 33
(iii)
REVISITING THE ROLES AND MISSIONS OF THE ARMED FORCES
----------
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2015
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:31 a.m., in
Room SD-G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator John
McCain (chairman) presiding.
Committee members present: Senators McCain, Inhofe, Ayotte,
Fischer, Cotton, Rounds, Ernst, Tillis, Sullivan, Reed, Nelson,
McCaskill, Manchin, Shaheen, Gillibrand, Blumenthal, Donnelly,
Hirono, King, and Heinrich.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN McCAIN, CHAIRMAN
Chairman McCain. Well, good morning. The committee meets
this morning to consider the roles and missions of the U.S.
Armed Forces as part of our review of our Nation's defense
organization. Our recent hearings in this series have
considered the first order question of geopolitics, strategy,
and technology. We have asked, for example, what challenges do
we face and how must our military be ready to deter, fight, and
win in war, both at present and in the future. Now we seek to
ask who should be responsible for what military missions.
We are fortunate to have a distinguished panel of experts
to help guide us. Retired General David Deptula, dean of the
Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies, Mr. Bryan McGrath of
the Center for American Seapower at the Hudson Institute, Dr.
Michael O'Hanlon, co-director of the Center for 21st Century
Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institute, and Mr.
Robert Martinage, who is a senior fellow at the Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Mr. Martinage, did I pronounce that correctly?
Mr. Martinage. Martinage.
Chairman McCain. Martinage. Please accept my apologies.
Mr. Martinage. That is fine.
Chairman McCain. I am sorry. To find out the last time this
question arose in missions was seriously deliberately and
clearly defined by senior leaders, you have to go back to March
1948. It was then in the aftermath of a World War and the
creation of what would become the Department of Defense. In an
effort to resolve confusion and quell rivalries between the
services that the first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal,
brought together the service chiefs for four days in Key West
to resolve these questions.
The resulting 14-page document, commonly known as the Key
West Agreement, defined the role of each service in achieving
the core military missions of the day. Simply put, the Navy was
tasked with fighting other navies, the Army with fighting with
other armies, and the Air Force with other air forces.
President Harry S. Truman signed the final agreement in April
of 1948. This was the last time the Commander-in-Chief formally
approved the roles and missions of the armed services.
To be sure, inter-service rivalry did not end at Key West,
and efforts have been made over the years to review roles and
missions, but many of these efforts have come to naught. The
congressionally-mandated 1995 Commission on Roles and Missions
even dismissed the questions it was asked to answer--who does
what.
The result has been far from ideal. To the extent that the
roles and missions of the armed services have evolved, they
have done so largely in ad hoc and reactive ways, driven more
by budgetary pressures than strategic direction. Far too often
this has led to duplication of effort, inadequate responses to
increasingly important missions, programs of record that
continue along despite changes in the strategic environment,
and inter-service fights over resources that give papered over
in the belief that everyone can do everything with roughly
equal shares of the pie.
There are other reasons as well why a review of roles and
missions is timely. First, while our military is still composed
of distinguished services, as it should be, it fights as one
joint force, conducting missions that span all the domains of
warfare. The Navy, for example, has a key role to play in
attacking targets on land and in the air. Air Force planes
armed with anti-ship missiles, have a vital role to play in
winning fights at sea. Army air defense batteries are
increasingly important in creating the kinds of anti-access
challenges for our roles that they seek to impose on us.
The question of who does what is even more pronounced when
budgets are tight. Take the mission of long-range precision
strike, which is essential to our ability to project power
against advanced adversaries. Aircraft carriers, long-range
bombers, and ground-based missiles and rockets all have roles
to play. But what is the proper balance between these
capabilities, especially when a carrier now costs $13 billion,
one bomber costs half a billion dollars, and individual
missiles cost millions of dollars each. What is the most
efficient allocation of roles to perform this mission?
Second, the missions themselves are changing significantly.
It has been a while since the Army mounted a large-scale
airborne assault on to contested ground or since the Marine
Corps conducted a contested amphibious landing. At the same
time, unconventional missions, such as space, special
operations, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
are more important than ever. Other missions like coastal
defense, close air support, and nuclear deterrence continue to
struggle for adequate funding and attention. Then there is a
mission like cyber, which did not even exist 20 years ago, but
is now absolutely central to our security.
There are serious questions about how to properly
prioritize new and untraditional missions. We cannot afford for
these vital functions to be orphaned within services that will
undercut and underfund them in favor of parochial priorities.
I would like to hear from our witnesses how best to
motivate the services, to give the attention to these new and
non-traditional missions that they deserve. Should certain
missions be allocated among the services? In these new domains
of warfare, such as space and cyber, should we even consider
creating new services, such as the Air Force was created seven
decades ago in recognition of the vital role of air power?
I would also be interested in our witnesses' view on the
value of competition both between and within the services.
``Service rivalry'' has become a derisive term. It is often
contrasted with service collaboration, unity of effort, and
jointness. Is that justified, or can competition of this kind
actually create the necessary incentives for excellence and
efficiency? When the services do compete, as they inevitably
will, how are those fights resolved and by whom? Do we get
clear, creative courses of action regardless of who wins and
loses or homogenized, lowest common denominator options that
cost more and deliver less?
Finally, I recognize that civilian and military leaders at
the Department of Defense [DOD] are wrestling with many of
these questions now, and that is encouraging. But they, like
their predecessors, face the challenge of how to affect
enduring change. The defense bureaucracy in the services have a
healthy track record of reverting back to their original forms
and functions once they are overseers of the moment move on.
The Key West Agreement was important because the Secretary
of Defense himself with the Service Chiefs and the Commander-
in-Chief personally directed the roles and missions assigned to
each service. Should we be asking the Commander-in-Chief,
either this one of the next one, to do the same today?
I look forward to this testimony of our witnesses.
Senator Reed?
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED
Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
I would like to join you in thanking our witnesses for their
willingness to appear today to provide their thoughts on the
roles and missions of the military services and providing for
the defense of the Nation. It is clear from your past week and
your prepared testimony for today's hearing that each of you
bring unique and valuable perspectives on this issue. Thank
you, gentlemen.
Two of our site experts that have recently come before our
committee, Shawn Brimley and Paul Scharre, wrote last year
that, ``Today's military is the product of history, not of the
missions and threats it now faces. American forces are hampered
by overlapping roles and missions, arcane organizational
structures, Cold War platforms and programs, and recruiting
practices detached from modern means. If it were starting
fresh, this is not the military the United States would build."
Now, while starting from scratch is obviously not an
option, I hope today's witnesses will offer their own thought-
provoking proposals for smart reform that would better align
the various roles and missions of our military services, reduce
redundancy where appropriate, and make our joint forces more
effective. The current and projected budget constraints facing
the Federal Government require that we week efficiencies while
at the same endeavoring to shape our military for the threats
we are most likely to face in the future.
While I suspect that all of our witnesses would support
larger budgets for all of our Military Services, I hope that
your testimony will take into account the very real budget
realities facing the Department of Defense, and offer
recommendations for prioritizing limited resources to most
effectively risk to our national security.
Some may also argue for better readiness and capability of
other parts of the government, such as the Departments of State
and Homeland Security. These departments also include important
elements of national power and security. The domestic
discretionary budget is also constraining these elements of our
national power.
The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols reforms necessarily focused on
the importance of jointness in the aftermath of several high-
profile military operations that exposed deficiencies in our
operating concepts. While these reforms were critical to
enabling today's joint force, they may have also had the
unintended consequences of blurring the lines between
traditional roles and missions assigned to the Military
Services, and allow for duplication in some capability areas as
new threats and technologies have emerged over time.
I would be especially interested in the thoughts of our
witnesses on the delineation of responsibilities in mission
areas that have arisen since the passage of Goldwater- Nichols,
most notably related to the use of cyber and unmanned aerial
vehicles. I would also say unmanned undersea vehicles.
Congress has recognized the need to continue to address the
responsibilities of the military services as new threats and
technologies arise by mandating periodic roles and mission
reviews. Unfortunately, these reviews, namely the Quadrennial
Roles and Missions Review, have largely been unsuccessful in
accomplishing their appropriateness. According to the
Government Accountability Office, these reviews fail to
``clearly identify the components within the Department that
are responsible for providing the core competencies and
capabilities needed to address each of the primary missions of
the Department of Defense, or plans for addressing any
capability gaps or unnecessary duplication.'' I hope our
witnesses today will provide any suggestions they might have
for improving the output of these efforts.
It is extremely important to take a look at all of these
issues, and I, again, commend the chairman for not only these
series of hearings, but for his intention to carry forward with
a significant review of our fundamental defense structure and
policies. With that, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
gentlemen.
Chairman McCain. I thank you, General. Welcome. Please
proceed. By the way, all witnesses' complete statements will be
made part of the record. General Deptula?
STATEMENT OF HON. LIEUTENANT GENERAL DAVID A. DEPTULA, USAF
(RET.), DEAN, THE MITCHELL INSTITUTE FOR AEROSPACE STUDIES
General Deptula. Mr. Chairman, Senator Reed, and members of
the committee, I am honored and humbled that you invited me
here today. I assure you I will do my best to keep my comments
brief, up front, and appreciate you putting an extended version
of my remarks in the record.
I will tell you all right up front that I believe if we
want to maintain our position as the world's sole super power,
we need to have the strongest Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air
Force in the world.
I am the product of a military family. My grandfather was
an immigrant and served as an Army infantryman in World War I.
My uncle was a marine at the tip of the spear in World War II,
Korea, and Vietnam. My dad served in World War II and the
Pacific as a B-29 maintenance officer. Later, he helped win the
Cold War, participating in nuclear weapons development and
testing. He is the most dedicated Air Force officer I know, and
now almost 95, he is still my inspiration, and I am honored
that he is with us today in the audience.
Chairman McCain. He is certainly welcome. Thank you, sir,
for your service.
General Deptula. World War II and the Cold War posed for my
uncle, my dad, and many others of the Greatest Generation
significant challenges. As a result of their efforts, the
United States prevailed against incredible odds. It is now up
to us to confront our own set of circumstances.
Today my son carries on a proud tradition by serving in the
military. Today's world presents him and his brothers and
sisters in arms a stark picture. The United States faces a
burgeoning set of threats around the globe, but has fewer
resources to meet them. One of the only ways to prevail is to
optimize our service roles and missions to evolve their
relationship from one of interoperability, which was an
objective of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, to one of
interdependency, the next step in the progress of our military,
and perhaps the focus of the McCain-Reed Act.
Now, getting to interdependency will require a more clearly
delineated assignment of roles and function than exist today.
As you gentleman have already noted, while updated in 2010,
they do not provide the kind of distinction among the Services
that current budgets, technologies, threats, and the strategic
environment demands.
So how does the Air Force fit into this environment? The
strategic narrative of the Air Force is to provide our Nation
global vigilance, global reach, and global power. These tenets
emphasize not only the agility of Air Force capabilities, but
also the flexibility and options they provide our civilian
leadership. That said, our defense institutions are woefully
stuck in the last century. The last serious roles and missions
review was held in 1995. It is time for a 21st century review
as 21st century threats present daunting challenges. We are not
going to buy our way out of these challenges because the money
is not there, nor are there any silver bullets. We are going to
have to think our way out of these problems.
This respected committee could lead the way on defense
reform if the committee considered realigning its structure to
mirror modern capabilities versus some model that reflects last
century military organization. Sea power is currently afforded
its own subcommittee. Land and air power are batched together
and named after a previous version of Army doctrine, and no
subcommittees are dedicated to cyber or space. An action you
might consider to increase focus on 21st century defense is to
split the Air/Land Subcommittee into one on aerospace power,
one on land power, and add one for cyber operations.
In my written remarks, I offer 14 additional areas that may
provide a starting point for serious review. Briefly, here are
my top six. One, insert a commission on roles and missions for
the 21st century into the next National Defense Authorization
Act [NDAA] that will inform a new National Security Act. Two,
cyber. Operation in cyberspace beg for more unification. Stand
up a U.S. cyber command as a combatant command as soon as
possible.
Three, information. Stand up of a vigilance command inside
the Air Force as soon as possible to integrate intelligence,
surveillance, reconnaissance, cyber, and space operations with
a view to a future combatant command to codify information as a
defense enterprise. Four, concepts of operation. Shift
combatant command predilection to organize by service
components to a more functional alignment of an intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaisance [ISR] strike maneuver
sustainment complex, capitalizing on advancements in network
capability to empowering information's ascent as a dominant
factor in warfare.
Five, process. Change the primary measure of merit in DOD
program decisions from individual unit cost to cost per desired
effect, and do it across service boundaries, vice inside
service stovepipes. Six, personnel. Change military force
management from a system that values risk avoidance to one that
accepts risk tolerance and rewards innovative thinking instead
of punishing it.
Please notice these recommendations are not about hardware.
They are focused on ideas, ideas about integrating existing and
future capabilities within an agile operational framework
guided by human understanding. The appropriate force structure
will follow.
Just as combat tomorrow will look different than it did
yesterday, so, too, should the military that prosecutes it. I
look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Deptula follows:]
Prepared Statement by David A. Deptula
revisiting the roles and missions of the armed forces
introduction
Mr. Chairman, Senator Reed, members of the Committee, thank you for
inviting me to appear today to present my thoughts on the critical
issue of roles and missions of the Armed Services. I am a product of a
military family. My grandfather was an immigrant and served as an Army
infantryman in World War I as a private. My uncle was a Marine at the
tip of the spear in World War II (WWII), Korea, and Vietnam. He was the
first Marine officer to land on Green Beach at Inchon, and led a
battalion in Vietnam. My Dad served in WWII in the Pacific as a B-29
maintenance officer. Later he helped win the Cold War participating in
nuclear weapons development and testing, and served in research and
development the remainder of his career. He is the most dedicated Air
Force officer I ever knew. Now almost 95, he was, and still is, my
inspiration on the value of aerospace power.
WWII and the Cold War posed for my uncle, my Dad, and many others
of the greatest generation, some very significant challenges. As a
result of their efforts, the United States prevailed against incredibly
challenging odds. Today, my son carries on a proud tradition serving in
the military and flies an Air Force fighter. It is now up to us to
confront our own unique set of circumstances. The present situation
paints a stark picture. The United States faces a burgeoning set of
threats around the globe, but has fewer resources to meet these
challenges. The only way to prevail against such dynamics is to
optimize our service roles and missions to evolve their relationship
from one of interoperability--a goal of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, to
one of interdependency--the next step in the evolution of our military,
and perhaps the focus of a McCain-Thornberry Act.
A dollar spent on duplicative capability comes at the expense of
essential capacity or capability elsewhere. Confused organizational
structures lead to sub-optimal employment of forces already stretched
too thin. Outdated service roles and missions parameters yield costly,
inefficient acquisition programs. Clearly, things have to change--
security circumstances and fiscal pressures will no longer tolerate
such conditions.
I believe that if the United States is to succeed in protecting its
core interests around the globe and deter aggression, we need to have
the strongest Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force in the world.
However, fiscal realities dictate that the military will have to make
difficult choices to balance near-term operational readiness with
longer-term needs. That is the only way we will attain affordability
imperatives. This demands much more clarity regarding goals and desired
outcomes, with special emphasis on what it means to project effective,
prudent power in the 21st century. These dynamics are yielding a
budget-driven roles and missions competition, but a thoughtful
conversation regarding national interests and strategy has yet to
occur. I commend Chairman McCain, Senator Reed, and the rest of the
Senate Armed Services Committee for staring this conversation by
initiating this series of hearings regarding our national security
architecture.
I believe the biggest challenge our defense establishment faces is
one of institutional inertia. We are well into the information age, yet
our systems, organizations, and concepts of operations are rooted in
the industrial age of warfare. This in addition to the fact our
diplomatic, economic, and informational elements of our national
security enterprise are also largely unchanged since the mid 20th
century, and require more integration than ever before. We can no
longer afford this misalignment--not only is it costly, but it also
projects undue risk.
Change with respect to the military involves four principal
factors: first; advanced technologies that, because of the new
capability they yield, enable the second element; new concepts of
operation that produce order-of-magnitude increases in our ability to
achieve desired military effects. The third element is organizational
change that codifies changes in the previous elements, or enhances our
ability to execute our National Security Strategy. It is through these
lenses that we need to be measuring our progress. The final essential
element to progress is the human dimension. People are fundamental to
everything we do, especially when it comes to leadership.
the 21st century security environment
First, our defense strategy must contend with non-state and
transnational actors; a rising economic and military powerhouse in
China; a resurgent Russia; declining states--some with nuclear weapons;
the increasing likelihood of nuclear weapons proliferation that the
recent deal with Iran does not attenuate; evil actors of the most
despicable nature; and a dynamic web of terrorism.
Second, the pace and tenor of our lives has been irrevocably
altered by the acceleration of change. Global trade, travel, and
telecommunications have produced major shifts in the way we live. Such
developments are not isolated. Speed and complexity have merged, and
now permeate the conduct of warfare. Consequently, one implication for
our future military is that it must be able to respond rapidly and
decisively anywhere on the globe at any time. As recent events have
demonstrated, key security events now unfold in a matter of hours and
days, not months or years. The window to influence such circumstances
is increasingly fleeting.
Third, we have to contend with increasing personnel and procurement
costs at a time when defense budgets are decreasing. Therefore, the
provision of flexibility of response across a wide spectrum of
circumstances should be foremost among the decision criteria we apply
to our future military.
Fourth, in the information age, we have to acknowledge that
deploying large numbers of American military forces onto foreign soil
to nation-build vice accomplish a defined mission and leave, is simply
counter-productive to securing our goals and objectives. Strategies
centered upon occupation and attrition warfare expose American
vulnerabilities, invariably result in anti-American backlash and
domestic disapproval, and often create destabilizing effects within the
very state or region they are intended to secure.
Fifth, we must actively pursue and invest in options we can use to
counter the increasingly advanced anti-access strategies and
technologies our adversaries are likely to employ. Systems such as
precision weapons and stealth projected incredible lethality at the end
of the Cold War. Those capabilities did not disappear. They continued
to advance and proliferate. One quarter of a century later, it is
foolhardy to assume U.S. Forces will be afforded freedom of action in
future engagements. Our strategies, planning assumptions, acquisition
programs, and training need to account for this reality.
Sixth, we need to challenge our adversaries' domination of public
perception in the information age. We have to learn how to use the
application of accurate, compelling information as a core element of
our security apparatus. We are woefully inept at strategic
communications and too often are put in a reactionary vice proactive
position when it comes to this core tenet of the information age.
Finally, information's value also extends past the news cycle. Just
as wireless connectivity, personal computing devices, and cloud-based
applications are revolutionizing life in the civilian sector; these
trends are also radically altering the way in which our military forces
project power. Faster and more capable networks and computing
capabilities are turning information into the dominant factor in modern
warfare. As one Air Force commander recently remarked, ``We need to
understand that platforms like the F-22 are information machines far
above and beyond being killing assets.'' Operations over Syria validate
this assertion. Given this reality, it is time we acknowledge that
information and its management is just as important today as the
traditional tools of hard military power-- airplanes, satellites on
orbit, infantry, amphibious elements and warships at sea. Information
and data is the force evolving all these tools from isolated
instruments of power into a highly integrated enterprise where the
exchange of information and data will determine success or failure in
the 21st century.
These facts have major implications throughout the military
enterprise--shaping key areas like doctrine, organization, training,
materiel acquisition and sustainment, along with command and control.
Top leaders in the policy community also need to adjust to the new
realities of information age combat operations. World War II and Cold
War paradigms will simply fall short when considering how to build,
sustain and employ military power in the modern era.
These trends provide a starting point for considering the future
with which we have to contend. Bluntly stated, all the services,
Department of Defense agencies, and the other elements of our national
security architecture have been slow to recognize the emerging new
security environment. Our focus has remained on traditional weapons
platforms and we still have institutions and processes that were
designed in the middle of the last century to accommodate what we
perceived to be--in retrospect--a rather simple world of kinetics and
traditional domains that characterized the Cold War. To fix this, we
need to supplement our traditional focus on combined arms warfare with
a broader ``lens'' that enables us to better accommodate such elements
as non-kinetic tools emerging traditional systems and the cyber domain.
Excessive emphasis on traditional weapon platforms associated with
combined arms warfare runs the danger of dismissing the emerging non-
kinetic instruments. We cannot relive the era of battleship admirals
and cavalry generals dismissing aviation as a passing fad.
Summarizing, the proliferation of technology, information flow, and
the associated empowerment of nation-states, organizations, as well as
individuals, presents one of the most daunting challenges our military
has ever faced.
the cornerstones of the u.s. military: services and combatant commands
Interservice rivalry is a vivid part of American military history
stretching forward from the earliest days of our Republic. The most
intense period of competition occurred at the close of World War II.
Drawing on the lessons of that war and seeking to address years of
agonizing political turmoil fueled by service rivalries, President
Truman prodded Congress to pass the National Security Act of 1947 and
its first amendment in 1949. This legislation established the
fundamental postwar defense organization for the United States. They
created, among other entities, a new Department of Defense (DOD),
intended to unify the earlier separate Departments of War and Navy, and
an independent air force as a third military department within DOD.
In 1958, additional legislation created the unified combatant
commands that were designated as the headquarters for the conduct of
actual warfare. However, this objective remained theoretical for many
years, with the services remaining dominant in all aspects of
organization, training, equipping, and planning. Land, sea, and air
forces tended to operate autonomously. A service would develop weapons
and equipment without regard to their compatibility with that of the
other services. Army and Navy communications systems couldn't talk to
one another; equipment was acquired by the Army and Navy that could not
be loaded into Air Force cargo planes; and each service had its own
doctrine for employing aircraft. This did not change until the
Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. Its passage prompted when years of
inter-service dysfunctionality manifested tragic results during the
1980 Iranian hostage rescue mission and the flawed invasion of Grenada
three years later. Reformers demanded a change to afford joint conduct
of warfare.
The Goldwater-Nichols Act had no intent to erase the differences in
service philosophies and cultures, but it was hoped that the unique
characteristics and strengths of each service could be molded to
complement one another so the whole would be greater than the sum of
its parts. Jointness became the mantra of the Armed Forces after
passage of the Goldwater-Nichols in 1986. So just what did the
Goldwater-Nichols act do? What is proper meaning of jointness?
Here are the basics of the Goldwater-Nichols Act. First, no longer
do the individual services fight our nation's war--the unified
combatant commands do the fighting under a designated joint task force
commander. There are two kinds of unified combatant commands--regional
and functional. The regional commands are Pacific, European, Central,
Southern, Africa, and Northern Command. The functional commands are
Transportation, Special Operations, and Strategic Command.
The services organize, train, and equip what are called service
component forces that are assigned to the unified combatant commands
under a joint task force commander to actually conduct operations. The
way America fights essentially boils down to this: individual services
do not fight--they organize, train, and equip. It is the combatant
commands that fight under the unifying vision of a joint force
commander.
Jointness means that among our four services, a separately
developed and highly specialized array of capabilities is provided
through service or functional components to a joint force commander--
his or her job is to assemble a plan from among this ``menu'' of
capabilities, applying the appropriate ones for the contingency at
hand. It does not mean four separate services deploy to a fight and
simply align under a single commander. It does not mean, ``going along
to get along.'' Nor does jointness mean everybody necessarily gets an
equal share of the action. Jointness does not mean homogeneity. In
fact, what is often misunderstood about joint operations is that its
strength resides in the separateness of the service components.
Joint force operations create synergies because they capitalize on
each services' core functions--skill sets that require much time,
effort, and focus to cultivate. It takes 20-25 years to develop a
competent division commander, a surface action group commander, a
Marine Expeditionary Force commander, or an aerospace expeditionary
force commander.
The beauty of the joint approach to warfare is that every
contingency will be different, and that a joint approach allows a joint
task force commander to tailor make a force optimal and unique to the
particular contingency facing him or her. The service component force
make-up for Operation Desert Storm (or the first Gulf War) was very
much different than that required for Operation Allied Force (the air
war over Kosovo and Serbia) which was very much different than that
required for Operation Unified Assistance (the South Asia Tsunami
relief), which is very much different than that required for Operation
Inherent Resolve (the current counter Islamic State operations), and so
on.
Since the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, a joint approach
was first intended to move contingency organizations and operations
from independent, de-conflicted, service approaches, to sustained
interoperability. Today, we need to move beyond interoperability to
interdependency, which means the service components rely on
capabilities brought to the joint fight by other service components.
The services need to shed their historical predilection for self-
sufficiency, or ``owning'' everything required to fight and win
independently. The reason joint task force operations create synergies
is because an interdependent approach allows each service to focus on,
hone, and offer its core competencies. Services trying to control
everything is unsustainable from a resource perspective and yields sub-
optimized, compromised capabilities. Control of all the capabilities in
a fight is the role of the combatant commanders when employing forces.
It is far better for the services to invest and excel in their
respective domains.
The notion can be likened to doctors concentrating on healing the
sick, and firemen focusing on rescuing people from burning buildings.
Drawing out this analogy, such an approach means joint task force
operations have at their disposal the abilities to both put out fires,
and to cure sick people, no matter which is needed where--and both of
these important tasks are being performed by specialists in their
fields. The unfavorable alternative to interdependence is to have
firemen also attempting surgical procedures, and physicians darting in
and out of blazing structures between seeing patients.
To be joint we require separate services, and it is an imperative
that service members understand how to best exploit the advantages of
operating in their domains. Articulating the virtues and values of a
member's service is being ``joint.'' However, when a single service
attempts to achieve warfighting independence instead of embracing
interdependence, ``jointness'' unravels, warfighting effectiveness is
reduced, and costly redundancies and gaps likely abound. The last thing
we need to do is turn back the clock on Goldwater-Nichols by allowing
services to continue to develop redundant capabilities, thereby
rejecting the premise of joint warfighting.
The degree of jointness exhibited since 1986 has ebbed and flowed
based on the commanders in charge, and the degree--or lack thereof--
that top U.S. military leaders have encouraged joint organization and
execution. Let me offer some examples of the real-world ebb and flow of
jointness. I was truly blessed with a career that found me in multiple
joint and combined operations that were then interspersed with
headquarters assignments and congressional commissions that were each
focused on joint warfighting and organization. In one of those
assignments I was the attack planner for air operations in Operation
Desert Storm. In doing so I really did not care what service--or
country insignia--was painted on the side of an airplane in
constructing those strikes; it was capability that mattered--what kind
of weapons could they deliver--dumb bombs or precision munitions? How
long could they stay on station? Did they require airborne refueling?
Could they defend themselves? Etc.
In one instance, I wanted to use the Army Tactical Missile System
(ATACMS) to suppress enemy surface-to-air missiles to eliminate the
threat these systems presented to our attack aircraft. The Army
commanders denied that request claiming that the ATACMS were a Corps
asset and they needed to ``save'' them for use by the Army Corps later
in the war. While I am not arguing with the requirement, I take issue
with the parochial solution. The parochial interests of Army
``ownership'' of that capability prevented a valuable application of it
in a joint context. Today we have matured in the context of joint use
of ATACMS as evidenced by its incorporation in the integrated planning
of potential operations in places like Korea, but the underlying
question remains--why are services procuring weapons to achieve effects
already possessed by another service? Today's variant of this situation
is very evident with the overlap among the services with medium/high
altitude unmanned aerial vehicles--also known as drones.
In another example, the Marines were dogmatic about who and how
``their'' aircraft would be tasked. This was the first major combat
operation since the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, and much was
at stake between those who held on to old ways of service fighting, and
those taking a joint approach. Lt General Chuck Horner--the first joint
force air component commander--stated that if you were going to fly you
had to be on the air tasking order to support the entire joint effort.
That meant your tasking would be accomplished in a unified manner as
part of a theater-wide plan. However, the Marines disagreed and came up
with ingenious ways to ignore joint requirements and pursue their own
unilateral objectives.
To get into the combat zone as an aircraft you needed to transmit a
specific identification code known as IFF. One day, the Marine in my
planning organization told me what the Marine Air Wing was doing to use
their aircraft as their wing commander wanted, vice what the joint
force air component commander planned. They would pick a two-ship that
was planned to attack a particular target in the area of operations,
and subsequently use the same IFF code to surreptitiously allow 24
aircraft to gain access into the combat area, and engage outside of
joint command and control. This undermined the intent of unified joint
air operations.
The Marines have now codified in ``joint'' doctrine that they do
not have to support joint force air component commander assigned
missions until all Marine requirements are satisfied. Then, and only
then, will Marine aircraft engage in support of the joint fight. The
bottom line is that with unparalleled skill in bureaucratic
maneuvering, the Marine Corps have actually ensconced their parochial
position on the aircraft in their inventory into joint doctrine. When
the United States engages in combat, it has national interests, not
service interests. Our doctrine needs to reflect this.
Let's jump forward 10 years to the opening nights of Operation
Enduring Freedom (OEF). In this operation I was the director of the
Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) conducting air operations over
Afghanistan. We had planners from all the services in the CAOC, and the
difference regarding service component cooperation and teamwork was
amazing compared to Desert Storm.
One night the commander of the carrier air group who was working as
the Navy liaison to the aircraft carrier operating in support of the
OEF air operations, and without having to be asked, had the weapons
reconfigured on the aircraft carrier deck to BLU-109 penetrating bomb
bodies. He was part of a broader joint enterprise and knew what air
operations were going to be targeting. This may not seam like a big
deal, but it was an indicator that this individual was so attuned to
the rapidly changing battle plan that he initiated necessary changes to
facilitate combat operations without waiting or having to be asked.
That sort of cooperative attitude is what ensures victory.
There are many stories like these--demonstrating both good and bad
examples of jointness. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the second
phases of both operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have moved
further away from the intent of Goldwater-Nichols than we have closer
to it.
We never established a true joint command organization in
Afghanistan or Iraq. The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) leadership
merely put a ``J'' in front of established Army organizations and
passed them off as a ``joint task force.'' Look at the organizational
diagram for Operation Anaconda (2002) and compare that chart with the
organizational diagram of the 10th Mountain Division deployed--there is
no difference except the title of the chart. There was a multi-national
CORPS Iraq (MNCI), but no Joint Task Force-Iraq. In Afghanistan there
was an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and an
organization called United States Forces Afghanistan, but it had no
service components. This presented a major problem because it inhibited
true collaborative, cooperative strategy development and execution at
the operational and tactical levels.
The only way we will be able to consider alternate strategies and
improve available courses of actions is to apply the joint process as
it was intended. Otherwise, we will get locked into dogmatic courses of
action that align with one service's view of the world, not a balanced
enterprise approach.
We are repeating this single service dominance again with CENTCOM's
organizational structure associated with Operation Inherent Resolve--
the current operations against the Islamic State. The Commander in
Chief (the President) has clearly stated that there will be no combat
operations on the ground in either Iraq or Syria performed by United
States Army or Marine ground forces, and that United States ground
forces in the region will only act in an advise and assist capacity.
The only direct application of U.S. military force in the region is
airpower, but the designated joint task force commander for Operation
Inherent Resolve was originally the CENTCOM Army component commander,
recently replaced by a separate Army three-star general. How does this
organizational arrangement optimize force employment when the service
component with the preponderance of force and expertise (Air Force) in
the application of force is not in command? We would never ask an
infantry officer to get into an F-15 and execute a combat mission, so
why are we executing this way at the strategic level? The earlier
example of firemen doing surgery and visa versa comes to mind.
Functional versus service component command organizations aim to
optimize our military effects regardless of which service component
provides them. First employed in Operation Desert Storm, the Joint
Force Air Component Commander (JFACC) could not care less about what
service from which an aircraft came. The operative means of including
or excluding a particular service aircraft in the attack plans was
determined by the capability the aircraft provided, not the service
that provided it. This is the essence of joint warfare. To date, Joint
Force Land Component Commanders (JFLCCs) do not do this type of
integration. In OIF, while there was a nominal JFLCC, the Marines
proceed up Iraq on the east side of the Euphrates, and the Army on the
west. That was deconfliction, not integration. A Joint Force Maritime
Component Commander (JFMCC) does not really execute joint command--
unless combined with another nation's ships--because only the Navy
possesses combat ships.
However, while Air Force officers are perhaps the most joint of all
the services (almost half the Air Force budget goes to enabling the
other military services), they have been historically excluded from
joint command and staff positions. To optimize the solutions that our
military provides to the nation, it is imperative that the options of
exploiting the third dimension of aerospace be well understood and
considered in military course of action development, planning, and
execution. However, the military can't do any of those activities if
Air Force leadership is absent from the key military organizations
involved. To put this in context, here are the facts why this is an
issue, and requires attention. From 2006 to early 2010, there were no
U.S. Air Force officers in any of the top 11 positions in the
Pentagon--the Chairman, the Vice Chairman, the Director, the J-1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 on the Joint Staff--almost 4 years with no leadership
position on the joint staff.
A look at the historical record of how the Air Force has fared in
command assignments in the combatant commands is quite revealing. Since
the establishment of regional combatant commands--the warfighting
commands--on January 1st, 1947, there have been a total of 105
commanders--only 6 have been Air Force officers. That is less than 6
percent of the regional combatant commanders in the entire history of
the Department of Defense have been from the Air Force. There is a
story behind those statistics, and it is not a good one from a joint
perspective. The issue here is not simply that the Air Force has not
been given its ``fair share'' of joint task force command assignments,
but that far more than just 6 percent of those areas of responsibility
could have benefited from an air-centric perspective, as is the case in
today's fight against the Islamic State. Furthermore, the Air Force
needs to look at itself in the mirror in this regard to appreciate more
honestly how it grooms, selects, and offers officers for these critical
positions. The situation involves more than just other-service
prejudice and turf protection.
There is a very real difference of having a surface commander in
command who believes all the other service components exist to provide
support for surface operations; and a truly joint warfighting
organization that seeks to build the best strategy without regard to
domain or service. The best way to secure this outcome is engendering
truly joint processes where soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen
offer their expertise and perspectives to contribute to the objective
defined by a joint force commander. However, all the formal doctrine,
doctrine manuals, and agreed joint principles and practices in the
world will be of no practical impact and worth without COCOM and joint
task force commanders of whatever color of uniform prepared and
determined to do the right thing in the national interest over their
service interests. It can be accomplished--Gen Norman Schwarzkopf is an
example of an Army general who commanded a joint operation with a joint
perspective.
The U.S. Air Force and National Security
Given the severity of the financial pressures facing the nation, it
is important to reflect on why the nation has an independent Air Force.
Services do not exist for their own benefit--they must stand forth as
effective and valuable tools to implement American interests around the
globe.
The strategic narrative of the Air Force is to provide our nation
global initiative. The Air Force has codified its strategic objectives
as providing Global Vigilance, Global Reach, and Global Power. The
global initiative enabled by these tenets emphasizes not only the
agility of airpower capabilities, but also the flexibility that such
capabilities provide to civilian leaders.
Essentially, the Air Force is a capabilities-based force. This
actuality makes it the nation's strategic hedge regarding future
challenges. This is a highly desirable characteristic considering that
we are horrible predictors of the future.
Five unique contributions define the US Air Force in the context of
its objectives of achieving Global Vigilance, Global Reach and Global
Power--first, gaining control of air, space, and cyberspace; second,
holding targets at risk around the world; third, providing responsive
global integrated ISR; fourth, rapidly transporting people and
equipment across the globe; and fifth, underpinning each of these
unique contributions with robust, reliable, and redundant global
command and control. However, the most important core competency of the
Air Force is pervasive throughout all of these--and that's innovative
thinking; the kind of thinking that manifest's itself in our Airmen
over the history of the Air Force. As Air Force airmen, we embrace the
ability to rise above the constraints of terrain, literally, and to
transcend the strictures of the horizontal perspective.
Before flight, wars were fought by strategies that hinged upon
attrition, annihilation, and/or occupation. Surface warfare climaxed in
World War I, with ground forces launching successive attacks over a
narrow band of territory for nearly half-a-decade. The cost in lives
and resources was overwhelming. Pioneering aviators flying over the
battlefields realized that the air domain afforded an alternate path to
secure victory. Instead of fighting foot-by-foot to capture enemy
territory in a linear fashion, airmen could fly past opposing forces to
strike critical centers of gravity, as well as over opposing forces to
present them a maneuver force from the third dimension. Deprived of the
means to sustain their fight, and coming under attack from above, an
adversary could be weakened to ultimately face defeat.
Turning the potential of this theory into reality took many years,
resulted in countless lessons learned, and stimulated tremendous
technological innovation. Throughout it all, Airmen remain fixed on
their objective: providing our country's leaders with policy options to
secure objectives effectively and efficiently, without projecting
unnecessary vulnerability. The same vision holds true for the men and
women serving in today's Air Force.
Long-time military expert Dr. Ben Lambeth has astutely observed
that today, ``when it comes to major conventional war against modern
mechanized opponents, the classic roles of air and land power have
switched places. Fixed-wing air power has, by now, proven itself to be
far more effective than ground combat capabilities in creating the
necessary conditions for rapid offensive success.'' Validating Dr.
Lambeth's observation, a platoon leader during Operation Iraqi Freedom
(Iraq 2003) at the leading edge of the push to Baghdad by the 1st
Marine Expeditionary Force, wrote: ``For the next hundred miles, all
the way to the gates of Baghdad, every palm grove hid Iraqi armor,
every field an artillery battery, and every alley an antiaircraft gun
or surface-to-air missile launcher. But we never fired a shot. We saw
the full effect of American air power. Every one of those fearsome
weapons was a blackened hulk.'' [Nathaniel Fick, One Bullet Away: The
Making of a Marine Officer (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), p. 289.]
Evolved aerospace power has fundamentally altered the way the
United States might best fight any future large-scale engagements. It
has the ability to perform battlespace functions at less cost, with
lower risk, and more rapidly than traditional ground force elements.
Most notable in this regard is modern airpower's repeatedly
demonstrated ability to neutralize an enemy's army while incurring a
minimum of friendly casualties and to establish the conditions for
achieving strategic goals almost from the very outset of fighting.
Reduced to basics, modern airpower now allows joint task force
commanders and their subordinate units both freedom from attack and
freedom to attack.
Aerospace power is based on the characteristics of technology--but
the invention, development, and application of those instruments flow
from human imagination, and knowledge. The Air Force seizes on the
virtues of air and space to project power without projecting the same
degree of vulnerability as operations in other domains, and as a
result, it provides our nation with strategic alternatives simply not
available any other way.
Global/theater-wide aerospace power alone can conduct genuine
parallel attacks, which means bringing multiple strategic and
operational level centers of gravity under near simultaneous attack. It
is through the use of parallel attack that it becomes possible to keep
military operations short. Short wars brought about through parallel
attack are dramatically less expensive in dollars and lives. Short is
good, long is bad when it comes to war--or any other kind of strategic
competition. Short should be the criteria for going to war and for
executing it. Unfortunately, parallel operations and time compression
can be difficult to explain and sell to those not versed in the ideas.
This will be a challenge that must be overcome for both planning and
for the development of a future force structure capable of parallel
attack.
Aerospace options provided by the Air Force shape, deter, and
dissuade so we can attain fundamental national interests minimizing the
need for combat operations around the world through collaborative
engagement with partner nations, deterring potential adversaries, and
reassuring allies that we will be there for them with credible
capabilities should the need arise. When combat is necessary, aerospace
capabilities yield a variety of strategic, operational, and tactical
effects that provide disproportionate advantages.
Today, our joint forces have the highest battlefield survivability
rates not only because of the advances in medicine--but also due to our
ability to rapidly get our wounded to critical care facilities--by air.
Today, unlike the contests of the past--our joint forces go into
combat with more information about the threat they face, and have
better situational awareness provided in near real-time, and they get
that information--from air and space, through cyberspace.
Today, unlike the past, our joint task forces are able to operate
with much smaller numbers, across great distances and inhospitable
terrain because they can be sustained over the long-haul--by air.
Today, navigation and precise location anywhere on the surface of
the earth for application in both peace and war is provided by an Air
Force GPS constellation--from space.
Today, not only do surface forces receive firepower from the Air
Force when they need it, but the adversaries our nation views as the
greatest threat to our security are being eliminated by direct attack--
from the air.
Air Force aerospace power will inevitably be pivotal in future
wars. This is by far the most preeminent unifying theme that has
emerged from the collective global combat experiences of the last
quarter of a century. Operation Desert Storm in 1991; Operations
Deliberate Force and Allied Force in the Balkans in 1995 and 1999,
during the major combat phases of Operation Enduring Freedom in
Afghanistan in 2001; Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq in 2003,
Operations Odyssey Dawn and Unified Protector conducted over Libya in
2011, and most recently, combat operations in Syria and resumed
operations in Iraq. These operations underline the fact that the Air
Force has been at war not just since 9/11/2001, but since 1991--now
approaching 25 years. That said, even the most capable air posture
imaginable can never make up for fundamentally flawed strategy--or a
lack thereof. That, however, is not the topic today but perhaps is
worth several hearings at another time.
The nature of the modern security environment demands that we focus
on not just sustaining, but accelerating Air Force contributions.
Whether providing stand-alone options or serving as an integral part of
joint operations, the Air Force is a vital national asset. Modern
combat operations are simply not feasible without the capabilities
afforded by the Air Force.
Our nation has three services that possess air arms--the Army,
Navy, and Marine Corps. Those air arms primarily exist to facilitate
their parent services' core functions--their mastery of operations on
the ground, at sea, or in a littoral environment. However, our nation
has only one Air Force. Its reason for being is to exploit the global
advantages of operating in the third dimension of air and space to
directly achieve our security objectives around the world. It is this
unique and specific focus of the Air Force that makes aerospace power
America's asymmetric advantage.
Said another way, while the other branches of the U.S. military
have localized air arms suited to supporting their respective domain
activities, only the U.S. Air Force possess the capabilities and
capacity required to facilitate sustained global operations anytime,
anywhere--and the perspective to exploit those capabilities in a way no
other armed service has the expertise to provide.
the rationale for a 21st century commission on roles and missions of
the armed forces
To move the Armed Forces from interoperability to interdependency
requires a much more clearly delineated assignment of roles and
functions than presently exists. We have the same services that
resulted from the National Security Act of 1947. However, Defense
Agencies have exploded since that time frame, as has the bureaucracies
of the service secretariats; the Office of the Secretary of Defense
staff; and the joint staff, as well as the oversight of the Department
of Defense (DOD) by Congress.
There have been a multitude of roles and missions reviews since
1947--some substantive, others cursory. The current roles and missions
of the armed forces are codified in DOD Directive 5100.01, ``Functions
of the Department of Defense and Its Major Components.'' Although the
current version was updated in 2010, it does not provide the kind of
distinction among service functions that the current budget,
technological capabilities, threat, and strategic environment that the
information age demands.
A quick look at the section in the current DoD Directive 5100.01,
labeled ``Common Military Service Functions,'' is revealing:
h. Organize, train, and equip forces to contribute unique service
capabilities to the joint force commander to conduct the following
functions across all domains, including land, maritime, air, space, and
cyberspace:
(1) Intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR), and
information operations, to include electronic warfare and MISO in order
to provide situational awareness and enable decision superiority across
the range of military operations.
(2) Offensive and defensive cyberspace operations to achieve
cyberspace superiority in coordination with the other Military
Services, Combatant Commands, and USG departments and agencies.
(3) Special operations in coordination with USSOCOM and other
Combatant Commands, the Military Services, and other DOD Components.
(4) Personnel recovery operations in coordination with USSOCOM
and other Combatant Commands, the Military Services, and other DOD
Components.
(5) Counter weapons of mass destruction.
(6) Building partnership capacity/security force assistance
operations.
(7) Forcible entry operations.
(8) Missile Defense.
(9) Other functions as assigned, such as Presidential support
and antiterrorism.
Given present resource constraints, we can no longer afford such
overlap. A dollar spent in a redundant, ineffective fashion comes at
the expense of necessary capability. Military leaders are presently
balancing an unprecedented number of high demand, low density
capabilities. The only way to help address those shortfalls is to
improve the way in which we organize, command, equip, and oversee our
military forces.
Ensuring each of the Services are best aligned to conduct
operations in their respective domains amidst austere budget
conditions; a burgeoning global threat environment; and the new
realities of the information age, demands that we reassess present
roles, missions, and Service organization.
critical issues for review
I have been privileged to participate in multiple defense reviews
over the last quarter century starting with what was known as the
``Base Force'' review in 1990; the Bottom-Up Review of 1993; the
Commissions on Roles and Mission of the Armed Forces in 1994/95; the
first Quadrennial Defense Review in 1997; the first National Defense
Panel; I directed the Air Force Quadrennial Defense Review effort in
2000/01; and I advised and informed the subsequent defense reviews
during the remainder of my time on active duty.
Fortunately, I was blessed in between those activities to
participate in multiple contingency operations that afforded a variety
of real-world perspectives. I was the principal attack planner for the
Operation Desert Storm air campaign; commander of no-fly-zone
operations over Iraq in the late 1990s; director of the air campaign
over Afghanistan in 2001; twice assigned as a joint task force
commander; and was the air commander for the 2005 South Asia tsunami
relief operations. With more than 3,000 flying hours--400 in combat--I
had multiple command assignments in the F-15. My last assignment was as
the Air Force's first deputy chief of staff for intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), where I orchestrated the
largest increase in drone operations in Air Force history.
After that quarter century of experience I have come to the
conclusion that fundamental change in the roles and functions of the
Armed Forces can only come from congressional legislation. The role men
and women in uniform can best play is to help share insights and
perspectives regarding the present state of affairs, where change is
needed, and avenues for positive reform. Ultimately, I think we need to
seriously consider a Commission on Roles and Missions in the 21st
Century that may ultimately inform a revised National Security Act. In
that regard, I offer the following topics for consideration:
1. Congress: The respective Armed Service Committees could lead the
way on defense reform if they mirrored 21st century capabilities versus
a historic model that is reflective of last century military
organization. Sea power is currently afforded its own subcommittee;
land and air power are batched together and named after a previous
version of Army doctrine; and no subcommittees are dedicated to cyber
or space. One action you all have in your power to make to enhance
oversight and focus in the all of the critical areas of defense in the
21st Century is to split the airland subcommittee into a subcommittee
on aerospace power, one on land power, and add a subcommittee on cyber
operations.
2. Cyber: As a ``man-made'' domain, cyber is fundamentally
different from the natural domains of air, land, sea and space. The
linear aspects of the traditional domains remain important, but our
national security predicament cannot be understood in a holistic sense
without an appreciation for the more complicated world of the man-made
cyber domain. Nor can instruments from the cyber domain achieve their
full potential as tools of foreign policy if they are simply filtered
through the institutional command channels of traditional domains,
including space. Yes, the cyber instruments can be useful in making
traditional instruments of power more effective and should be tapped
for this purpose. However, as is now being demonstrated on a continuing
basis by our opponents, they also have autonomous potential for serving
foreign policy goals independent from air, land, sea and space tools.
Indeed, it is apparent that the private sector has moved far ahead of
the DOD in advancing cyber technology in response to consumer demand.
DOD is no longer the dominating production and marketing force.
Against this background, all the services must consider how to
engage more effectively in public-private ventures with leading
technology entities. Needless to say, our potential ``wingmen'' in the
cyber domain represent a very different culture from the profession of
arms. We must learn to accommodate this new culture on a partnership
basis or, alternatively, accept the necessity for a substantial new
non-military enterprise to create and command a force structure for
deterring and operating autonomous instruments emerging from the cyber
domain. Either alternative requires that the military supplement its
traditional focus on combined arms warfare with increased emphases on
the more holistic question of desired effects and thereby open the door
to an increased appreciation for non-kinetic instruments particularly
in the cyber domain.
Today's situation in operating in the domain of cyberspace is one
that begs for more unification. Accordingly, it would be appropriate
and useful to consider standing up a U.S. Cyber Command as a unified
command along the lines and same model of the U.S. Special Operations
Command. Each service would provide component expertise to the unified
command from their unique domain perspectives. At the same time, the
unified cyber command could begin to establish long needed policy in
this realm that is so badly needed to establish cyber deterrence, and
more effectively normalize cyber operations as fundamental in our
contingency plans and planning.
3. Space and Information: One perspective holds that not much
benefit would currently come from standing up a separate space service,
but there may be value in doing so at some point in the future. We may
arrive at that juncture when our activities in space move from a
predominant focus on what is occurring inside the atmosphere of the
earth to a greater set of activities focused outside our atmosphere.
Human conflict remains on land, at sea, and in the air. Space is
critical to the success of, and combat in, the domains of sea, land and
air, but lethal combat today remains inside the atmosphere. Until such
lethal combat moves to space, there is little need for a separate space
service.
Space effects must be seamlessly integrated with the other domains
in order to effectively fight and win. It happens best when integrated
with the service components responsible for building the forces to
fight and win. Creating a separate service would actually encourage
investment in space for the benefit of the space service alone vice
optimizing investment in the domains in which warfighting occurs.
Why does each service maintain their own space command? The answer
is simple yet complicated at the same time. Simple, because each
service is critically dependent on space, therefore it needs some level
of space expertise, and the best way to get it is with a component
space command. Complicated because it creates inefficiencies and sub-
optimal concepts of operations. For example, we have chosen to make a
joint area of ``expertise'' satellite communications (SATCOM).
Accordingly, each service develops its own SATCOM systems. However, in
a fight, we cannot effectively fight SATCOM because of the separate
service responsibilities. We actually turn to a Defense Agency, Defense
Information Systems Agency (DISA), to fight SATCOM. This is ludicrous,
but we accept it in the name of jointness.
Because it controls the preponderance of military spacecraft, the
Air Force should be the single lead service for Operational Test and
Evaluation of all space capabilities and the other services should have
an information command that focuses on integrating all the information
effects (ISR, space and cyber). I also believe the Air Force should
have such a command ("vigilance command") to integrate ISR, cyber, and
space operations. The key will be integrating information to achieve
information superiority. Information superiority is the key to winning
future conflict, and the sooner the Air Force stands up a ``Vigilance
Command'' the quicker we will be able to adapt to the information age.
On the other hand, there are those who believe the nation would
benefit from a separate ``Space Force,'' with a relationship to the
Department of the Air Force analogous to the Marine Corps' relationship
with the Department of the Navy. Among the benefits of this options is
that if properly organized, the Space Force would have responsibility
for ballistic missile defense, and the Missile Defense Agency could be
eliminated. Ballistic missile defense would be integrated with medium
to high altitude air defense in this model, so the Army would have to
give up Patriot and like future systems into the newly created Space
Force. The Army would still be responsible for close-in air defense
with their own man-portable or truck-mounted mobile missile systems,
but they would give up the strategic, and theater-wide air and missile
defense business. That could prove very beneficial in terms of our
ability to integrate manned interceptor air defense with ground-based
theater air defenses. Furthermore, with a single service (The Space
Force) given responsibility for ballistic missile defense, there would
be institutional backing to find practical solutions to the challenges
posed by ballistic missile proliferation.
Both of these alternatives described above deserve a comprehensive
review that an objective, new commission on roles and missions could
provide.
4. Personnel: Changing force management from a system that values
risk avoidance in decision-making to one that accepts risk tolerance as
a minimum, and rewards innovative thinking. We need to create a culture
and environment that encourages innovative thinking instead of
discouraging it. More bureaucracy in the Pentagon, and in various
headquarters staff does not help combat capability. It is worth noting
the size of the Pentagon that won World War II was far smaller than the
present enterprise.
5. Concepts of Operation: The United States military is facing
another technology-driven inflection point that will fundamentally
reshape what it means to project power. Advancements in computing and
network capabilities are empowering information's ascent as a dominant
factor in warfare. In the past, the focus of warfare was predominantly
on managing the physical elements of a conflict--planes in the sky,
satellites in space, troops on the ground, amphibious elements and
ships at sea. In the future, success in warfare will accrue to those
who shift focus from a loosely federated construct of force application
systems to a highly integrated enterprise collaboratively leveraged
through the broad exchange of information.
Said another way, desired effects will increasingly be attained
through the interaction of multiple systems, each one sharing
information and empowering one-another for a common purpose. This
phenomenon is not restricted to an individual technology or system, nor
is it isolated to a specific Service, domain or task. It is a concept
that can loosely be envisioned as a ``Combat Cloud''--an operating
paradigm where the preeminent combat systems of the past become
elements in a holistic enterprise where information, data management
systems, and command and control practices become the core mission
priorities.
Our military needs to learn better how to rapidly adapt new
technology to the concepts of operation that technology enables. We
need to realize and exploit the advantages of modern weapon systems and
information age technology to build new concepts of operation; and we
need to also realize that innovation can be applied to organization as
well as from technology.
To fully capitalize on these capabilities will require a new way of
designing our force. We have to think outside of the organizational
constructs that history has etched into our collective psyche. Network-
centric, interdependent, and functionally integrated operations are the
keys to future military success. The future needs an agile operational
framework for the integrated employment of U.S. and allied military
power. It means taking the next step in shifting away from a structure
of segregated land, air or sea warfare to integrated operations based
on the four functions of ISR, strike, maneuver, and sustainment.
We need to link aerospace and information-age capabilities with sea
and land-based means to create an omni-present defense complex that is
self-forming, and if attacked, self-healing. This kind of a complex
would be so difficult to disrupt that it would possess a deterrent
effect that would be stabilizing to where ever it is employed. The
central idea is cross-domain synergy. The complementary vice merely
additive employment of capabilities in different domains such that each
enhances the effectiveness, and compensates for the vulnerabilities, of
the others. The concept is that the ubiquitous and seamless sharing of
information will form the basis of the third offset strategy.
A tremendous strategic advantage will accrue to us if we exploit
organizational innovation to develop an ISR-Strike-Maneuver-Sustainment
Complex. This complex is not just about ``things.'' It is about
integrating existing and future capabilities within an agile
operational framework guided by human understanding. It is an
intellectual construct with technological infrastructure.
6. Process: The nature of large institutions is inhibiting rapid,
decisive action that is required for success in the information age. We
need to eliminate the ponderous, and excessively regulated acquisition
processes that hinder innovation, increase cost, lengthen delivery
times, and inhibit effectiveness. There is perhaps not a better
advocate for reversing these burdens than the current Secretary of
Defense, Dr. Ash Carter, so I will not elaborate on this topic here.
However, a recent example that illustrates our ponderous process is
that the decision on the long-range strike bomber (LRS-B) took way too
long to make. As we move into an ever-accelerating future, the DOD has
to learn how to make decisions quicker, and reverse the trend of adding
expense and time by paying so much attention to `process' as opposed to
`product.' Much of the delay on the LRS-B was driven by exquisite
attention to excessive procurement rules and regulations in what is
apparently greater concern with avoiding litigation that moving on with
development of a critically needed capability.
The DOD has fundamental difficulty in making force structure
decisions that optimize cost-effectiveness--it limits alternatives to
`stovepipes' restricted to similar platforms or within Service budgets
rather than evaluating joint capability to achieve a particular effect
across the spectrum of possible contributors regardless of Service of
origin or what kind of system. While attempts to deal with this
challenge have been instituted and exist today in the form of the Joint
Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) and Joint Capabilities
Integration and Development System (JCIDS) process, however, they more
often than not result in ``lowest common denominator'' outcomes.
One way ahead is to change the primary measure of merit in program
decisions from individual unit cost to value, or cost per desired
effect. Cost per unit is often used as a measure of merit in making
procurement decisions. A more accurate measure of merit that captures
real value or capability of a particular system is cost per target
engaged, or better yet, cost per desired effect. In this fashion one is
led to consider all the elements required to achieve a specific goal.
We also need to think holistically about how we manage force
constitution and acquisition. We simply cannot afford everything we
want. We must prioritize. An option to be explored to optimally do that
is to look at assessing the strategy via risk. What training,
equipment, personnel expertise, etc. does it take to manifest various
strategic options and how long does it take to constitute such
capacity? I think the nation needs both soldiers and submarines to
execute the defense strategy. However, given our limited resources,
perhaps we need to take increased risk with force structure that we can
reconstitute with relative speed and ease. We can recruit and train
soldiers and Marines in a matter of months. It takes years to build a
submarine and some of their key personnel. Such realities ought to be
considered in the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. Present budget allocations
do not show this realization.
When managing forces in a period of austerity, we need to focus on
the most complex capabilities that yield the U.S. its asymmetric
advantages, while also retaining enough capacity and intellectual
capability to surge the areas that allow for taking higher risk.
7. Terminology. We need to think beyond the constraints that
traditional military culture imposes on new technology. For example,
5th generation aircraft such as the F-22 and F-35 are termed
``fighters,'' but technologically, they are not just ``fighters''--they
are F-, A-, B-, E-, EA, RC, AWACS-22s and 35s. Similarly, the new
``long-range strike bomber (LRSB)'' will possess capabilities much
greater than the ``bombers'' of the past.
These new aircraft are actually more properly described as flying
``sensor-shooters'' that will allow us to conduct information age
warfare inside contested battlespace whenever we desire--if we fully
exploit their ``non-traditional'' capabilities to the degree that those
capabilities become accepted as the new ``traditional.
Modern sensor-shooter aircraft enable the kind of interdependency
that I described earlier. They are key elements in enabling U.S. and
allied forces to work in an interdependent manner throughout the
extended battlespace to deliver the effects or outcomes that are
necessary for deterrence as well as war fighting dominance.
With the already demonstrated capability of the F-22 to provide
multi-tasking capabilities, including command and control (C2) for an
engaged force, the ability to provide for C2 in an extended battlespace
will be enhanced with the coming of the F-35 and the LRS-B, which are
not simply replacements for old aircraft, but part of the C2 dynamics
crucial to an ability to fight and prevail in challenging battlespace.
Whereas adversaries are working towards trying to shape Anti-Access/
Area Denial (A2/AD), U.S. and coalition forces must shape their
capabilities to render ineffective these A2/AD capabilities.
8. Remotely Piloted Aircraft (Drones): Service mission sets need to
be realigned to minimize duplication of effort and allow resource
concentration to secure maximum value. A prime example in this regard
lies with Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA)--commonly known as drones. As
we move into a more fiscally constrained future we need to seek ways to
optimize the effectiveness of all our medium and high altitude RPAs for
the benefit of our joint warfighters. Joint Publication 2.0,
Intelligence Support to Joint Operations, states, ``Because
intelligence needs will always exceed intelligence capabilities,
prioritization of efforts and ISR resource allocation are vital aspects
of intelligence planning.'' Most would agree that demand for RPA
exceeds supply and will continue to exceed it even after the services
build all their programmed drones.
This reinforces the notion that the best possible way to get ISR
from medium and high altitude RPAs to our joint warriors is by
allocating the capability to where it is needed most across the entire
theater. It argues against assigning medium/high altitude RPAs
organically to individual tactical units that preclude their benefit to
the entire theater joint fight. Consider the analogy of a city made up
of 50 blocks, where the mayor owns five fire trucks. If the mayor
designated one truck to one block, those five fire trucks would be
assigned to only five blocks. A joint approach would leave it up to the
mayor--or Joint Force Commander--where to allocate the five fire trucks
based on which blocks needed them most.
Today, every Air Force operationally designated medium- and high-
altitude drone dedicated to CENTCOM is at the disposal of the joint
task force commanders--there are no such things as Air Force targets--
there are only targets that are part of the joint campaign. That is not
the manner in which Army or Navy possessed medium- and high-altitude
drones are employed.
At some point Med/Hi alt RPA will be allocated to theaters other
than CENTCOM--perhaps in locations without a significant U.S. surface
presence. Now, the Army assigns its medium altitude RPAs to individual
units, which means if that unit is not in the war zone then neither are
the RPAs. A joint approach applicable in any region of the world is
already part of all combatant commands joint force air component
operational concepts.
The designation of an Executive Agency (EA) for medium-and high-
altitude RPA to oversee the standardization of all RPA that operate
above a coordinating altitude; and lead research, development, test,
evaluation and procurement of these systems, will be more efficient and
cost effective than individual services duplicating their efforts; is
an acquisition area in which DOD could realize tremendous dollar
savings; and deserves reappraisal in this era of constrained resources.
The objective of a joint approach is to get medium-and high-
altitude RPA ISR distribution to be as transparent as the global
positioning satellite (GPS) signal is to all the services. GPS is 100
percent owned by the Air Force; and 100 percent operated by the Air
Force, and yet it is used by all the service components without any
concern. We can do that with medium- and high-altitude RPA.
It is instructive to note how medium- and high-altitude RPA can be
used in a joint context. Air Force component provided RPA are routinely
tasked to conduct tactical operations for our forces on the ground.
During an operation as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), when a
sniper was pinning down Marine ground forces in Iraq, a Predator RPA
flown by Air Force personnel from Nevada, spotted and identified the
insurgent. The Predator delivered video of the sniper's location
directly to a Marine controller in the fight, and he used that video to
direct a Navy F/A-18 into the vicinity. Then the Navy jets' laser bombs
were guided to the enemy position by the Air Force Predator laser
designation of the target, eliminating the sniper. This engagement took
less than 2 minutes.
This is what joint warfare is all about, and a joint approach for
the use of RPA is all about getting the most out of our ISR resources
to increase this kind of capability for America's sons and daughters on
the ground, at sea, and in the air, while promoting service
interdependency, and the wisest use of American's tax dollars.
9. Command and Control: While the increase in information velocity
is enabling dramatic increases in the effectiveness of combat
operations, there is also a downside. As a result of modern
telecommunications, and the ability to rapidly transmit information to,
from, and between various levels of command, there are many examples of
``information age'' operations where tactical level execution was
usurped by commanders at operational and even strategic levels. This
devolution of the construct of centralized control--decentralized
execution to one of centralized control--centralized execution has
caused reduced effectiveness in accomplishing mission objectives.
Discipline is required to ensure ``reachback'' does not become
``reachforward.'' Centralized control--centralized execution represents
the failed Soviet command model that stifled initiative, induced delay,
moved decision authority away from execution expertise, bred excessive
caution and risk aversion. The results of such a model against a more
flexible command structure were evident in 1991, when Soviet-sponsored
Iraq applied--unsuccessfully--similar C2 constructs against the US-led
Coalition.
Higher level of commanders, who are unwilling to delegate execution
authority to the echelon with the greatest relevant situational
knowledge and control, suffer from their remote perspective, create
discontinuity, and hamstring the capability of commanders at the
tactical level to execute a coherent, purposeful strategic plan.
Growing accessibility to information requires the restructure of
command and control hierarchies to facilitate rapid engagement of
perishable targets and capitalize on our technological advantage.
Information synthesis and execution authority must be shifted to the
lowest possible levels while senior commanders and staffs must
discipline themselves to stay at the appropriate level of war.
The challenges of emerging threats, information velocity, and
advanced technologies demand more than a mere evolution of current
C2ISR paradigms, but rather a new approach that capitalizes on the
opportunities inherent in those same challenges. We cannot expect to
achieve future success through incremental enhancements to current C2
structures--that method evokes an industrial-age approach to warfare
that has lost its currency and much of its meaning. The requirements of
information age warfare demand not ``spiral development,'' but modular,
distributed technological maximization that permits and optimizes
operational agility. That kind of agility will not be achievable
without dramatic changes to our C2 CONOPS; our organizational paradigms
for planning, processing, and executing joint operations; our
acquisition processes; and a determined effort to match the results to
the three critical challenges and opportunities, while simultaneously
fitting them seamlessly into the context of joint and combined
operations.
10. The Nuclear Triad: The nuclear triad remains critical to U.S.
security for five reasons: 1) It provides the needed survivable
platforms of bombers, submarines and land based missiles to avoid
dangerous instabilities that would come from a submarine only force
that would reduce American nuclear assets to less than 10 targets; 2)
It provides the needed flexibility of ICBM promptness, SLBM
survivability, and bomber recall ability to hold at risk adversary
targets across the nuclear and non-nuclear spectrum to give the
President the necessary timely capability to stop aggression using the
least force necessary; 3) It guards against technological surprise
including an adversary finding our submarines at sea or markedly
improving their air defenses; 4) It preserves the land based ICBM leg
of the Triad that with 400 silo based missiles presents an adversary
with the impossible task of targeting the force by surprise; and 5)
Provides a significant hedge that allows expansion of the force should
current arms control limits be abandoned or should the geo-security
environment become significantly worse.
11. Military Advice to the President: One of the downsides of the
Goldwater Nichols Act--in terms of ensuring alternative courses of
action regarding matters of war are heard by the President--is that the
Act designated the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) as the
principal military advisor to the President. The next National Security
Act should specifically give the service chiefs access to the President
in order to stop the filtering of advice. An anecdote from planning
Operation Desert Storm illustrates the point.
In the late fall of 1990, the President became aware that there was
disagreement among the Joints Chiefs of Staff about plans for the war
against Iraq. In response, he called a meeting at Camp David with the
Joint Chiefs and others to be held just days after his request went
out. Some of the air planners spent a considerable amount of time in
those few days working with the Air Force Chief of Staff so that he
would be prepared to make the airpower case that the war could be
executed quickly and at a very low cost. The message got through, for
in early January, the President asked just the Air Force chief and the
Secretary of Defense to meet him at the White House where he asked the
Air Force chief if he was still as confident as he had been at Camp
David a few weeks previously. Receiving an affirmative response, he
proceeded with the plans that led to an ultimatum to Iraq and
commencement of the air-dominant war on the 16th of January.
Although any military officer could have been involved in this type
of discussion with the President, it is the Air Force professional that
can give the clearest predictions as properly planned airpower
operations connect directly and quickly to strategic objectives and are
parallel in nature as opposed to the serial operations of land warfare
where probabilities and costs are so difficult to forecast. These
meetings not only illustrate the close connection of the airpower
professional and the highest national objectives, but also suggest that
the airpower professional has special and especially difficult roles to
play in the current system of joint staff organization.
During World War II, four senior officers had generally open access
to the President and they frequently presented him with ideas as
divergent as Europe first verses Pacific first and with emphasis on
aircraft production as opposed to tank production. The President, as
commander-in-chief, then made the decisions he was charged to make, but
did so having had unfiltered advice from military experts. In today's
world the President rarely receives unfiltered advice; instead, the
CJCS, accompanied and supervised by the Secretary of Defense,
summarizes the views of the other service chiefs and then makes his own
recommendations. Representation of views with which you disagree is
very difficult at best. As there are very clear philosophical and
operational differences (or should be) between land, sea, and air
officers, the chance that the president will hear a clear exposition of
the differences is small. Thus, the likelihood of an informed decision
on such momentous issues as war and peace is unlikely.
This indeed was the situation in December of 1990 and had not the
President learned of the significant disagreement within the JCS,
decisions on the first Gulf War might have been far different. The role
of the service leadership is to represent their perspectives
forthrightly, and to be prepared to take the case to the highest
leadership. This is not an easy charge in today's world, but it is one
essential to accept. Ideally, however, there would be a serious
reconsideration of our defense leadership structure and the service
military leadership should be at the forefront with proposals and
arguments.
12. Joint Training. The past nearly 25 years of continuous combat
operations have made the services the most joint capable forces in the
world in conducting joint operations. But as we drawn down our combat
operations and the services move back into garrison, The CJCS must be
given the authority and the accountability for designing and directing
aggressive and continuing joint training exercises and experiments. In
the absence of that kind of effort, the services will retreat to their
primary focus on using their limited resources to develop their service
required skills and exercises and ``joint'' operations will become an
after thought.
13. Unit Organization, training and equipage. One of the treasured
principles of Title 10 is the service prerogative to determine their
own methods for ``organizing, training and equipping'' their forces and
then defining how they will present those forces to a combatant
commander who then has the authority, by the provisions inherent in
definition of ``Operational Control'' reconfigure, reassign and combine
organizations to meet his war fighting needs. Clearly those authorities
are exercised with great caution because the combatant commander must
weigh the risks associated with altering the basic structure of a
combat unit to the opportunities for success by doing so to present a
more capable warfighting force.
This is often done however, in the rear area with logistics,
administrative, security, communications, personnel, civil engineering
and other enabling capabilities. So if the combatant commander has the
authority to over rule the services in the way he may organize his
gained forces, and by law, may direct the training regimens required of
the services to prepare their forces to meet his unique theater needs,
and then may adjust the equipage of those units, again to meet his
needs, and the services must comply, one must ask why are the services
so much different in the way they describe themselves in the ``Force
For'' documents?
Further why will one service offer capabilities down to and
including only a single person and yet other services define a
capability type and then tailor it, to include all of its organic
enablers, as the minimum deployable package, thereby preventing its
enablers to be used without deploying the entire package. The
opportunity for efficiencies could be enormous if the services were
made to become much more standard in the way they construct their
tables of allowance and table of equipage.
14. The Reserve Components: The value of National Guard and Reserve
forces are critical if we are to craft a defense strategy that yields
the nation strategic agility. As we seek to balance capability,
capacity, and readiness, the reserve components' ability to surge in an
affordable fashion, makes them incredibly important assets. They need
to be at the center of options for managing the military in a time of
austerity. It is important to recognize that Guard and Reserve forces
are not just a force in reserve, or an force multiplier with a
personnel cost savings, but when the reserve forces are used, they
bring the rest of the nation into the decision making process.
15. Sequestration. Because there is no public awareness of what is
happening relative to the reduction in resources allocated to Defense,
the hollow force that sequestration is imposing today will not be
readily apparent until those forces are required. What is so
devastating about sequestration--and not obvious in a 20 second sound
byte--is that it is now affecting U.S. capability to provide rapid
response sufficient to meet the demands of our security strategy.
Said another way, we have a growing strategy-resource mismatch, and
that dichotomy between what we say we want to accomplish, and what we
can actually accomplish is growing. Without action to eliminate
sequestration that mismatch will only get worse.
I believe it is vitally important to remember that the first
responsibility of the United States government is the security of the
American people. As the preamble of our Constitution states, the
federal government was established to first, ``provide for the common
defense'' and subsequently, ``promote the general welfare.'' Recent
decisions have confused this prioritization, with sequestration taxing
defense spending at a rate greater than twice its percentage of the
total federal budget. It's time to return to first principles and get
our priorities straight.
conclusion
The challenge before us is to transform today to dominate an
operational environment that has yet to evolve, and to counter
adversaries who have yet to materialize. The 9/11 commission report's
now famous summary that the cause of that disaster was a ``failure of
imagination'' cannot be allowed to be repeated across our security
establishment.
Another roles and missions commission will not be easy and is sure
to upset many apple carts, but if we do not do it, our adversaries will
capitalize on the ponderous, bloated, and inefficient structures,
processes, and procedures that are currently in place and based on the
conditions that existed immediately after WWII--we have too much at
risk to let that happen again. The Islamic State does not have a JCIDS
process.
I finish with a plea for new thinking. In the face of disruptive
innovation and cultural change, the military can maintain the status
quo, or it can embrace and exploit change. I suggest that the latter is
preferred. Our services need to learn better how to rapidly adapt new
technology to the innovative concepts of operation that technology
enables. Our intelligence community, military, and other security
institutions will suffer if their internal organizations fail to adapt
to new, disruptive innovations and concepts of operation.
One of our most significant challenges is the structural and
cultural barriers that inhibit the diffusion of new ideas that
challenge the status quo. That is the challenge for not just our
military, but for all the other pillars of our national security
architecture. We must challenge our institutions to have an appetite
for innovation--and a culture that rewards innovative solutions.
Chairman McCain. Mr. McGrath?
STATEMENT OF BRYAN McGRATH, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, THE CENTER FOR
AMERICAN SEAPOWER, THE HUDSON INSTITUTE, WASHINGTON, DC
Mr. McGrath. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Reed, and members of the committee. Thank you for this great
civic honor today to be before you and to sit alongside these
experienced individuals.
The roles and missions defined at Key West were only part
of the story of how national and military strategy were
arranged during the Cold War to protect and sustain America's
interests. Of equal and perhaps greater importance, in my view,
was the strategic prioritization of those roles and missions,
to the point where the Department of the Air Force was
receiving nearly 50 percent of the defense budget late in the
Eisenhower Administration.
I am here today as a sea power advocate, and any reading of
my work leads logically to that conclusion. But I am also a
land power advocate, and I am also air power advocate. I am an
advocate of preponderant American military power capable of
deterring, fighting, and winning conflicts thousands of miles
from our own shores, and I am concerned that the current force
on its apparent trajectory does not maintain this
preponderance.
If we continue down the path we are on, one in which less
and less is spent on defense as a function of our economy, as a
function of total government spending, and as a function of the
capability and capacity necessary, our preponderance will
decline, and it will result in a force that looks
proportionally much like this one, only capable of doing fewer
things in fewer places to a lesser degree. I consider this path
dangerous and risky, but unfortunately it is perhaps the
likeliest path.
There are two other general paths we could take. We could
do what I believe is the most prudent thing to do, and this is
to increase defense spending across the board on virtually on
all components, capabilities, and capacities of the current
force. Unlike the flag and general officers present at Key
West, we have some idea of what the table stakes of great power
competition are.
Some consider this path to be unaffordable. I do not
believe this this is true. We remain a very prosperous country.
The fiscal restraints imposed on defense spending are self-
imposed and represent choices among competing priorities, but
they are choices nevertheless. Choosing to de-weight military
strength at the end of the Cold War was wise, but it is
increasingly unwise in the emerging great power contention
environment. This path would obviously cost more than we spend
today, but it would involve relatively little in changing the
strategic prioritization of roles and missions.
The second path we could take is one in which we spend
relatively similar to what we spend today and inflate it
appropriately, but where roles and missions--certain roles and
missions are prioritized in a return to the clarity of
President Eisenhower and his assumption of risk through the
making of tough strategic choices. Were we to do so, I believe
that American sea power would merit greater emphasis,
specifically because in its modern instantiation, it merges the
sea power of the world's most powerful Navy, with the air power
of the world's most lethal and mobile tactical air arm, and the
land power of the world's most feared middle-weight land force,
the U.S. Marine Corps. I see this force and a robust mix of
Special Forces as capable of needing a substantial number
assurance, presence, crisis response, and conventional
deterrence needs of any appropriate national strategy.
American sea power makes disproportionate contributions to
important national security objectives. Sea power enables the
homeland defense away game. Sea power bolsters critical
security balances. Sea power provides for effective
conventional deterrence. Sea power enables diplomacy and
development. Sea power provides for modulated military
responses and options for escalation and de- escalation as the
case may require. Sea power shows the compassion and spirit of
the American people on a global basis on disaster strikes.
Of course, sea power cannot do it all. Campaign-level air
and land power would continue to be what they have been for
decades, war waging and war winning forces. But they would be
overwhelmingly based in the United States, and they would be
maintained in a somewhat reduced status.
My written statement contains more detail with regard to
the major movements of this future joint force, one that
recognizes the virtues of friendly border neighbors, the
geography of being thousands of miles from many of our security
interests, and the reality of man's overwhelming proclivity to
live and work near the sea. I look forward to laying out some
of that detail in the questions period.
I want to stress once again that this sea power-centric
approach is not my first choice largely because I believe it
assumes too much risk, but less risk than staying on the path
we are on. I would much rather resource a larger, more powerful
version of the current force, one I believe appropriate to the
challenges ahead. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McGrath follows:]
Prepared Statement by Bryan McGrath
All testimony herein represents the personal views of Bryan McGrath
Thank you Chairman McCain and Ranking Member Reed, and all the
members of the Senate Armed Services Committee for the opportunity to
testify and to submit this written statement for the record.
I am a defense consultant by trade, specializing in naval strategy.
In early 2014, I joined with Seth Cropsey of the Hudson Institute to
found a think tank devoted to Seapower, known as the Hudson Center for
American Seapower. All of my adult life has been spent either in the
Navy or working on matters of naval operations and strategy.
On active duty, I commanded a destroyer, and I was the team leader
and primary author of the 2007 USN/USMC/USCG maritime strategy known as
``A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. Since leaving
active duty in 2008, I have written and spoken widely about
preponderant American Seapower as the element of our military power
most that most effectively and efficiently promotes and sustains
America's prosperity, security, and role as a world leader.
It is an honor to appear before you and in the company of my
esteemed colleagues. The nature of this hearing--an inquiry into the
continuing relevance of the roles and missions compromise reached at
Key West in the late 1940's--provides the opportunity for a more
generalized discussion of the relative merits of Seapower, land power,
and air power in the national security strategy of the United States of
America. While the Key West Agreement went a long way toward containing
the inter-service rivalry that characterized the immediate post-war
defense bureaucracy, it took the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 to
finish off the Services as effective advocates for their own particular
brand of military power, while creating an atmosphere of ``go along to
get along'' in which consensus is viewed as the highest bureaucratic
attribute. In fact, the interaction of Key West and modern Jointness is
primarily responsible for the strategic sclerosis that predestines this
nation--in these austere times--to a military that is increasingly
misaligned with our interests and the strategic environment.
The primary casualty of seventy years of Key West and Goldwater-
Nichols has been the loss of forceful, uniformed advocacy for the
particular operational and strategic benefits of generally Service-
specific military modalities. The contributions of Seapower, land
power, and air power in anything more than the tactical and theater
operational sense has in no small measure been sacrificed on an altar
of ``Jointness'' in which the contributions of all Services must blend
harmoniously, and in which unseemly advocacy--and its likely threat to
Jointness--is a guaranteed career shortener.
That is why this hearing and this Committee's willingness to take
hard look at where we are with Goldwater-Nichols--nearly thirty years
after its passage--is so important.
Our fighting force has become the envy of the world, and Jointness
has a lot to do with that. Our ability to synthesize and synchronize
the fires and effects of the four armed services in the space and time
of our choosing is unmatched. Additionally, Jointness has the potential
to create efficiencies in acquisition, so long as requirements and
performance specifications are not unduly compromised in order to
attain the ``one size fits all'' (or most) approach.
Where Jointness has ill-served this country is at the level of
strategy-making, both in terms of military strategy and the military's
contribution to the making of Grand Strategy.
jointness, strategy, and resources
Eight years ago while on active duty, I was the team lead and
primary author of a document called ``A Cooperative Strategy for 21st
Century Seapower'', which was a tri-service document (Navy, USMC, Coast
Guard) that boldly proclaimed itself a ``maritime strategy'', a term
that had not been used to describe any one of a half-dozen Navy and
Department of the Navy strategic documents in the previous two
decades--since the seminal ``Maritime Strategy'' of the Reagan era.
In point of fact, Goldwater-Nichols and the rise of the Combatant
Commanders created a sense among many in the national security field
that strategy was no longer the purview of the Services, and that to
the extent strategy was to be made, it would be done at the Combatant
Commands and the Joint Staff. This view was summed up in a conversation
I had in early autumn of 2007, just before the new maritime strategy
was to debut. In it, my interlocutor, a friend who is now occupying a
position of great responsibility in the Department of Defense, told me
that ``Services make budgets, not strategy. You guys (the Navy) have no
business in writing strategy.'' He was not alone in this assessment.
We forged ahead with the Maritime Strategy in spite of those who
felt strongly that we had no mandate to do so, and the result was
generally well-received. In dissent, one prominent navalist opined that
it (the strategy) was not Joint enough, and that we ignored the
important contributions of the other Services. Keep in mind, this was a
Seapower strategy, designed in no small measure to explain modern
American Seapower and its unique contributions to national security and
prosperity.
The point of this discourse is to raise the issue that Jointness
has risen to the level of attribute above all other attributes--not
only in how the force fights, but in how it makes strategy. Military
strategy and its contribution to grand strategy take as a starting
position, a Joint force that is constituted from the pieces and parts
and roles and missions largely enshrined at Key West. Key West
essentially locked the contributions in place, with Goldwater-Nichols
then enforcing the notion that while the individual service modalities
were of course important, it was ONLY in their blending--in largely
consistent shares--that goodness could be had.
We can see evidence of this in how base budgets have been allocated
in the post-Vietnam era. We often hear of a ``\1/3\, \1/3\, \1/3\''
split, but this is not correct. In fact, the Services only actually
split 80% of the budget, as 20% is consumed by DoD activities. That 80%
however, has been relatively consistently allocated over the years,
with the Department of the Navy generally receiving the largest share
(it contains two armed services), the Department of the Air Force next,
and the Department of the Army the least. What is interesting though,
is that the proportions remain relatively equal irrespective of the
national military strategy. Put another way, we have had numerous
defense-wide reviews since Goldwater-Nichols, to include the Base
Force, the Bottom-Up Review, several National Security Strategies,
several Quadrennial Defense Reviews, and the 2012 Defense Strategic
Guidance. Although these reviews addressed markedly different security
environments, the proportions allotted to the military departments
remained generally stable. Supplemental funding is not included in this
comparison.
How can this be? How can base budgets remain relatively stable
across a number of dramatically different security environments,
including America as ``hyper-power'', the War on Terror, and the
Rebalance to the Pacific? The answer is that Key West and Goldwater-
Nichols have created an atmosphere in which comity and consensus are
the coin of the realm, and that consensus is ``purchased'' with defense
spending that ensures each of the Services generally get much of what
they want and rarely get all of it.
redundancy, inefficiency, and risk
The roles and missions division that emerged from Key West
enshrined redundancy and inefficiency, but in the process, these
overages helped buy down risk, especially as the Cold War progressed.
While existential threats lurked, a certain amount of inefficiency and
redundancy was worthwhile, and strategically unobjectionable. It is
important to remember that the reason Secretary Forrestal convened the
Chiefs at Key West was in order to gain efficiency, to economize.
Although he was relatively unsuccessful in this regard, Key West
created a roles and missions architecture that could be relatively
easily enlarged and diminished in response to the perceived level of
threat from the Soviet Union. While Eisenhower eventually came to rely
more heavily on nuclear weapons rather than conventional (with the USAF
receiving nearly = the defense budget late in his second term), he did
little to alter the roles and missions of the Services. Additionally,
he had the luxury of spending nearly 10% of GDP on defense, nearly
triple the proportion we allocate today.
It cannot be stressed enough that Key West was convened largely to
reach efficiencies and to economize, and not as a means to achieve
strategic coherence or wholeness. As we face what appears to be a new
era of great power contention, I am concerned that as we look at roles
and missions, we do so not as an exercise in efficiency, but in the
quest for the allocation of resources and forces best suited to deter
and if necessary, win great power war.
Put another way, the roles and missions debate is potentially less
interesting than a debate about how those roles and missions are
prioritized, and that prioritization discussion necessarily involves
the concept of risk. That said, it seems strategically unwise to
continue to spend a declining share of our national wealth on defense
while maintaining the current departmental allocation consistency. We
are creating a Joint force that is simply a smaller version of its
predecessors, capable of doing fewer things, to a lesser extent, in
fewer places, without any diminishing of the responsibilities assigned
to it. We can go in one of three directions. We can continue to go in
the direction that we are, which will ill-position us to protect and
sustain our interests in an era of renewed great power contention. This
is the most risky path but also the most likely. We can dramatically
increase defense spending across the board, and increase the size and
readiness of the Armed Services even as we modernize them, which is the
least risky path, but in the absence of a triggering event or a
political sea-change, highly unlikely. Or we can continue with the same
general total outlay of defense spending but favor certain military
roles over others. This is option is less risky than the path we are
on, but it is potentially as politically unlikely as the broad based
increase in defense spending.
I wish to be on record as supporting the second option, a broad
increase in military spending across the board. I believe this nation
is dangerously ill-prepared to move forward in an era of great power
contention, and I believe that the trajectory we are on will only
decrease our fitness for these challenges.
if we prioritize, prioritize seapower
Given that the political conditions for a broad increase in defense
spending are unlikely to be achieved, and given that simply shrinking
the current force will only increase the mismatch between our force and
its likely operating environment, we must then consider placing bets on
certain aspects of our military power; relying on them to a greater
extent while we de-weight other capabilities, not because they are
unimportant, but because they are less important to the missions of
conventional deterrence and/or because such capabilities can be more
rapidly reconstituted than other more capital intensive aspects of the
force.
In my view, if a well-conceived strategic approach were taken that
1) weighted deterring and winning great power war higher than any other
military endeavor and 2) allowed no sacred cows, modern American
Seapower would be prioritized over land power and aerospace power. This
is not to say that America does not need land and aerospace power; we
certainly do. But the Department of the Navy is essentially a microcosm
of the Joint Force as presently constituted. It clearly has the
overwhelming amount of Seapower, although the Army has a large number
of watercraft. It has the world's most mobile air component, though the
Air Force clearly contains campaign level, war-winning air power. It
has the world's most feared middleweight land force, delivered from the
sea with mobility and flexibility, although the Army is clearly our
most powerful land force. In other words, I am an advocate for land
power and air power-and I believe they can most efficiently be
delivered from the sea in order to protect and sustain our interests
around the world. Additionally, if properly resourced, the land and air
power contained within the units of issue of modern naval power--the
Carrier Strike Group and the Amphibious Ready Group, would be
sufficient for much of the day to day work of military diplomacy,
assurance, presence and deterrence around the world, and would be the
force upon which the war-winning power of the Army and the Air Force
would marshal if a conflict outstripped available naval power.
However, the Navy and Marine Corps as presently constituted would
be ill-suited to this work. We are sized for peacetime forward presence
of credible combat power in two theaters at a time--currently the Far
East and the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean region. Our 271 ship, 186K
Marine force is insufficient to service these forward deployed combat
hubs, and worse, our national interests demand a return in force to the
Mediterranean--where turmoil and unrest throughout North Africa and the
Levant, threats to our ally Israel, and a new Russian ``keep out'' zone
developing in the Eastern Mediterranean require United States answers.
A Navy and Marine Corps capable of providing continuous and
indefinite presence, assurance, and deterrence in three theaters
simultaneously would necessarily be larger than the current force. It
would be built around 15 Expeditionary Strike Forces each of which is
comprised of a large, nuclear powered aircraft carrier, an amphibious
assault ship, 8-10 surface combatants, two additional amphibious ships,
two loosely attached attack submarines networked into an undersea
constellation of unmanned, unattended, and or fixed surveillance,
sensors, and weapons, shore-based maritime patrol aircraft and
integrated maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
unmanned platforms. This force would take decades to achieve, and would
likely be in the neighborhood of 450 ships and 220,000 Marines.
In fact, it is the time associated with achieving this force that
argues strongly for moving quickly and investing steadily in peacetime.
The framers of our Constitution faced a similar dilemma to what we face
today. In relative terms, it was then--and remains today--less
difficult (and expensive) to `` . . . raise and support Armies . . .
'', than it is to `` . . . provide and maintain a Navy'' (U.S.
Constitution Article I Section 8). Recently, the Army Chief of Staff
gave a speech in which he attempted to dispel a number of ``myths''
about warfare. One of these myths was that ``armies are easy to
regenerate''. This is of course, a straw man, as no thoughtful analyst
considers it ``easy'' to regenerate an Army. The point though--one that
the framers foresaw in the language of the Constitution--is not that it
is easy to raise an army, but that it is EASIER than raising a Navy. In
this regard, the Air Force is much more like the Navy than the Army. In
simple terms, building ships takes a long time, and in our present
industrial base--where there are few places that proper warships can be
built--there is little or no surge capacity to ``ramp up'' in an
emergency.
geography is not destiny, but it matters
Another reason to privilege the land power and air power resident
in the sea power of the Department of the Navy is the great gift of
geography that we enjoy. Our border nations are not military threats to
our security. As the world's most powerful economic nation, our
interests are global, and protecting and sustaining them requires the
projection of power and influence across thousands of miles. This
extended quotation from Congressional Research Service analyst Ron
O'Rourke article in the Naval Institute's Proceedings (Jan 2012) says
it best:
``Most of the world's people, resources, and economic activity are
not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere,
particularly Eurasia. Consequently, a key element of United States
national strategy, going back many decades, has been to prevent the
emergence of a regional hegemon in one part of Eurasia or another,
because such a hegemon could deny the United States access to some of
the Eastern Hemisphere's resources and economic activity. Preventing
this is a major reason why the U.S. military is structured with force
elements-including significant naval forces, long-range bombers, and
long-range airlift-that enable it to cross broad expanses of ocean and
air space and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations
upon arrival. The United States is the only country with a military
designed to do this. The other countries in the Western Hemisphere
don't attempt it because they can't afford it, and because the United
States is, in effect, doing it for them. Countries of the Eastern
Hemisphere don't do it for the very basic reason that they're already
in that hemisphere, where the action is. Consequently, they instead
spend their defense money on forces for influencing events in their own
neighborhood.''
Given our propitious geography and our friendly neighbors, there is
a logical argument to be made to keep the land and airpower of the
Department of the Navy in highest readiness with global capacity, while
keeping the war-winning combat power of the U.S. Army's land power and
the U.S. Air Force's air power largely--but not exclusively--garrisoned
in the United States in smaller numbers than we have been used to. The
nation would necessarily have to think through how most effectively to
ramp up these two campaign level Services, and a more fluid mix of
active, reserve and National Guard forces would likely result. Those
elements of the Army and Air Force that support the day to day
operations of the Navy and Marine Corps would also be kept in highest
readiness, as would those portions of the Army that most resemble the
capital intensive nature of the Navy and Air Force--specifically Army
Aviation and Air and Missile Defense.
The greatest risk of this Seapower-centric approach is that we
simply could not generate enough ``war winning'' combat power fast
enough to prevent a ``fait accompli'', especially one not proximate to
the sea (for instance, Central Europe). Mitigating this threat would
necessarily involve a greater reliance on the land forces of friends
and allies. The risk could not however, be eliminated.
conclusion
The most likely direction this nation will head (and the most
dangerous) is to continue on the path it is on, a path to a smaller
force that is increasingly inappropriate to the emerging security
environment. This is because the forces of inertia are strong, both in
the Pentagon and here on Capitol Hill. Additional money for defense
seems unlikely, and just as unlikely would be a strategic re-
prioritization.
The best option then would be to embark on a broad based defense
increase, one that would grow the current force as allocated both in
size and in capability. This I believe to be the soundest, most
strategically wise course to take as China and Russia begin to assume
larger roles in the world, and while spending more on defense would be
a difficult political pull, it is probably more likely to happen than a
strategic allocation of resources that challenges current paradigms and
rice bowls.
Should the nation move in the direction of a dialogue that would be
less risky than the current path and less expensive than the broad
based defense build-up, then shifting resources and priorities to the
Department of the Navy to enable it to provide the global, day-to-day
management force while the other Military Departments concentrate on
support to those routine and crisis response operations and most
importantly, the provision of war-winning, heavy, campaign level land
and air power, is advised.
Chairman McCain. Thank you. Dr. O'Hanlon? I might mention
for the record the excellent new book called The Future of Land
Warfare. Congratulations. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL E. O'HANLON, PH.D., CO-DIRECTOR, THE
CENTER FOR 21ST CENTURY SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE, THE
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. O'Hanlon. Thank you, Senator. Very kind of you. I
appreciate the honor to be here today as well.
I really just want to make two main points in the spirit of
the roles and missions conversation that we are having, and the
first is to say that while many are looking to the Army as a
preferred bill payer for other parts of the military, I think
we have gone about far enough with this way of thinking. So I
am not here to advocate for a larger Army, but I am very
concerned about some of the ideas now being considered and
presented, whether it is the strategic capabilities and
management review that we heard about in 2013, whether it is
some ideas that are out there now, for example, from former
Chief of Naval Operations [CNO] Admiral Gary Roughead to cut
the Army to below 300,000 active duty troops.
Some of these ideas I believe would go too far. This would
require a longer conversation, of course, about just what size
Army is optimal, but I would simply make a historical point
before moving on to my specific recommendations on roles on
missions. The historical point, we always tend to assume that
we have figured out how to avoid big ground wars, and for the
last century we have had this tendency. When we have come out
of a big conflict or a big crisis or competition, we have made
that assumption, and we have been proven wrong.
And so, I would simply observe, for example, up until World
War I, we had a tiny Army, 17th or 18th in the world even as we
were becoming the world's number one economic power. The
argument was, well, we got away from all those Old World
conflicts. Let us stay over here. We are safe. We do not need
to worry about playing that Old World game of interstate war.
And we all know we had to build up for World War I, but you
would have thought that might have been the lesson, but after
World War I we cut back to being the 19th largest Army in the
world in the mid-1930s, and we all know what happened after
that. You would have thought World War II would have taught us
the lesson, and, of course, we did have to downsize from eight
million soldiers. But nonetheless we downsized so much that in
five short years, as this committee well knows, Task Force
Smith was incapable of responding to North Korean aggression
just five years later, just five years after we had had the
world's most powerful military machine ever contemplated or
invented on the face of the earth.
And then, of course, we had problems in the Cold War
period. We tried to fight the Vietnam War with tactics and
weapons that I think were inappropriate to that fight. Then the
lesson of Vietnam was no more Vietnams--excuse me. No more
Vietnams. Let us not even have a military that can do that. Let
us get the Army out of the counterinsurgency and stabilization
business. Lo and behold, that seemed okay for Operation Desert
Storm, but by the time we got to the wars of this century, we
were not ready. It took us three or four or five years to
really get the right tactics, and leaders, and concepts to be
effective.
And now, we risk doing it again. I do not think that the
damage so far has been all that great, but I think we are
starting to say things and think things that are worrisome. In
addition to the ideas I just mentioned a few minutes ago about
proposals for even deeper cuts in the Army, we now have the
Quadrennial Defense Review [QDR] as a matter of official U.S.
strategy saying we will no longer size the armed forces for
prolonged large-scale stabilization missions. I just think this
is ahistorical, unrealistic, and incorrect.
President Barack Obama has every right and reason to try to
stay out of big new operations in any specific place, like a
Syria or where have you. But nonetheless, the idea that we can
simply assume away these kinds of missions forever, which is
essentially what the QDR says if you take it literally, I think
is a mistake. So I would simply counsel that we have gone far
enough in our thinking about downsizing the Army and putting it
into a very specific limited set of missions.
General David Petraeus was kind enough to launch my book
with me last week, and he repeated the idea that I know he, and
Senator Reed, and Senator McCain, and many others on this
committee have discussed and heard about before. Our Army needs
to remain an Army of pentathletes, people and forces that can
do many different things and at scale, not in a boutique way,
not in an overly limited way.
One last set of thoughts.
Chairman McCain. Let me--let me ask, in this scenario, what
role and capacity is the Marine Corps?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Well, my thinking is the Marine Corps is
essentially right sized. The Marine Corps has a pretty good
floor under its force structure. It is known for being very
effective on Capitol Hill. It is known for being very effective
with the American people. I think the Marine Corps in a sense I
am taking as a given in the sense that it may fluctuate a
little. But I think the Army is more likely to be the target
for big new changes, and that is why I focused my attention
there.
Just a couple--because the committee has asked us to give
specific recommendations, and like my fellow panelists I would
like to just give a couple and then finish, because I am not
trying to say that every Army program or every military program
is just right today. I do think we need a somewhat larger
defense budget increase than President Obama is calling for or
that the recent budget compromise is calling for. But I think,
you know, we need to make some reforms, as you said, Senator,
and let me just list a couple.
First of all, the Army has already managed to kill off most
of its own weapons programs. It may not need a lot more help
from the committee or anyone else, and I say that somewhat
facetiously, but it is also somewhat true. In the last 20
years, the Sergeant York, the armored gun system, the crusader,
the Comanche, the future combat system, all of these have met
their demise. The Army has had some troubles with
modernization. It needs to go back to the drawing board. It is
trying to do that, I recognize, but the Army is already
thinking hard about how to scale back some of its modernization
programs. So I will leave that as it is.
On the Air Force, and Navy, and Marine Corps side, I think
the F-35 Program is a good program, but I think it is
oversized. In an era when we are doing so much more with
drones, with space, with existing fourth generation systems
like the A-10 and the F-16, I think that we do not need 2,450
F-35s. I would encourage the other services to look at that
number.
I would also suggest that when the United States Navy under
a man I respect greatly, former CNO Admiral Jonathan Greenert,
says that nuclear modernization is its top priority, I would
suggest the Navy ought to reconsider. We do need safe and
reliable nuclear deterrent capabilities, but I do not think the
Navy should have nuclear deterrence as its top priority. The
world has changed. The details of our nuclear force
capabilities to me are not as quite as important as the Navy is
perhaps estimating. I want to see a little greater relative
focus on conventional forces.
And I think finally on the size of the Navy, I would submit
that perhaps we can scale back the size of the carrier fleet by
one or two if we are willing to put a little bit more land-
based tactical air power in the Persian Gulf. We have a lot of
our allies now equally concerned about the rise of Iran. I
think the idea of going back to some more permanent land basing
for tactical fighter jets may enable us to reduce the strains
and demands on the carrier force in the Persian Gulf. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. O'Hanlon follows:]
Prepared statement by Dr. Michael O'Hanlon
the future of land warfare
By Michael O'Hanlon (author of the new book, The Future of Land
Warfare)
Greetings, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, and other Senators on
the Committee. It is an honor to testify today as we stretch our
imaginations to postulate what the future of warfare may be like--and
thus what demands may be placed on different elements of America's
military. I am here to argue in favor of the rough balance of resources
that has characterized the U.S. Armed Forces in the past. My purpose is
not to argue that landpower should be the preeminent military tool of
the United States. Rather, I would like to challenge those who claim
that its time has come and gone--and that the U.S. Army's size and
budget should decline accordingly. I strongly disagree. An Army of some
million soldiers, active and Reserve and National Guard, remains
roughly the right size for the United States going forward--and in
fact, that is a rather small and economical force relative to the scale
of challenges and threats that I foresee. Moreover, that Army should
continue to prepare for a wide range of possible scenarios, challenges,
and missions. We cannot opt out of certain categories of warfare based
on some crystal ball we purport to possess; the United States has
always been wrong when it tried to do so in the past. To paraphrase the
old Trotsky'ism, we may not think we have an interest in large, messy,
dangerous ground operations in the future--but they may have an
interest in us.
military revolutions and the allure of technology
In recent years, Americans have understandably gotten tired of land
warfare. Fatigued by Iraq and Afghanistan, rightly impressed by special
forces, transfixed by the arrival of new technologies such as drones,
and increasingly preoccupied with a rising China and its military
progress in domains ranging from space to missile forces to maritime
operations, the American strategic community has largely turned away
from thinking about ground combat. \1\ This is actually nothing new.
Something similar happened after the world wars, Korean and Vietnam
wars, and Operation Desert Storm in 1991 as well. That last time,
debate shifted to a supposed revolution in military affairs. Many
called for a major transformation in American military forces to
respond to that presumed revolution, until the 9/11 attacks returned
military analysis back to more practical and immediate issues. But now
the strategic debate seems to be picking up about where it had left off
at the turn of the century--except that in the intervening 15 years,
remarkable progress in technologies such as unmanned aerial systems
have provided even more grist for those favoring a radical transition
in how militaries prepare for and fight wars.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ For good treatments of the capacities of special forces, that
at the same time do not overstate their realistic roles or falsely
imply the obsolescence of major combat units, see Phillip Lohaus, A
Precarious Balance: Preserving the Right Mix of Conventional and
Special Operations Forces (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise
Institute, 2015); and Brian S. Petit, Going Big by Getting Small: The
Application of Operational Art by Special Operations in Phase Zero
(Denver, Colorado: Outskirts Press, 2013).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Much of this debate is welcome. Even if futurists understandably
tend to get more wrong than right in their specific recommendations, a
debate in which they challenge existing Pentagon rice bowls is
preferable to complacency. As long as the burden of proof is on those
who would dismantle proven concepts and capabilities when proposing a
whole new approach to military operations and warfare, a world of too
many ideas is preferable to a staid, unimaginative one of too few. The
history of military revolutions suggests that established superpowers
are more likely to be caught unprepared for, even unaware of, new ways
of warfare than to change their own armed forces too much or too fast.
That said, pushback against transformative ideas will often be
necessary. We have seen many unrealistic military ideas proposed for
the post-World War II American armed forces, from the Pentomic division
of the 1950s that relied on nuclear weapons for indirect fire, to the
flawed counterinsurgency strategies of the 1960s, to the surreal
nuclear counterforce strategies from Curtis Lemay onward in the Cold
War, to the dreamy Strategic Defense Initiative goals of the 1980s, to
the proposals for ``rods from God'' and other unrealistic technologies
in the revolution in military affairs debate of the 1990s. As such,
wariness about new ideas is in order. Even in a great nation like the
United States, groupthink can happen, and bad ideas can gain a
following they do not deserve. Also, the United States has a history of
cutting its ground forces too far and too fast after major challenges
or conflicts have passed. For example, after World War I, we downsized
until we had only the 17th largest army in the world as World War II
approached; after the latter conflict, we cut the Army so fast that
Task Force Smith was routed by the North Koreans just five short years
later, in 1950.
One hears much discussion again today about the supposed
obsolescence of large-scale ground combat. Official American policy now
leans in that direction too, as codified in the 2012 Defense Strategic
Guidance and 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, largely a result of
frustrations with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accordingly, the
2012 Defense Strategic Guidance, released under the signature of then-
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta with a preface signed by President
Obama, states flatly that ``U.S. forces will no longer be sized to
conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations.'' \2\ Later that
same year, the Pentagon carried out a so-called Strategic Capabilities
and Management Review that examined the option of reducing the Army to
just 380,000 active-duty soldiers. \3\ Subsequently, the Ryan-Murray
budget compromise of late 2013 and other considerations led to a less
stark goal of 440,000 to 450,000 active-duty soldiers. But the 2014
Quadrennial Defense Review again dismissed the plausibility of large-
scale stabilization missions, albeit somewhat more gently, stating that
``Although our forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale
prolonged stability operations, we will preserve the experience gained
during the past ten years of counterinsurgency and stability operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan.'' \4\ The emphasis changed somewhat, but the
fundamental point was the same. Ground warfare, or at least certain
forms of it, was not only to be avoided when possible--certainly, that
is sound advice--but not even truly prepared for. That may be less
sound advice.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Department of Defense, ``Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership:
Priorities for 21st Century Defense,'' Washington, D.C., January 2012,
available at http://www.defense.gov/news/
Defense_Strategic_Guidance.pdf.
\3\ Michael E. O'Hanlon, ``Sizing U.S. Ground Forces: From `2 Wars'
to `1 War Plus 2 Missions,''' Washington Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1
(Spring 2014), pp. 151-164, available at https://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/
sites/twq.elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/O'Hanlon_PDF.pdf.
\4\ Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review (Washington,
D.C.: March 2014), p. vii, available at defense.gov/pubs/
2014_Quadrennial_Defense_Review.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are lots of reasons to believe that, whether we like it or
not, ground warfare does have a future, and a very significant one at
that. Nearly three-fourths of the world's full-time military personnel,
almost 15 million out of some 20 million, are in their nations'
respective armies. \5\ Most wars today are civil wars, fought within
states by ground forces. Interstate wars are rare, but when they do
happen, they generally involve neighboring states and generally involve
a heavy concentration of ground combat. America may be far away from
most potential conflict zones, putting a greater premium on U.S. long-
range strike including air and naval forces than is the case for most
countries. Yet the United States works with more than 60 allies and
security partners that tend to emphasize their own armies in force
planning, and tend to worry about land warfare scenarios within or just
beyond their own borders. Iraq and Afghanistan revealed the limitations
of standoff warfare, and the problems that can ensue when the nation
places severe constraints on its use of ground power (especially in the
first few years of each conflict).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military
Balance 2014 (Oxfordshire, England, 2014).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is another problem with the trend of our current national
thinking: since the Cold War ended, the U.S. Army like much of the
American armed forces has been built around the prospect of fighting up
to two major regional wars at a time. That thinking has evolved--
especially in the years when the United States was actually fighting
two wars at once, in Iraq and Afghanistan (and in the process
eliminating one of the threats that two-war scenarios had been built
around, the government of Saddam Hussein). Former Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld's 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review began to shift the
paradigm somewhat. The Pentagon's 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance and
2014 Quadrennial Defense Review moved further away from a two-war
construct without jettisoning it altogether. Now, in the second of the
two overlapping wars, it is deemed adequate to ``inflict unacceptable
costs'' on an adversary. \6\ But the vagueness of that latter standard,
deterrence by the threat of punishment, and changes in the
international security order, suggest that perhaps it is time to think
afresh about the future of the U.S. Army and the other services.
Planning for regional conflict will have to be a component of future
force sizing, but with less specificity about likely foes than in the
past, and with a fuller range of considerations to complement the
contingency analysis.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Quadrennial Defense Review
2014 (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 2014), p. 22, available
at defense.gov/pub s/2014_Quadrennial_ Defense_ Review.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some would counsel against preparedness for plausible military
missions on the grounds that by being prepared, we might stray into
conflicts that would have been best avoided. The 2003 Iraq War may be a
recent case in point--a ``war of choice,'' in Richard Haass's pithy
depiction, that would surely not have been undertaken without a ready
and fairly large standing military. \7\ But for every such case in U.S.
history, there are probably several--as with the world wars, and Korean
War--in which lack of preparedness proved an even greater problem.
Moreover, in Iraq and Afghanistan, improper preparation for a certain
type of fighting arguably made the initial years in both these wars far
less successful than they might have been. Nor is it so clear that the
United States is really spoiling for military action abroad. Americans
may not be as restrained in the use of force as they often like believe
about themselves. Yet at the same time, casual aversion--and, more
recently, a national souring about the kind of ground operations
conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan--impose important constraints on
action as well. Deliberately staying militarily unprepared for
plausible missions, as a way of avoiding unsuccessful military
operations abroad, thus seems an unwise and highly risky strategy for
the nation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of
Two Iraq Wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
plausible scenarios that could threaten core american interests
In the interest of brevity, I will conclude this written testimony
with a list of the ten scenarios that I develop and analyze in my new
book. None except perhaps the Syria contingency is individually likely.
But all bear watching. Each could seriously threaten major American
national security interests including even the basic safety of the
homeland if it took place. As such, while we might try (and arguably
should try) to stay out of most of them even if they begin to unfold,
we might also find that there is ultimately little choice but to
intervene as part of a joint, coalition operation. For several in
particular, maintaining the capacity to conduct them promptly and
effectively could strengthen deterrence, making the very possibility of
war less than it would be otherwise. Here is my list:
A Russian invasion threat to the Baltic states
A second Korean war, including possible Chinese
involvement
A maritime conflict between China and Japan or the
Philippines that spills over onto land
A fissioning of Pakistan, perhaps combined with a complex
humanitarian emergency sparked by a major natural disaster in South
Asia
Indo-Pakistani war, perhaps over a terrorist strike, with
Kashmir providing the spark
Iranian use or threatened use of nuclear weapons against
a neighbor
A major international stabilization operation, as in
Syria after a negotiated peace
Civil war accompanied by terrorism and perhaps a
biological pandemic within Nigeria . Increase in the brutality and
reach of criminal networks in Central America
A major domestic emergency in the United States
Consideration of these scenarios leads me to advocate a million-
soldier U.S. Army, similar to today's capability, with roughly the
current mix between active component and reserve component forces. The
Marine Corps would retain roughly its current size and strength as
well. Under my proposal, the ground forces would be sized, equipped,
trained, and prepared for what I call a ``1+2'' framework--with the
``1'' contingency being a large-scale conflict (like some of the more
demanding operations suggested above, such as Korea) and the ``2'' most
likely long, multilateral operations involving some combination of
stabilization, relief, counterterrorism, deterrence, and assistance to
local partners. All three operations could occur at the same rough time
period (and if they did, we would need to start growing the Army as
well, in anticipation of possible further demands).
Such messy missions may not be what we want as a nation. They
certainly are not what our brave soldiers (and other members of the
joint force, as well as diplomats and aid workers) might prefer to
conduct in faraway lands. But in this complicated, huge,
interdependent, dangerous world, they probably will be in our future
whether we like it or not.
Chairman McCain. Thank you. Mr. Martinage?
STATEMENT OF ROBERT C. MARTINAGE, SENIOR FELLOW, THE CENTER FOR
STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Martinage. First off, I would just like to thank the
committee for the opportunity to share my views on how we might
realign the roles and missions of the armed forces to better
addresses emerging operational and strategic challenges, as
well as take more advantage of new opportunities.
I would like to focus my remarks on three broad areas for
potential change: the possible creation of new services for
space, cyber, and special operations, the need for increased
service specialization, and the concept of what I call
comparative jointness, meaning encouraging healthy intra- and
inter-service rivalry to foster innovation.
So, first, creating new services. While few argue that air
power merited an independent service in the immediate wake of
World War I, the momentum behind the establishment of the
Department of Air Force was strong by the end of World War II.
Today in comparison to air power, cyber and space forces are
arguably somewhere in the later inter-war period. Cyber and
space warfare capabilities have been developed, but have yet to
be tested in high intensity combat.
So looking specifically at cyberspace, it has clearly
become a vital operational domain for U.S. military forces that
is similar, but yet unique, from the air, sea, and space.
Unlike the other warfare domains, it encompasses physical
elements, such as communications infrastructure, and computer
networks, electromagnetic radiation, traveling through air and
space, and the virtual world of computer code and data
processing. It is distinct culturally as well. We are requiring
different types of warriors to fight it.
Given these myriad differences and its growing importance,
cyber warfare may warrant an independent branch of the armed
services. As a step in this direction, in 2010 DOD's U.S. Cyber
Command, which is staffed in large part by the services, but in
addition each service maintains its own cyber component that is
technically subordinate to Cyber Command, but is also
controlled by the respective service chain of command. This
approach has a number of drawbacks, including duplication of
effort, potential inconsistency across the Joint Force, and
lack of continuity as personnel rotate in and out of their
cyber positions every three years.
An independent service focused on cyber operations would
offer at least six potential benefits: unity of command, better
enforcement of common cyber and information technology
standards, different recruiting standards, training programs
and retention strategies, dedicated career paths to enable the
development of deep technical and operational expertise over
time, the formulation of cyber and operational concepts and
doctrine independent of the parent service culture, and
centralized management of cyber manpower and resources. Of
course, there are some potential downsides, which I also get
into in my prepared statement.
With respect to space, while each service has its own space
professionals, most of the expertise currently resides within
the Air Force. But space operations are fundamentally different
from air operations. The laws of aerodynamics govern activities
in space, whereas the laws of aerodynamics govern air power.
Like space--like cyber--excuse me--space operations require
specialized skill sets, training, equipment, operational
concepts and doctrine. The culture of the space community is
also far different from the very pilot-centric one that
dominates the Air Force. Accordingly, it may be worth
considering the establishment of an independent service to
organize, train, and equip space warfare operators.
In 2010, Congress created the Commission--I mean, in 2001
created Congress created the Commission to Assess United States
National Security Management and Organization, the so-called
Rumsfeld Commission, that looked at the specific issue. At the
time, they decided the disadvantage of creating a separate
space service outweighed the advantages. As they put it at the
time, there is not yet a critical mass of qualified personnel,
budget requirements or missions sufficient to establish a new
Department. They did, however, leave open the possibility that
a military department of space might be needed at some future
date.
I think it is instructive to reflect on what has or, more
importantly, what has not happened over the past 14 years since
that commission was formed. First, United States space systems
have increased significantly, most notably from China and, to a
lesser degree, from Russia, and it is not at all clear that we
are keeping pace with the threat. Second, until recently most
of DOD's larger space system acquisitions experienced
considerable difficulty. The past decade is littered with
failed or canceled programs, ones with staggering costs and
scheduled overruns.
Third, while financial and program turbulence exacted a
toll on the space industrial base across the board, the U.S.
space launch sector has severely atrophied. For over 15 years,
for example, the United States has been in the very unfortunate
position of having to purchase RD-180 rocket motors designed
and built in Russia for use on the Atlas 3 and 5 space launch
vehicles owing to the lack of a domestic supplier.
In short, most of the urgent items identified by the
Commission 14 years ago remain partially or completely
unaddressed. It certainly appears that the Nation has become
more, not less, vulnerable in space. While threats have
intensified and proliferated, space-related acquisitions have
been slow and disordered, and the U.S. industrial base has
grown weaker. While it is impossible to say with certainty, the
focus of attention--the focused attention of a dedicated space
service may have prevented some of this downward slide.
Like Cyber Command, there are a number of benefits of
potential new space service in the years ahead dealing with
recruitment, space career paths, space operational concepts, a
dedicated funding stream, and the concentrated and dedicated
management of space systems acquisitions. It is a long list.
Switching now to Special Operations Command [SOCOM]. SOCOM
is a hybrid organization like the services. It is a force
provider to the combatant commands, but like the other
combatant commands it is involved in operational planning,
force allocation, and, in some cases, execution of military
operations. The primary reason to consider elevating SOCOM to a
full-fledged service would be to give it far more flexibility
in managing the career paths of its highly-skilled operators,
both enlisted and officers.
I would like to switch now to the second major topic,
increased service specialization. There are many unintended
consequences of the Key West Agreement as reinforced by
Goldwater-Nichols. First, the service budget allocations have
remained fixed over the past three decades, which has stifled
innovation. Second, there is an everyone plays mentality when
it comes to contingency planning and, thus, resource
allocation. Within the respective Key West stovepipes, the
services have over invested in capabilities for conducting
operations in medium threat environments with the implicit
reasoning that such capabilities can swing to the low end or to
the high end. The problem, however, is that such middle of the
road capabilities are often inefficient in terms of cost with
respect to lower-end contingencies, and inadequate
operationally for higher-end ones.
In my prepared remarks, I have a series of examples of how
the Marine Corps, the Army, and the Air Force, and Navy might
become more specialized to deal with both these low- end and
high-end threats, and I am happy to discuss in the questions if
you are interested.
The third major area for change is what I call competitive
jointness. Intra- and inter-service competition should be more
strongly encouraged. The inter-service crowding into each other
battle space, if managed properly, could give the services--
keep the services on their toes, foster innovation, and lead to
a more robust future force. A competitive approach to joint
operations would allow alternative service concepts to vie for
incorporation and to regional contingency plans and, thus,
demand a larger share of the budget.
To enable competitive jointness, some of the service
monopolies on specific missions protected as ``primary
functions'' in Secretary James Forrestal's memorandum in 1948
and that have hardened over time will need to be opened to
competition. Many of the collateral functions enumerated for
each service, but largely ignored since 1948, will need to be
elevated in importance. Again, I have a lot more detail on
those examples of how we might foster more intra- and inter-
service competition for--to foster innovation in my prepared
remarks.
So to conclude, the emergence of new capabilities in the
evolving threat landscape demand a fundamental re-look at the
Key West Agreement and the subsequent evolution of service
roles and missions. It may well be time to establish new
independent services for space and cyber, as well as to elevate
SOCOM to a full-fledged service. Given flat or declining
resources for defense and ongoing threat trends, service
investments that focus on being a jack of all trades but master
of none are increasingly problematic. Accordingly, increased
service specialization in selected areas should be given
serious attention.
And finally, intra- and inter-service competition should be
more strongly encouraged as a means of fostering innovation. To
do so, many of the service mission monopolies that have
hardened since 1948 will need to be broken, and many of the so-
called collateral missions that have been ignored or under
invested in to date will need to be elevated in importance.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Martinage follows:]
prepared statement by robert martinage
Chairman McCain, Ranking Member Reed, and members of this
distinguished committee, thank you for the opportunity to share my
views on how we may need to realign the roles and missions of the Armed
Forces to better address emerging operational and strategic challenges,
as well as to exploit new opportunities for sustaining U.S. military
superiority.
After private meetings with the Joint Chiefs a month earlier in Key
West, Florida, Secretary of Defense Forrestal signed out a memorandum
codifying the ``Functions of the Armed Forces and the Joint Staff'' on
April 21, 1948. The Department of Defense (DoD) was wrestling with
three major internal issues at the time: the creation of the Air Force
as a full-fledged military Service, the division of responsibilities
for deterrence and warfighting in the atomic age, and the role of the
U.S. Marine Corps relative to the U.S. Army with respect to
conventional power projection. Externally, the Soviet Union was in the
process of consolidating control over Eastern Europe and had not de-
mobilized following World War II to nearly the same degree as the
Allies. The Soviet blockade of Berlin was intensifying, which would
lead just two months later to the commencement of the Berlin Airlift. A
little more than a year later, the United States would lose its atomic
monopoly with the Soviet's successful test of an implosion device in
August 1949. Unbeknownst to the participants at the Key West meeting,
two years later, the Nation would be engaged in a large-scale war on
the Korean Peninsula.
Today, DoD arguably faces an even wider array of threats,
opportunities, and planning uncertainties. After more than a decade of
sustained military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United
States military continues to confront a range of global security
challenges. In Europe, Russia is resurgent and increasingly assertive
in its near abroad. In the Middle East, the Syrian civil war is heating
up with the involvement of a growing number of external powers, Iraq is
unstable, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has risen to
power, and Iran continues to expand its ballistic missile arsenal as it
drives toward a nuclear weapons capability. In Central Asia, the
security situation in Afghanistan remains tenuous and will likely
deteriorate as United States forces withdraw over the coming year. In
East Asia, an unstable, nuclear-armed North Korea remains as
belligerent as ever, while China pursues hegemonic ambitions, becoming
increasingly confrontational in the South China Sea. The metastasizing
radical Islamic threat has spread from the Middle East and Central Asia
into Africa. At the same time, traditional sources of U.S. military
advantage are being undermined by the maturation and proliferation of
disruptive technologies--most notably, anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD)
capabilities. \1\ DOD must also come to grips with the emergence of war
in two new domains: space and cyberspace.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ ``Anti-access'' refers to the ability to slow or prevent the
deployment of U.S. forces into a given theater of operation or cause
them to base operations farther away than would be preferred. ``Area
denial'' captures actions to restrict freedom
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The roles and missions of the Armed Forces need to be realigned to
better address these manifold challenges and preserve U.S. military
superiority in the decades ahead. In addition, while beyond the scope
of this hearing, closely related adjustments are also needed to the
Joint Staff model established with the Goldwater-Nichols Department of
Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 and the current Unified Command Plan
(UCP). The remainder of my remarks will focus on three broad areas for
change: the possible creation of new Services for space, cyber, and
special operations; the need for increased Service specialization; and
the concept of ``competitive jointness,'' meaning encouraging healthy
intra-and inter-Service rivalry to foster innovation.
creating new services
While few argued that air power merited an independent Service in
the immediate wake of World War I, the momentum behind the
establishment of the Department of the Air Force was strong by the end
of World War II. Today, in comparison to air power, cyber and space
forces are arguably somewhere in the late inter-war period. Cyber and
space warfare capabilities have yet to be tested in high intensity
combat. The dominant view in the national security community, however,
appears to be shifting from not whether there should be separate cyber
and space Services, but when to take those steps. While U.S. Special
Operations Command (SOCOM) is now well established, has proven itself
repeatedly in operations over the past decade, and has the lead for DoD
on counter-terrorism operations around the world, it may now be time to
reinforce success and elevate it to a full Service.
toward a new cyber service
Cyberspace has become a vital operational domain for U.S. military
forces that is similar--and yet unique--from the air, sea, land, and
space. \2\ Unlike the other warfare domains, it encompasses physical
elements (e.g., communications infrastructure and computer networks),
electromagnetic radiation traveling through air and space, and the
virtual world of computer code and data processing. It is distinct
culturally as well, requiring different types of warriors than the
other Services. Given these myriad differences and its growing
importance, cyber warfare may warrant an independent branch of the
Armed Services to recruit, organize, train, equip, and retain skilled
personnel; prioritize and manage financial resources; and develop
domain-relevant operational concepts and doctrine.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ For an excellent argument in favor of an independent cyber
Service, see Admiral James Stavridis and David Weinstein, ``Time for a
U.S. Cyber force,'' Proceedings, January 2014.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While most cyber attacks against American entities have been
motivated by espionage or greed, there have also been attempts to
sabotage critical infrastructure. China, Russia, and other prospective
adversaries have established dedicated cyber units and write frequently
about the employment of cyber weapons. The People's Liberation Army
(PLA), for example, has cultivated a comprehensive computer network
attack capability over the past decade concentrated within the Fourth
Department of the General Staff Department. \3\ While most of China's
cyber activity to date has focused on intelligence collection, it has
demonstrated a sophisticated penetration and exploitation capability.
\4\ There is also a strong possibility that Chinese actors have left
behind malware in DoD systems. In light of PLA doctrine, in the event
of hostilities, it is likely that cyber attacks would be focused on
U.S. and allied C4ISR and logistic support networks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ Bryan Krekel, Patton Adams, and George Bakos, ``Occupying the
Information High Ground: Chinese Capabilities for Computer Network
Operations and Cyber Espionage,'' report prepared for the United
States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, March 7, 2012.
\4\ Kevin Pollpeter, ``Controlling the Information Domain: Space,
Cyber, and Electronic Warfare,'' in Tellis and Tanner, eds., China's
Military Challenge--Strategic Asia 2012-2013, pp. 172-177.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 2010, DOD stood up U.S. Cyber Command, and in 2013 it activated
the Cyber Mission Force comprising National Mission Teams, Combat
Mission Teams, and Cyber Protection Teams--all of which are staffed by
the Services. \5\ In addition, each of the Services maintains its own
cyber component that is technically subordinate to Cyber Command, but
also controlled by their respective Service's chain of command. This
approach has a number of drawbacks, including duplication of effort and
lack of continuity as personnel rotate in and out of cyber positions
every 2-3 years. An independent Service focused on cyber operations
would offer a number of potential benefits:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Stavridis and Weinstein, ``Time for a U.S. Cyber Force,''
Proceedings, January 2014.
Unity of command;
Promulgation and enforcement of common cyber and
information technology standards;
Tailored recruitment standards (e.g., relaxed physical
fitness and dress/grooming requirements), training programs, and
retention strategies;
Dedicated career paths to enable the development of deep
technical and operational expertise over time;
Formulation of cyber operational concepts and doctrine
independent of the parent Service's culture; and
Centralized prioritization and management of cyber
manpower and financial resources.
There are, however, some potential downsides to standing up a cyber
Service at this time.
First, it might be preferable to have the current Services compete
for the mission to spur innovation in what is a nascent warfare domain.
Second, by deferring the decision, Cyber Command would have additional
time to establish a strong institutional foundation upon which a future
Service could be built to include cultivating a critical mass of
skilled personnel and a cyber warfare culture. Third, the current
approach identifies and pulls promising cyber warfare candidates from a
very large personnel pool. Whether or not a new cyber Service could
recruit sufficient talent from the existing Services, government
agencies, and from the commercial sector is an open question.
It is sometimes argued that instead of a separate Service, it would
make more sense to stand up a unified functional combatant command
similar to SOCOM. However, unlike SOCOM, whose functions span multiple
warfare domains, Cyber Command focuses on only one: cyberspace.
Therefore, while SOCOM requires the core competencies of all the
Services to conduct operations on land, at sea, in the air, and in
space, Cyber Command does ``not require any of the core competencies of
the five Services; in fact, the cyber domain requires precisely the
core competencies that none of the other branches possesses.'' \6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
toward a new space service
While each Service has its own space professionals, most of the
expertise currently resides within the Air Force. Space operations,
however, are fundamentally different from air operations. The laws of
astrodynamics govern the former whereas the laws of aerodynamics govern
the latter. Space operations require specialized skill sets, training,
equipment, operational concepts, and doctrine. Accordingly, it may be
worth considering the establishment of an independent Service to
organize, train, and equip space warfare operators.
In 2001, the Commission to Assess United States National Security
Space Management and Organization concluded that the disadvantages of
creating a separate space Service outweighed the advantages. As they
explained, ``There is not yet a critical mass of qualified personnel,
budget, requirements, or missions sufficient to establish a new
department.'' \7\ They did, however, call for a number of
organizational reforms and left open the possibility that ``U.S.
interests may require the creation of a military department of space at
some future date.'' \8\ The Commission also identified matters of key
importance that demanded urgent, senior-leader attention, including the
matter that ``the U.S. must develop the means both to deter and to
defend against hostile acts in and from space.'' \9\ It is instructive
to reflect on what has--or perhaps more importantly, what has not--
happened over the past 14 years. Most of the urgent items identified by
the Commission, for instance, remain partially or completely
unaddressed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ Report of the Commission to Assess United States National
Security Space Management and Organization (Washington, DC: DoD, 2001),
p. 80.
\8\ Ibid.
\9\ Ibid., pp. 9-10.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mounting Threats
Threats to United States space systems have increased
significantly--most notably from China and to a lesser degree from
Russia. The PLA first targeted American satellites with a High Energy
Laser (HEL) in 2006. \10\ Building upon the successful SC-19 direct-
ascent ASAT test against a defunct weather satellite in low earth orbit
(LEO) in January 2007, which created thousands of pieces of space
debris, China demonstrated an ability to attack satellites in higher
earth orbits in May 2013. \11\ China also conducted a non-debris-
creating test of an ASAT missile for use against LEO targets in July of
2014. \12\ According to one source of emerging PLA space doctrine,
China seeks to have fielded space weapons systems, including both land-
based and co-orbital ASATs, by 2025 that are ``capable of destroying or
temporarily incapacitating all enemy space vehicles that fly in space
above our sovereign territory.'' \13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ David Axe, ``Chinese Laser vs. United States Sats?''
Defensetech, September 25, 2006, available at http://defensetech.org/
2006/09/25/chinese-laser-vs-u-s-sats/.
\11\ Mike Gruss, ``Pentagon Says 2013 Chinese Launch May Have
Tested Antisatellite Technology,'' Space News, May 14, 2015, available
at http://spacenews.com/pentagon-says-2013-chinese-launch-may-have-
tested-antisatellitetechnology; and William Broad and David Sanger,
``Flexing Muscle, China Destroys Satellite in Test,'' New York Times,
January 19, 2007, p. 1.
\12\ Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), Annual Report to
Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's
Republic of China 2015 (Washington, DC: OSD, 2015), p. 35.
\13\ Li Daguang, Space Warfare (Beijing: Military Science Press,
2001), pp. 413-414; and Anthony Mastalir, ``The PRC Challenge to United
States Space Assets,'' in Erickson and Goldstein, eds., Chinese
Aerospace Power, pp. 74-75.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The United States has taken some steps to improve its space
situational awareness, as well as to develop space control
capabilities. The National Defense Authorization Act for 2015, for
example, authorized funds for the recently created Space Security and
Defense Program, whose mission is ``the development of offensive space
control and active defense strategies and capabilities.'' It appears,
however, that the United States is lagging behind the threat in terms
of fielding operational offensive and defensive space control
capabilities.
Acquisition Difficulties and Weak Industrial Base
Until recently, most of DOD's larger space system acquisitions
experienced billions of dollars in cost increases and delayed
schedules. The past decade is littered with failed or canceled programs
(e.g., TSAT, space-based radar, and Future Imagery Architecture) or
ones with staggering cost overruns. According to GAO, estimated space
acquisition costs for fiscal years 2012-2017 grew by a staggering
$22.6B or nearly 230 percent over the initial baseline. \14\ The
Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) program, for example, more
than doubled from an original total program cost of $6.3B to over $14B,
and its first launch in 2010 was six years later than planned. The
Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS), which was initially estimated to
cost $4.7B, is now expected to crest $19B, and its first launch in 2011
was roughly nine years late. \15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ Cristina Chaplain, ``Space Acquisitions--DoD is Overcoming
Long-Standing Problems, but Faces Challenges to Ensuring its
Investments are Optimized,'' GAO Testimony Before SASC Subcommittee on
Strategic Forces, April 24, 2013, pp. 2-3.
\15\ Ibid., p. 8.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
While financial and program turbulence has exacted a toll on the
space industrial base across the board, the U.S. space launch sector is
arguably the weakest. For over 15 years, the United States has been in
the very unfortunate position of having to purchase RD-180 rocket
motors designed and built in Russia for use on the Atlas III/V space
launch vehicles owing to the lack of a domestic supplier. In May 2014,
in the wake of declining United States-Russian relations over events in
Ukraine, senior Russian officials threatened to ban the United States
from using RD-180 for military launches. Congress is also opposed to
continued reliance upon Russian engines. The United States Government
is now scrambling to find domestic alternatives. Re-building the rocket
motor industrial base, however, takes time and it will probably not be
possible to field a new engine for several years.
With the focused attention of a dedicated space Service,
acquisitions may have been better managed and the industrial base would
have had a more powerful bureaucratic advocate.
Looking Ahead
The organizational reforms flowing from the recommendations of the
Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management
and Organization have proven insufficient. The critical capability
shortfalls that were identified 14 years ago have not been adequately
addressed. The Commission questioned in 2001 ``whether, as in the past,
a disabling attack against the country and its people--a `space Pearl
Harbor'--will be the only event able to galvanize the nation and the
cause the United States Government to act.'' \16\ It certainly appears
that the Nation has become more-not less-vulnerable in space since
2001. While threats have intensified and proliferated, space-related
acquisitions have been slow and disordered, and the United States
industrial base has grown weaker. Until recently, the development and
fielding of space control capabilities was not afforded priority
attention. Similarly, the recruitment, training, and retention of space
warfare professionals remain mostly unchanged.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ Report of the Commission to Assess United States National
Security Space Management and Organization (Washington, DC: DoD, 2001),
p. 15.
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The potential benefits of standing up a new space Service would be:
Better control over recruitment, training, promotions,
and retention of skilled personnel;
Creation of dedicated space career paths, fostering
development of deep technical and operational expertise;
Formulation of space operational concepts and doctrine
unencumbered by legacy ``air power'' approaches;
A separate funding stream that does not compete with
other Air Force priorities; and
Centralized prioritization and focused management of
space systems acquisition.
As an interim step in this direction, U.S. Space Command could be
broken out from under Strategic Command and transformed into a unified
combatant command with major force program (MFP) funding similar to
SOCOM.
It might also make sense to incorporate the Air Force's strategic
missile forces into the new space Service. Over time, much like the
PLA's Second Artillery Corps, the space Service's missile branch could
expand into conventional long-range, precision-strike operations with
ballistic missiles, boost-glide weapons, and sub-orbital weapons.
elevating socom to a service
Almost seven years to the day after the tragic failure of Operation
Eagle Claw/Operation Evening Light at a temporary airstrip in Iran,
dubbed Desert One, SOCOM was created by an act of Congress, over the
strenuous opposition of the Armed Services and the Joint Staff, to
improve the capabilities, readiness, and command and control of special
operations forces. The key impetus for the creation of SOCOM was the
Holloway Commission report on the failed Desert One hostage-rescue
mission, which among other things highlighted poor command and control,
interoperability, and readiness within and among the Services'
respective special operations units.
SOCOM is responsible for organizing, training, equipping and
deploying SOF to geographic combatant commanders. Furthermore, SOCOM is
the lead combatant command for planning, synchronizing, and, as
directed, executing global operations against terrorist networks in
coordination with other combatant commanders. In essence, SOCOM is a
hybrid organization: like the Services, it is a force provider to the
geographic combatant commands; like other combatant commands, it is
heavily involved in operational planning, force allocation, and, in
some cases, execution of military operations. Reflecting SOCOM's unique
hybrid status, it is the only combatant command with the authority to
submit its own program objective memorandum to the Secretary of Defense
and to have its own acquisition executive and funding line, referred to
as Major Force Program-11 (MFP-11), for conducting R&D and procuring
materials, equipment, supplies, and services unique to special
operations requirements.
The primary reason to elevate SOCOM to a full-fledged Service would
be to increase the command's control over its personnel. Currently, the
individual Services are ultimately responsible for managing the career
paths of special operators, which is a source of considerable
institutional tension. As a Service, SOCOM would have more flexibility
in managing the career paths of its highly skilled operators. Second,
while SOCOM takes full advantage of MFP-11's flexibility, it is
nevertheless constrained in some respects by ossified Service
acquisition processes. As a Service, with increased funding and a more
robust acquisition workforce, SOCOM could potentially develop and field
a wider range of SOF-unique and SOF-tailored equipment and weapons
systems more quickly.
increased service specialization
One of the many unintended consequences of Goldwater-Nichols has
been an acceptance of what is often referred to as ``Little League
rules,'' meaning that every Service is entitled to a role in planning
and conducting nearly all military operations across the spectrum of
conflict regardless of whether or not it makes the most sense
operationally or is the best use of available resources. Every Service
``gets to play'' to justify its respective program of record and defend
its budget allocation. As a result, Service budget allocations have
remained remarkably fixed over the past three decades, which has
stifled innovation. A corollary is that the Services have over-invested
in capabilities for conducting operations in medium-threat environments
with the implicit reasoning that such capabilities can swing to the
low-end or high-end. The problem, however, is that such middle-of-the-
road capabilities are often inefficient in terms of cost with respect
to lower-end contingencies and inadequate operationally for higher-end
ones.
What might a more ``specialized'' joint force look like? The Marine
Corps, for example, could focus on being the Nation's crisis response
force in readiness for contingencies in low-to-medium threat
environments around the globe. In exchange, it would give up on high-
risk, high-cost notions of forcible entry operations in high-end A2/AD
environments. It would also eschew protracted counter-insurgency and
stability operations. The Army could focus on developing the cultural,
language, and specialized skill sets to be the Nation's lead for
counter-insurgency, stability operations, and building partner
capacity. It could also develop and field mobile, cross-domain missile
forces (e.g., surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles, long-range
ASW weapons, and surface-to-surface missiles) to both enable and
conduct power projection operations in A2/AD environments. The Air
Force and the Navy might shift more strongly toward a ``high-low''
force mix with the high focused on conventional power projection in A2/
AD environments and the low focused on persistent ISR-strike presence
in more benign environments. For the Air Force, this might entail
curtailing investment in medium-threat environment capabilities such as
short-range, manned fighters in favor of extended-range MQ-9 Reaper
UAVs, RQ-4 Global Hawk High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) ISR UAVs,
and commercial derivative aircraft for the low end of the mix and LRS-
B, penetrating HALE ISR UAVs, and a land-based unmanned combat air
systems (UCAS) for the high end.
For the Navy, this might mean increased investment in Joint High
Speed Vessels/Expeditionary Fast Transports, Afloat Forward Staging
Bases/Expeditionary Mobile Bases, Littoral Combat Ships, and frigates
for the low end and stealthy carrier-based UCAS, additional attack
submarines, undersea payloads, and unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs)
for the high.
competitive jointness
Intra-and inter-Service competition should be strongly encouraged,
with the Secretary of Defense and his key advisors as referees. Inter-
Service crowding into each other's battlespace in particular, if
managed properly, could keep the Services on their toes, foster
innovation, and lead to a more robust future force. A competitive
approach to joint operations would allow alternative concepts to vie
for incorporation into regional contingency plans and secure DoD
investment resources.
Encouraging competition within and among the Services does not mean
that the Services should adopt a go-it-alone approach to warfighting.
The intent of what might be called competitive jointness is to exploit
the expertise inherent in divergent approaches and expand the range of
warfighting options presented to joint force commanders. Each branch or
Service or would be encouraged to integrate the capabilities of other
branches or Services, respectively, to enhance its own capabilities and
achieve theater objectives.
To enable competitive jointness, some of the Service monopolies on
specific missions protected as ``primary functions'' in Secretary
Forrestal's ``Functions of the Armed Forces and the Joint Staff''
memorandum from 1948 will need to be opened to competition, and many of
the ``collateral functions'' for each Service will need to be elevated
in importance.
The Army's primary function of defeating land forces, for example,
should be open to the Navy and the Air Force, and its collateral
function ``to interdict enemy sea and air power and communications
through operations on or from land'' should become a new area of
conceptual and capability development.
Similarly, the Navy's primary functions ``to seek out and destroy
enemy naval forces and to suppress enemy sea commerce, to gain and
maintain general sea control, and to control vital sea areas to protect
sea line of communications'' should be open to competition by the Air
Force and Army. Meanwhile, the Navy's collateral function to
``interdict enemy land and air power and communications through
operations at sea'' should be a focus of operational concept
development along with the fielding of critical enabling capabilities.
Finally, the primary functions of the Air Force for ``defense of
the United States against air attack,'' as well as to ``gain and
maintain air supremacy'' and ``defeat enemy air forces,'' should be
open to competition by the Navy and the Army. All three of the Air
Force's assigned collateral functions--interdicting enemy sea power,
conducting anti-submarine warfare and shipping protection, and
conducting aerial minelaying operations--should be growth areas for the
future.
conclusion
The emergence of new capabilities and the evolving threat landscape
demand a fundamental re-look at the Key West Agreement as promulgated
by Secretary of Defense Forrestal in April 1948. It may well be time to
establish new independent Services for space and cyber operations, as
well as to elevate SOCOM to a full-fledged Service. Given flat or
declining resources for defense and threat trends shaping the future
security environment, being a ``jack of all trades, but master of
none'' appears to be an increasingly problematic proposition.
Accordingly, increased Service specialization in selected areas should
be given serious consideration. Finally, intra-and inter-Service
competition should be strongly encouraged as a means of fostering
innovation. To do so, many of the Service mission monopolies that have
hardened since 1948 will need to be broken and many of the collateral
missions that have been ignored or under-invested in to date will need
to be elevated in importance.
About the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) is an
independent, nonpartisan policy research institute established to
promote innovative thinking and debate about national security strategy
and investment options. CSBA's analysis focuses on key questions
related to existing and emerging threats to U.S. national security, and
its goal is to enable policy makers to make in formed decisions on
matters of strategy, security policy, and resource.
Chairman McCain. Well, thank the witnesses. You know, just
a comment, we with Goldwater-Nichols encouraged jointness as
one of the major factors of it, yet we want competition. We
want them to be joint, and we want them to be competitive. I am
still not sure how we get our arms wrapped around that one.
It seems to me, if I recall my history, and I think it is
right, that in World War II we had basically two commands. We
had a European command under General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied
Commander Europe [SACEUR], and we had a Pacific Command under
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, eight million people under arms. Now
we have a proliferation of commands.
It seems to me that every time I turn around there is a new
crisis, so the answer is create a new command. Problems in
Africa, let us have an Africa Command [AFRICOM]. Let us have a
Northern Command [NORTHCOM] and a Southern Command [SOUTHCOM]
with an arbitrary line between Guatemala and Mexico. Every one
of these commands creates large staffs, requires large support,
requires contractors. We have watched the number, especially
Dr. O'Hanlon, we have watched the number of brigade combat
teams go down while we watch the support contractors staffs go
dramatically up.
So here we are before the committee and saying, well, we
need a cyber command. I do not disagree. I do not disagree with
that, and SOCOM we are all proud of. SOCOM crosses all of those
geographic lines. So it seems to me or I am not convinced that
this increase in commands that we have experienced particularly
in an almost accelerated process and now calls for another
command, which I am not opposed to. It seems to me that at some
point, should we not look at the whole structures as they are,
particularly since the greatest threats that we face in the
opinion of most crosses boundary lines, crosses oceans, and
crosses all aspects of geography, whereas our commands were set
up for basically different geographical parts of the world.
And so, again, I am not against a cyber command. In fact, I
think we would probably agree to it. But should we not look at
the other end of the spectrum here? Do we need to just have a
proliferation of commands and, by the way, a commensurate
increase in admirals and generals? So maybe I could begin with
you, Mr. Martinage.
Mr. Martinage. I think you raise a really good point. I
think, you know, when you look at cyberspace and special
operations commands, I mean, there is already a significant
headquarters and overhead associated with those. The question
is if you elevate them to a service, give them more
independence in terms of their budget authority, give them more
control over their resources and managing their personnel, do
you--is that worth the investment.
But I would separate that from the geographic combatant
commands, which I agree with you have become too large, and
have become much more like mini State Departments than actual
combat, you know, preparing organizations. So, you know, a lot
that could be done--you know, we have these combatant commands,
but then when we have a contingency we set up a joint task
force, which I think reflects a lot of this.
So anyway, I think--I agree with you. I think that we could
pare back the number of or size of our geographic combatant
commands, but I would separate that from the question of do we
want to think about elevating SOCOM or creating a space or
cyber service, which I think is a different question.
Chairman McCain. Doctor? Dr. O'Hanlon?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Thank you, Senator. I would just make the
brief point that I agree with the thrust of your argument. The
nice thing is we now sort of have a geographic command for
every continent, so there probably is not a whole further to
go, and I hope we do not go any further. But on the functional
commands----
Chairman McCain. We have two for this----
Dr. O'Hanlon. That is a good point, and one could make the
argument, especially you put it very well that Guatemala,
Mexico, it is sort of an unnatural division. Obviously Northern
Command is thinking about the defense of the homeland
fundamentally. Southern Command is thinking about Latino allies
fundamentally, but perhaps that is something that could be
juxtaposed.
Cyber, however, strikes me as different enough, and hard
enough, and technical enough that I am sympathetic to the idea
of according it its own command. I do not know about a separate
service. I do not know about separate services for space and
special operations, but I think having a cyber command
recognizes the technical challenge of the operations associated
with that and the importance of cyber to everything we do. So
that is probably the one example where I would be willing to go
ahead.
Chairman McCain. You would--might agree that jointness does
not foster inter-service competition?
Dr. O'Hanlon. You know, Senator McCain, as a person who is
not in the military, I have admired the balance between
competition and cooperation. I generally think it is pretty
good today. I take your point that there is a tension, and one
could easily see it skewed too far in one direction or other.
Historically, I think it has been at times skewed in one
direction. I think Strategic Air Command in the 1950s had too
much influence, and too big an idea of what it could accomplish
with nuclear weapons, so there have been mistakes in the past.
But today I think it is a pretty good balance between
competition and collaboration.
Chairman McCain. Mr. McGrath?
Mr. McGrath. Very quickly on the cyber point. Cyber is so
misunderstood by me, by perhaps people in the room, as to defy
anything I think. There are strategic cyber activities that are
held, I believe, at the level of the President. There are cyber
activities that could be easily carried out at the individual
unit ship board level.
Who controls those, who controls the ROE, all of those
issues are very complicated, and I would as a former naval
officer be loath to not have people on my ship who understood,
who were wearing uniforms subject to my command, who understood
what the impact of those cyber activities would be, or that we
would just subcontract them all to a building somewhere in
Maryland to come in from above.
With respect to jointness, I have written quite a bit. I
think we are--jointness works at the level of war fighting. It
works much less at the level of strategy and the making of
strategy.
Chairman McCain. General?
General Deptula. Yes, sir, very quickly. Great point on the
challenge of balancing service perspectives versus joint just
very quickly because many people--I know many here do, but
external from this body some do not. That is the fact that to
be joint requires that separateness of the services. It takes
20 to 25 years to master the skills of learning how to be a
commander of a surface action group, or a division, or an air
expeditionary force, or a Marine expeditionary force.
The beauty of the joint construct is that the services do
not fight. The services organize, train, and equip, and provide
these professionals to a joint task force commander who can
then organize relative to the contingency that is facing him or
her. So they can select from this menu of capabilities that
require the separateness of the services, but then to integrate
them to meet a particular contingency. So that balance is
there.
Now, second point. In the context of----
Chairman McCain. You have got to--you have got to
accelerate a little bit. I am way over time.
General Deptula. Okay, sorry, sir. You are right on re-
exploring the validity of the regional combatant commands that
were established after World War II, and then we tack them on
until we have got every continent. It ought to be part of the
review of the 21st Century Roles and Missions Commission.
Cyber command versus service, probably needs to be a
command first because, as Bryan mentioned, every one of the
services has and is affected by the cyber domain.
Chairman McCain. Thank you, General. Senator Reed?
Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you, gentlemen, for your excellent testimony. The
chairman has raised, I think, a fundamental question here about
the way we have put together the military with both overlapping
missions and responsibilities. Some argue it is wasteful,
redundant. Others argue it spurs the kind of competition and
complementarity that is--makes us successful.
And you can attack this in very different ways to look at
it. One is the structural. Do we need these commands? The other
is missions. I would just--I think it to be useful to the
expertise here starting with the general. Are there sort of
missions that are now being conducted by several services that
are redundant, and on the other side of the ledger, missions
that are more effectively carried out because they have several
services engaged? That might help us, I think, sort of begin
think through some of these.
So, General, if you have any thoughts.
General Deptula. Yes, sir. Obviously there is a lot of
redundancy across all of the services, and this is one of the
areas that we have got to revisit. If you take a look at the
current 5100.01, there are a listed 28 common military
department functions and 24 common military service functions.
Obviously we do not have time to go into all of those here
today.
A couple of the ones that stand out and deserve immediate
attention is the whole issue of intelligence surveillance and
reconnaissance, the use of remotely piloted aircraft. We have
one service that is buying and developing essentially the
carbon copy of the same kind of drone that is operated by
another service. Why is that?
We have different organizational means of actually
employing them. Some believe that the use ought to be up to the
Joint Task Force commanders. Others believe that they should be
inherent to the organic ownership of particular units. That is
an issue that needs to be addressed.
The capability in the context of the mission area of deep
attack, long-range strike is one that is maintained by all the
services. A roles and missions review would take a good look at
that. I mean, why do we have one service that is developing
deep attack capability that is already resident in another?
And the other area is close air support. We have got
multiple services with multiple systems that can all conduct
close air support, yet we tend to focus on, and this is not a
surprise to this committee, a particular aircraft and a
particular service without looking across the different service
stovepipes to take a holistic look at what we have available
for close air support.
Senator Reed. Thank you, sir. Mr. McGrath?
Mr. McGrath. Senator Reed, I would like to speak in favor
of redundancy and overlap. When the chiefs got together at Key
West, it was three months before the Berlin air lift. They had
no concept of what was coming. Secretary Forrestal generally
considered the product of Key West to be sub-optimal, that
there was still far less efficiency gained and swim lanes
designated than he wanted.
I think we are entering into a new period of great power
dynamics, that overlap and inefficiency I think served us well
through the Cold War. It does not mean it was the only thing
that could have worked, but it was something that did work. So,
if we look at a roles and missions review right now solely
through the lens of efficiency and more efficient allocation of
resources, I think we miss the bigger picture is if we are
going to do it, it needs to be focused on preparing us to be
ready for great power and competition.
Senator Reed. Thank you. Dr. O'Hanlon and then Mr.
Martinage.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Senator Reed, thank you. Just a very brief
point about the Marines and the Army. To me, I have seen that
they have actually done well in having a healthy competition in
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, the Marines do not
like to be seen, nor should they been seen, as a second army,
but they did have certain sectors, as we all know, in both Iraq
and Afghanistan, and they sometimes employed somewhat different
tactics, and perhaps they were a little bit ahead of much of
the Army, not General Petraeus, not General H. R. McMaster, but
much of the Army on the proper use of counterinsurgency
tactics. I think there was a healthy competition and a back and
forth getting ideas from each other.
There was a reputable book done by a former Washington Post
reporter that thought that Marines went too far in Helmand
Province in Afghanistan and created their own Marinastan in
Helmand, and insisted only having their own TacAir support for
their own forces. I think there was some validity to that
concern, but General Stanley McChrystal, General Petraeus were
in positions to overrule that if they needed to.
And so, I think generally speaking, the distinctiveness,
the competition was probably okay, and we probably got more
benefit from it than harm.
Senator Reed. I would add in reflection, I think the Army
learned a great deal from the Marine Corps because it became an
expeditionary force essentially, and much more closer to the
Marine Corps model than it was going into these operations. So
it has been--that is an example of how competition, if you
will, helps everybody in a sense. But, Mr. Martinage, quickly.
Mr. Martinage. Again, I think it is a balancing act between
specialization on one hand and then jointness and overlap on
the other. I just come down, I think, in some cases with Bryan
in terms of that overlap is good as long as you have
competition in that area.
So, for example, anti-surface warfare, the Air Force has
gotten out of that business over time in terms of anti- Navy
capabilities. But you are feeling this long-range strike bomber
[LRSB], very stealthy, capable aircraft armed with anti-ship
missiles. It could be a very effective anti-surface warfare
capability for the Nation, possibly surpassing what we could do
with carrier strike groups, which could provide an impetus for
the Navy to think about how they are going to go after that
problem differently. So that is just one example of many.
Senator Reed. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. Senator Inhofe?
Senator Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, first of
all, General Deptula, I am very proud of your family and the
fact that your daddy is here. I just am very pleased, and also
with your career, the things that you have done, the things you
have accomplished. I am not surprised in that you got your
training at Vance Air Force Base. So anyway, I appreciate your
being here.
And, Dr. O'Hanlon, it was kind of interesting. You brought
up a couple of things. First of all, are you aware that in 1994
I was in the House? I was on the House Armed Services
Committee. Sitting next to me was John McHugh, and we had
testimony--this is 1994--by experts like you experts, except
they were not quite to your level. They said in 10 years we
would no longer need ground troops. Do you remember that
discussion?
And I bring that up because whatever we say now goes back
to what General Bob Gates said. You know, whatever we do and
decide to do about the future of threats and preparing right
now--we were 100 percent, we were wrong every time. Of course,
that is one of the reasons that I am very happy that we have
had a series of hearings over the last three, four weeks that I
have really benefitted a lot from.
We have had, of course, Secretary Gates, and then we had
one on the 22nd of October with some--four professors coming
from their perspective. General Keith Alexander was here with
some of the academic witnesses. I think--the one thing that
they all had in common was that we are really not spending
enough on defense. We are not getting enough resources in
defense. We have a different world now than we have had before.
And we are now in a position where we have cut the
military. I think you mentioned, Mr. McGrath, the same thing
that I think General Gates, and he said in 1961 we had 51
percent of our resources went to defending America. Now we are
down to 15 percent.
Now, I would ask each one of you, do you think that that is
a problem. We have adopted a policy now that if we try to
correct the problem that we are having that came with
sequestration, that we have a policy now that we cannot
increase the spending in defense unless we have an equal amount
of increase in social programs. I would like to have, starting
with you, General, your opinion of that policy.
General Deptula. Thank you, Senator, for the opportunity to
comment on that. First order question that still little
discussion has been given to. Everybody has an opinion on what
we should do with defense spending relative to social spending.
But I suggest that we go back to one of our foundational
documents, which can provide some guidance, the Preamble of the
Constitution, which we formed this government to ``provide for
the common defense, promote the general welfare.'' It does not
say provide for the general welfare and promote the common
defense.
So if you take a look at what we have done in terms of
sequestration, we have hit defense essentially at an excessive
rate relative to the percentage of the budget that it makes up.
So you are exactly right, we need to provide the resources to
meet the national security strategy. If we want to be the
world's sole super power and to be able to engage on all the
continents around the world to shape peace and stability, and
then fight and maintain multiple contingencies simultaneously,
we need to pay for it. We either do that or we change the
strategy.
Senator Inhofe. Okay. Do the rest of you kind of agree with
that generally? Yes, because we are short of time.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Senator, could I just make one very brief----
Senator Inhofe. Of course.
Dr. O'Hanlon. I would like to see domestic discretionary
programs that are relevant to long-term national power
supported, too. So I am most concerned about the overall
downward pressure on all discretionary programs and the
relative lenient treatment for entitlements and for tax
considerations. I would rather see a much more integrated
budget deal because those domestic programs on infrastructure,
science, education I see as relevant to long-term national
power.
Senator Inhofe. All right.
Mr. Martinage. Two seconds. I would just like to say, I
mean, I think we need a larger defense budget, but investing in
more of the same I think is not the solution. We face a
different array of challenges, and doing more of the same is
not going to work.
Senator Inhofe. Okay. I am almost out of time here, and I
did not want to spend that much time on that because one of the
problems that we are having now is one that everybody
recognizes, all the other panelists. It is not exactly in the
purview of what this is supposed to be about, but that is in
the difficulty we have in making cuts in headquarters.
You know, we have been trying to do this for a long period
of time. I have an analogy that I use, all bureaucracies are
the same; they all want to grow. In the case of the FAA
[Federal Aviation Administration] back in 2000, they had a
budget of $9.9 billion. Today it is $16.5 billion, and they
have fewer licensed pilots out there. It is just the nature of
the bureaucracy.
And I think we are trying right now to address that. I know
Secretary Gates and Secretary Chuck Hagel attempted to do it,
and we in our defense authorization bill have actually--
headquarters budget and personnel by cutting it $435 million in
personnel spending. We are making an effort to do that, and we
have not been successful in doing it.
And since my time has expired, I would like to have each
one of your for the record give your recommendations on what we
can do to keep the--that level from growing regardless of what,
you know, what the situation is. You said it very well,
General, when you said the size of the Pentagon that won World
War II was far smaller than the present enterprise. For the
record, all right? Thank you.
General Deptula. Yes, sir. Very briefly, this needs to be
one of the objectives, number one, of a roles and missions
review. I went back and, I mean, I mentioned earlier we have 28
common military department functions, 24 service common service
functions. That does not even touch the Office of the Secretary
of Defense [OSD], which has exploded as well as the Joint
staff.
This is a, what I call, as you were talking, the law of
large organizations, and it will take leadership to put a stop
to it. But we need to reduce, not continue to grow, and quite
frankly you can do things better if you have smaller staff. So
set an arbitrary limit and stick to it. You can start with
cutting OSD by 25 percent.
Senator Inhofe. Yes, and just the rest can answer for the
record. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman McCain. Senator King?
Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We had a very
interesting hearing yesterday in the Budget Committee talking
about some of these larger issues. I think it is important to
put into perspective the discussion about defense spending and
domestic discretionary spending. They represent just about 25
percent of the total Federal budget. We are fighting over a
small piece and not discussing the major piece, which is
entitlement spending, interest on the national debt, and tax
expenditures which are now a trillion dollars a year equal to
the entire discretionary budget.
So there is a lot of areas to discuss. I do not see this as
a fight between the National Park Service and the Defense
Department. It is a much larger discussion in terms of the
context of this--of this issue.
General Deptula, first I want to say how impressed I have
been by your testimony. The person who allowed you to retire
should be hunted down and punished. Delighted to have you with
us this morning. Give me a big picture in a minute, upside of
reorganization. We are here today talking about reorganization.
What do we gain? Is it financial? Is it effectiveness? As Chief
Justice Warren Burger used to say, why are we here?
General Deptula. Sir, depending on how it goes, it could be
all of those. It could be increased capability with fewer
resources. But in order to get that end state, we need to think
about different ways and how technology has enabled us to go
there. You know, folks like to single out the F-35 and say,
well, we can use fourth generation aircraft instead, but what
they are doing is they are thinking about the F-35 as a
replacement aircraft, older aircraft.
Part of the problem with weapons systems like F-35, F-22,
and the next generation bomber is they are not Fs or Bs. They
are F-B-E-A-R-C-E-W-A-W-C-S 22s and 35s. They are flying sensor
shooters that with the proper context you could put together
and match them and connect them with land forces, sea forces. A
wingman to an F-35 should be an Aegis cruiser. Those kinds of
concepts will allow us to become much, much more effective with
fewer overhead in structure trying to use an employ forces the
old way.
Senator King. One of the concepts we have been talking
about here is that the modernization of these large weapon
systems--the new Ohio-class, the F-35, the strike bomber--we
need to be thinking about modularization and modernization as
built into the concept because we are building a 35- or 40-year
asset, and it is obsolete the day it is built. We have got to
be thinking about how it can be upgradable, it seems to me.
Specific question. Dr. O'Hanlon, you said something very
interesting, and perhaps you could give me this on the record.
The relative cost of a carrier versus a land base, do you have
anything on that specifically? We know what a carrier costs. It
is about $12 billion. What about a base somewhere in the
Persian Gulf?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Well, bases typically cost in the range of $2
billion if they have to be very well fortified and protected.
So that would be the investment cost, a land base, and that is
going to include underground facilities for fuel, weapons, all
sorts of redundancies so that you can survive hits. Of course,
there are going to be costs that a land base is going to have
incur thereafter that are going to be quite high----
Senator King. But I think that is--but I think that is an
interesting figure because there are areas of the world where
we know we are going to have to station a carrier. Maybe it
would be most cost-effective to station a station.
Another question, intelligence. We spend about $70 billion
on intelligence, $50 on the civilian side, $20 on the military
side. Those are rough figures, unclassified. That is a lot of
money. Is this an area where we could--where we could find some
efficiencies? I just--I cannot help but believe that there is
overlap having these multiple intelligence agencies essentially
all watching what Assad is doing or what Putin is doing. Any
thoughts on that, General?
General Deptula. Yes, sir. You are exactly correct.
Senator King. Could the record show that?
[Laughter.]
General Deptula. Sixteen, 17 intelligence organizations. I
used to go to the Executive Committee [EXCOM] on a, you know,
monthly basis that the Director of National Intelligence [DNI]
held, and I would sit around the table. I would listen to
everybody, and then everyone would go back home to their own
organizations and do their own thing again. It is an area that
is worthy of further exploration to get to the point how do we
integrate and avoid duplication and overlap.
Senator King. Thank you. Thank you very much, gentlemen,
for your testimony.
Chairman McCain. Let the record show that the opinion of
the senator from Maine for the first time in the history of
this committee was exactly right.
[Laughter.]
Chairman McCain. I am also reminded to correct the record
concerning the Pacific in World War II. It was divided between
Admiral Nimitz and General Douglas MacArthur. A West Point
graduate was offended by my omission there, and I deeply
apologize.
[Laughter.]
Chairman McCain. I am not sure who is next.
Senator Ernst. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, gentlemen,
for joining us here today. I appreciate your testimony very
much.
I would like to kind of redirect back to our air powers for
a little bit of discussion there. As many of you know, I and
many of my colleagues have really been focused very much on the
Air Force effort to divest the A-10. Many of us are strongly
opposed to that. Senator Ayotte has been a wonderful leader in
this effort, and I have known many warriors on the front lines
that have had the benefit of close air support from the A-10.
It is very highly regarded amongst members of our armed forces.
So I would just love to get your feelings on whether the A-
10 should be divested, and certainly, General, let us start
with you.
General Deptula. Well, thanks very much for the
opportunity. The first point that I would like to make, and by
the way, this gets to the heart of the subject of roles and
functions, roles and missions. The close air support is a
mission. It is not an airplane. As you have been--I do not know
if you have been involved in close combat, but if you are being
shot at by an adversary and all of a sudden that adversary gets
terminated and you are no longer shot at, do you really care
where the weapon came from that terminated the adversary? I do
not think so.
Senator Ernst. General, do we have a platform if we should
get rid of the A-10 right now as suggested by some? Do we have
a platform that would perform that mission?
General Deptula. Yes. More than 70 percent of the close air
support missions that have occurred in Afghanistan were by
aircraft other than the A-10. Now, that is not to say it is not
a magnificent platform, which gets to my other point, and that
is why we need to look across service boundaries. In the United
States Army, as you well know, we have got Apache helicopters.
The A-10 performs a close air support mission much better than
the Apache helicopter or the helicopters--attack helicopters in
the Marine Corps.
So why do we not open the spectrum before we look at
terminating one particular aircraft in one particular service
stovepipe and look at the entire mission set, and look at what
is the best way to meet our fiscal challenges while at the same
time optimizing our military capability?
Senator Ernst. That is a great discussion. How about you,
Mr. McGrath?
Mr. McGrath. I realize the world is not this simple, but we
could trade, trade air defense artillery from the Army to the
Air Force, trade the A-10 from the Air Force to the Army. Many
of our allies around the world have air defense artillery in
their air force. But I believe the plane, the A-10, and how it
is revered by those who live under its protection, we should be
very, very cautious about getting rid of that platform. Perhaps
it should just be switched over to the Army.
Senator Ernst. Well, that was going to be my next question
actually is I know the Army does not want to absorb the A-10,
but that is a thought that is out there as well.
Mr. McGrath. I think they would absorb it if you gave them
the money.
Senator Ernst. That is it. That is the key. That is the big
issue. Dr. O'Hanlon?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Senator, I, too, think the A-10 is a pretty
good platform, and I would like to see a more integrated cost
study. We have this figure that has been used by the Pentagon
that there is $4 billion in O&M savings if you retire the A-10.
I think that is based on very specific assumptions, and, of
course, it is not accounting for the fact that you are going to
have to buy F-35s in order to replace the A-10s if you retire
them.
I would buy fewer F-35s and/or attack helicopters in order
to be able to keep the A-10, and then it becomes a different
cost calculation. So at a minimum we should see that
calculation done with a broader set of assumptions because I
think the Pentagon is giving a very specific way to do the
calculation, which assumes the F-35 Program and the Attack
Helicopter Programs are all givens and untouchable, and only
then calculates the cost addition from the A10.
Senator Ernst. Okay, thank you. Mr. Martinage?
Mr. Martinage. I tend to agree with my colleagues here on
the panel, and I would say I think it is really important to
look at it as a mission and, you know, have the AC-130. You
have attack helicopters, you have the A-10, you have TacAir,
you have bombers that can all perform the mission to varying
degrees. I think the A-10 is probably one of the best in the
bunch, but I think that we need to look at the cost
implications.
And I think this gets to the high/low mix. You know, for
the Air Force, they probably need some dedicated low
capabilities for doing ISR close air support, strike in low to
medium threat environments, and they need a different set of
capabilities for high-end anti-access area denial [A2AD]
environments. Quite frankly, the F35 does not fit well into
either of those.
Senator Ernst. Okay. General, I would like to shift back to
you since you brought up the Apache attack helicopter. There is
an effort to move the Apaches out of the National Guard. I, of
course, believe that the National Guard needs to retain some of
the combat capabilities. We need those pilots to retain hours
or keep their hours up. What are your thoughts on moving that
strictly to the active duty component?
General Deptula. I think the Guard and the Reserve forces
in the United States of America are oftentimes overlooked as a
key element of our entire defense architecture. I am not
specifically familiar with the details of that argument, and so
I would leave that to the experts in the Army, Guard, and
Reserve as well as active duty. However, I would be a bit
suspicious about shifting a particular capability set all into
one of the components or the other.
Senator Ernst. Thank you. I am suspicious as well. My time
is up, gentlemen. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman McCain. Senator Hirono?
Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank the
panel. We note that as we focus on what should be the roles and
missions of the armed services that I note that I think all of
the panelists said that--indicated that this is not the armed
services that we would have if we were creating this body
because our military is a product of history.
So, General Deptula, thank you very much for your service.
I know you also had a stint in the--in the Pacific, so mahalo
for that. I note in your testimony that the biggest challenge
our defense establishment faces is one of institutional
inertia. If there is institutional inertia, how can we have a
serious discussion that leads to changes to the military if
there is inertia, as you indicated? How would you go about
pushing through this inertia and creating an environment where
appropriate changes can happen?
General Deptula. Aloha, and thank you for the question,
because it is a very, very important one. The first thing that
we need to do, in my opinion, in terms of getting at this
institutional inertia is, number one, recognizing it and
talking about it, which gets to my first recommendation that I
made earlier, and that is we need to have a roles and missions
commission for the 21st century to deal directly at these
issues because, once again, as Senator Inhofe, and the
chairman, and Mr. Reed have mentioned, we are faced with this
law of large institutions that tends to dumb everything down to
a lowest common denominator, and adds lots of time and effort
into any decision, which also reduces the proclivity for risk
taking.
And it has gotten to be such a risk averse environment
across many, many subject areas in the Department of Defense,
it is amazing that we make any progress.
Senator Hirono. Do the other panelists agree that
institutional inertia is a huge factor in moving us forward?
Yes?
Mr. McGrath. Senator, I think another word for
``institutional inertia'' is ``jointness.'' Jointness, as I
have said earlier, has provided a lot of really good things.
Our ability to summon a variety of fires from a variety of
services and platforms at the time and place of our choosing is
the envy of the world.
But when you enter a process of the making of strategy with
one of your first pillars being how the joint force would be
used or how the joint force would be--would contribute, rather
than thinking about what is it you are trying to do and which
elements of this joint force are most important. Until we get
to a point where jointness is not the number one attribute that
we look for from our armed services, until we get to that point
we will have this sclerosis and this institutional inertia.
Senator Hirono. I think you mentioned that jointness works
when we are actually in a war situation, and it does not work
so well when we are planning for a 21st century military.
Mr. McGrath. I think it is less successful.
Senator Hirono. Anyone else want to weigh in, especially on
the subject of risk averseness in our military, and that was
testified to in one of our earlier panels. Dr. Thomas Mahnken
said that we are--the U.S. has grown unused to having to take
risks and bear costs.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Senator, I would--I would personally say that
when we get to issues like high-level modernization debates, I
think we have a system that works pretty well because we cannot
expect the system to make the decisions for us. All we can
expect is the system will elevate the important issues to a
place where the Armed Services Committee, the Pentagon, the
Nation as a whole focuses in on them and the contending
arguments.
What I am most concerned about is I think where Senator
McCain and Senator Inhofe were speaking earlier, the harder to
analyze growth in staff growth and bureaucracy, to me these the
parts of the institution and the system that are the most
challenging to comprehend and to attack. So, I am less troubled
by the high-level roles and missions debates on some of the
weapons and more concerned about the growth of the bureaucracy.
Senator Hirono. Well, I think in connection with that then,
as we focus on research and development efforts, and, you know,
a large part of that is in the service of combatant commanders.
Would you say that the combatant commanders should have much
more input into what kind of technologies and resources that
they need as opposed to much more of a centralized decision
making at the Pentagon level? Anyone?
Mr. Martinage. I would say yes. I mean, I think one of the
big ways to get out of the institutional inertia problem is to
encourage inter-service competition for key missions, and
exactly what those missions are and the priorities of those
missions could very much come from the geographical combatant
commanders.
But to have real inter-service competition, you have to be
able to affect budget share. If you cannot get out of the one-
third, one-third, one-third rule, there is no incentive to take
risks to try to something new. So, I mean, I think that is a
big part of it.
Senator Hirono. Thank you.
Chairman McCain. Senator Sullivan?
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you,
gentlemen, for your testimony. I think these are really
important hearings. I want to commend the chairman for
undertaking this important look at the future, what we need to
do.
Dr. O'Hanlon, I really appreciate your comments on Task
Force Smith. You know, one of my favorite books that I have in
my office I actually suggested to the Secretary of Defense and
his team to read is T.R. Fehrenbach's This Kind of War, which I
think for people thinking about readiness is always a good book
to read on the lack of readiness that we had in the Korean War.
As Senator Inhofe mentioned, we seem to get it wrong every time
if you are looking historically.
But I do want to amplify for the record on your comments on
the Marine Corps. You mentioned effectiveness on Capitol Hill,
effectiveness with the American people. You forgot to mention
effectiveness on the battlefield, and as you can imagine, those
levels of effectiveness are all related.
But I want to talk about the size of the Army, and I know
that you have written a lot of--I really appreciate your Wall
Street Journal op-ed recently on that. With all due respect to
Admiral Roughead, I think the idea of an Army of less than
300,000 is strategic lunacy, and hopefully nobody seriously is
contemplating that. I certainly am not. I think it should be
about double that size.
General Mark Milley, the chief of staff of the Army, gave a
recent speech at the Association of the U.S. Army [AUSA]
conference a couple of weeks that I thought was an excellent
speech that talked about some of the myths of warfare. One of
those myths that he talked about was that armies are easy to
regenerate. If you overshoot, cut to 300,000, and then, oh, my
gosh, we have got a crisis, that you can, presto, bring back a
couple of brigade combat teams and, you know, units that need
to be trained.
Can any of you talk about just what that takes in terms of
once you cut--once you get rid of a, you know, Brigade Combat
Team [BCT]--an airborne BCT, for example, what happens? How
long does that take, because obviously he thinks--he puts that
out as a myth that it can take years, decades.
Dr. O'Hanlon. I could start, and I know others will want to
weigh in. Thank you, Senator. General Deptula already made the
very important point that it takes 20 years to grow a leader of
a certain stature.
Senator Sullivan.Sullivan. Right.
Dr. O'Hanlon. You can try to distribute the existing stock
across a slightly larger force structure, and promote people a
little faster, and do a few things around the edges. I would
defer to those who have more experience hands on than I have,
but I would simply say that the buildup of the last 15 years,
once we started growing the force after 9/11, we grew by about
15 percent over about six to eight years. I think that is about
as fast I feel that we can empirically say is consistent with
maintaining high standards.
So I think 15 percent growth in overall numbers of people,
of brigade combat teams, and so forth over a six- to eight-year
period, that is a pretty good set of numbers to keep in mind.
Anything faster than that would be unproven, except going back
to World War II when we had a much different kind of buildup.
Senator Sullivan. Right.
Dr. O'Hanlon. I think with all great respect to our World
War II veterans, you know, some of the concepts in that
particular fight were a little different than today's.
Senator Sullivan. Sir?
Mr. McGrath. Senator, I think General Milley was attacking
a straw man in that speech. No thoughtful defense analyst
thinks it is easy to grow an army. The question ultimately is,
is it easier to grow an army, or easier to grow a navy, or
easier to grow an air force in capital intensive services where
you have to put investment in year after year in order to
maintain a certain size.
It winds up being easier to grow the Army. I think we
surged up 80,000 people in the Army in a relatively short term,
and a good number of those saw combat. It would be very
difficult to imagine a navy growing that fast in that amount of
time.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you. Let me switch topics a little
bit here. The other thing that General Milley, and I know that
our committee has been focused on to try do a fair amount in
the NDAA this year on it, is focusing on the tooth-to-tail
ratio with regard to if we have to make cuts. Again, I am
focused more back on the Army, but I would appreciate your
views on this more generally, that the last units we should be
cutting are the units that are the, you know, direct combat
units.
Do you think that as we are looking right now on kind of
downsizing in the Army or the other branches that we are
getting that tooth-to-tail ratio correct, or--because I
certainly think that the last units we should be cutting are
the BCTs and the other ground combat units. But are we missing
something in terms of getting that ratio correct? Dr. O'Hanlon?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Senator, I will begin. I do not disagree with
you, but I also think that one of the great strengths of the
American military is that tail. Now, there are parts of it that
are less efficient, and I would--I would agree with the idea of
putting 10, 20, 30 percent cuts into some of the headquarters
and staff, and then letting the services and other
organizations within DOD figure out how to make that happen.
So I support that because I think there is a lot of waste.
But the general notion of tail includes intelligence, includes
logistics, transportation, cyber. All these things are crucial
to how we fight, and I think our tail is actually just as
impressive as our tooth in terms of how we stack up against
other countries' militaries, which is part of why I am just
generally reluctant to get too far into that conversation
because it implies that if you really have tough budget caps,
you can cut tails safely or relatively safely. I think we just
cut the defense budget enough, and we are going to have to
recognize that the tail is important to protect in some cases
as well.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman McCain. Senator Shaheen?
Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. O'Hanlon, I
think I heard you say in your testimony that, and I agreed as
you went through the history of how we, you know, fought in
Vietnam based on a false set of assessments and based on what
we learned from previous wars, and dismantling after those
wars. But I think what I heard you say is that it took us
several years to be ready now for the wars of this century. Do
you think we are ready for the fight against Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria [ISIS] and for the potential threat from Russia,
and Iran, and China that we might face?
Dr. O'Hanlon. Senator Shaheen, thanks for the great
question. No, I do not think we have a good concept of how to
deal with Syria partly because the political mess is so huge. I
mean, what kind of solution are we really after at a higher
level of political--I have argued for a confederal model of
Syria. Trying to negotiate a new successor government to Assad
just is not going to work, and if we begin with that political
framework, we are bound to fail militarily as well. So that is
more than just a military challenge. I think it is a broader
strategic challenge.
In Asia, I think we are doing better, and I know other
panelists who will want to comment on that a swell. But I think
the recent moves by the Pacific fleet to operate in the South
China Sea, the general concept of the rebalance have been
reasonably well thought through. I think we are all still
struggling on how to think about Putin, so that is a separate
problem, and I am not sure it is fundamentally a DOD problem.
So I think it really depends, but on the----
Senator Shaheen. Explain that when you say you do not think
it is fundamentally a DOD problem.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Well, I think that the genesis of this goes
into how we have dealt with Russia for 25 years in terms of
everything from Nunn-Lugar, to North Atlantic Treaty
Organization [NATO] expansion, to many other issues. Now,
seeing the arrival of Putin and how he suppressed Russian
democracy and otherwise, you know, been a bully in his
neighborhood, I am not sure that beginning with the debate
about which weapons to give the Ukraine Army, for example, is
the essence of the matter. I would rather have a broader debate
about the future of European security structures and think
about how our strategy follows from that.
So arming the Ukraine military may be part of it, but I
think it needs to be in a broader debate that we are not really
having. So, again, I do not fault DOD and its tactics and its
units for that particular challenge.
Senator Shaheen. Yes, Mr. Martinage?
Mr. Martinage. I would like to focus in on your comment
about sort of Iran, China, and that sort of section of
challenges. In my view, the power projection concept that we
developed during the Cold War and demonstrated in Desert War
and really refined since then is really fundamentally being
called into question. Our adversaries get a vote, and they are
developing and fielding capabilities to disrupt our preferred
approach to power projection.
The big--the big four in my view are space is no longer a
sanctuary against attack; closed-in airbases and ports, which
we rely on extensively, are now increasingly vulnerable to
attack; service combatants and aircraft carriers are vulnerable
to detection at rang and attack at range; and conventional
aircraft are increasingly vulnerable to integrated air
defenses. If you look at all that and how we are currently
structured and postured in our force, and we have a big and
growing problem.
Senator Shaheen. Mr. McGrath, I want to--in your written
testimony, you talk about the rise of the combatant commanders
creating the impression that strategy development is no longer
in the purview of the services. This sort of gets to some of
the other issues that you all are raising.
Talk a little bit more about that and why you believe that
the services should be involved in strategy because my
perception is that they have been very involved, if no in the
final decisions around strategy, at least in presenting options
for what we should be doing. You know, certainly in the war in
Iraq, I think General Petraeus with his surge, which I think
there were members of Congress who were involved in those
discussions. But I think much of the strategy there was based
on what we were hearing from the commanders in the field. So
explain what you mean there.
Mr. McGrath. I think it is important to make a distinction
between sort of campaign level military strategy, which is what
the surge was, and the making of long-term military strategy to
serve the national security strategy. It is in the latter part
where the services, in my view--I was the lead author and the
team leader of the Navy's 2007 maritime strategy. There was a
lot of institutional resistance within the building. What is
the Navy doing writing strategy? The strategy is the purview of
the Combatant Commanders [CoComs].
And in my twisted view of the world, strategy really ought
to be the purview of the service chiefs because they are the
ones with the long-term view, whereas the combatant commanders
are generally more looking at the threats that are before them,
and I think that's what we pay them to do.
So it is that tension between the near term and the long
term that I think puts the Service Chiefs in a better position
to do that long-term strategic thinking.
Senator Shaheen. I am out of time, but does anybody
disagree with that?
[No response.]
Senator Shaheen. Okay. I just want to ask Dr. O'Hanlon a
final question. You raised issues about the QDR. We heard last
week from a panelist who said we should get rid of the QDR. Do
you agree with that?
Dr. O'Hanlon. No, Senator. I think overall even though I do
not always enjoy reading them--at this point they have gotten a
little dry at times--the discipline of the process is actually
useful. Sometimes when they are dry, it is because we have
worked towards a consensus as a Nation, which is not all
together a bad thing in all cases either.
So, no, I would support it. I think we have got about
enough. General Deptula has mentioned the roles and missions
commission idea. Maybe that is a good idea. Maybe that is
enough, however. I mean, in other words, we should not pile on
additional reviews one after another after another. But I think
a QDR every four years is probably a pretty solid concept.
Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
Chairman McCain. I have found the QDR to be an excellent
cure for insomnia myself.
[Laughter.]
Chairman McCain. Senator Cotton?
Senator Cotton. Mr. McGrath, a question about the role of
sea power. Over the last 15 years, we have used sea power to
project the power onto the land, especially air power. Still
doing that to this day in the Middle East. Do you think that is
the proper or primary role that should be using sea power for,
or should we have sea power focused primarily on control of the
seas and lines of communication on the seas?
Mr. McGrath. More of an emphasis on the latter than there
is today, but certainly a great emphasis on the former.
Senator Cotton. Okay. Could you say more about that?
Mr. McGrath. Sure. We live thousands of miles from our
security interests. Sea power is ultimately probably going to
be the most effective way to bring mass quantities of power to
bear quickly when situations are likely to still be in the time
where they can be controlled, escalated and de-escalated.
It is hard to get the amount of power flown there from
Continental United States [CONUS] that we would need in that
kind of a role, so we have to be able to project power in the
early stages of conflicts. But when it comes time to bring the
big hurt, that is really I think an Air Force mission.
Senator Cotton. Would you say the same thing about the
Marine Corps and extended land warfare?
Mr. McGrath. I would say the Marine Corps should--I was
just talking to Bob Martinage this morning about this. The
Marine Corps really ought not be in the counterinsurgency
business and the wide area of security business. They ought to
be in the crisis management business, but there is a lot of
business in the crisis management business.
Senator Cotton. Anybody care to respond to Mr. McGrath's
comments on those two points? Dr. O'Hanlon got his hand up
first.
Dr. O'Hanlon. Sorry. I will be brief. Senator Cotton, I
think the Marines helped us a lot in the counterinsurgency
campaigns of the last 15 years. So, while it may nice to have
them prioritize the missions that focus on expeditionary
warfare, I think we need to have them also as a potential
counterinsurgency force.
Senator Cotton. General Deptula?
General Deptula. Listen, having 4.3 sovereign square acres
of U.S. territory that could be moved around the world where
and when we need it is an absolutely necessary force structure
requirement of the United States military. The question becomes
how many in the context of force structure. That decision and
discussion needs to also be informed by the fact that sea-based
air power is about 10 times more resource costly than land-
based air power. I am not talking Air Force versus Navy here
because I am including the Marines as part of that land-based
calculation. So it is just something that needs to be taken
into consideration.
So if you take a look at the initial stages of Operation
Inherent Resolve, you were flying F/A-18E/Fs with two 500-pound
bombs 1,200 miles to deliver and come home when on B-1 could
essentially accomplish the equivalent of 40 F/A-18E/F sorties.
Chairman McCain. I would point out that without the use of
Incirlik, we did not have many other options.
Mr. Martinage. I would just say, along with what Bryan
said, I think sea control is essential. It is a key enabler for
the Joint Force. But ultimately, we want to be able to project
from the sea against land targets.
Senator Cotton. Okay.
Mr. Martinage. The challenge there is I think we need to
rethink the future of the Carrier Air Wing. In particular, we
need the longer range and more survivability off the carrier
deck.
Senator Cotton. General Deptula, I would like to shift to
our nuclear forces. Given China and Russia's modernization of
their nuclear forces as well as delivery vehicles and space
systems, do you think our nuclear forces are properly postured
to appropriately deter aggression from those countries?
General Deptula. The overarching general response would be
yes, particularly in the context of the viability of our triad.
However, we cannot neglect attention to modernizing our nuclear
forces. Quite frankly, adversary or potential adversary nuclear
forces are the only forces that currently pose an existential
threat to the United States, so that needs to be priority one.
Senator Cotton. Anyone else have comments on our nuclear
forces? Mr. McGrath?
Mr. McGrath. I want to associate myself with something Dr.
O'Hanlon said earlier, which was his concern--and I do not want
to misquote you here--his concern for the degree to which the
Navy's recapitalization of its strategic deterrent could
potentially impact its ability to continue to provide the force
necessary as the conventional deterrence force. That concerns
me greatly.
I think that is the U.S. Navy's primary close to unique
contribution to our national defense, and that is day-to-day
conventional deterrence around the world. If that is impacted,
I think that is a dangerous thing.
Senator Cotton. So you worry that they are prioritizing the
strategic deterrent over conventional deterrent?
Mr. McGrath. I am certain that they are, yes.
Senator Cotton. No, as am I. That worries you.
Mr. McGrath. Oh, okay. I am sorry. Yes, sir, they are.
Senator Cotton. Okay.
Mr. Martinage. The only thing I would say about that is
when we come down on the number of the delivery vehicles and
nuclear warheads, the coin of the realm becomes the
survivability of that assured deterrent. Nothing is as good as
the ballistic missile submarine [SSBN], period, stop.
Senator Cotton. My time has expired.
Chairman McCain. Senator Donnelly?
Senator Donnelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to
all of you for being here. General Deptula, in your testimony
you wrote in regards to the three legs of the triad, you
affirmed the importance of it, in maintaining an effective
nuclear deterrent, and I completely agree. What I am interested
in is hearing some of your additional thoughts. In your
testimony you wrote, ``A dollar spent on duplicative capability
comes at the expense of essential capacity or capability
elsewhere."
Do you believe we can achieve savings by pursuing common
components and systems among the Services for nuclear
modernization efforts?
General Deptula. Senator, I am not an expert in that
particular area, but in general as you posed the question, my
answer would be yes.
Senator Donnelly. Okay. I would love to hear the insights
of anybody else on the panel. Mr. McGrath, I know you talk
about jointness as a--as a strategy it is not always the
greatest thing. How about jointness in common components and
similar things?
Mr. McGrath. I think if we were able to create a missile
that was nearly identical for the SSBN and for silos, I think
that would be a wonderful thing. I do not know how likely that
it is. I just want to quickly say that my fear is not--I am not
trying to say that we should not do the SSBN. What I am trying
to say is we cannot let building the SSBN keep us from having
the level of conventional Navy that we need to do its job.
Dr. O'Hanlon. I will pile on the SSBN issue for just a
second, if you do not mind, and this is in the spirit of--I do
not want to associate you with this, Senator. But you mentioned
the $13 billion aircraft carrier. I am troubled by the $6
billion Ohio-class replacement. I do not know why it has to
cost $6 billion. I know why it is going to cost more than the
Ohio-class, and there are some inefficiencies, and times have
changed.
The Ohio-class, I think, is quite survivable. It is just
getting old. To be honest with you, just conceptually I would
be happy with something that looked like the Ohio-class for the
future, new Ohio-class subs. I realize we cannot really do that
because we have lost some shipyard capabilities and so forth.
But I am still not quite sure why the SSBN successor has to
cost more than twice as much per vessel. I think some scrutiny
on that would be--would be advisable for all of us.
Mr. Martinage. I do not want to get too far down in the
weeds on the--on the common components on the nuclear side, but
in terms of warhead designs, having some inefficiency and
redundancy is probably good so if there is this failure,
technical failure, in any one of the different warhead designs,
it does not compromise our strategic deterrence. So sometimes
you have got to balance, you know, the efficiency.
Senator Donnelly. Let me ask you this. As we look at dollar
challenges and budget challenges, and I would love to hear from
all of you, each one, one after the other, your best idea for
reduction in bureaucratic growth. You know, if you had one main
point on that, what would you tell us this is what you have to
go after? General, I do not know if you want to start first,
but you are the Lieutenant General in the group, so.
General Deptula. Sure, I will go first. Once again, we have
18 defense agencies. We have 10 DOD field activities. That is
the first place I would start looking to cut in terms of
increasing and freeing up resources. Then the next place I
would look is I would look at the staffs, both OSD and Joint
Staff. Then I would look at the service headquarters staff.
Senator Donnelly. Mr. McGrath?
Mr. McGrath. Defense agencies.
Dr. O'Hanlon. I agree with the idea of a 10 or 20 percent
arbitrary cut. Usually that kind of policymaking strikes me as
a punt, and I am frustrated as an analyst when that is all I
can recommend, but staffs have grown so much. I think simply
imposing some degree of percentage reduction over a period of
time----
Senator Donnelly. Having them figure out----
Dr. O'Hanlon. Exactly. Then I also am a supporter of
another round of base closures. I recognize a lot of the
objections this committee and others have had to the specifics
of how we did it in 2005. I share some of those critiques. But
I think we are going to have to get to it at some point as
well.
Mr. Martinage. I agree with the rest of the panel. Defense
agencies, then OSD and Joint staff, and just looking broadly at
contractor support across the Department.
Senator Donnelly. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman McCain. Thank you. I am sure our witnesses are
aware that in the defense bill, which hopefully--which just
passed the House in the--has a seven and a half percent across-
the-board required cut for four years in staffs. It has been
pointed out that former Secretary Gates mandated a cut in
staffs as well, which never really happened. They just shifted
people around.
It is also hard to get a handle on it when you don't how
many people are working there. For 15 years now we have been
trying to get an audit of the Pentagon. It is my desire, and I
was just recently out in Silicon Valley to see if they can come
up with a way since obviously internally we have been unable to
achieve that.
We did even get to the issue sequestration, and the--not
only the damaging that it does to our defense funding, but to
the ability of the men and women to plan, to operate, to know,
to have some certainty. I do not know how we can have a QDR if
we are lurching from one year to another and nobody knows what
the level of funding is going to be. Of that course, that
responsibility less in a bipartisan effort in Congress and the
President of the United States.
So these are very interesting and difficult times, and
almost every day brings a new challenge, the disappearance of
an airliner over Egypt just being the latest. So we need your
thinking and experience and knowledge very badly. We do not
pretend to know all the answers, but we are going to make it
our--reform our highest priority for the coming year.
There are some very important beginnings, such as reform of
the retirement system which is fundamental, as you know, and
many others. But we have a long way to go, and your testimony
has been very helpful to all members, and I thank you very
much. Jack?
Senator Reed. Mr. Chairman, let me thank you for bringing
together these experts, and let me thank the witnesses for
extraordinary insights, and thank you for your service to the
Nation in so many other ways. So, Mr. Chairman, thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:15 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]