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Is the DOD Budget Focused On the Proper Future Threats?

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  • Is the DOD Budget Focused On the Proper Future Threats?

    “In lieu of knowing what to do, we do what we know.”

    Perhaps this quotation has never applied so aptly to the U.S. military as it does now. For most of its history, the United States has largely fought in the very types of warfare for which it has trained and found familiar. In World Wars I and II, the United States trained for and fought in a mostly conventional war. But now, the enemies of the United States are decidedly unconventional. The United States has to be prepared to face off against non-state actors and failed states that pose little conventional military threat but are just as potentially lethal as any Cold War adversary. It is just these types of irregular, asymmetric conflicts that the United States is ill-prepared to fight. The U.S. military does not know how to prepare for, train for, and wage these types of wars, and so, in lieu of knowing what to do, the military does what it knows and continues to prepare for traditional, conventional war.
    In his article “A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age”, Secretary Robert M. Gates echoes these same sentiments. Gates asserts that the Pentagon and defense budget is out of balance with respect to preparing to fight both conventional and unconventional enemies. According to Gates, the U.S. military is not preparing for the current fight and the enemies it will likely face in the future, but is instead continuing to prepare for types of warfare, largely conventional, it will likely not see again.
    Secretary Gates’ assessment is accurate – the U.S. military is out of balance. First, the military is equipped to fight Cold War-era conventional armies, not the irregular threats that exist today. Second, the U.S. military budget and procurement systems do not keep pace with the current fight or evolving threat. Finally, U.S. military doctrine has been exceedingly slow to adapt to the current fight. In this paper, I will discuss these issues and show that Secretary Gates’ assessment is correct.
    The U.S. military is simply not equipped for the current fight. Much of the U.S. military arsenal is still focused towards a fight against a heavily armored conventional enemy. This is not an entirely wrong approach. The United States still needs to be prepared to fight a China, Russia, or similar conventional threat from a major world power. But even these world powers are developing increasingly more asymmetric systems such as computer network attack and information operations capabilities. And, to be sure, armored and mechanized units still have a role on the irregular battlefield; Secretary Gates mentions how M1 tanks have proven effective in counterinsurgency environments. But the U.S. military can no longer afford to continue to develop and amass an almost purely conventional offensive and defensive capability. The United States must also invest in and develop equipment and capabilities for the irregular, asymmetric battlefield.
    Compounding this equipment problem is a slow and unresponsive budgeting and procurement process. The Pentagon budgeting and procurement process has been exceedingly slow to adapt to a war that can often require fast and flexible procurement of new technologies and equipment. Gates mentions that the current system seeks “a 99 percent solution over a period of years” where the current fight requires “a 75 percent solution over a period of months.” An example of this would be the fielding of the up-armored HMMWV and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. First, the current procurement system took much too long to get these vehicles to the service members in Iraq and Afghanistan who so desperately needed them. Second, to develop these vehicles, the Pentagon had to circumvent the established system at times. Gates argues that a robust procurement system should be in place that is responsive and allows the innovation to develop the types of equipment needed for the current and future fights.
    The U.S. military has been very slow to adapt its doctrine. This is perhaps most evident with the counterinsurgency fights in Iraq and Afghanistan. For too long, Army commanders approached the insurgency problem set with a hyperkinetic, highly conventional mindset. Commanders concentrated almost exclusively on killing insurgents and relied on special operations forces and interagency organizations to develop security forces and build the foundations of governance and economics. Not all commanders fell into this mindset. From the beginning, certain skillful commanders realized that a more holistic approach was required to wage counterinsurgency successfully. They would have to become experts in and concentrate on building legal systems, establishing local councils, and providing basic services. The more successful they were in these endeavors, the less likely they were to have to battle insurgents as the insurgent population would slowly dwindle over time if effective government institutions were established and economic improvements occurred. In other words, if a commander waged counterinsurgency correctly, he would have to engage in very little of the kinetic activities for which he had been trained and likely trained his soldiers.
    But it took almost three years in the case of Iraq and five years for Afghanistan before these lessons were internalized and codified in new doctrine. This time frame is much too long considering some commanders had determined so early on in the fight how to successfully fight an insurgency.
    The Army needs a much more responsive method to capture lessons from the field and produce revised doctrine. Perhaps the Army has solved this issue by publishing interim field manuals while major revisions to doctrine are still under review. Time will tell, but this is a step toward rectifying this problem, though more institutional change will likely be necessary to fully fix this.
    So, Secretary Gates is correct: the U.S. military is out of balance and not postured for the current or likely fights. It is fielded for a conventional fight, it has a long and laborious procurement system that cannot adapt to the changing nature of the battlefield, and it is very slow to incorporate new changes in doctrine. These are three very major shortcomings; in most organizations, such shortcomings would be enough to doom an organization to failure. But the fact that the Secretary of Defense himself is pointing out these faults is cause for optimism. If the military is every going to be put back into balance, such a rebalancing effort will have to be top-down driven by the leadership. Fortunately, the U.S. military is led by someone who clearly sees these imbalances.

    MAJ Mark D. Metzger
    Student, Command and General Staff College

    The views contained in this posting are those of the author and do no necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense or the Command and General Staff College.

  • #2
    MAJ MARK,

    Totally agree with your analysis, though probably with less optimism about the Generals of our Army and the Admirals/Generals of the Navy and Air Force. You identify procurement as the issue, and it is. Unfortunately, it hasn't changed. Trying to kill the useless F-22 took years and still hasn't happened.

    We have been at war for going on 9 and 6 years respectively, yet the Air Force and Navy still run larger budgets than the Army, and they barely fight our wars! Until that changes not much will change in our military.
    Michael C

    On Violence Twitter

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