SecDef Should Crack Whip On Cyber, Drones, & Training Foreigners by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., Breaking Defense
Yesterday, four mid-grade military officers — one from each armed service – made a remarkable public recommendation to their boss, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel: It’s time to force the four services back into clearly demarcated “lanes” and reduce overlap between them as budgets shrink and competition escalates...
All told, the study identifies 10 areas of “excessive redundancy,” from nuclear deterrence to Apocalpyse Now-style riverine combat boats to chaplains. After 12 years of flush budgets and urgent wartime needs, the services have all built up “excessive duplicative capabilities [that] the Department of Defense can no longer afford,” write Navy Commander Clay Beers, Marine Lt. Col. Gordon Miller, Army Col. Robert Taradash and Air Force Lt. Col. Parker Wright. It’s remarkable to see a single document with co-authors from all four services, especially since these are not high-ranking guys…
Comments
To some extent I can sympathize with their arguments, but the sad reality is we're not as joint as we like to advertise, and for this to work we truly would have to be joint, which also means a high level of trust between the services. The Air Force has a different culture that some argue is barely military, so to assume the Army and Marines are going to trust that they'll be at pointy end of the spear when their needed is unrealistic. The Air-Force, not unlike the other services, will have their own priorities, and get away with pursuing them. Therefore it is logical and necessary for the Army and Marines develop their own UAVs to support their tactical operations.
The Marines demonstrated their lack of jointness in Afghanistan when they blew off then ISAF commander GEN McCrystal who told them to secure and stabilize Kandahar, and instead deployed forces to pursue their own strategy. SOF and the Army have each pulled their share of stunts that undermined effective jointness. The services and SOF (a hybrid of all the services) have learned repeatedly they can't depend upon other services, which is why they develop capabilities they have direct control over. If we truly fix jointness, then maybe what the 4 officers propose would be workable.
One other factor that needs to be considered is we're not a business, so streamlining the force to reduce redundancy (as if to produce a greater profit margin, but in this case to save money) presents risk when we go to war without redundancy of capabilities. We haven't suffered high losses in combat since the Vietnam War, so this point is too often glossed over as irrelevant, but it isn't.
Sydney analyzes the just released CNAS report on roles and missions by the their active duty military fellows. I think it is worth reading and debating. I have one comment to offer on Sydney's analysis and "competition" (Sydney's word) between the Army, Marine Corps, and SOF in Phase Zero operations. Excerpt:
QUOTE:So-called Phase Zero Operations, in which US troops train foreign forces, conduct exercises with them, and even quietly help them secure their countries. Historically, Special Operations Forces did the small-scale, low-profile, long-term work in the shadows, while the four services occasionally showed up for big high-profile exercises. But after 9/11, the “Big Army” andMarine Corps both had to build up Afghan and Iraqi forces, expertise they don’t want to lose. Now now they are to some extent competing (my word, not the authors’) with each other and with SOCOM for Phase 0 business around the world, especially in the high-profile Pacific. “The Department of Defense needs to provide the services guidance on their primary mission responsibilities in Phase 0 operations,” the four officer write, “instead of letting the services make their own decision about the force size and mix required.”END QUOTE
What is really required is simply to use the right forces for the right missions. The Army, Marine Corps, and SOF are different forces with different capabilities (and as an old boss used to say "jointness does not equal sameness" - our joint force is better by having the right mix of different capabilities rather than trying to make the organizations that make up the joint force the same or do the same things, but I digress). While DOD does need to provide service guidance what is really necessary to prevent "competition" (which of course is not always bad but in this case might lead to redundancy vice efficiency among capabilities) is a comprehensive strategy with supporting campaign plans that will determine the right mix of capabilities and forces to support the strategy. i think the DOD guidance will end up being focused on force structure and budget with "competition" to employ their capabilities in support of the geographic combatant commands in order to justify their force structure and share of the resource pie. In effect there is a lot of push, but is there a real pull from the combatant commands and the chiefs of mission for these capabilities? Again more fundamentally, are we developing a comprehensive national strategy and regional campaign plans and country team mission strategic plans that will call for and then orchestrate the right service capabilities to accomplish the required ends of the strategy
MF,
I get the impression that the authors were going for something more like the following:
- Like Prof. Robert Farley advocates, get rid of the USAF….roll it back into the Army as the Air Corps, perhaps even letting it focus primarily on tactical air while the Navy does strat-air. I personally would prefer reorganizing the USAF into the Space Force that handles missiles, strategic airlift, cyber-control, and all space dominance missions (does the Army need a Space BDE??) while the Army takes the tac-air missions (save the A-10!) along with the Navy and USMC…….but that’s just me.
- Look at getting rid of Navy SEALs and reorganizing the Marines to take on all Naval special operations missions. After all, they are part of the Navy and already do the sea-air-land thing.
Your reading of the article seems to take their argument to an extreme (though I admit that they authors may actually have your ideas in mind….I don’t know). I, too, feel there is far too much redundancy between the services. But more importantly, I think each services lacks the necessary guidance & control from DoD/ SecDef allowing them to make decisions about budget, equipment, etc, etc…in a vacuum.
Clear guidance about strategy and a firm DoD hand on each service will probably do much to fix any problems regarding “redundancy”.
Guess I'm a little confused.
The Navy officer is an F/A-18 pilot. Is there any reason all F/A-18 and F-35C and B pilots could not be USAF officers to better live up to the spirit of their recommendations? The Army officer is an MP. Should all MPs, Shore Patrol, and Airfield security forces be Army? The USAF officer does not appear to be a pilot so has limited expertise related to flying despite working in a JAOC. Does he propose that USAF officers fly every Raven, Puma, Shadow, and Gray Eagle UAS from Creech AFB in Nevada? How about those Firescouts flying off LCS and Destroyers? Marine UAS?
Should USAF CSAR MH-60 pilots be Army since the Army has many more UH-60s and MH-60s and CSAR primarily flies MEDEVAC-like missions? How about Navy MH-60s? Could Navy Corpsmen be Army medics instead since the Marines have none? Could enlisted USAF JTACs supporting Army Close Air Support be an offshoot MOS of Field Artillery Joint Fires Observers? Should Navy SEALS be an offshoot of Army Delta force or Rangers since they operate primarily on land? See how ridiculous this starts to get when you begin thinking there is excessive redundancy?
What is the cost of satellite data link time and personnel costs for USAF officers vs enlisted men flying Army, USMC, and Navy UAS from theater with access to local service intelligence and BCT information collection? Isn't the USAF planning to cut back on Predator and Reaper operations as part of budget cuts and pilot dislike for such flying? Will that leave the Army in the same UAS state it encountered in 2003 when lack of UAS forced one huge movement to contact in the first OIF? By the end of the war, Army UAS flew millions more hours than the USAF in support of ground combatants. Should that be reversed by removing UAS from Army control and letting the USAF cut UAS budgets as occurred with the C-27, MC-12, and possibly the A-10?
Could the Marine Corps have conducted both island-hopping in the Pacific and the Normandy Invasion? Do Marines need KC-130s? How many more UH-60Ms and Joint Multirole counter-rotating rotor (if chosen) could fit on the USS John Glenn Mobile Landing Platform to facilitate ship-and-island hopping to a potential Pacific conflict from airfields farther outside the A2/AD envelope of short range ballistic missiles and the DF-21D?
Which service is the sole one that should conduct cyber defense and EW? Redundancy is the word often errantly substituted for the complementary capabilities of different systems that Joint Services bring to the fight. However, due to budget and philosophy differences, services do not always see things similarly as Robert Gates pointed out with his "pulling teeth" comment about USAF UAS. We also saw that in retired USAF General Moseley's comment here from a National Defense Magazine article:
<blockquote>Tight budgets were not the real reason why Gates terminated the program, he said. “The money was there. … We spent $50 billion on MRAPs [mine resistant ambush protected] trucks. We spent a large amount on unmanned aerial vehicles for every private first class and corporal,” Moseley said, and immediately added, “I'm being a little facetious but not much.”</blockquote>
Most realize the USAF never would spend sufficiently or create the right requirements, capabilities, and force structure for UAS to support the Army, Marines, and Navy if they were solely in charge of fielding systems.