Pentagon Budget Stuck in Last Century as Warfare Changes by Gopal Ratnam, Bloomberg
… Nevertheless, the defense budget contains hundreds of billions of dollars for new generations of aircraft carriers and stealth fighters, tanks that even the Army says it doesn’t need and combat vehicles too heavy to maneuver in desert sands or cross most bridges in Asia, Africa or the Middle East.
“There’s a fundamental need to have a conversation about what kind of military we need to have and what we should expect it to do,” Andrew Bacevich, a West Point graduate and former Army colonel who now teaches at Boston University, said in an interview.
In the absence of such a conversation, the Pentagon faces the prospect of $500 billion in automatic cuts over the next decade, beginning March 1, with no consensus on what to trim. Instead, the budget is driven largely by champions of existing programs in Congress, the defense industry and the uniformed services. As a result, predicts Bacevich: “The behemoth of an entity called the Pentagon is not going to shrink.” …
Comments
<blockquote>However, the sad story of the American rifle also serves as a metaphor for a defense culture that slights the little stuff to fixate on buying big war machines that haven’t been employed in serious combat for generations, and probably never will be again.</blockquote>
<blockquote>During World War II, the most dangerous jobs belonged to submariners and bomber crewmen. Next came the infantry, who, because of their greater numbers, accounted for about 70 percent of all those killed at the hands of the enemy.
In wars fought since then, no submariner has died in combat. In fact, the U.S. Navy fought its last major sea battle the year I was born — 1944. The last bomber crewman lost to enemy action died during the 1972 Christmas bombing offensive over Hanoi.
In contrast, close-combat troops (Army and Marine infantry, as well as special operators like Delta, Rangers and SEALs) have suffered more than 80 percent of deaths from enemy action in post-World War II conflicts. This is a force that makes up less than 4 percent of all those serving in uniform.</blockquote>
The above quotes are from this Washington Times article by retired MG Robert Scales:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/20/scales-superior-warrior…
As Scales points out, it is sexy for analysts to postulate how isolated anecdotes of the past 40-60 years coupled with WWII histories of long gone larger navies and air forces somehow translate into likely lessons for future warfare fought in the air and at sea. This occurs while seemingly ignoring how much we already dominate in the air and at sea, who we don't fight due to mutually assured destruction, and current daily headlines about terrorism and ground death tolls that will continue to pose a threat until we no longer can ignore them.
Ground forces deterred war in Europe and Korea, succeeded in securing the peace in the Balkans and the Sinai, and fought terror in the Middle East and South Asia. Yet a decade of war with inadequate early stability resources along with diplomatic decisions to pull nearly all ground forces prematurely from Iraq and Afghanistan (and not redraw illogical borders prior to holding elections) are somehow a landpower failure? If Navy and Airpower solutions are so effective why is Libya still a mess and Syria looks worse daily? How long do we believe Israel and Saudi Arabia will put up with Iranian nuclear pursuits before they take matters into their own hands? Also ignored is the interdependency of Chinese and U.S. and its neighbor economies and the deterrence of nuclear weapons that have single-handedly precluded WWIII.
Watched an Information Dissemination video in which a Japanese analyst contrasted the immense Naval assets of the Soviets with the far more scant and non-survivable assets of the PLAN and PLA Air Force. In the same event a South Korean analyst pointed out the Chinese are too smart to risk it all economically and further annoy neighbors by going to war over rocks in the water that they cannot begin to defend hundreds of miles from their homeland.
While we fixate on A2/AD challenges posed temporarily against us only in the event of a completely surprise attack, we seem to ignore how improbable it would be that Chinese aircraft and naval assets could survive <strong>our</strong> subsequent U.S. and allied navy and stealth fighters backed up by an incomparable aerial refueling fleet that could allow basing farther from 2nd Artillery Corps missiles that are mostly short-range. How many ships would make it to Taiwan or rocks in the distant South and East China Seas and could continue to resupply PLA forces there and hold off allied forces? Yes, RAND corporation, Navy fighters do exist as do other bases aside from Kadena and Guam. No need to scare the DoD into spending excessively on AirSea Battle when programmed systems already would dominate any likely Pacific conflict.
Fortunately, retired Marine Robert Work will become the next number 2 at the Pentagon and he knows that we can buy 3 LCS for every alternative Destroyer and that a new start Cruiser would experience the same delays and normal cost overruns vs. LCS systems already in production with bugs being worked out. The Navy can afford a fleet with 50+ LCS, but not one with 50 or even 30 cruisers, DDG-51s, or their newer DDG-1000 destroyer the size of an aircraft carrier. The LCS makes sense if you want forward deterrence and presence in multiple places to combat mines, submarines, and small or less capable boats (to include Chinese Coast Guard), not to mention SOF insertion and helicopter lily pad capability.
In addition, in an article that purports to shortchange the LCS as too weak (as opposed to Scales point that naval battle have been far and few between since WWII) and the F-35 is too strong and unnecessary (despite integrated radar air defense threats) there is a schizophrenia in this article that makes little sense. If there is a need to deter China in the Pacific, I can think of no greater means than fielding and dispersing stealth fighters at multiple Pacific airfields, and backing them up with others on 20+ U.S. carriers and in more austere wartime locations. In addition the LCS allows forward Naval presence with the possibility of loss of a few in a sudden surprise attack, followed by swarms of said ships after PLAN naval and airpower is rapidly depleted by our stealth fighters and subs.
Not convinced? Look at T.X. Hammes concept of Offshore Control and think how well the LCS and Joint High Speed Vessel fit into our ability to board and halt or divert vessels headed to or from China. Since this will occur far from Chinese shores and by then the PLAN and PLA Air Force would be at the bottom of the sea, what threat do we think will sink the LCS or threaten our stealth fighters?
Articles like this seem authoritative because they tap into "experts" in the media and elsewhere whose business is to bash. Other truer "experts" at Think Tanks are clever enough to manipulate our fears and skew assumptions (no Naval airpower defending Taiwan????) to endanger critical systems like LCS and the F-35. Pay no attention to the man/woman behind the curtain sitting safely at a desk thousands of miles away from deployed Soldiers/Marines they would eliminate in favor of improbable conflicts. Ask these "experts" how we would afford realistic alternatives to current systems like LCS and the F-35. Ask how more 4th generation fighters would survive air defenses and how long it would take for new starts to be developed that will either be just as/more costly and will require decades to build as opposed to current fielding and improvements of the LCS and F-35.
Meanwhile, consider today's Middle East, South Asia, and African headlines and events of 9/11 when you consider who really is more likely to deploy, fight, and experience casualties in future warfare. Soldiers/Marines die when we overemphasize the wrong scenarios, fail to realize how ground forces ensure offshore control without escalatory deep penetration of China, and set ourselves up for failure in more realistic conflicts by kicking our most experienced ground troops out the door after multiple year-long deployments. We should not send our ground troops to future battles ill-equipped, inadequately trained, and undermanned just because we grow enamored with the strange prospect of fighting our friend and trading partner in the Pacific.
I have to agree. I thought we were headed towards a reevaluation of requirements with the interest in the "human domain" but that has not even been placed on the back burner, it has been shelved altogether. We have conducted no real analysis of the world today, what political and social conflicts are likely to occur, what security interests we have in those conflicts, and what type of military capability will be required to deal with those situations. Instead, we have returned to the idea that we must be capable of beating every military system that could possibly exist, now or in the future. Technology is great, don't get me wrong, but it has to be designed to defeat a realistic threat. Some guy put a glow plug in a ammo can place on a five foot piece of angle iron attached to the front of a HMMWV to defeat IR activated EFPs. We did not need a fifth generation fighter to do that.
If I sound like I am frustrated and am venting, then you would be right. I really don't understand how we can design a military based strictly on defeating ... well no one, since no one actually has the technology we are trying to defeat ... and run the entire country into the ground doing it.
Isn't it the military's job to defend the nation? If we, through a bloated budget that is designed to defeat fictitious threats, cause the country to go bankrupt, haven't we failed?