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Testimony of
Andrew Krepinevich, Executive Director, before the Senate Armed
Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities Today we face a challenge that is unprecedented in the nation’s history: the need to transform our armed forces into a very different kind of military from that which exists today, while sustaining the military’s ability to play a very active role in supporting U.S. near-term efforts to preserve global stability within a national security strategy of engagement and enlargement. In his testimony before the full committee last year, Defense Secretary William Cohen declared, “I can sum up our vision to you in one word: transformation.” Both the Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and the National Defense Panel (NDP), an independent body of national security experts, declared transforming the military a top priority. Moreover, it is important to begin the transformation process soon. It is no exaggeration to say that the U.S. military that will confront the very different challenges of tomorrow is being formed by decisions being made today. Unfortunately, I have serious concerns about the nature, scope, and direction of the Defense Department’s current transformation efforts, which I will address presently. Why the need for a transformation? To be sure, the strategic environment in which the United States finds itself today is far more favorable than that which existed during the Cold War. It could be argued that, irrespective of what course the Defense Department follows in modernizing its forces, U.S. military superiority over any prospective near-term challenger is so great that we are unlikely to confront a significant threat to our vital interests over the next ten years, and perhaps longer. On the other hand, we are almost certainly entering into a period of military revolution (or a “revolution in military affairs,” to use the Pentagon’s term). Such periods are characterized by discontinuous leaps in military effectiveness, and dramatic shifts in the threats posed to our security, the capabilities available to commanders to respond to these threats, the ways in which armed forces fight, and how they organize for combat.1 This century has witnessed two such periods of military revolution. The most recent is the nuclear weapon-ballistic missile revolution of the 1940s and 1950s. An earlier revolution occurred in the 1920s and 1930s, and was characterized by the transformation of warfare on land, which culminated in the blitzkrieg; at sea, with the rise of naval aviation and carrier battle groups; and in the air, with the emergence of strategic aerial bombardment. Periods of military revolution are often characterized by large, rapid, and unexpected shifts in the military balance. Those militaries that are surprised often have little time to recover and adapt. Consequently, there is the risk that if the Defense Department does not undertake a transformation, it may not have time to “buy” its way out of its mistakes later. In such circumstances, the price of failure can be high: vital interests can be compromised, or preserved only at a high cost in blood and treasure, or perhaps forfeited entirely.
The Emerging Military Regime In summary, the emerging military revolution seems destined to change, in dramatic fashion, the character of the threats to our security, and the capabilities we can potentially draw upon for defense. But what kinds of threats will we face, and what types of capabilities should we seek to develop?
Emerging Threats
Power Projection and the “Anti-Access” Problem Despite this bold vision, much of the wargaming that supported both the 1993 Bottom-Up Review and last year’s QDR were oriented on “Desert Storm-like” contingencies in the Persian Gulf and on the Korean Peninsula. Relying on experiences from an eight-year old conflict to determine forces for future contingencies, particularly in a rapidly changing competitive environment, seems unlikely to provide the kind of insights needed for military transformation. This seems particularly true in power-projection operations, where the U.S. military’s traditional method of deploying air and ground forces at or through ports and airfields is almost certain to be held at risk by the growing proliferation of satellite services and missile technology. Commercial and third-party satellite constellation imagery services will allow even regional rogue states to monitor U.S. deployments and (unless one makes heroic assumptions regarding the effectiveness of missile defenses) hold them at risk through the employment of large numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles. Senior U.S. military leaders have voiced strong concern over their ability to deal with such a contingency. General Ronald Fogleman, then Air Force Chief of Staff, observed:
Saturation ballistic missile attacks against littoral forces, ports, airfields, storage facilities, and staging areas could make it extremely costly to project U.S. forces into a disputed theater, much less carry out operations to defeat a well-armed aggressor. Simply the threat of such enemy missile attacks might deter U.S. and coalition partners form responding to aggression in the first instance [emphasis added]. The Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jay Johnson, expressed very similar concerns when he declared that: Over the past ten years, it has become evident that proliferating weapon and information technologies will enable our foes to attack the ports and airfields needed for the forward deployment of our land-based forces. I anticipate that the next century will see those foes striving to target concentrations of troops and materiel ashore and attack our forces at sea and in the air. This is more than a sea-denial threat or a Navy problem. It is an area-denial threat whose defeat or negation will become the single most crucial element in projecting and sustaining U.S. military power where it is needed [emphasis added].Perhaps most revealing, however, are the comments of a retired Indian brigadier, who observed:
[access to forward bases] is, by far the trickiest part of the American operational problem. This is the proverbial “Achilles heel.” India needs to study the vulnerabilities and create cover and overt bodies to develop plans and execute operations to degrade these facilities in the run up to and after commencement of hostilities. Scope exists for low cost options to significantly reduce the combat potential of forces operating from these facilities.A regional power’s development of this kind of “anti-access” or “area denial” capability by 2010 is certainly plausible. Some of the pieces are already being put into place. Iran, for example, seems far more interested in fielding anti-access systems, such as ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles, submarines, and advanced antiship mines, as opposed to military systems such as tanks and combat aircraft that proved largely ineffective for the Iraqis during the Gulf War. North Korea today has a formidable missile arsenal and chemical (and perhaps biological) weapons. Future adversaries will almost certainly benefit from access to space-based systems capable of providing imagery for reconnaissance purposes, communications, position location and targeting information, and battle damage assessments. States seeking to boost their anti-access forces will tap into the growing number of countries and multinational consortia anxious to exploit space and willing to sell their services to those who can pay for them. If it is to maintain its current relative superiority beyond the near- to mid-term future, the American military will almost certainly have to undertake a major transformation that enables it to project decisive military power in the absence of forward bases.
Homeland Defense and Nontraditional Threats But the challenge of defending the United States from attack will not end here. Two important trends seem likely to complicate our military’s problems. First, ever greater destructive power, especially in the form of chemical and biological weapons, seems likely to be available to small groups involved in terrorism, subversion, insurgency, and ethnic conflict. Moreover, the information revolution—represented in fax broadcasts, cellular phones, the internet, and the global positioning system—will enhance such groups’ effectiveness by permitting them to coordinate their activities more effectively. In short, this trend may well see the United States, with its long, relatively porous borders, and open society, highly susceptible to “nontraditional” forms of WMD attack. Second, there is the growing potential of military organizations, terrorist groups, and even individual hackers to conduct electronic or information attacks, at great distance and with little prospect of detection. The United States is leading the world in transforming from an industrial economy to an industrial-information hybrid. This may make our economic infrastructure particularly vulnerable to such attacks. In addition to the threats noted above, our military will also likely confront the challenge of defending our military and rapidly growing commercial assets in space, controlling space, achieving information superiority, and conducting urban control and urban eviction operations. Given the magnitude of the transformation required, and the natural tendency to worry about today’s problems, the Defense Department leadership might be excused for deferring transformation. This could be a grievous error.
Emerging Military Capabilities In responding to these emerging threats, we will need to transform our military into a fighting force that, relative to today’s force—and to the force that is currently envisioned in the QDR modernization program—places substantially greater emphasis on systems that incorporate the following characteristics:
New Thinking on RDT&E, Experimentation, and Procurement A good example of this approach—albeit one that was pursued perhaps more as a product of serendipity than calculation—is the United States Navy’s development of carrier aviation in the 1920s and 1930s. The Navy launched several classes of carriers, but always in limited numbers. This allowed the Navy to use its scarce resources to keep abreast of fast-moving technology and rapidly emerging military capabilities, while avoiding investment in successive classes of carriers whose value was likely to depreciate rapidly until the spectacular advances in aviation technology began to level off. When Japan emerged as a clear threat in the late 1930s, the Navy was able to exercise its strategic option in carriers, which could now be procured in greater numbers, and with the latest technology. Just as important, the Navy now had a good sense of how these carriers could best be used, and a cadre of officers and sailors who were experienced in operating them.
Tolerance for Honest Failure
Competition for New Capabilities
What emerges from these earlier periods of transformation, whether it be the development of naval aviation, or the exploitation of ballistic missiles, is that they take a considerable amount of time, at least a decade and often closer to a score of years, to play out. Today even those military systems that are placed on a “fast track” for development and fielding often take ten years or more to reach forces in the field. Considerable additional time is required to determine how best to employ the new military system, and to make the appropriate adjustments in the force structure. If that is the case, then senior Defense Department leaders must begin now to develop and execute a transformation strategy to prepare for the very different kinds of challenges they see confronting the armed forces over the long-term.
Emerging Threats and Capabilities: Barriers to Change In short, far from striking out in a bold, new direction, the QDR ratified a future course that was set principally by the momentum developed over forty years of Cold War with the Soviet Union. The result is a slightly smaller, but similar U.S. military as compared to the one called for by the QDR’s proximate ancestors, the Clinton Administration Bottom-Up Review (BUR) force and the Bush Administration Base Force. Why the discontinuity between words and deeds? There is no simple answer to this question, no single source of the problem. It is only by examining a range of factors that some tentative conclusions may be drawn. Consider, then, the following barriers to transformation:
Success Breeds Complacency This gradualist approach worked well during the Cold War, when the threat was well understood and technology was progressing at a relatively leisurely pace. But, as noted above, this condition no longer obtains. Transforming a large military organization is a difficult and time-consuming process, often taking several decades to bring about. The U.S. military thus finds itself in a race against time—the time needed to effect a transformation matched against the time its competitors will need to develop asymmetric strategies to defeat today’s “American way of war.” Given recent precursor events—the denial of forward bases to U.S. forces during recent Gulf crises, the concerns voiced by U.S. commanders in Korea over the lethal combination of North Korean missiles and chemical and biological agents, the use of Sarin nerve gas by a radical group on the Tokyo subway, and the continued growth of electronic attacks on the U.S. information grid—a strong argument can be made that the race has already begun. Thus what is required is not complacency but, rather, a sense of urgency.
Refighting the Last War
Service Culture In short, dominant Service cultures may well see their influence erode, at least somewhat, as the transformation occurs. The Services, however, have found it difficult even to contemplate that those combat systems and organizations that have worked so well in the past may be less central in a post-transformation regime.
Short Tenure of Senior Leaders Individuals do matter in successful military transformations, and they matter a great deal. For example, the choice of General Hans von Seeckt as head of the German Army following World War I as opposed to General Walter Reinhardt was crucial to the Reichwehr’s development of blitzkrieg. Simply stated, von Seeckt had a vision of military transformation centered on elite, highly mobile, mechanized forces, while Reinhardt believed static warfare would dominate future conflict as it had in the recent war on the Western Front. Von Seeckt also served in his position for seven years, allowing sufficient time for his vision to take root. Had Admiral Jackie Fisher not been its First Sea Lord from 1904-10, it is doubtful that the Royal Navy would have moved so aggressively in divesting itself of over 150 ships of the passing military regime, while plunging forward with the transformation of naval forward presence operations, the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought, and fast battle cruisers. The opportunity to institutionalize a process for change is arguably far more difficult for today’s military leaders. Senior officers shuttle from one position to the next, completing “touch-and-go” assignments, often after only a year or two. Four years is the maximum time a senior officer can serve as a chief of Service or as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Thus, today’s leaders barely have enough time to enunciate a vision of transformation, let alone institutionalize a process for achieving it. Short tenures also have a way of promoting emphasis on near-term problems and solutions. People are naturally concerned with things not going wrong on their watch. They also want to point to clear accomplishments when they depart their positions. One suspects that they also are loath to start something during their tenure whose ultimate fate will rely on the good will of their successors.
Antiquated Analytic Tools Reflecting their Cold War heritage, these models tend to emphasize attrition (as opposed to maneuver) warfare and linear operations along well-defined front lines—characteristic of the kind of military operations many experts anticipated twenty years ago had war erupted between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. But many U.S. military leaders today do not see future war resembling these operations, and thus view these “legacy” models as being unhelpful at best, and likely counterproductive to military transformation. In short, current models, with their focus on past forms of warfare, by and large, tend to be biased in favor of traditional military operations (and traditional or legacy systems), and thus act as barriers to transformation. The Defense Department also continues to place great reliance on systems analysis, introduced during Robert McNamara’s tenure as Defense Secretary, to determine future requirements. Systems analysis tends to focus on the cost-effectiveness of various options, with the intent of arriving at the most efficient solution. While a powerful analytic tool, systems analysis has become too heavily focused on the near-term future, particularly on the six-year period covered by the Future Years Defense Plan. This approach may have worked well during the Cold War, where the threat was immediate, the time horizons arguably short, and technology was not progressing at the breakneck pace it is today. But the twin geopolitical and military-technical revolutions that are the basis for transformation have created a far higher level of planning uncertainty. Whereas generating maximum near-term efficiencies may be realized by assuming away uncertainty about the future to identify the best solution, this also runs the risk of planning for the wrong future. Simply put, a defense plan that is very efficient for a specific future may produce a very ineffective military if the future turns out quite differently from what is expected. The Maginot Line built by France in the interwar period would no doubt have been both an efficient and an effective use of defense resources if the static trench warfare that characterized the Western Front in World War I dominated in 1940 as well. When it became clear that blitzkrieg, and not World War I redux, was the future, France was left with no viable alternatives against the German onslaught. Today, systems analysis may be helpful in determining an efficient mix of the three new tactical aircraft in the Pentagon’s modernization plan, which is based primarily on Gulf War-era contingencies. But systems analysis is not especially useful in capturing the uncertainties of the longer-term, or “post-transformation,” competitive environment. Yet these aircraft are expected to be in service for at least two or three decades. As U.S. access to forward bases is increasingly placed at risk, the value of tactical aircraft may depreciate rapidly, leaving the U.S. military with relatively ineffective air forces.
Field Exercises Unfortunately, U.S. military field exercises today are rarely joint, and typically do not focus on post-transformation operational challenges (e.g., projecting power in the absence of forward bases). The QDR declared that the number of man-days to support joint exercises would be reduced by 15 percent. However, pressure from congressional leaders has led the Pentagon to charge Atlantic Command (ACOM) with responsibility for joint experimentation. This represents an encouraging development. Still, it remains to be seen how well joint experimentation will be supported in terms of troops and exercise funds. At present ACOM’s first major joint experiments are not scheduled to occur until around the 2004 time frame—six years after being given its mission.
The Budget Unfortunately for those espousing the “insurance premium” view of defense budgeting, military transformation is closely linked to the shape of defense investments, as well as their magnitude. For example, if one examines French and German military expenditures during the twenty years following World War I, it shows France enjoying a clear lead for nearly the entire period. Yet Germany was able to transform its military to execute the blitzkrieg form of war and defeat France in a campaign lasting all of six weeks. An examination of the U.S. Navy during the same period would find its budgets constrained by the Great Depression. Nevertheless, during this time the Navy was able to lay the groundwork for the carrier-dominated battle fleet, while Japan was able to do the same at a time when its production of manufactured goods was less than one-fifth that of the United States! Sadly, much of the defense budget debate today revolves around the question “How much is enough?” to sustain the current defense program. A more important question to ask is “How wisely are we investing?” in order to support the goal of transforming the U.S. military to meet the very different kinds of challenges it will begin to confront over the next decade. The budget problem is made worse still, as the U.S. military today is afflicted by a condition known as the “volunteer’s dilemma.” Its primary attributes are a defense program that cannot be sustained by current and projected budgets, and a national security leadership that favors near-term military capability over long-term readiness. The result is that, to resolve the program-funding mismatch, Defense Department leaders have continually shifted money programmed for modernization to support current operations. This almost certainly is subversive of efforts at Service transformation. When, for instance, in 1994 the Navy volunteered to go below its authorized fleet size in order to free funds to develop future capabilities, senior defense officials siphoned off much of the anticipated savings to help offset budgetary shortfalls. The lesson has not been lost on senior military leaders. When it came time for the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Service chiefs quickly realized that the process was primarily a budget “cut drill,” designed to bring the program-budget mismatch into balance. Consequently, the Services sought to protect existing programs and forces, rather than running the risk of losing budget share if they reduced near-term capability to support military transformation.
The Defense Acquisition System To be sure, “buying in bulk” helps keep unit costs down, an important consideration for a military whose force structure is overly large for the kind of modernization effort planned by the Pentagon. Correspondingly, canceling a major new system, with its substantial research and development costs, is anathema in today’s military. Indeed, Service program managers are evaluated primarily on their ability to move their system into large-scale production. This produces a bias on the program manager’s part to avoid taking the kind of risks that produce innovation in favor of safe design choices. However, the incentives to reduce costs, while laudable in many respects, also serve to undermine transformation by limiting wildcatting and promoting lock-in. The defense acquisition system’s ability to support transformation also suffers from a dramatic shift in the size and character of the defense industry that sustains it. As demand for defense products declined dramatically with the Cold War’s end, the industry was left to consolidate itself under what was, until only recently, a laissez faire attitude on the Pentagon’s part. The consolidation has dramatically reduced the number of suppliers—and bidders—for the Defense Department. For example, only two major aircraft manufacturers remain to compete for defense business. Fewer competitors, combined with the Pentagon’s preference for buying a relatively small number of systems in great quantities, does not augur well for innovation, let alone transformation.
The Process Efforts to remedy the problem have met with limited success. The Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), designed to compete military programs across Service boundaries and in emerging mission areas (e.g., information warfare) has had no significant effect on the allocation of defense resources. Thus it comes as no surprise that some members of Congress have concluded that the defense planning, programming, and budgeting process requires a major overhaul.
Conclusion There appears to be general agreement concerning the need to transform the U.S. military into a significantly different kind of force from that which emerged victorious from the Cold and Gulf Wars. Yet this verbal support has not been translated into a defense program supporting transformation. As discussed above, the causes for this disconnect between the words and deeds are varied, but are primarily of our own making. While there is growing support in Congress for transformation, the “critical mass” needed to effect it has not yet been achieved. One may conclude that, in the absence of a strong external shock to the United States—a latter-day “Pearl Harbor” of sorts—surmounting the barriers to transformation will likely prove a long, arduous process. Providing support and oversight for this endeavor is a challenge worthy of this new committee. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to present my thoughts on the emerging threats to our security and on how we might best develop the capabilities we will need to meet them successfully. ©1999 Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. All Rights Reserved.
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