Strategy and Budget Driven by Global War on Terror
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by Lawrence P. Farrell Jr.
For several months now, there has been widespread speculation about
the outcome of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review.
The
final report is not scheduled to be completed and sent to Congress
until February, but looking at what is happening in the world today,
there are clear indicators of where the QDR is headed. It appears
fairly certain that the review will initiate a change to the current
military posture, which requires that the services size their forces
so they can fight and win two major regional conflicts.
The force design of the current strategy, which was slightly modified
from an earlier version after the 9/11 attacks, is “1-4-2-1.”
The first “1” means the military must be prepared to
defend the U.S. homeland. The “4” stands for the ability
to deter hostilities and counter aggression in four regions of the
world. The “2” means it must be capable of swiftly defeating
two adversaries in overlapping military campaigns. The final “1”
stands for the capability to win one of the two campaigns decisively,
while also being able to conduct a limited number of lesser contingencies.
One assumes that the new strategy will depart from the emphasis
on major conventional conflicts and focus more immediately on the
needs of the global war on terror. That surely will lead to changed
and likely reduced requirements for traditional military hardware,
particularly warplanes and capital ships.
The immediate priorities of fighting terrorism—versus the
transformation construct of the last QDR—will be the dominant
factors shaping force structure and weapon buying decisions for
the foreseeable future.
Commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan also will play a major role
in the Pentagon’s long-term strategy. Troops likely will remain
there in significant numbers for several more years. It’s
worth noting that the United States historically has had a tough
time withdrawing its military presence after major conflicts—witness
Korea, Japan, Germany and Bosnia—because we keep discovering
that continuing U.S. force presence (well after the end of hostilities)
helps provide stability. Bosnia is especially noteworthy since the
United States went there in 1995 with coalition partners, strictly
limited objectives and a one-year time frame. Most Americans would
be surprised to discover that we still have a few hundred troops
in Bosnia.
Another overriding issue that will influence the QDR is the affordability
of weapons systems. Pressure on military programs to cut costs and
on the services to tighten their budgets grows by the day. As one
Air Force official put it, this is the first time that the Defense
Department deliberately asked the service, as part of the QDR process,
to downsize the force in order to cut costs, rather than base decisions
strictly on strategy and mission requirements.
The Air Force and the Navy, particularly, are being asked to cut
back purchases of warplanes and new ships, in order to help fund
Army and Marine Corps personnel and equipment. The Air Force already
has reduced the number of F/A-22 air superiority fighters it plans
to buy, and is expected to also trim the quantities of F-35 Joint
Strike Fighters. The Navy is eliminating one aircraft carrier from
its fleet of 12, and is likely to scale back major ship programs
such as the DD-X destroyer and the Virginia-class attack submarine.
It is, in some ways, understandable why high-tech programs are
bearing the brunt of the budget ax. The difficulties that U.S. troops
have encountered in Iraq combating insurgents and hunting Al Qaeda
cells call for other qualities than those designed into present
high tech systems in development and early production. It is evident
that, in the short term, technology alone does not provide all the
answers. The resiliency of this enemy clearly demonstrates that
more resources are needed in human intelligence collection and analysis,
as well as cultural awareness and civil affairs.
Many of us have wondered how military transformation fits into
all this. After all, transforming the military into a high-tech,
network-centric force has been touted by Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
and his team as a central goal of the Defense Department. But will
there be enough resources to fight the war on terrorism, to buy
the advanced technologies, space assets and sophisticated networks
that are envisioned, and finally to recover from the effects of
the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts?
It is to be hoped that the QDR will provide some answers, but it
is hard to see how we can afford everything, especially as we see
the defense budget starting to level off even in the face of increased
demands on our military. But despite this reality, we still need
to continue to keep our eyes on the high end of warfare, and ensure
we don’t lose the capabilities we have built at great expense
over the past decades to address the full spectrum of warfare. We
may well, sooner or later, have to fight another war, and we don’t
know what that future enemy will have in his arsenal. We need to
keep our technology on the cutting edge, both to prepare for unplanned
contingencies and to preserve our ability to deter major conflicts.
The QDR, finally, also will be about homeland defense. The recent
terrorist bombings in London painfully remind us of how vulnerable
we are, and how easy it is to attack our infrastructure, such as
mass transit and power plants. Military programs surely will be
competing for resources with domestic initiatives to secure the
nation’s infrastructure. We expect the QDR to recognize all
this, but whether the words line up exactly with fiscal and strategic
realities remains to be seen. The next president’s budget
will tell the real story.
Please email your comments to Lfarrell@ndia.org