FEATURE ARTICLE

February 2005

Military Rivalries Rekindled Over ‘Roles and Missions’

by Sandra I. Erwin

The military services have proved that they can be team players in combat and work together toward common goals.

The collegial spirit seen on the front lines, however, typically does not translate into affable negotiations at the Pentagon’s budget table, where the services wage bureaucratic wars for their share of a $420 billion defense pie.

This year, particularly, the debate over how much money each service needs to fulfill its “roles and missions” will be more heated than we have witnessed during the first Bush term. One reason is the anticipation of smaller weapons budgets, mandated by the White House. These cuts are aimed at paying for the administration’s tax cuts and offsetting ballooning costs for the war in Iraq, now running nearly $5 billion a month.

Another reason why the services are likely to take a more aggressive stance in defending their share of the budget is the Pentagon’s quadrennial review of strategy and programs that is due to Congress this fall. Each service assigned a two-star officer to run its QDR think tank operations. These officers are responsible for providing detailed analysis of capabilities and strategies.

These analyses of capabilities inevitably are boiled down to whether the services can make a legitimate case for funding current and future weapon systems. Although the Defense Department’s policy is that every weapon system must be justified in the context of “joint” requirements, each service retains authority over its own budget, and remains protective of its roles and missions.

Unlike the 2001 quadrennial review, which reflected the pre-9/11 world, the current QDR is shaped by the realities confronting the military services: open-ended commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuing hunt for Al Qaeda operatives, speculations about future military threats in Iran and North Korea, and the need to be prepared to respond to unforeseen humanitarian crises, as was recently the case after the Asian Tsunami.

Illustrating the climate likely to dominate this year’s QDR process is an emerging debate over tactical airlift. Only four years ago, it would have been easy for the Air Force to make a case that the Army should not invest in tactical fixed-wing cargo airplanes, because the Air Force had more than enough material and human resources to take over that role.

After two years of fighting in Iraq, however, Army leaders are convinced that they need to expand the Army’s tactical fixed-wing cargo aircraft fleet, both to supplement the Air Force efforts and to help alleviate the burden for overworked helicopters and truck convoys, which bear the brunt of enemy attacks.

As a result, the Army plans to back the procurement of a “future cargo aircraft,” said Col. Michelle F. Yarborough, Army program manager for aviation systems. The troops on the front lines, she told an industry conference, need “logistical support that delivers on demand.” The funding has not yet been approved, and the Army has released few details. “We are pushing hard to make it happen and do it right,” Yarborough said.

Most of these aircraft would be flown by National Guard pilots, which would make the program politically attractive to lawmakers, analysts said.

The Air Force, for its part, has been pressing the case that ground commanders in Iraq should transfer more of the cargo from truck convoys to C-130 transport aircraft. “I asked the Air Force to get with the logistics folks over there,” said Gen. John Jumper, chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. “We can reduce the traffic on the most dangerous routes,” he told reporters. “They can take advantage of that however they want to.”

These turf battles are not unusual in Washington, but they gain new meaning against the backdrop of a violent conflict such as Iraq.

“At times like this, it’s normal to expect there will be some questions of roles and missions among the services,” said Brig. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, director of the Army aviation task force, an office created specifically to revamp the service’s aviation force structure.

He said the debate over tactical cargo airlift should not be seen purely as a turf war. “The services are trying to support troops in combat and there are always resource constraints,” he told a conference of the Association of the U.S. Army. “It’s not a battle, but I would say there are significant negotiations. These are normal things we expect.”

A similar discussion is likely to surface during the QDR on the role of armed robotic aircraft, also known as weaponized unmanned air vehicles.

The Army has tested the utility of armed UAVs in Iraq with the Hunter system, noted Brig. Gen. E.J. Sinclair, commander of the U.S. Army Aviation Center. The service has yet to come to grips with how exactly it will employ armed UAVs, he added, and a comprehensive assessment of UAV tactics and strategy will get under way next month.

The Air Force, meanwhile, is positioning itself as the lead service in the employment of armed UAVs, touting the success of the Hellfire-equipped Predator aircraft in hunting insurgents in Iraq. During the fight for Fallujah last year, dozens of Hellfire missiles were shot from Predators, Jumper asserted.

It remains to be seen how these deliberations will eventually translate into dollars and cents. The Army will see a significant surge in spending, but most of those funds will be earmarked for personnel and operations, rather than new weapon systems. Regardless of what happens to specific weapon programs, it’s a fair assumption that tightening defense budgets will spark increasingly heated exchanges at the Defense Department on whether each service is getting its fair share.

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