1999 Fletcher Conference

Tuesday, November 2, 1999 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
Panel 3:

Anticipating Today the Essential Capabilities for Tomorrow

Dr. Ashton B. Carter
General George A. Joulwan
Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney
General Michael P. C. Carns

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Analysis

A strategy of preventive defense demands a reorientation of the traditional U.S. approach to military affairs. It is a strategy focused on taking the necessary steps now to avert or minimize future potential threats to U.S. national interests. The effort to prevent WMD proliferation in the former Soviet Union under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program is illustrative of preventive defense. While the success of the RMA in improving traditional military capabilities is promising, our ability to initiate a "parallel RMA" to counter looming asymmetric threats leaves much to be done. The practice of assigning new missions to existing forces is no longer appropriate in a transformed security setting. New threats, especially those categorized as threats to vital interests, but also the other types of contingencies for which military forces are deemed necessary, call for a reorganization of the Department of Defense. Such an undertaking would require a fundamental revision of the 1947 National Security Act perhaps along functional lines. There are several areas that fall outside the existing DoD organizational hierarchy: asymmetric warfare, joint information technology development, joint procurement, homeland defense, and peace enforcement, as in Bosnia and Kosovo. To execute such sweeping reforms the Department of Defense would have to reverse the steep decline in R&D spending and exploit commercial technology more effectively. Despite the lack of public clamor for defense reform, the national security community should act now to take fullest account of the fundamental transformation shaping the global security environment.

Although two nearly simultaneous wars are not the most likely contingencies confronting the United States in the near future, the possibility of such conflicts remains sufficient to justify the presence of necessary U.S. military capabilities. The Armed Forces must have the strategies, doctrines, and forces needed to execute the full range of likely missions within the concept of Strategic Responsiveness. The principle of integrated military command based on the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) concept, as demonstrated by NATO, will be a cornerstone of U.S. operations spanning the range of plausible conflict scenarios. Retooling our Armed Forces will demand (a) greater organizational flexibility; (b) improved agility and rapid-deployment capabilities within the warfighting commands; and (c) expanded support to the activities of law-enforcement agencies, civil authorities, and international organizations. Developing these roles and further refining those of our joint civil-military staffs would improve U.S. efficiency in responding to future contingencies.

Understanding the basic military lessons from Operation Allied Force gives the Armed Forces an important perspective for the future. First, the experience of the U.S. Air Force exposed shortfalls in sustainability and modernization that plague all of the Services. The force structure is too small and is aging rapidly because of inadequate R&D and procurement. While it is important to improve flexibility, sizing the force correctly is also a central element of adapting to the early 21st century security setting. For instance, the United States emphasizes the use of stealth aircraft in order to minimize casualties; yet there are fewer than 75 of these aircraft in the entire Air Force inventory. The escalating demands for precision weaponry have depleted the inventory. Shortfalls in cruise missiles and precision guided munitions during Operation Allied Force illustrate the degree to which the procurement cutbacks of the 1990s have eroded U.S. early 21st century military readiness.

Improved cooperation between the military and the private sector is crucial to successful technological advancement and logistical development in the Services. While the RMA will bolster the capabilities of the warfighters, a Revolution in Business Affairs is needed to streamline logistics and infrastructure. Improving the defense acquisition process is critical. The current acquisition system is an artifact of the relatively predictable threat environment of the Cold War. To accelerate the process of designing and fielding weapons, the United States must be able to: (a) anticipate the essential capabilities that will be needed tomorrow; (b) translate these capabilities into concrete operational requirements; (c) determine what technologies should be exploited to fulfill these requirements; and (d) dramatically shorten the lead time from R&D to the deployment phase.

The U.S. Services must abandon centrally planned Future Years Defense Plans and move instead to milestone-driven programs that harness private sector business dynamics. Competition among defense contractors will remain a key element in developing new systems rapidly and at reasonable cost. Modernization funding must be boosted. Shedding unneeded infrastructure and placing greater emphasis on outsourcing activities such as accounting and finance would enhance efficiency and reduce duplication of effort with the DoD and the Services. The traditional 20-year lag between the identification of a requirement and fielding a weapon system is clearly unacceptable in a dynamic security environment in which technologies are changing so rapidly that today's innovations become tomorrow's obsolete systems. Force planners are faced with problems brought about by the increasing obsolescence of equipment. The Armed Forces should purchase modern weapons in smaller buys rather than pursuing large-scale production runs that may be unaffordable under present budget constraints and, in any event, may be rendered obsolete by rapidly changing technologies. This approach to modernization must be designed in such a fashion that it does not impede combat efficiency by creating a force made up of a mix between newer and older systems. The less desirable alternatives may be a force consisting only of older systems.