[Senate Hearing 111-114]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 111-114
THE CURRENT AND FUTURE ROLES, MISSIONS, AND CAPABILITIES OF U.S.
MILITARY LAND POWER
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HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AIRLAND
of the
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 26, 2009
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services
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52-749 WASHINGTON : 2009
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
CARL LEVIN, Michigan, Chairman
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts JOHN McCAIN, Arizona
ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
JACK REED, Rhode Island SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
BILL NELSON, Florida JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
E. BENJAMIN NELSON, Nebraska MEL MARTINEZ, Florida
EVAN BAYH, Indiana ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
JIM WEBB, Virginia RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
MARK UDALL, Colorado SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina
MARK BEGICH, Alaska
ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois
Richard D. DeBobes, Staff Director
Joseph W. Bowab, Republican Staff Director
______
Subcommittee on Airland
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
EVAN BAYH, Indiana JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
JIM WEBB, Virginia JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
MARK BEGICH, Alaska RICHARD BURR, North Carolina
ROLAND W. BURRIS, Illinois
(ii)
?
C O N T E N T S
__________
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WITNESSES
The Current and Future Roles, Missions, and Capabilities of U.S.
Military Land Power
march 26, 2009
Page
Krepinevich, Andrew F., Jr., Ph.D., President, Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments............................ 5
Donnelly, Thomas, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
for Public Policy Research..................................... 16
Mansoor, Peter R., Ph.D., General Raymond E. Mason, Jr., Chair of
Military History, The Ohio State University.................... 25
(iii)
THE CURRENT AND FUTURE ROLES,
MISSIONS, AND CAPABILITIES OF U.S.
MILITARY LAND POWER
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THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 2009
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Airland,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:01 p.m. in
room SR-222, Russell Senate Office Building, Senator Joseph I.
Lieberman (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Committee members present: Senators Lieberman, Hagan,
Begich, Burris, Inhofe, and Thune.
Majority staff members present: Creighton Greene,
professional staff member; Michael J. Kuiken, professional
staff member; and William K. Sutey, professional staff member.
Minority staff members present: William M. Caniano,
professional staff member; Paul C. Hutton IV, professional
staff member; and David M. Morriss, minority counsel.
Staff assistants present: Ali Z. Pasha, Brian F. Sebold,
and Breon N. Wells.
Committee members' assistants present: Todd M. Stein,
assistant to Senator Lieberman; Jon Davey, assistant to Senator
Bayh; Gordon I. Peterson, assistant to Senator Webb; Julie
Holzhuenter, assistant to Senator Hagan; David Ramseur,
assistant to Senator Begich; Brady King, assistant to Senator
Burris; Lenwood Landrum, assistant to Senator Sessions; and
Jason Van Beek, assistant to Senator Thune.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, CHAIRMAN
Senator Lieberman. The Airland Subcommittee will come to
order. Good afternoon. Let me first say, since this is our
first subcommittee hearing this year, how much I look forward
to working with my colleague and friend, Senator John Thune, in
his capacity as ranking member of the subcommittee. We've had a
very good line of partners in this subcommittee. I guess I go
back to Senator Santorum, Senator McCain, and Senator Cornyn;
they always worked in a bipartisan way on behalf of our
military, and I know we will here as well.
The Airland Subcommittee meets this afternoon in the first
of two hearings intended to broadly explore the Nation's
current and future roles and requirements for military land and
air power. This afternoon we focus on land power. We're going
to follow with an additional hearing next month on air power.
It's the intent of these hearings to identify requirements
for our land and air power as part of our primary
responsibility to authorize funding for the programs for air
and land power that we conclude are necessary to provide for
the common defense. But we also do so this year to anticipate
the administration's reassessment of the National Security
Strategy, the National Military Strategy, and the Quadrennial
Defense Review.
Over nearly 8 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we've
watched with pride and gratitude the magnificent performance of
America's land forces, our soldiers and our marines. They have
repeatedly shown that they can rise to the challenge on
battlefields on which they have not fought before. They have
adapted through major combat operations, counterinsurgency, and
irregular warfare in response to evolving challenges that they
have faced in battle.
But I believe that we have not done enough to support our
ground forces' transformation or to prepare them to meet future
threats. That's why at today's hearing I hope our witnesses
will help us answer three basic questions: What threats are
American ground forces likely to face in the foreseeable
future? Is American land power now sized, organized, and
equipped to defeat those threats? If not, what changes do we
need to make in the size, organization, and equipping of
American land power?
It is encouraging that the Army and Marine Corps have
achieved the targets for end strength growth that members on
both sides of this committee and in the Senate worked hard to
set 3 years ago. But I don't believe that this growth is
sufficient to meet current and future land power requirements.
I'm concerned that in the near term the Army will not be able
to finish building all of its remaining 48 Active Duty brigade
combat teams or the critically necessary enablers that they
require; and that this growth will be insufficient in the long
run for the Army to stand up any additional specialized units
that it needs. We have to organize the force to do the missions
we ask of it and provide the force with the personnel it
requires.
The Obama administration is also reassessing the Department
of Defense's (DOD) previous strategy for modernizing our land
forces. Although the fiscal year 2010 defense budget request
has not been delivered yet in detail to Congress, there are
reports that defense procurement funds will probably be
redirected from the Army's most technologically sophisticated
programs toward capabilities that target counterinsurgency or
irregular warfare.
I'm very interested and concerned about the
administration's plans for the Army's major modernization
program, the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. We've
invested a lot of money into FCS and some of the results are
already helping our warfighters. But we have to ask now in this
particular environment what is the future of the FCS program?
Should it be modified, terminated, or continued on its present
course?
The defense budget will also face pressure because of the
need to reset the equipment that has been used in our ongoing
wars while also shifting new resources to support the fight in
Afghanistan.
In short, this is a time when we really have a
responsibility to conduct an examination of our Nation's land
power and its needs. To help us with that examination today
we're fortunate to welcome a panel of really extraordinary
witnesses whose testimony will provide I think a range of views
with respect to the current state and future roles and
requirements for our ground forces and help us answer the
questions that I have posed.
With that, Senator Thune, I would welcome an opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN THUNE
Senator Thune. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I too look
forward to working with you. You've outlasted a number of our
colleagues on this subcommittee, but you've been a great leader
on these issues and I'm certainly honored to have the
opportunity to work with you on what are going to be important
national security issues to come before this subcommittee and
the full committee in the days ahead.
I think this is an important hearing. I want to join you in
welcoming our witnesses. In the next few months this
subcommittee may be called upon to make some very consequential
budget decisions on a number of major defense acquisition
programs. None of these decisions are going to be easy. These
decisions will require this subcommittee and the entire
Congress to make careful assessments of the risks and tradeoffs
associated with each program.
This hearing will help inform those assessments and sharpen
our thoughts about the character of future land warfare.
Specifically, I want to hear the witnesses' views on whether or
not land forces acquisition programs, along with the roles and
missions assigned to our land forces and the forces' size,
organization, and training, are suitable or at least
sufficiently agile.
I believe it's reasonable to assess that the precise
requirements for land forces will continue to evolve through
the first quarter of this century and that the geopolitical
implications of the current economic crisis on our national
security and the security of our allies have not been fully
realized. This makes the future character of land power all the
more complex. The range of diverse threats and trends that our
land forces must be prepared to address will likely escalate.
While some have called this an era of persistent conflict,
I submit it may certainly be persistent, but I'm concerned that
the future will be more uncertain and more unstable.
Accordingly, I sense the character of the era of persistent
conflict will be more irregular than conventional.
The subcommittee will want to hear and learn the witnesses'
views on the difficult threats and rising trends we will face
in the decades to come and the implications for our land
forces.
In January, DOD released the 2009 Quadrennial Roles and
Missions (QRM) review report. Within the 2009 QRM review, DOD
defined its core missions as missions for which DOD is uniquely
responsible, provides the preponderance of capabilities, or is
the U.S. Government lead as established by national policy. The
QRM review found that DOD's core mission areas are: homeland
defense and civilian support; deterrence operations; major
combat operations; irregular warfare; military support to
stabilization; security, transition, and reconstruction
operations; and military contribution to cooperative security.
This is clearly a full spectrum of operations and each has
a sizable land force component. Do we have land forces that are
designed and organized to rapidly adapt across the entire
spectrum of operations? Do the Army's modular organizations
give us versatile capability? Is the size and projected growth
of our land forces sufficient? Is the education of our military
leaders adequate? The subcommittee will want to learn the
witnesses' thoughts on these important issues.
Our soldiers and marines have been deployed almost
continually since 2001, performing courageously against
adaptive enemies. The strain on our forces and their families
has been significant. The state of the Army is, as General
Casey testified, out of balance. General Casey has also said
we're not able to build depth for other things; we're running
the All-Volunteer Force at a pace that is not sustainable.
The subcommittee will want to hear the witnesses' opinions
on the principle of balancing our force, the future of the All-
Volunteer Force, the utility of the Army force generation
(ARFORGEN) model that is used to build readiness, and the
future roles and missions of the Reserve component land forces.
In closing, the subcommittee will benefit from the
witnesses' opinions on the utility of some major acquisition
programs. Specifically, we'll ask their views on the Army's FCS
program. FCS is the centerpiece of the Army's modernization
effort and it's intended to make the Army a lighter, more
agile, and more capable combat force.
In recent weeks the Government Accountability Office (GAO)
cast doubt about FCS. GAO found the FCS critical technologies
are not currently at a minimum acceptable level of maturity and
that the FCS acquisition strategy is unlikely to be executed
within the current $159 billion cost estimate. Our witnesses
will be asked their views on the FCS program and whether or not
there are other modernization routes for the Army.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you and I look forward to hearing the
testimony of our witnesses today.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Senator Thune, for that very
thoughtful statement.
I want to welcome Senator Hagan, Senator Begich, and
Senator Burris to the subcommittee. We're honored to have you
here, and I don't want to not welcome back Senator Inhofe.
We have three really great witnesses today. I asked the
staff how they decided on the order and the good news/bad news
for you, Andy, is that you're first because they've decided
you're most senior. [Laughter.]
Andrew Krepinevich is President of the Center for Strategic
and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) here in Washington. He's
appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee on many
occasions before. His most recent study is ``An Army at the
Crossroads,'' one of the CSBA's studies intended to contribute
to the new administration's defense strategy review.
I just finished reading--and I really did read it--his
``Seven Deadly Scenarios'' book, which is really riveting and
thought-provoking reading, and I'd recommend it to all my
colleagues. I don't get any commissions on the sales, so that's
really said from the bottom of my head. [Laughter.]
Dr. Krepinevich, please proceed.
STATEMENT OF ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH, JR., PH.D., PRESIDENT,
CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND BUDGETARY ASSESSMENTS
Dr. Krepinevich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will summarize
the remarks in my testimony.
Senator Lieberman. We'll include your testimony and all the
others, as if read in full. You each did a lot of work on them.
I appreciate it.
Dr. Krepinevich. I think the question of what kind of an
Army do we need was a question that was fairly easily answered
for much of the 20th century. The first half of the 20th
century, the answer was we need an Army to beat the German
army; World War I, World War II. The second half of the 20th
century, we needed an Army to beat the Soviet army. These were
armies that looked a lot like ours.
When you ask that question today, what kind of an Army do
we need, there is no other army out there like our own. Both
General Casey and the Secretary of Defense have said we are in
an era of persistent conflict. I would insert one word into
that phrase: We are in an era of persistent irregular conflict.
The wars we have been waging for the last 8 years, what we're
engaged in now and what we are likely to be engaged in for the
foreseeable future, are irregular wars.
When you begin to address the question of what kind of an
Army we need, I think you need to take that fundamental shift
into account. We need an army that is expert at irregular
warfare, a business in a sense we got out of after the Vietnam
war and have recently gotten back into.
But we also need an Army that can hedge against other kinds
of conflicts, specifically conventional conflict. The problem
that the Army has had is that the Army has a limit on its size,
both in terms of the human resources it can reasonably attract
at an acceptable cost and the force that it can modernize over
time. As a consequence of that, the Army has said, ``look,
because we can only be so large and because the number of
contingencies are great both at the high end and the low end,
we need to have a full-spectrum Army. We need an Army where our
brigades are fully capable of operating both at the high end of
the conflict spectrum and at the low end, with high levels of
proficiency and on short notice.''
The question that concerns me is, while this may be
desirable, it's not at all clear that it's possible. It's not
clear that you can rapidly switch from the skill set that is
required, as Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell, USA,
Combined Army Center, said, of strategic corporals in irregular
warfare to then participate in what I call the FCS ballet, the
highly networked aggregation of 14 different systems waging
high-intensity warfare.
The point I think also is that not only are we asking more
of our soldiers, but if you look at the quality in terms of the
way the Army measures quality of the officer corps, the
noncommissioned officer (NCO) corps, and the enlisted force,
that quality has gone down, which I think is another reason why
it's really a bit risky to say that we can have a full-spectrum
Army, an Army that can seamlessly shift gears from one form of
war to another.
Moreover, even if we have an Army that is 48 brigades, that
can handle these kinds of missions, even if you grant the Army
that assumption, the problem is a lot of the contingencies that
we anticipate today or concern ourselves with today; what
happens if there is a conflict in Iran and you have post-
conflict operations, what happens if Pakistan comes apart at
the seams, Nigeria or Indonesia?
There are any one of a number of planning scenarios that by
themselves would overwhelm even a 48-brigade Army with a 28-
brigade Reserve component.
You see the wisdom in the strategy that was developed in
2006, but which really hasn't been embraced. The strategy is
the strategy of the indirect approach or building partner
capacity. The source of our advantage isn't in a large quantity
of manpower; it's in the quality of manpower that we have, the
skills of the relatively small numbers of soldiers that are in
the Army. So the idea is to leverage that quality by over time
building up indigenous forces in other countries that are
threatened by instability and state failure.
My point of view has been that as a consequence of that
when the Chief of Staff of the Army talks about rebalancing the
force, what you really need is a force that's balanced between
conventional high-end operations and irregular warfare or
stability operations. Essentially, we need an Army that has two
wings to it, not an Army with divisions that only fight
conventional war and brigades that only wage irregular warfare,
but an Army that has brigades that are oriented, although not
optimized, for irregular warfare and an Army that also has
brigades that are oriented but not optimized for conventional
warfare.
Right now we have an Active Force where the plan is to have
19 of 48 Active brigades be heavy brigades. Forty percent of
the Active Force is going to be oriented on conventional war.
There are zero brigades that are oriented specifically on
stability-cooperation operations.
Also, what I find ironic is that, while 40 percent of the
Active Force is oriented on high intensity warfare, only 25
percent of the Reserve Force is, this despite the fact that the
Active Force can be deployed more frequently in protracted
irregular warfare operations. So I do believe that there is
this imbalance, and I do believe that when the Secretary of
Defense worries about the Army not institutionalizing what it's
learned in the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq and the global
war on terrorism, he is concerned that the center of gravity is
going to pull the Army back toward its traditional comfort
zone, which is high-end conventional conflict.
So if you had a balanced force you'd be looking at brigade
combat teams that were oriented on irregular warfare, a more
formal training and advisory capacity, and also a governance
capacity, because the Army has signed up to the task of showing
up and providing governance support in the event that the
interagency team fails to show up.
This has significant implications for modernization. FCS
was originally designed with a vision toward open battle and
conventional warfare operations. Having said that, I think
there are four areas of risk associated with FCS. First is
fiscal risk, as the chairman pointed out. A second is technical
risk, as the GAO study pointed out. A third is temporal risk,
and a fourth is operational risk.
To the extent that we overweight our investments toward FCS
and accept these kinds of risks, I think we jeopardize our
ability to properly reset the force, and also we ignore the
issue of the need prospectively for what I would call war
reserve stocks. If we are going to be in the business of
building partner capacity and if we are going to be in the
business of doing that rapidly, we are going to have to have
stockpiles of equipment so that we can in the future help build
up military forces that can provide for their own security or,
as the case indicates now, building up the Afghan National
Army, for example, and equipping them in ways that will enable
them to take on more of the responsibility from our forces
there.
I'll mention one final thing and that's what I would call
the guided rockets, artillery, mortars, and missiles (GRAMM)
threat. Some people call it hybrid warfare. I think the clear
example here is the second Lebanon war in 2006, where Hezbollah
fired roughly 4,000 projectiles into Israel, and several
hundred thousand Israeli citizens had to be evacuated. The
Israelis had to shut down their oil refining and distribution
system for fear that a lucky hit would cause untold damage.
I think the Army has a real mission here in terms of
looking at how air and missile defenses, counterbattery fires,
and things like hunter-killer teams can begin to deal with this
nascent threat that I think over the next decade will become a
more direct threat to us.
So in summary, what I see is a fundamental shift, a very
difficult question that was an easy question to answer in the
20th century, and an important question to address at this
time, not just because the threat has changed, but also because
you can only reset the force once. Congress has generously
offered to write that big check, but once you write that big
check for that equipment that's supposed to be in the field for
10, 20, or 25 years, particularly in this fiscal year, it
becomes a very difficult task to accept a response 5 years down
the road: ``Gee, we made a mistake; please, we need to reset
again.''
So again, my belief is that the chief is right, what we
need is a rebalanced Army, but the kind of Army that we're
looking at right now is in my estimation far too rebalanced and
oriented on traditional or conventional military operations.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Krepinevich follows:]
Prepared Statement by Dr. Andrew F. Krepinevich
INTRODUCTION
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to appear before you
today, and to share my views on the future of U.S. Ground Forces. As we
begin a new administration, we are sobered by the security challenges
that have emerged in recent years: the attacks of September 11; the
deployment of U.S. troops to Iraq and Afghanistan; the erosion of
barriers to nuclear proliferation; and the rapid rise of China and
resurgence of Russia. Not surprisingly, there is considerable interest
in what this portends for the U.S. military in general and our ground
forces in particular.
Of course, any detailed discussion of how our ground forces might
best be organized, structured, trained, and equipped to meet the
challenges of a rapidly changing security environment should be
informed by a sound national security strategy. Anything less would be
putting the cart before the horse. The Obama administration has a
strategy review underway. This review stands to be the most important
review since the Cold War's end.
My testimony is focused primarily on the Army, given the dominant
position it holds in providing ground forces for our country.\1\
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\1\ My testimony is essentially a summary of my monograph on the
Army. See Andrew F. Krepinevich, An Army at the Crossroads (Washington,
DC: CSBA, 2008).
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THE NATIONAL SECURITY CHALLENGES FACING THE ARMY
The three challenges confronting the U.S. military today--the war
against Islamist terrorist elements, the prospect of nuclear-armed
rogue states, and the potential rise of China as a military rival--
differ greatly from those confronted during the Cold War era. Nor do
they resemble the threats planned for in the immediate post-Cold War
era, when minor powers like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea which lacked
weapons of mass destruction and were assumed to present challenges not
all that different from Iraq during the first Gulf War. Nevertheless,
this assumption led the U.S. military to focus its attention on waging
two such conflicts in overlapping timeframes from 1991 until the
September 11 attacks.\2\
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\2\ The two major regional conflict posture was succeeded by the
two major theater war and major combat operations (MCO) postures, which
essentially represented variations on the same theme: regional wars
against minor powers in the Persian Gulf and Northeast Asia. The U.S.
force posture did not begin to change significantly until after the
September 11 attacks and the onset of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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For the Army, these new challenges all suggest the onset of an era
of persistent, irregular conflict. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
show no signs of ending soon. The same can be said regarding the war
against Islamist terrorist groups operating around the globe. Moreover,
the rising youth bulge in Africa, the Middle East, Central and South
Asia, and in parts of Latin America only promises to increase the
strain on governments in these regions, increasing the prospect for
further instability and even state failure. As unprecedented numbers of
young people in these parts of the world come of age, they will find
themselves competing in a global economy in which they are hampered by
a lack of education and burdened by corrupt and incompetent
governments. The communications revolution will enable radical groups
to influence large numbers of these young adults, and attempt to
recruit them. Even if radical elements succeed in winning over only 1
percent of the young as they rise to adulthood, they will have
recruited millions to their cause. For much of history, large numbers
of people were required to cause disruption and destruction. Yet as
groups like Aum Shinrikyo,\3\ al Qaeda, and Hezbollah have shown,
thanks to the advent and spread of highly destructive technologies even
small groups can create widespread disorder.
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\3\ On March 20, 1995, members of a Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo,
released sarin nerve gas in a coordinated attack on five trains in the
Tokyo subway system. Although the attack was botched, 12 commuters were
killed and 54 seriously injured, while nearly 1,000 more people
suffered some ill effects. Kyle B. Olson, ``Aum Shinrikyo: Once and
Future Threat?'' Centers for Disease Control, accessed at http://
www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol5no4/olson.htm, on March 21. 2009.
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It does not end there. Should minor powers hostile to the United
States, such as Iran, acquire nuclear weapons, they will likely feel
emboldened to take greater risks in backing groups pursuing ambiguous
forms of aggression. In Iran's case, this could lead to greater support
for radical groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Mahdi Army, as well
as others. If the United States is unable to convince China to abandon
its attempts to exclude the U.S. military from East Asia and to
threaten America's access to the global commons, the competition could
spill over into irregular proxy wars in developing nations. China could
pursue this path both in an attempt to tie the United States down in
costly, protracted conflicts, and to position itself to secure access
to important or scarce raw materials.
A FULL-SPECTRUM FORCE
Given the advent of an era of persistent irregular conflict, with
its emphasis on manpower-intensive operations on land, the Army is
destined to play a central role in U.S. defense strategy. The Service
will need to build on its hard-won expertise in conducting these kinds
of operations, whether they go by the name of stability operations;
foreign internal defense; internal defense and development; stability,
security, transition and reconstruction operations; counterinsurgency;
or irregular warfare.\4\ At the same time, the Army must also hedge
against a resurrection of rivals who look to challenge its dominance in
more traditional, or conventional, forms of warfare.
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\4\ While the U.S. Armed Forces appear to have little need to
segment conventional warfare into discrete types, the same cannot be
said of warfare at the lower end of the conflict spectrum. In addition
to the various ``flavors'' of this form of warfare mentioned above, one
might add peacekeeeping and peace enforcement operations, operations
other than war, among others.
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These disparate missions argue for an Army that can operate
effectively across the entire conflict spectrum. However, because the
range of missions is so broad, and the skill sets required sufficiently
different, attempting to field forces that can move quickly and
seamlessly from irregular warfare to conventional warfare seems
destined to produce an Army that is barely a jack-of-all-trades, and
clearly a master of none. This approach becomes all the more
problematic when one considers the ongoing erosion of quality in the
officer and noncommissioned officer (NCO) corps, and in the Service's
recruiting standards.\5\ Yet this is what the Army is attempting to
accomplish through its full-spectrum force.
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\5\ Bill Sasser, ``Strained by War, U.S. Army Promotes Unqualified
Soldiers,'' July 30, 2008, accessed at http://www.salon.com/news/
feature/2008/07/30/sergeants/index.html?source=rss&aim =/news/feature,
on August 29, 2008.
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The Army has understandably felt compelled to pursue the ``full-
spectrum'' approach owing to the need to cover a range of missions
within the limitations on its size imposed by fiscal constraints and
its all-volunteer character. Yet even if this approach were viable, the
Army remains too small for larger irregular warfare contingencies, let
alone those that occur simultaneously.
Fortunately, the authors of the U.S. defense strategy have wisely
chosen to address the gap between the scale of the challenges
confronting the Nation and the forces available to address them by
focusing on building up the military capabilities of threatened states,
and of America's allies and partners. The Army must give greater
attention to supporting this strategy, especially with regard to
stability operations, as the best means of addressing the challenge of
preparing to conduct operations at high levels of effectiveness across
the conflict spectrum.
The Army has specialized forces. It will need more.
The Service has for decades fielded forces specialized for airborne
operations and air assault operations. Of course, the Army also has its
Special Forces, expert in a range of irregular warfare operations. It
has forces specially designed for high-end warfare, and plans to
continue in this vein with the Future Combat Systems Brigade Combat
Teams (FCS BCTs), which the Army properly recognized are optimized for
conventional warfare. These kinds of forces are designed to surge on
short notice to address conventional contingencies. While it was once
argued that such general-purpose forces could readily shift gears to
handle contingencies at the lower end of the conflict spectrum, the
evidence of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq suggests the contrary.
Moreover, the Army's new doctrine confirms the triumph of real-world
experience over wishful thinking. Thus what the Army lacks are forces
designed to surge in the event of a major contingency at the lower end
of the conflict spectrum, as well as forces designed to prevent such a
contingency from arising in the first place.
The Army needs to field two surge forces, one for conventional
operations, the other for irregular warfare. Should either form of
conflict prove protracted, the other wing of the force could, over the
course of the initial 12- to 15-month surge, undergo training and the
appropriate force structure modifications to enable it to swing in
behind the surge force to sustain operations.
This approach might be termed the dual-surge Army, comprising two
wings, one oriented (but not uniquely specialized in) operations along
the lower end of the conflict spectrum, while the other wing would be
oriented on operations along the high end of the conflict spectrum.
Structured in this manner, the Army could rightfully claim to be a
truly capable full-spectrum force.
THE NEED FOR IRREGULAR WARFARE CAPABILITIES
The Army's most immediate and pressing missions are those related
to irregular warfare. The Department of Defense (DOD) is pursuing an
indirect strategy with regard to the challenges posed by this form of
conflict. This makes sense, both as a means of avoiding having U.S.
forces tied down in protracted conflicts, and because internal threats
are typically best handled by indigenous forces. It is also necessary,
as the U.S. military simply lacks the capability to create the security
conditions necessary to enable stability on the scale that might be
required. Consider that the Army is fully engaged in Afghanistan and
Iraq, countries whose combined populations are under 60 million. Yet
countries of significant concern to the United States, like Iran (70
million), Nigeria (150 million) and Pakistan (165 million) have far
greater populations. Hence the need to ``build partner capacity'' in
the security forces of friendly countries threatened by instability,
and in allied and partner countries which could assist in restoring
order should the regime of a hostile state (e.g., Iran) collapse.
With respect to friendly States the best strategy is to build
partner capacity and engage in other preventive measures before a
friendly country is at risk. The Army must be prepared to engage in
substantial steady-state peacetime training and advising of indigenous
security forces, when requested by the host nation. These efforts
should be undertaken on a scale appropriate to the situation, and
within the host nation's comfort level. In an era of persistent
irregular conflict, the Army will need to conduct persistent training
and advising operations, much as maritime forces over the years have
conducted peacetime forward-presence operations as a means of
maintaining stability by reassuring partners and demonstrating resolve
to rivals.
In the event preventive measures fail, the Army must have the
ability to build partner capacity rapidly, creating an indigenous/
allied surge capability that can begin to restore stability to the
threatened area. In circumstances where U.S. vital interests are at
stake, the Army must also be able to surge its own forces into the gap
while partner capacity is being created. The effort to build partner
capacity will typically find the Special Operations Forces (SOF) in the
lead. However, given their relatively small size, the large demands
placed on SOF by the protracted war against Islamist terrorist groups,
and the prospective scale of the contingencies involved, the Army and
its sister Services must be prepared to conduct training and advising
of host-nation and, where necessary, allied and partner militaries.
Moreover, if the Army's partners in the U.S. Government's interagency
element--e.g., the State Department, the Intelligence Community, United
States Agency for International Development, etc.--prove unable to meet
their obligations as partners in restoring stability, the Army must
also be prepared to engage in operations to help restore the threatened
state's governance and infrastructure, and the rule of law.
Consequently, the Army must maintain a significant standing
training and advisory capability that can be deployed on short notice,
when necessary. This capability can reside within the institutional
Army, in the form of officers and noncommissioned officers assigned to
Army schools as instructors or students; at Army headquarters (e.g.,
the Training and Doctrine Command); or as staff, faculty and students
at a school where instruction is given on how to serve as a trainer or
advisor. Rather than stripping existing brigade combat teams of their
officers and NCOs to support the training and advisory mission, thereby
eroding their effectiveness, the institutional Army can provide a surge
capability while the Service leverages its existing school-house
facilities to generate additional trainers and advisors.
Since the Army may need to fill gaps in the U.S. interagency effort
to restore governance and enable economic reconstruction and sustained
growth, it must remain capable of responding quickly as part of any
surge effort. Given this requirement, the Army should strongly consider
maintaining the ability to field, on short notice, Civil Operations,
Reconstruction and Development Support (CORDS) groups capable of
providing advice, mentoring, and support to the host nation's
nonsecurity institutions (including its civil administration and its
legal, economic, and healthcare sectors). The CORDS groups should be
capable of creating parallel advisory offices to host-nation ministries
at the national, regional, provincial, and (on a rotating basis) local
levels. They must also have the ability to undertake quick impact
projects immediately upon deployment; develop annual plans for civil
operations, reconstruction, and economic development; and engage in
longer-term capacity-building efforts. The Army's CORDS groups would
vary in size depending on the circumstances, but they should include
military personnel (including personnel from the other Services),
civilians made available from other executive departments and agencies,
and expert personal services contractors.
MAINTAINING DOMINANCE IN CONVENTIONAL WARFARE
The Army also needs to maintain a dominant capability for high-end
conventional warfare, of which the most demanding form is likely to be
major combat operations (MCOs) whose objective is to effect regime
change of a minor nuclear power. The Army must preserve its dominant
position in this form of warfare to dissuade rivals from contemplating
threatening U.S. security interests by employing conventional forces.
It is important to remember, however, that modern conventional
operations are inherently joint, and U.S. dominance in air power
provides the Army with a priceless advantage in conducting conventional
operations, as we have seen in both Gulf Wars, the 1999 Balkan War, and
during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2001-2002. While
these factors may enable the Army to take more risk in the area of
conventional capabilities, it does not obviate the need to sustain the
Service's dominant position. The focal point of this effort should be
creating a combined-arms battle network land force linked to the U.S.
military's overarching joint battle network.
DEFENDING THE U.S. HOMELAND
The Army must also meet its obligations to defend the U.S.
homeland. Most of the skills and capabilities required to support this
mission are also required to conduct the two basic missions described
above. Stability operations involve Army units engaged in providing
population security, securing key infrastructure, enabling
reconstruction, restoring governance, and numerous other tasks
associated with defending the homeland and supporting post-attack
recovery. The same can be said of Army capabilities at the other end of
the conflict spectrum, which may involve defense against a weapon of
mass destruction attack, damage limitation in the event of an attack,
and consequence management following an attack. The same can be said of
the skill sets and capabilities required to deal with the so-called
hybrid threat, such as that confronted by the Israelis in combating
Hezbollah in the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
SECURITY COOPERATION BRIGADE TEAMS
A requirement also exists for an Army surge capability for
stability operations in the form of Security Cooperation Brigade Combat
Teams (SCBCTs). These brigades should also serve as the Army's Phase O
forward-presence forces, designed to keep weak states from becoming
failed or ungoverned states. The SCBCTs, while similar to Infantry
Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs) in many respects, would incorporate some
significant differences. They would have one artillery battery instead
of two in their fires battalion. Relative to IBCTs, SCBCTs would have
an augmented Special Troops Battalion, while their military
intelligence company would be increased in size and accord greater
emphasis on human intelligence and expertise in operating on complex
human terrain. The SCBCT's military police contingent would have two
companies, not one, as in the IBCT. Strong consideration should be
given to increasing the SCBCT's battalion's engineer component relative
to the IBCT, and to embedding civil affairs and psychological
operations units. If necessary, the SCBCT could also be augmented with
(or supported by) quick-reaction-force squadrons, which could be drawn
from Stryker Brigade Combat Teams (SBCTs) or Heavy Brigade Combat Teams
(HBCTs). Depending upon the contingency, SCBCTs could also be augmented
by weapons of mass destruction rapid-response forces, military advisory
teams, and air and missile defense units. Soldiers serving in SCBCTs
would also be expected to spend most of their troop time in these
brigades, although they should serve at least one and perhaps two tours
in other units (e.g., IBCTs, HBCTs, SBCTs, Airborne or Air Assault
Brigades, or SOF units) oriented more heavily on traditional, or
conventional operations. This will enable these soldiers to reorient
their SCBCT units more effectively should they be needed to support a
surge at the high end of the conflict spectrum as a follow-on force
behind the HBCTs.
THE DECLINE IN QUALITY OF THE NCO AND OFFICER CORPS
Irregular warfare demands will require a higher density of officers
and noncommissioned officers than exists in the current force to
support training and advisory missions, and to fill out CORDS units,
and perhaps SCBCTs as well. Yet the Army has been experiencing a
decline in quality of its officer and noncommissioned officer corps.
NCOs mentor junior enlisted soldiers in soldier skills and leadership,
setting an example for them and providing an indispensable link between
officers and their troops. For this reason the NCOs are often referred
to as the ``backbone'' of the Army. The NCOs' importance is clearly
seen in the institutional crisis that confronted the Army during the
Vietnam War when the Service found itself compelled to adopt
accelerated promotions to fill shortages in the NCO ranks. The
widespread promotion of enlisted soldiers (often referred to as shake-
and-bake sergeants) unprepared to handle NCO responsibilities played a
major role in the breakdown in order, discipline, and unit
effectiveness during that war.
There are signs of the same phenomenon today. In 2005 the Army
began automatically promoting enlisted personnel in the rank of E-4 to
E-5 (sergeant), based solely on the soldiers' time in service, without
requiring them to appear before a promotion board. In April 2008 the
policy was extended to include promotions from E-5 to E-6 (staff
sergeant). Although a soldier's name can be removed from consideration
by his or her commander, each month the soldier's name is automatically
placed back on the promotion list.\6\ The Army was short over 1,500
sergeants when the policy went into effect. Since then, the shortage
has been reduced by over 70 percent; but numbers do not reveal
quality--or lack thereof.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ While a soldier's commanding officer can remove his or her name
from the promotion list, there are pressures at work that discourage
this. Failure to advance a soldier to NCO rank could make the soldier
less willing to re-enlist. It could also hurt unit morale if other
units in the same organization (e.g., other companies in a battalion)
are promoting soldiers as they hit their time-in-service points, but
one unit is not. Failure to promote, which results not only in an
increase in rank but in pay and status, can also be seen by soldiers as
a social issue, in terms of how a soldier is viewed in his or her
community, and the level of support they can provide to their family.
\7\ Bill Sasser, ``Strained by War, U.S. Army Promotes Unqualified
Soldiers,'' July 30, 2008, accessed at http://www.salon.com/news/
feature/2008/07/30/sergeants/index.html?source=rss&aim =/news/feature,
on August 29, 2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The shortage also finds the Army increasing the number of
involuntary extensions of duty--the ``stop-loss'' policy. The number of
soldiers affected by the stop-loss increased by 43 percent between 2007
and 2008. Revealingly, nearly half of those affected by the stop-loss
are NCOs. Army leaders believe the program will have to be extended at
least through 2009.\8\ Fortunately, this practice seems to be coming to
an end. However, as the Army suffers from a shortage of junior officers
as well, many enlisted personnel with high potential are being diverted
into Office Candidate School, further diluting enlisted leadership
quality. This situation will only be exacerbated by the planned 65,000
increase in the Army's end strength.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ Tom Vanden Brook, ``More Forced to Stay in Army,'' USA Today,
April 22, 2008, p. 1; and Pauline Jelinek, ``General: Army Will Need
`Stop-Loss' Through 2009,'' Houston Chronicle, April 22, 2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nor is the problem limited to junior NCOs. An Army study of
soldiers' mental health found that 27 percent of NCOs on their third or
fourth combat tour exhibited post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms,
vice 18.5 percent of those who had completed their second tour, and 12
percent of those who finished their first tour. The Army study found
that NCOs who had served multiple deployments reported ``low morale,
more mental health problems and more stress-related work problems.''
\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Thom Shanker, ``Army Worried By Rising Stress of Return Tours
to Iraq,'' New York Times, April 6, 2008, p. A1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Army's problems extend to the officer corps as well. In 2003,
roughly 8 percent of the Army's officers with between 4 and 9 years of
experience left the Service. Three years later, the attrition rate had
jumped to 13 percent. Of the nearly 1,000 cadets from the West Point
class of 2002, 58 percent are no longer on active duty.\10\ An effort
in the fall of 2007 to entice 14,000 captains to extend their
commissions fell short by roughly 1,300.\11\ Making matters worse, the
Army will need another 6,000 captains as it expands by 65,000 soldiers
and 6 new BCTs and their associated supporting elements.\12\ There is a
projected shortfall of roughly 3,000 captains and majors until at least
2013, with the Army counting only about half the senior captains that
it needs.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ Andrew Tilghman, ``The Army's Other Crisis,'' Crisis,''
Washington Monthly, accessed at http://www2.washingtonmonthly.com/
features/2007/0712.tilghman.html, on September 8, 2008.
\11\ Tom Vanden Brook, ``Deployments Strain Army Recruiting,
Retention,'' USA Today, p. 6.
\12\ Bryan Bender, ``Military Scrambles to Retain Troops,'' Boston
Globe, March 7, 2008.
\13\ Andrew Tilghman, ``The Army's Other Crisis,'' Crisis,''
Washington Monthly, accessed at http://www2.washingtonmonthly.com/
features/2007/0712.tilghman.html, on September 8, 2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
An increasing percentage of the Army's new officers, however, are
not being commissioned from the traditional sources of West Point and
Reserve Officers Training Corps programs, which supply recruits fresh
from college. Rather, the Army has been increasingly compelled to pull
soldiers, most of whom have not graduated college, from the ranks and
send them to Officer Candidate School (OCS). The number of OCS
graduates has grown dramatically since the late 1990s, rising from
roughly 400 a year to over 1,500 a year, or more than the graduating
class at West Point.\14\ Again, as with the NCO corps, as officer
quality has declined, promotion rates have increased. Instead of the
traditional promotion rates of 70 to 80 percent of eligible officers to
major, now over 98 percent of eligible captains are promoted to
major.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ Idem.
\15\ Idem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
These trends are worrisome, especially for an Army that intends to
place greater demands on its soldiers and their leaders to be highly
proficient at irregular warfare while also mastering the complex battle
networks and advanced equipment that comprises its Future Combat
Systems.
REBALANCING THE FORCE STRUCTURE
What changes in the Army's force structure and program would be
necessary to field the ``Two-Surge'' Force? The following
recommendations are provided for consideration. While these
recommendations might be further refined through more detailed analysis
than is practical here, I am confident that they represent a
significant improvement over the Army's current approach. It is assumed
that force structure modifications will be completed at the same time
as the Army's planned completion date for the Modular Force, in fiscal
year 2013. At that time, it is also assumed that overall Army
requirements for Afghanistan and Iraq will be significantly reduced
from the levels reached during the Surge in Iraq, perhaps by half.
The Army must rebalance its force structure to enable persistent
support for Phase O stability operations, to include building partner
capacity where needed. This requires converting 15 Army IBCTs to the
SCBCT configuration described above, as well as 15 Army National Guard
(ARNG) IBCTs to an SCBCT configuration. Given a 3:1 rotation rate for
the Active component, and a 6:1 rate for the Reserve component the
force generation process should be capable of fielding 7\1/2\ SCBCTs on
a sustained basis. In Phase O operations, these BCTs would typically
operate in small force packages conducting a range of stability
operations missions, to include building partner capacity. In the event
of a major stability operations contingency, the Army would have a
force of 30 brigades to draw upon for surge operations for up to 12 to
15 months, to enable the Army's other wing to reorient itself to
sustain the initial surge and to build up partner capacity within the
threatened State and among allies and partners, as necessary.
The Full-Spectrum Force and Dual-Surge Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Modular ``Full- Modular ``Dual-Surge''
AC/RC Spectrum'' Force Force
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HBCTs....................................................... 19/7 13/9
SBCTs....................................................... 6/1 6/1
IBCTs....................................................... 23/20 8/0
SC BCTs..................................................... 0/0 15/15
---------------------------------------------------
Total..................................................... 48/28 42/25
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Department of the Army, CSBA.
Should the Army be confronted with an irregular force capable of
posing a hybrid warfare threat, HBCT elements (and, perhaps eventually,
FCS BCTs) might be deployed as part of the initial surge force. The
stability operations surge force could also be supported by the 4 Army
airborne brigades of the 82nd Airborne Division, as well as the 4
brigades of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the 6 middle-
weight Stryker brigades, for a total of 14 BCTs. To this might be added
the ARNG's single Stryker BCT.
The Army's heavy force oriented primarily on conventional
operations would comprise 12 HBCTs, perhaps eventually migrating to 12
FCS BCTS, and an armored cavalry regiment, along with 9 National Guard
HBCTs (an increase of 2 HBCTs over the current force). This would
provide the Army with a heavy surge force of up to 22 HBCTs, with 6 AC
SBCTs and 1 ARNG SBCT available if needed, along with the 4 brigades of
the 101st, for a total of 33 heavy or middle-weight brigades, far in
excess of what is likely to be required for the MCO portion of regime
change operations against a nuclear rogue state like Iran, assuming its
anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) \16\ defenses can be reduced to a level
that would permit the introduction of large U.S. ground combat forces.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ ``Anti-access/area-denial'' (A2/AD) capabilities are those
designed to delay the arrival of U.S. forces, to keep them beyond their
effective range, and to defeat them if they try to penetrate the denial
zone. While many military forces and capabilities can contribute to the
A2/AD mission, those most closely associated with it include: ballistic
and cruise missiles that can strike forward air bases and massed troop
concentrations; submarines; anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs); land-
based anti-ship systems (e.g., strike aircraft, ASCMs, and ballistic
missiles that target carrier strike groups); and counter-command,
control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance (C\4\ISR) capabilities, such as anti-satellite weapons,
cyber weapons, and electromagnetic pulse generators designed to
fracture U.S. battle networks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above recommendations result in an overall force structure of
42 BCTs in the Active component (AC), and 25 BCTs in the Reserve
component (RC), for a total of 67 BCTs. This represents a reduction in
the Army's Modular Force goal of 48 AC BCTs and 28 RC BCTs. This
reduction in the level of BCTs (which would be matched by a
corresponding reduction in support brigades) offers several important
benefits.
First, by reducing the need to generate large numbers of new
officers and NCOs, it stems the highly corrosive decline in the quality
of the Army's leadership. At the same time, it enables the Army to
restock the ``institutional Army''--the Services schools, staffs,
etc.--that enable officers and NCOs to receive the training and
education needed to enable a surge of trainers and advisors when
needed, as opposed to pulling from deployed brigades to fill the need.
Along these lines, doctrine for advisors and trainers needs to be
developed, along with a school to ensure they receive the proper
training.
Second, reduction of six AC BCTs and two RC BCTs along with
programmed new support brigades also mitigates the erosion in the
quality of the officer and NCO corps stemming from the decision to
increase dramatically the size of the U.S. military's Special
Operations Forces. This has created a whipsaw effect within the Army,
as it sees the quality of its recruits declining while the best of
those who remain in the Service are being recruited by the Special
Forces.
Third, a smaller force structure also reduces the pressure on
manpower that has led the Army to lower its recruiting standards.
Finally, it also has a beneficial effect on the Army's budget: fewer
soldiers reduces strain on the personnel accounts, while fewer brigades
takes some of the stress of the procurement accounts, since there are
not as many of them requiring updated equipment.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ It is estimated that the addition of 65,000 AC soldiers and
27,000 marines will incur an annual sustained cost of $13-14 billion
per year.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The revised force structure is also more evenly weighted between
the Active and Reserve components. Current plans call for an Active
component of 19 HBCTs out of a total of 48 BCTs, or approximately 40
percent of the force. Yet the Reserve component would field only 7
HBCTs out of its planned 28, or 25 percent of the force. For an Army
waging persistent irregular conflict, it makes little sense to have the
Active component, whose BCTs can be deployed on a much more frequent
basis than the Reserve component, be the principal hedge force for
conventional warfare. In the Dual-Surge Army proposed here, roughly a
third of the RC force would be comprised of heavy brigades, while HBCTs
represent slightly less than a third of the AC.
To be sure, there are risks involved in reducing the Army's
projected force structure. However, the risks of continuing the decline
in officer and NCO quality; accepting a lack of capacity to support the
defense strategy's focus on building up the capabilities of allies and
partners; and promoting the flawed assumption that a general purpose
Army that remains overly weighted toward conventional warfare can
quickly and effectively shift to conduct irregular warfare operations
far outweigh the risks associated with the Dual-Surge Army recommended
here.
EQUIPPING THE FORCE--RETHINKING THE FCS
There is also the matter of equipping the force. The Army's
centerpiece modernization program, the Future Combat Systems, is really
a cluster of 14 systems of various types. These systems will rely
heavily on being linked as part of an overarching battle network that
ties them together with individual soldiers and the U.S. military's
joint battle network. While revolutionary in its concept, the FCS
program may not be executable at an acceptable cost, given the many
technical challenges confronting the program. Moreover, it may not be
possible to create the battle network as currently envisioned by the
Army, or to create it within the timeframe projected. If this proves to
be the case, the Army needs to have a plan to harvest as many FCS
capabilities as possible while identifying an alternative modernization
path. Thus far the Army is moving FCS components into the current force
as they become available. However, to date these capabilities are
relatively modest compared to the program's stated goals and the level
of resources being invested. A thorough program review is warranted
before making a commitment to continuing the FCS program in its current
form.
What might an alternative modernization path look like? In addition
to harvesting as much of the FCS program as possible, such as the
unmanned aerial systems, unattended ground sensors, and ground
robotics, the Army would need to experiment with various options for
building a battle network that is feasible, affordable, and that
enables a major boost in military effectiveness across the entire
conflict spectrum. Since the effectiveness of the combat systems
associated with the network is heavily dependent upon the network,
final decisions on the major combat systems' designs should be held off
until the network's form and capability are well understood. In the
interim, the Army needs to continue recapitalizing the existing force,
while engaging in selective modernization only when necessary.
addressing the guided rockets, artillery, mortors, and missiles threat
The Army also needs to move energetically in developing air and
missile defense capabilities to address the nascent Guided Rockets,
Artillery, Mortors, and Missiles (G-RAMM) \18\ threat before it matures
and the Service finds itself engaged in another round of reactive
transformation, as it has experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq. The
challenge here is not only to develop effective capabilities, but
capabilities that are cost-effective. At present, given the high cost
of kinetic interceptors, the most promising developments in this area
are in the field of solid-state lasers (SSLs). A substantially greater
effort should be devoted to translating this rapidly-progressing
potential into fielded military capability.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\18\ G-RAMM refers to guided rockets, artillery, mortars and
missiles. In the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah fired some 4,000 RAMM
projectiles into Israel, causing several hundred thousand Israelis to
be evacuated from their homes. The Israelis also shut down their oil
refineries and distribution system for a time, out of concern that a
lucky hit would cause untold damage. The problem will only become more
acute as irregular forces gain access to guided weaponry. (Hezbollah
fired guided antiship cruise missiles at an Israeli patrol boat,
damaging it. Hezbollah also employed several unmanned aerial vehicles
during the conflict.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAINTAINING AN EQUIPMENT AND PRODUCTION BASE
The era of persistent irregular warfare presents the Army with the
challenge of training and equipping indigenous and partner forces
engaged in stability operations on a major scale. The Army must also be
prepared to replenish damaged or destroyed equipment of Army units
engaged in stability operations. Given the importance of preventive
action and exploiting the opportunities presented by the ``golden
hour,'' \19\ the equipment to support a sustained surge in stability
operations must be available to the combatant commands on short notice,
and not cobbled together on the fly. Thus equipment stocks to outfit
host-nation forces being trained should be stockpiled, similar to the
Prepositioning of Materiel Configured in Unit Sets (POMCUS) \20\
equipment that was positioned to support U.S. forces during the Cold
War. A warm production base must be capable of surging equipment to
replace those items lost during operations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\19\ The ``golden hour'' is the brief period after the introduction
of U.S. troops ``in which we enjoy the forbearance of the host-nation
populace. The military instrument, with its unique expeditionary
capabilities, is the sole U.S. agency with the ability to affect the
golden hour before the hourglass tips'' and the local populace becomes
disaffected. An Army called upon to surge BCTs to exploit the golden
hour is not likely to have months to restructure and train them to a
high level of expertise in stability operations. James Stephenson,
Losing the Golden Hour, (Washington, DC: Potomac Press, 2007), p. 98.
\20\ The term ``POMCUS'' stands for Prepositioning of Materiel
Configured in Unit Sets. During the Cold War large quantities of
equipment were prepositioned in Europe to facilitate the rapid
reinforcement of U.S. forces there. By having a unit's equipment
prepositioned, and thus not having to transport it from the United
States, the Army's airlift and sealift requirements were greatly
reduced. The Army eventually prepositioned roughly 4 divisions' (or 12
brigades') worth of equipment in Western Europe. Colonel (Ret.) Gregory
Fontenot, LTC E.J. Degen, and LTC David Tohn, On Point: The United
States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, p. 40, accessed at http://
books.google.com/books?id=7x8U4t-oJvcC&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=POMCUS+Cold+
War&source=web&ots=ERAs40Gn8o&sig=f3YuMfJ4OujYdk2
gRJFAPmgfqbg&hl=en&sa=X&oi= book--result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPR16, M1,
on September 29, 2008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
The Army's leadership has rightly concluded that it needs a force
capable of performing across the full spectrum of conflict at a high
level of effectiveness. But in its attempts to become equally effective
across a range of conflict types, it risks becoming marginally
competent in many tasks, and highly effective at none. In attempting to
increase the size of the Army to field forces large enough to deal with
a range of contingencies, the Service risks becoming incapable of
creating the needed scale by building up the capabilities of America's
allies and partners, a key part of the defense strategy. It also risks
a catastrophic leadership failure of a kind not seen since the late
stages of the Vietnam War, a failure that took the Army over a decade
to repair.
Squaring this difficult circle will require the Army to put more
faith in the joint force's ability to dominate conflict at the higher
end of the conflict spectrum, and resisting the temptation to return to
a general-purpose force posture by another name (i.e., the full-
spectrum force). The Dual-Surge force will allow the Army to truly
orient itself on fielding forces that are highly competent across the
spectrum of conflict by fielding forces focused on irregular warfare on
a scale and level of effectiveness comparable to its world-class
conventional forces.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you, Dr. Krepinevich. You got us
off to a good start.
Our next witness is Tom Donnelly, who I will describe as a
recovering journalist. He was a professional staff member of
the House Armed Services Committee, editor of the Armed Forces
Journal, and now is a resident fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research here in
Washington.
Mr. Donnelly and co-author Fred Kagan recently published
the study, ``Ground Truth, the Future of U.S. Land Power.'' So
he is again ready to be a helpful witness today. Thanks for
being here.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS DONNELLY, RESIDENT FELLOW, AMERICAN
ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH
Mr. Donnelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At least you didn't
describe me as a recovering House guy. I have a lot of
persistent diseases. [Laughter.]
Senator Lieberman. I'm going to hold my tongue at this
point. [Laughter.]
Mr. Donnelly. I see very much a similar world to the world
that Andy sees. It's always the case in these circumstances
where the opening testimony becomes the standard and everything
else becomes a commentary upon it.
So I see very much a similar world to the world that Andy
sees, but I think Andy goes wrong, in general terms and in
crude terms, by trying to fit the strategic requirement to land
forces, to the size of the force and the shape of the force,
rather than sizing the force and shaping the force based upon
America's strategic goals in the world.
I would also say that those strategic goals have been
remarkably consistent and are much clearer than people have
almost been willing to accept over the last decade, in this
regard. Administrations of both parties have wanted to preserve
American leadership in a global sense and have taken the
necessary steps, not often with perfect foresight or with
perfect understanding, to maintain that position.
So I think we can see in that regard that the future for
American land forces is not all that dissimilar from our recent
post-Cold War experience or particularly from our post-
September 11 experience. The so-called long war that we are now
engaged in in the Middle East, meaning the attempt to build a
greater Middle East, an Islamic world that we and the rest of
the world can live with, is a mission that's been ongoing since
the establishment of U.S. Central Command a generation ago. If
we look at the operation of U.S. forces in that region over the
course of time it's been very much a growth industry, and it's
transitioned from a maritime and aerospace presence to an
onshore land presence.
So we may not be able to tell precisely where our forces
will be operating and what the tactical nature of the
engagement will be for the future, but I think we delude
ourselves if we don't think that the outcome of this war is
critical to us and that the primary instrument that we have to
achieve that success is our land forces, our Army and Marine
Corps. We have come ashore, so to speak, in the region and if
we withdraw that will be a huge setback for the United States.
Therefore, we do have enough information to conduct
intelligent force planning and in particular land force
planning going forward. Now, my testimony describes the general
characteristics of the land force that we need, but in the
interest of brevity and in response to some of the subjects
that have been raised, I just want to make a couple of more
precise remarks.
I think it's worth beginning first of all with the size of
the force. Numbers really matter. If you want to have a force
that's versatile, that's flexible, that's genuinely expansible,
where the Reserve components are a Strategic Reserve, not just
a part of the operational conveyor belt, not just a substitute
for the Active Force that we already have, the key to solving
that puzzle is expanding the size of the Active Force and
particularly the size of the Army, because the Army is
America's long war force, meaning conducting sustained
operations.
The fact that we have an insufficient Army not only has
consequences for the Reserve components, but it has
consequences for the Marine Corps. We have transformed,
particularly in the last 5 years, the Marine Corps from being
an expeditionary force, a force in readiness, as they would
say, to yet another link in this conveyor belt of deployments
to Iraq and Afghanistan. If we want the Marines to do the
things that are uniquely Marine, again the answer in my mind is
to have enough Army to be able to do what we need to do on a
day-in, day-out basis.
So 547,000 Active Duty soldiers is not enough. We've been
mobilizing more than 100,000 Reserve and National Guardsmen
every day since September 11 and so we have a pretty good idea
of what the requirement going forward to operate at this pace
is. I for one think it's a rebuttable proposition that we will
not continue to operate at this pace going forward.
So when you put really ballpark numbers on it or do the
kind of troop-to-task analysis that force planners do, the
answer should be to have an Active Duty Army that's somewhere
about the size that it was at the end of the Cold War, that is
about 780,000. That was the size of the Active Duty Army in
1991, before the post-Cold War drawdown. We had maintained a
force of that size ever since the early 1980s, when the Army
chose, rather than expanding itself when the Reagan buildup
began, to do accelerated modernization, resulting in the big
five programs that are still the main front-line fighting
systems of the U.S. Army today.
So we ought to return to something like that level, which
we maintained for a generation back then. That would
essentially make the size of America's land forces in total,
meaning Active Army and Marine Corps, something like a million
people. That would be one-third of 1 percent of the American
population, not something that's not sustainable, but a force
of an adequate size to maintain the kind of pace of operations
that we have seen persistently since September 11.
A couple of quick final points because I know we're pressed
for time. I regard our experience as not being just simply one
of irregular warfare. But the term hybrid warfare, and
particularly when you take the experience as a whole and add in
things like the Israeli experience in southern Lebanon in 2006,
essentially means that all aspects of land forces have been
stressed, I would say to the maximum extent that it's
reasonable to imagine.
So the need for mounted forces, be they middleweight forces
like Stryker brigades or Marine mounted forces, and even heavy
forces have performed remarkably well in a variety of roles. So
as we go forward I would certainly agree with Andy that as the
Army grows I would prefer to buy lighter forces and more
middleweight, Stryker-like forces, although FCS would make for
lighter units.
So in the shape of the correct size land force, I would
agree that the balance between very heavy and lighter forces
needs to be adjusted. But again, I think the first question is
whether the force is large enough.
A final point about size is that we expect our land forces,
as Andy suggested, to do many more non-combat kinds of missions
and tasks than we thought they were going to be required to do
a decade ago. That means that we do have to have people who are
trained advisers to do the partnership role. It also means that
we need our leaders to go to school, our NCOs to go to basic,
advanced, and sergeant major academy courses, and our officers
to continue to go to staff college and war college, and in fact
to make the rigor of our professional military education even
higher than it has been.
So we need to have a force that's as well-educated, if not
better educated, that has time to participate in the kind of
quality of American life that all American citizens expect.
That means they can't be getting off a plane for Iraq and then
boarding another one for Afghanistan or wherever else they're
going to go.
So all these things, all the qualities that we want to
inculcate and maintain in the force, are dependent on having a
force that's of adequate size. What we have done over the last
5 years is use a too small force too often, and we are not
going to walk away from the mission without paying a huge
price. So the question becomes are we willing to pay the price
to execute the mission successfully.
I want to conclude with a few remarks about FCS because I
regard that as a program that is profoundly misunderstood, in
no small measure because the Army doesn't do a very good job of
explaining what the requirement is. I believe that this will
bring much greater flexibility to the force. We will have
smaller, tracked combat vehicles that are more applicable to a
wider variety of missions. They will be much more capable and
adaptable to the kind of environment that we find ourselves in.
That means they will have not only lighter chassis, but
chassis that are ballistically better protected against
improvised explosive devices and threats that attack them not
only from the direct front, the way the M-1 and Bradley are
designed to do, but from underneath, from the top, and from the
sides, as modern weapons suggest.
Networking is an essential feature of a small force in an
irregular warfare environment or a hybrid warfare environment.
Finally, there's a whole host of things that are just
necessary to do because simply extending the life of our
current vehicles wouldn't solve some of the problems that we
face. Just to take one final example, FCS will have an engine
that generates much more electricity than the current fleet of
vehicles does. Soldiers now have to turn off the many computers
and widgets and electronic devices that are part of their
world, that are part of the way that they fight and operate,
because they don't have enough electricity to keep them on all
the time.
So a vehicle that not only generates more electrical power
on board, but can power many other kinds of devices,
particularly the individual soldier devices that will be so
essential to maintaining the effectiveness of dismounted
infantrymen and other individual soldiers in a complex
irregular warfare environment, is absolutely essential.
I could certainly continue in this vein. I look forward to
answering your questions. But in my mind the question is both
simpler and harder than many people are willing to acknowledge.
I don't believe that we can reform or find a clever solution to
our problems that will be sufficient. We simply need to have a
larger and more modern land force, and FCS is probably the best
alternative. To go back to a different form of modernization
that modernizes in a stovepiped, individual platform way would
be to repeat the mistakes of the past.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Donnelly follows:]
Prepared Statement by Thomas Donnelly
I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before the subcommittee
today to discuss the topic I would regard as the central issue in
American defense planning: the requirements for U.S. land forces. Our
soldiers, marines, and Special Operations Forces have borne the brunt
of the fighting and suffered the majority of the casualties during the
post-September 11 era. They have also won remarkable victories. But, as
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once ruefully remarked, we went to
war with the Army we had, not the Army we would have liked to have. Six
years after the invasion of Iraq and more than seven after the invasion
of Afghanistan, we still do not have the land forces we need. My
testimony is intended to provide the committee with a clear view of
what those needs are and will be for the foreseeable future. My
arguments have been developed more fully in the book Ground Truth: The
Future of U.S. Land Power, written with my American Enterprise
Institute colleague Fred Kagan and published last year.
Further, we need to arrive at such an understanding very rapidly.
President Obama has proposed a budget plan that will profoundly alter
the size and, even more critically, the purposes of American
government. In particular, both by reducing the level of defense
spending and increasing the amounts devoted to social entitlements,
domestic discretionary spending, and to servicing the national debt, it
will reduce that nation's ability to meet our defense needs. Even
though we have yet to see the full programmatic implications of this
budget, it is obvious that there will be significant cuts. We can also
see a new set of force-planning constructs on the horizon, in the form
of an expedited Quadrennial Defense Review, which the administration
has announced it intends to complete by the end of this summer. To make
the decision before us, we need to think our way through four basic
questions: What are the needs for land forces in American strategy?
What kind of wars will our land forces fight? How should we size and
shape our land forces to conduct these operations? What are the costs
of fielding the land forces we need?
THE STRATEGIC REQUIREMENT FOR LAND POWER
Force planning without a large understanding of American
geopolitical purposes and strategy is an empty exercise. Without this
measuring stick, there is no way to tell what kinds of forces are more
useful than others. So before outlining our land force requirements,
let me quickly review the consistent ends and ways of U.S. strategy in
recent decades, through administrations of both parties. Throughout the
post-Cold War period, U.S. Presidents have made a strong commitment to
preserving American global leadership: that is, the maintenance of a
liberal international order that has proven, all things considered, to
be a framework that has permitted growing stability, liberty and
prosperity. President Obama has reaffirmed this commitment, and further
has rightly observed that the continued centrality of the United States
in the international system will be a key factor in any economic
recovery.
Beyond rhetoric, American international leadership has a number of
geopolitical, economic, and security corollaries. Indeed, our security
role is the bedrock of today's global order; conversely, absent the
organizing function played by the United States, the world would most
likely devolve into a competition between various blocs of states, and
non-state actors--terror groups, criminal syndicates and the like--
would find themselves in constant conflict. The dangers of failing
states, or, as John Quincy Adams called them, derelict states, would be
exponentially greater and the world's ability to address these dangers
so much weaker.
In summary terms, America's ability to maintain the current global
order depends upon fulfilling two essential tasks: preserving a
favorable balance of power among nation-states, and preserving the
integrity of the state system from the challenges of non-state actors.
In an era where nuclear proliferation and other forms of technological
diffusion are providing non-state groups with destructive capabilities
and reach heretofore reserved to only the greatest powers, preserving
the international political order is no small task.
Correspondingly, there are two prime directives for U.S. military
forces. First, we must develop the situation with regard to the
increasing strength and capabilities of the Chinese People's Liberation
Army (PLA). I use the term ``develop the situation'' intentionally, to
make it clear that we must act, and exercise some initiative, to ensure
that the PLA does not become a strategic threat to U.S. interests. This
mission is the first order of business for American naval, air, and
space forces, as well as those military capabilities designed to
operate in the electromagnetic spectrum, but is hardly the primary
shaper of U.S. land forces. Second, and this is most critical for U.S.
land forces, is the need to continue to prosecute the long war in the
greater Middle East. To be sure, there are a variety of scenarios
across these two broad mission sets that might call for highly
integrated joint forces, but the greater likelihood is that the U.S.
military will continue to develop a new, looser kind of jointness in
response to emerging battlefield realities.
A LONG-WAR FORCE
America's interests in the Muslim world are as old as the republic,
and from the first--on the shores of Tripoli--U.S. land forces have
been an important element in defense of those interests. But it was not
until the promulgation of the Carter Doctrine in 1979 and the formation
of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, the precursor of today's U.S.
Central Command (CENTCOM), that we saw for ourselves a permanent
mission in the region. If one were to plot the deployments of American
military forces to the CENTCOM region since that time, what would
become apparent is that we have moved generally from a maritime posture
of ``offshore balancing'' to an on-shore, land-based posture intended
not simply to work through local potentates and autocrats but to
encourage a more stable and representative order throughout the region.
While our engagement still is centered on the Persian Gulf region--the
strategic epicenter--it extends from West Africa to Southeast Asia.
This is, truly, America's ``continental commitment'' in the 21st
century.
The range of missions conducted by U.S. land forces has varied
immensely over time and promises to be equally varied in the future.
Even in the hectic years since the September 11 attacks, the number and
kind of land forces operations have run the gamut from conventional
blitzkrieg--and we should never forget how remarkably and surprisingly
successful the initial invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq proved to be--
to persistent irregular warfare, partner-building operations of all
sorts, and a panoply of reconstruction and stabilization efforts.
Indeed, it would be harder to invent a wider diversity of missions. In
Ground Truth, we considered a number of ``case studies'' that
catalogued the spectrum of these operations, looking also at the
Israeli army's experience in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Suffice it to say that modern land warfare is a thoroughly exacting art
and science. It is a source of wonder that American soldiers and
marines have conducted these missions as well as they have; in
retrospect and taken altogether, what is remarkable is not that there
have been moments of confusion and near-defeat, but that the United
States should find itself in such an advantageous strategic position
today.
Alas, this surprisingly good result is not the product of
intentional force-planning, but the residue of past, Cold War
investments; of improvised procurements in emergency, supplemental
appropriations; and, most tellingly, of nick-of-time innovations by
soldiers and Marines on the battlefield. The heroism of Americans at
war is a very reliable constant, but it is not a plan.
Nor is it a plan to pretend that the pace of operations in the
post-September 11 world is an extraordinary anomaly or simply the
product of Bush administration folly; again, the larger pattern of
commitments and operations during the years since CENTCOM was
established reflect the continuity of American strategy. While numbers
of troops deployed or the organization of forces in the field may
fluctuate with the conduct of particular campaigns, we must accept the
plain fact that the posture of U.S. forces in this part of the world
has reached a new plateau, and that plateau stretches a long way into
the future--certainly far beyond the planning horizons of the
Department of Defense, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. At this point,
to repeat the mistakes of the Bush administration, to delude ourselves
that we will return to a more comfortable status quo, would be to
transform the unintentional failures of strategic imagination into an
intentional, potentially catastrophic failure of strategic planning.
We now know, within experimental error, the answer to the timeless
question of force-planning: how much is enough? For the past 5 years--
every minute, every hour, every day--we have fully an employed an
active Army (that is, the baseline active Army plus national guardsmen
and reservists called to active duty) of about 650,000 (of which
100,000 or more are the mobilized reservists) and the entire U.S.
Marine Corps of about 200,000, or a total land force of about 850,000.
That is a fact. There are two other facts: one is that this force is
too small to eternally sustain the demands of the deployments; dwell
times between rotations are too brief to fully reconstitute or train
units and individuals or to fulfill the social and moral contract
between the Nation and people in uniform. A second is that this force
is also too small to mitigate the many risks of other long war
missions, let alone the secondary land-force missions elsewhere across
the globe.
WHAT KIND OF FORCE?
Given the number and variety of missions confronting the U.S.
military and the emerging nature of land war, it is apparent that U.S.
land forces need not only to be more numerous but must also possess
qualities other than the timely and devastating delivery of firepower.
Recent realities have underscored the shortcomings of the movement for
military transformation, with its imagining of ``rapid, decisive
operations'' characterized by long-range, precision strikes. Indeed,
history provides very few examples of a one-battle war. Conversely, we
have only lately begun to apply our most advanced technologies to the
problems of irregular warfare. Lethality is just one of a half dozen
required attributes for future U.S. land forces--and it's not even the
primary one.
As might be expected, the primary attribute for victory in a long
war will be sustainability. Presence matters. As David Galula, the
French military officer and scholar whose writings have so helped
American soldiers and Marines adapt to challenges in Iraq and
Afghanistan wrote in his 1964 classic Counterinurgency Warfare: Theory
and Practice: ``The static units are obviously those who know best the
local population, the local problems. . , . It follows that when a
mobile unit is sent to operate temporarily in an area, it must come
under local command.'' Thus, the enthusiasm of recent years for
strategic deployability has been misplaced. That is, we need The force-
generation models for both the Army and Marine Corps are not well
suited to the demands of sustained presence.
A second attribute required for U.S. land forces is the ability to
gather, analyze, share, and act upon a flood of information; at its
heart, the long war is largely about the struggle for and about
information. The force-transformation ideal imagined that U.S. forces
would automatically enjoy perfect situational awareness and dominant
battlespace knowledge; by contrast, recent experience suggest that the
fog of war is even thicker in the information realm than on the simply
kinetic battlefield. Organizing, training and equipping our land forces
to operate in opaque situations--where seemingly small-scale, tactical
decisions can have great strategic consequences--is a necessity
demanding more robust and flexible forces rather than the perfectly
tailored forces previously thought desirable. In complex operations,
perfectly designed forces are most likely to be designed perfectly
wrongly.
Firepower does still count for a lot, and arguably precision
firepower is an even greater benefit in irregular than in conventional
warfare. At the same time, firepower, like forces more generally, must
be constantly present or available. The coordination of joint fires
with land maneuver units is an incredible advantage to U.S. forces, but
in thinking about future fire support requirements it is necessary to
consider the global strategic requirements for the forces that supply
that fire support, particularly air support and naval fire support. The
presumption of the recent past--that joint fires will be everywhere and
plentifully on call--is an uncertain proposition for the future, and it
is worth reconsidering force-structure savings assumed in organic
Marine and, especially, Army fire support.
A fourth quality to stress in future land forces is leadership,
beginning at the small-unit level but also including the quality of
generalship. Dispersed and irregular operations demand quicker and
better decisionmaking. As one veteran cavalry officer recently put it:
The environment we faced required junior leaders to make
hundreds of independent decisions every day. The sheer volume
of information generated daily was staggering. Moreover, the
operations tempo was very high, requiring the execution of
dozens of missions simultaneously across the spectrum of
operations.
The Marine Corps' idea of the strategic corporal is perhaps an
exaggeration, but the underlying notion--that soldiers and marines are
asked not simply to be competent tacticians but to exercise their
judgments in many situations that are only vaguely military--has merit.
In sum, military leaders must be more fully educated at a younger age,
not simply trained.
A fifth quality that should describe U.S. land forces for the
future is partnership, as in the Pentagon's initiative, articulated in
the last defense review, for building partnership capacity. As
necessary as U.S. forces are for the many Long War missions they have
been assigned, they are not sufficient; they must undertake a variety
of efforts to build the capacity of the indigenous or allied forces
with which we are fighting. While most attention in the recent past has
been devoted to building the Iraqi and Afghan armies, there is a huge
opportunity to improve the professionalism and effectiveness of other
partners, not simply to react to new crises and conflicts, but to
anticipate or prevent problems. The section in Ground Truth describing
the recent U.S. role in the Philippines provides a snapshot about how
this can be done well with very small forces, and the new U.S. Africa
Command will have this partnership-building mission as its initial
task. Moreover, figuring out how to do this without so disrupting the
unit design, cohesion or effectiveness of U.S. ground combat units will
be a challenge; creating a large-scale, standing advisory corps runs
that risk.
Finally, U.S. land forces must be genuinely expansible. We must
understand that, while we can now better predict the future requirement
for land power, there may well be situations where the demand exceeds
the supply. Expanding the current Active-Duty Force would have the
added benefit of returning the Reserve component into the truly
strategic Reserve for which it, and particularly the National Guard,
was designed. The Bush administration's decision to mobilize the Guard
as an Operational Reserve--just a lesser cog in the deployment machine
that so consumes today's force--was yet another penny-wise-but-pound-
foolish choice. The quality of expansibility, a traditional tenet of
American force planning, has been sacrificed by default and without
serious discussion as a result of the decision to fight the long war
with a too small force.
THE COSTS: TIME, PEOPLE, MONEY
Building the land forces we need will take the better part of a
decade. The belated Bush administration plan for increasing the size of
the Active Army and Marine Corps, just recently achieved, brings the
total active land force to about 750,000, or still about 100,000 short
of the day-to-day requirement; hence the continuing need to mobilize
large numbers of guardsman and reservists. My recommendation would be
to return the active land services to about the same size they were at
the end of the Cold War: a little bit less than 800,000 soldiers and a
little bit more than 200,000 marines, for a total of about 1 million.
In a nation of 300 million Americans, that's a very and certainly
achievable modest goal, and would return economic benefits at a time of
relatively high unemployment. This ought to have been a provision in
the recent stimulus legislation.
Sizing the field force--the kid of force-sizing construct that has
been the hallmark of recent defense reviews--should likewise be a
relatively straightforward exercise. The first principle of land-force
planning should be the need to conduct a sustained, large-scale
stability campaign, as Iraq has been since the initial invasion and as
Afghanistan, as the Obama administration shifts its strategic focus, is
becoming. Such efforts routinely require on the order of 150,000 U.S.
forces, up to 22 brigade-equivalents. The requirement in Afghanistan
will be somewhat lower as long as significant European North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) forces continue to at least patrol and
occupy the Tajik and Uzbek provinces. This is neither a prediction that
another such mission is on the horizon or an expression of any desire
to undertake a new project of regime change, but it is a recognition
that circumstances might make this necessary, and is a sound basis for
force planning. A second force building-block would be a requirement to
conduct at least two other economy-of-force stability operations, sized
roughly as the U.S. element of the NATO Afghanistan mission has been--
that is, about 25,000 to 30,000 troops--during the years of maximum
effort in Iraq. With a ``post-combat'' American posture in Iraq of
35,000 to 50,000, it appears that the relative roles of the two mission
of the recent past are about to flip; for planning purposes, the
ability to do two economy-of-force missions--and at least one conducted
entirely by Marine forces--at the same time makes sense. Finally,
another simultaneous requirement is for multiple partnership missions.
These can be quite substantial and long-running, as the story of
Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa reveals: it's employed almost
1,000 troops form all Services under a two-star headquarters.
A second field-force question is that of unit force structure and
design. In general terms, the combination of budget shortfalls and
transformation enthusiasm has resulted in a significant reduction in
land force structures, most evident in the Army's design for modular
brigades. In short, the Army has shrunk the size of its core ground
maneuver unit from about 5,000 to about 3,500, and also dramatically
cut back on the size of its divisions. The price has been paid in fire
support, logistics and other forms of support, and each brigade has one
fewer ground battalion. The result is that each brigade is less
sustainable and less capable, with the further inevitable result that,
when deployed, each brigade requires many additional enablers--though
these are often different kinds of units than those that were
previously eliminated--that return its strength to 5,000 or more. As we
shall see when the details of the Afghanistan ``surge'' are made clear,
the challenges of operating in austere and undeveloped environments
require even more support troops. The shortage of support forces puts a
correspondingly larger burden on Reserve component soldiers, who
provide a disproportionate share of the support capabilities in the
Army. Because the Army provides higher-level support to the Marines
and, indeed, the Air Force, these support requirements are in fact much
greater than they immediately appear. It makes no force-planning sense
to continue to ignore these requirements.
But perhaps the most willfully ignorant land-force planning
assumption of the past decade has been the shortchanging of the
services' institutional base, that part of the Army and Marine Corps
that prepares the field force to fight. Again, the full story is a
complex one, but suffice it to say that, in zealous pursuit of the
highest possible tooth-to-tail ratio and a belief, especially strong
during the Rumsfeld years, that the institutional base was unproductive
overhead, that the long-term health of the U.S. land force
establishment has been put at risk. Even with the recent growth in
force size, the Army has just 11,400 soldiers on active duty for each
one its brigade combat teams. A better-balanced force would be manned
at a total of 13,500 troops per brigade or more; these extra people
would allow for improved leadership development, better training, and a
greater capacity to execute partnership-building missions. Finally, the
post-Cold War years have seen an increasing imbalance between the
Army--the main long war service designed for sustained land
operations--and the Marine Corps--self-described as the expeditionary
force in readiness for contingencies and crises. At the end of the Cold
War, there were about four active-duty soldiers for every marine; today
the ratio is 3-to-1. If the main mission of U.S. land forces is the
long war, then we are building the wrong sort of force.
Then there is the question of force modernization, weapons
research, and procurement. While the Defense Department has been on an
extended ``procurement holiday'' through the post-Cold War period, the
reductions have been felt most keenly in land force modernization.
Indeed, the two cardinal program cuts of the Rumsfeld years were the
Army's Crusader howitzer and Comanche scout helicopter; my point is not
a post-mortem justification of these projects, but to indicate that
land systems have been the lowest procurement priority. The state of
land force equipment is likewise reflected in the tens of billions
spent for reset in emergency supplemental appropriations. Nor does it
make sense, in my judgment, to terminate or yet again restructure the
Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program; indeed, it is hard to find
a less well-understood procurement project than FCS. Program critics
seem intent on fighting the last war--that is, in describing the
program as it was originally conceived rather than the program being
executed today. To be sure, there are reasonable questions to be raised
about FCS, the structure of the project and the program priorities,
such as whether there is sufficient value, in an irregular warfare
world, in the FCS network. But many of the other aspects of the
program--such as the utility in common vehicle chassis, or in new
material that promise improved ballistic protection from a wider
variety of threats, or engine designs that can generate the required
amounts of electricity to run the proliferation of electronic gadgets
that are soldiers' everyday appliances--ought not to be controversial.
Nor can I see any purpose in returning to the old stovepiped version of
land-force modernization that allowed the Army's various branches to
develop the tank, or the infantry fighting vehicle, or the attack
helicopter of its dreams but equipped them all with different radios so
that modifications were needed to allow one platform to talk or
exchange information with another.
Creating an adequate land force will not be cheap. But it's a price
we're already paying now: when adding the Army's baseline budget to the
constant and predictable cost of mobilizing Reserve personnel and doing
back-door procurements in the supplementals, the United States is
paying about $200 billion per year for Army land forces. The costs of
the Marines, which include weapons systems and other items included in
the Navy budget is harder to estimate. In fact, Marine costs can and
should remain relatively constant; the difference is and should remain
in Army expansion. But it would be far better to continue to grow and
modernize the Army under a long-term plan rather than on an annual, ad
hoc basis through supplemental appropriations and unending Reserve
call-ups. In very rough terms, I would estimate the cost of a large-
enough Army to be about $240 billion per year. By 2016--the time it
would take to expand, equip and configure the force we need, and if
President Obama's economic projections are correct--that would account
for just 1.2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. A million-man land
force would be a third of 1 percent of the U.S. population.
Without doubt, this is a force we can afford. Conversely, the
strategic costs of not rebuilding America's land forces would be very
great indeed. We cannot expect to exercise leadership in the
international community if we are unable to guarantee the stability of
the greater Middle East; in addition to the economic value of the
region's resources, the political volatility of the Islamic world, and
the prospects for jihadi terrorism, make it a cockpit for many
conflicts--not just regional, but potentially between global great
powers. Nor can we expect, at this juncture, to stabilize the region by
offshore balancing. That moment has passed, both militarily and
geostrategically; the clock cannot be turned back. Land power is not
the answer to every problem, but it is an essential answer to this
problem.
I wish to thank Senator Lieberman, Senator Thune, and the members
and staff of the subcommittee for this opportunity and your attention.
I look forward to any questions you may have.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks very much, Tom. Very interesting.
It strikes me as we're talking today that we are assuming the
centrality of our land forces in persistent irregular conflict,
and of course we should. But it seemed not so long ago that
there was some feeling, certainly during the 90s, that maybe we
could deal with an irregular conflict from the air. Obviously,
air power is very important, but I think everybody now agrees
from our experience that land power is the key.
Our final witness, Dr. Pete Mansoor, has really been at the
heart of the transformation of our land forces, a real scholar-
soldier. He is the General Raymond Mason, Jr., Chair in
Military History at Ohio State University. Last year he retired
from the Army after commanding a brigade of the First Armored
Division in Iraq, and later served as a Special Adviser to
General David Petraeus at Multi-National Force-Iraq in Baghdad,
in which capacity many of us had the pleasure to meet him.
Dr. Mansoor's experiences, I think, will add a valuable
perspective on today's discussion, and for that reason and many
others I thank you for being here.
STATEMENT OF PETER R. MANSOOR, PH.D., GENERAL RAYMOND E. MASON,
JR., CHAIR OF MILITARY HISTORY, THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Mansoor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Thune,
members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to
appear today to discuss the ongoing development of our Nation's
land power.
Due in no small measure to the remarkable capabilities of
the other components of our Armed Forces, I believe that land
power will be the deciding factor in our Nation's wars in the
early 21st century. The United States remains the preeminent
global power in conventional warfare, a fact well-understood by
our opponents. It is far easier for the enemy to challenge the
capabilities of American forces in an asymmetric fashion. In
short, our enemies will most likely avoid fighting the type of
wars the United States has organized and trained its Armed
Forces to fight.
In the 1990s, various military officers and defense
analysts posited a coming revolution in military affairs based
on information dominance coupled with precision-guided
munitions. Concepts such as networkcentric warfare envisioned
near-perfect intelligence from manned and unmanned sensors,
satellites, and other intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance assets. Accurate and timely information would
lead to battle space dominance, prompt attacks on targets from
extended ranges, and the execution of rapid, decisive
operations that would quickly and precisely collapse an enemy
armed force or regime at its center of gravity.
Advanced sensors and precision guided munitions, however,
are tactical and operational capabilities. They are not a
strategy. Those leaders who staked the outcome of the Iraq war
on rapid, decisive operations misread the nature of war, and
not just the nature of war in the post Cold War era, but the
nature of warfare in any era. Despite our high-tech
capabilities, uncertainty and the interplay of friction and
chance on military operations will remain integral to war for
the indefinite future.
There is a larger point here. The emphasis on technology
over an understanding of the realities of war and conflict
reflects the historicism not only of too much of the officer
corps, but the American educational system as well. Our
mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan have come through a pervasive
failure to understand the historical framework within which
insurgencies take place, to appreciate the cultural and
political factors of other nations and peoples, and to
encourage the learning of other languages. In other words, we
managed to repeat many of the mistakes that we made in Vietnam
because America's political and military leaders managed to
forget nearly every lesson of that conflict.
As appealing as high-tech warfare with standoff weapons may
seem, those who advocate it in the current environment are
guilty of mirror imaging our opponents. State and non-state
actors are using proxy forces and insurgencies in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and elsewhere to advance their political goals
along with their social and religious agendas. We cannot rely
on high-tech weaponry to check these groups. High-tech weapons
designed for combat at stand-off ranges are ill-suited for
combating insurgents in urban strongholds. Sensors are a poor
substitute for personal interaction.
Therefore, we must closely examine expensive high tech
programs such as the Army's FCS to determine if they are useful
in the current operational environment, where the typical
engagement range is less than 500 meters and the need to engage
the population is the paramount priority.
History has underlined again and again that
counterinsurgency warfare can only be won on the ground, as you
noted, Mr. Chairman, and only by applying all elements of
national power to the struggle. These struggles are troop-
intensive, for the counterinsurgent must secure and control the
population, deliver essential services, and provide a basic
quality of life. These requirements take energy, resources, and
above all, time.
Although the requirement to sustain counterinsurgency
forces for extended periods suggests the need for considerable
expansion of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, as my colleague
has noted, the best way to provide more ground forces is to
procure them from the host nation. This realization mandates a
significant focus on advisory duty and foreign internal
defense, along with the creation of an institutional home for
these activities in the Armed Forces.
We must design our military forces with a balanced set of
capabilities, but it is essential that they be capable of
operating effectively in a counterinsurgency environment.
During the 1990s U.S. Army leaders believed that units trained
for major combat operations could easily adjust to take on
other missions such as peacekeeping or humanitarian assistance.
In Iraq and Afghanistan we have learned that counterinsurgency
warfare actually requires a long list of added capabilities
that training for conventional high end combat does not
address. In short, counterinsurgency is a thinking soldier's
war.
Military intelligence must also change or risk irrelevance.
High-tech intelligence capabilities are no substitute for human
intelligence and cultural understanding. One cannot divine
tribal structures, insurgent networks, sectarian divisions, and
ethnic mosaics through technological means.
As the United States ramped up its math and science
education following the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, so
must it now pursue excellence in humanities programs such as
history, cultural anthropology, regional studies, and
languages. Our Nation's universities, to include my home at the
Ohio State University, stand ready to assist in this endeavor.
The transformation of American land power for the wars of
the 21st century remains incomplete. Although bulky divisions
have given way to smaller, modular, more easily deployable
brigade combat teams, these units remain largely configured for
conventional combat, and imperfectly at that. Brigades that are
tailored for counterinsurgency operations would include more
infantry, a full engineer battalion, augmented staff
capabilities, and intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance assets, particularly armed reconnaissance units
that can engage the people and fight for information.
The need for more infantry and engineers is especially
critical, so much so that the Army should forgo the creation of
additional brigade combat teams until existing units are
reconfigured with the addition of a third maneuver battalion.
If this seems like a small matter, if you did that across the
force it would take about 45,000 soldiers to add another
maneuver battalion and a full-up engineer battalion. The
paucity of the current brigade combat team structure has forced
brigade commanders to attach armor and infantry companies to
the reconnaissance squadron, which is otherwise too lightly
armed to act as a combat force.
A triangular organization would be more effective not just
in counterinsurgency warfare, but would give our maneuver
commanders the resources they need to fight more effectively in
conventional conflicts as well.
Finally, the culture of the U.S. Army must continue to
change or the organization will be unprepared to fight and win
the wars of the 21st century. While retaining the capability to
conduct major combat operations, the Army must continue to
embrace missions other than conventional land force combat. We
must adapt the current personnel system, with its emphasis on
rewarding technical and tactical expertise at the expense of
intellectual understanding and a broader, deeper grasp of the
world in which we live, to promote those leaders with the skill
sets and education needed for the wars America will fight in
the decades ahead.
In other words, to win the fight against 21st century
opponents we must first adapt the organizational culture of our
military forces to the realities of 21st century warfare.
Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Mansoor follows:]
Prepared Statement by Dr. Peter R. Mansoor, Colonel, USA (Ret.),
General Raymond E. Mason, Jr., Chair of Military History, The Ohio
State University
Senator Lieberman, Senator Thune, and members of the committee,
thank you for the opportunity to appear today to discuss the ongoing
development of our Nation's land power. Due in no small measure to the
remarkable capabilities of the other components of our Armed Forces, I
believe that land power will be the deciding factor in our Nation's
wars in the early decades of the 21st century. The United States
remains the pre-eminent global power in conventional warfare, a fact
well-understood by our opponents. It is far easier for an enemy to
challenge the capabilities of American forces in an asymmetric fashion.
Some opponents will seek to neutralize our technological advantages
through terrorism and insurgencies; others may produce nuclear weapons
that threaten massive destruction. In short, our enemies will most
likely avoid fighting the type of wars the United States has organized
and trained its armed forces to fight.
In the 1990s, various military officers and defense analysts
posited a coming revolution in military affairs based on information
dominance coupled with precision weapons. Concepts such as network-
centric warfare envisioned near-perfect intelligence from manned and
unmanned sensors, satellites, and other intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance assets. Accurate and timely information would lead to
battlespace dominance, prompt attacks on targets from extended ranges,
and the execution of rapid, decisive operations that would quickly and
precisely collapse an enemy armed force or regime at its center of
gravity. Advanced sensors and precision guided munitions, however, are
tactical and operational capabilities--they are not a strategy. Those
leaders who staked the outcome of the Iraq War on rapid, decisive
operations misread the nature of war--and not just the nature of war in
the post-Cold War era, but the nature of war in any era. Despite our
high-tech capabilities, uncertainty and the interplay of friction and
chance on military operations will remain integral to war for the
indefinite future.
There is a larger point here. The emphasis on technology over an
understanding of the realities of war and conflict reflect the
ahistoricism not only of too much of the officer corps but of the
American educational system as well. Our mistakes in Iraq and
Afghanistan have come through a pervasive failure to understand the
historical framework within which insurgencies take place, to
appreciate the cultural and political factors of other nations and
people, and to encourage the learning of other languages. In other
words, we managed to repeat many of the mistakes that we made in
Vietnam, because America's political and military leaders managed to
forget nearly every lesson of that conflict.
Accordingly, the United States must understand and apply the
strategic, operational, tactical, and doctrinal lessons of the wars we
are now waging in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military has already
learned a great deal, but there is much more work to be done in
developing and inculcating counterinsurgency doctrine, refining
professional military education, revamping promotion systems, and
establishing relevant tactical and operational capabilities in our
Armed Forces.
As appealing as high-tech warfare with standoff weapons may seem,
those who advocate it in the current environment are guilty of mirror-
imaging our opponents. State and non-state actors are using proxy
forces and insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to advance
their political goals along with their social and religious agendas. We
cannot rely on high-tech weaponry to check these groups. Strikes with
unmanned aerial systems across national borders inflame local opinion
and often serve to create more terrorists than they destroy. High-tech
weapons designed for combat at stand-off ranges are ill-suited for
combating insurgents in urban strongholds. Sensors are a poor
substitute for personal interaction. Therefore, we must closely examine
expensive, high-tech programs such as the Army's Future Combat System
to determine if they are useful in the current operational environment,
where the typical engagement range is less than 500 meters and the need
to engage the population is the paramount priority.
History has underlined again and again that counterinsurgency
warfare can only be won on the ground, and only by applying all
elements of national power to the struggle. Insurgency and
counterinsurgency are struggles for legitimacy and for competing
visions of governance and the future. The side will win that can gain
the people's trust and confidence or, failing that, to control their
movements and actions. These struggles are troop intensive, for the
counterinsurgent must secure and control the population, deliver
essential services, and provide a basic quality of life. These
requirements take energy, resources, and above all, time.
Requirements vary by location and circumstances, but a historically
based rule of thumb is that successful counterinsurgencies require 20
to 25 security force personnel for every 1,000 people. Although the
requirement to sustain such forces for extended periods suggests the
need for considerable expansion of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, the
best way to provide more ground forces is to procure them from the host
nation. This realization mandates a significant focus on advisory duty
and foreign internal defense, along with the creation of an
institutional home for these activities in the armed forces.
We must design our military forces with a balanced set of
capabilities, but it is essential that they be capable of operating
effectively in a counterinsurgency environment. During the 1990s, U.S.
Army leaders believed that units trained for major combat operations
could easily adjust to take on other missions, such as peacekeeping or
humanitarian assistance. In Iraq and Afghanistan we have learned that
counterinsurgency warfare requires a long list of added capabilities
that training for conventional, high-end combat does not address.
Indeed, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are really four types of
security operations lumped together--a counterinsurgency campaign to
protect the population and subdue insurgents, a counterterrorism fight
to destroy terrorist operatives, a peacekeeping operation to separate
hostile factions, and a law enforcement operation to fight organized
crime and corruption. Each of them requires unique competencies not
normally found in military organizations designed for conventional
warfighting. Nation-building tasks add even more complexity to this
mixture. In short, counterinsurgency is a thinking soldier's war.
Military intelligence structures must also change or risk
irrelevance. The most effective intelligence system in these conflicts
combines human intelligence with technical intelligence. Insurgents can
hide in plain sight, but our forces can target them when they move,
shoot, or communicate. This happens when conventional military and
police forces dominate an area and force the insurgents and terrorists
to reposition, at which point they become vulnerable. The use of
signals intelligence, persistent sensors, biometric identity systems,
and armed unmanned aerial vehicles are vital capabilities that we must
continue to expand. These capabilities, however, are no substitute for
human intelligence and cultural understanding. One cannot divine tribal
structures, insurgent networks, sectarian divisions, and ethnic mosaics
through technological means. As the United States ramped up its math
and science education following the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957,
so must it now pursue excellence in humanities programs such as
history, cultural anthropology, regional studies, and languages. Our
nation's universities, to include my home at the Ohio State University,
stand ready to assist in this endeavor.
The transformation of American land power for the wars of the 21st
century remains incomplete. In Military Innovation in the Interwar
Period, Allan Millett lays out three prerequisites for effective
military innovation: revised doctrine, changes in professional military
education, and the creation of operational units that meet real
strategic needs. The U.S. Army has met the first two fundamentals, but
not yet the third. Although bulky divisions have given way to smaller,
modular, more easily deployable brigade combat teams, these units
remain largely configured for conventional combat--and imperfectly at
that. Brigades that are tailored for counterinsurgency operations would
include more infantry; a full engineer battalion; a large intelligence
section built mainly around human and signals intelligence, with
significant analytical capability; military police, engineer, civil
affairs, information operations, and psychological operations cells; a
contracting section; adviser and liaison sections, with requisite
language capabilities; human terrain teams, with the capability to map
tribal and social networks; explosive ordnance demolition teams; and
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets--particularly
armed reconnaissance units that can engage the people and fight for
information, along with armed unmanned aerial vehicles and ground
sensors. The need for more infantry and engineers is especially
critical, so much so that the Army should forgo the creation of
additional brigade combat teams until existing units are reconfigured
with the addition of a third maneuver battalion. The paucity of the
current brigade combat team structure has forced brigade commanders to
attach armor and infantry companies to the reconnaissance,
surveillance, and target acquisition squadron, which is otherwise too
lightly armed to act as a combat force. A triangular organization would
be more effective not just in counterinsurgency warfare, but would give
our maneuver commanders the resources they need to fight more
effectively in conventional conflicts as well.
The culture of the U.S. Army must continue to change, or the
organization will be unprepared to fight and win the wars of the 21st
century. While retaining the capability to conduct major combat
operations, the Army must continue to embrace missions other than
conventional land force combat. We must adapt the current personnel
system, with its emphasis on rewarding technical and tactical
competence at the expense of intellectual understanding and a broader,
deeper grasp of the world in which we live, to promote those leaders
with the skill sets and education needed for the wars America will
fight in the decades ahead. In other words, to win the fight against
21st century opponents, we must first adapt the organizational culture
of our military forces to the realities of 21st century warfare.
Thank you.
Senator Lieberman. That was excellent. Thank you.
Unfortunately, a series of three votes went off at around
2:30 p.m. So if we hustle over now we'll get to the end of the
first vote. We'll try to get back as soon after 3 o'clock as we
can, but I'm glad we got the opening statements in. So please
stand at ease for a while. The hearing will be recessed.
[Recessed at 2:44 p.m., reconvened at 3:05 p.m.]
Senator Lieberman. Thanks for your patience in this. I
thought, rather than just linger and schmooze with my
colleagues, as enjoyable as that is, between the votes, it was
good to come back. Senator Thune will follow. He has an
amendment on the floor now, so he may take a while. We'll take
turns going back for the last of the three votes.
Your opening statements were really excellent and
responsive to what we were talking about. Let me focus for a
minute on FCS and just try to draw you out in a little more
detail, and then I'll come back to the Army personnel
questions, which are very important, and some provocative ideas
were presented.
FCS, as you all know, features a tactical network, eight
manned ground vehicles, two classes of unmanned aerial
vehicles, and other robotic ground vehicles. The Army says it
plans to build 15 FCS brigade teams and also plans to spin out
certain FCS technologies and systems to the modular infantry
brigades of the current force as they become available.
It's obvious that, pursuant to what the President and the
Secretary of Defense have said, that FCS is under review now.
Each of you touched on the program in some ways. I suppose in
the most direct way, and probably too simplistic, I want to ask
you what you think. If you were advising the President on FCS,
generally speaking to frame three options, would you recommend
that it continue on the course it's on now, be modified, or be
terminated?
Pete, why don't we start with you.
Dr. Mansoor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to go back
to military innovation in general, so that we understand why
FCS exists or if we can get the Army to tell us exactly what
its aimed at. If you go back to military innovation in the
interwar period between World War I and World War II, for
instance, what you see is that the best innovation, such as
carrier aviation, armored warfare, the British integrated air
defense system that won the Battle of Britain, are focused
tactical, technical, and operational solutions to specific
problems and specific challenges. Unfocused modernization, that
looks out at creating a kind of capability that has no
historical antecedent, usually creates the wrong type of
capabilities and ends up being not a viable capability in the
next war.
This is the issue with FCS. It's a system that's been built
around unproven theories that are aimed at creating a kind of
capability that really doesn't meet a specific strategic
challenge. If you look out over the range of possible enemies
the United States faces today, the number of possibilities of
the United States engaging in mobile armored warfare on the
ground with massed armies is pretty limited. On the other hand,
if you look at the possibilities for irregular warfare, we're
already fighting two, Iraq and Afghanistan. If you look at the
possibilities in Pakistan or Mexico or any number of other
areas of the world today, I would argue that the Army should be
creating capabilities to meet those specific strategic
challenges that exist. Therefore, with FCS you should look at
it with a view to modifying it to make sure that it meets those
current challenges.
My issue with the system is it's really intended to fight
at long ranges with a very networked sensor-heavy system, where
you see first, act first, and hit targets very precisely. But
when you look at targets in counterinsurgency warfare, they
wear civilian clothes, they hide among the people, and they're
in dense urban areas. I don't think FCS is really configured to
fight that kind of war. Therefore, if we're going to equip 19
Active Army brigades and maybe a number of other Reserve
brigades with this system, you're creating the kind of
capability that really isn't tuned to the kind of war that
we're going to be facing for the next 2, 3 decades at a
minimum. So I would think that the system would have to be
modified.
Senator Lieberman. I want to hear the other two, but I'll
come back and ask you some questions. That was very helpful.
Andy, what would you say?
Dr. Krepinevich. I'd say major modification, for four
reasons. One, I think there's a lot of, as I said, fiscal risk.
The program is at about $160 billion. Independent estimates put
it closer to $200 billion. It originally started out as 18
systems. To keep the costs under control, they had to reduce it
down to 14 systems. Now there's discussion they're going to
reduce it down to 10 new systems.
Technical risk. According to the GAO report, only 3 of the
44 critical technologies have reached the point where best
business practices would say yes, this is an acceptable risk in
terms of moving forward with an entire program.
You have an F-35 that has 20 million lines of code. The FCS
network is now up to 95 million lines of code. The Army has
told me that about 70 million lines of this code are code
that's already been written for other purposes, that we're
going to pull together. My one concern is that you could also
say that Windows Vista was built on a lot of established lines
of code and we were just adding code to it. I just think when
you're adding as much code as is going to be in the F-35 that's
a real significant issue.
There's temporal risk. General Shinseki when FCS started
said: ``If we don't field this system by 2010, the Army risks
becoming strategically irrelevant.'' Obviously we're not going
to get there. It's not going to be 2012, it's not going to be
2015. Now we're talking 2017. At some point the assumptions you
make about getting rid of our oldest equipment because this is
coming on; if that stuff doesn't come on at a certain point,
then you incur another risk. You either have to start paying
much higher operations and maintenance costs for the stuff that
you can't get rid of or you have to start recapitalizing the
stuff that you already have. I don't think that's been given
sufficient weight.
Finally, as Dr. Mansoor points out, this system was
revolutionary for a form of warfare that I fear is passing into
history: see first, understand first, act first, and finish
decisively. The idea was that, unlike the Army I grew up in,
where you closed with and destroyed the enemy, you maneuvered,
then closed with him in close combat and then defeated him, the
idea here was you would see enemy armored forces at a distance
and the decisive battle would occur at a distance.
First of all, we can already do that if the Army and the
Air Force work together. We showed that in the second Gulf War.
But second, as Dr. Mansoor pointed out, our enemies don't fight
that way any more and they have almost no incentive to go back
to fighting that way.
I'm also concerned in terms of operational effectiveness
about a system whose effectiveness in terms of public
pronouncements is very much a product of simulations.
Simulations about what's very effective in this environment,
that's if everything works as assumed, because a simulation in
many respects is only as good as the assumptions you put into
it.
My feeling is that the big advantage that was supposed to
be offered by FCS was the network that would enable you to
violate the military principle of mass and disperse your
forces, making them far less vulnerable. In an irregular
warfare environment that kind of network may be highly useful.
But we should build the network, number one. We should
determine what kind of network we need, and I think principally
it's a network for irregular warfare primarily.
Third, we should see whether it's possible to build that
kind of network, before we really take big steps in terms of
these are the kinds of ground combat vehicles that best suit
this particular modernization program for the Army.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks. That's very interesting. Good
discussion.
My time is up. I wonder if you want to try a short answer,
Mr. Donnelly, or wait until the second round.
Mr. Donnelly. I'll try to be quick and then if it's
inadequate you'll tell me so.
Senator Lieberman. Okay, good.
Mr. Donnelly. I would accelerate the program actually. I
think Pete's historical example is inapropos to the current
moment. That was a period of strategic pause between two global
conflicts. We are now, as everybody agrees, in an era of
persistent conflict and we have a need to continue to field a
force on a day-in and day-out basis.
I would agree with Andy that the value of the network is
really the key to the system, but we shouldn't measure it by
the old outdated transformation rhetoric of 2000 and previous.
The value of a network in an irregular warfare environment is
something that we should test, and that's what the Army is
doing at Fort Bliss. I think we should have an open mind about
whether it's going to work or whether it is worth the money.
The other part of the network or part of the program that I
think is critical is the radio part of it. The value of a
network is, I think, particularly in a dispersed operational
environment, one that's self-generating. There are a lot of
questions about the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS). I'm not
an engineer, but I think it's really an engineering question as
to whether it can be solved. We need a network that doesn't go
blind or become useless when satellites are not available or
when other nodes outside the ground network are unavailable.
Finally, the individual soldier gear, the revival of what
used to be called the Land Warrior Program, particularly in the
irregular warfare environment, and the rifleman radio, as it
was called, those kinds of little things that don't get the
headlines. We're going to need some new vehicles. The ones that
we have are old and have reached the point where they can't
really be modified to do what they need to do, and Stryker is
only a little bit better than Bradley and Abrams in that
regard.
Senator Lieberman. So bottom line, you would continue on
the current course and really try to accelerate it?
Mr. Donnelly. Particularly the individual soldier gear, the
radio, and making the network work, which again I think are
software engineering things, challenges that are solvable.
Senator Lieberman. Thank you.
Senator Thune.
Senator Thune. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all very much for your testimony. Mr. Donnelly,
you had mentioned that the force isn't large enough. You
mentioned 780,000 in 1991. I'm just curious, perhaps from each
of you, what you might think the optimal force size is for the
modern Army.
Mr. Donnelly. Again, in order to maintain the pace of
operations that I think is reasonable to expect, to be able to
give people time to train, to be educated the way we want them
to be, and to have a decent quality of family life so they stay
in the Army, so the contract between America and its soldiers
is not violated, plus or minus, I would say somewhere in the
750,000 to 800,000 ballpark for the Army, is what I would keep
coming back to.
Senator Thune. Dr. Krepinevich?
Dr. Krepinevich. I guess in an ideal world I would like Tom
Donnelly's Army. In the real world what I see is an Army
leadership that is asking more of its soldiers and its
officers. General Craddock says it's not strategic corporals
any more; I need strategic privates. I need even the most
junior soldiers to be able to operate at a very high level of
competence, and across the full spectrum of conflict, high-end
and low-end, almost seamlessly.
What we're also seeing, though, is despite the fact that we
keep demanding more, the quality is going down in terms of the
enlistees and the NCOs. It's now automatic promotion to E-5 and
E-6. That brings back memories of the Vietnam era Army that I
served in, the shake-and-bake NCOs. These are people some of
whom should not be junior NCOs. The increased stress on senior
NCOs, and the accelerated promotion rates for officers.
So what we have is a situation where the demands go up, the
quality goes down, and oh, by the way, the cost per soldier has
increased nearly 50 percent in real terms since September 11.
We can say we want a 781,000-soldier Army. The fact of the
matter is we can't afford it. If we tried to get it, I think
the quality would go down even further.
Strategy is about playing to your advantages. Our advantage
is not large quantities of manpower. Our advantage is
technology and high-quality manpower. I think DOD has it right.
The way we leverage technology and our quality manpower is to
train, organize, advise, and equip the indigenous forces of
other countries, both to prevent from descending into
instability and becoming failed states, and also to be able to
have a sufficient force. I think we can do this with roughly
the numbers we have now, to be able to plug the gap in cases
where we haven't been successful and where the failure of a
state or the loss of a region would be unacceptable to us in
terms of our interests.
So again, our advantages, quality personnel, technology,
equipment, and also allies. We have more allies than any other
country in the world. Leverage them, train them, equip them to
the extent that we can, and rely on diplomacy to help them get
more in the game.
I think the notion that somehow you can have a much bigger
Army and retain quality and not suffer unacceptable costs in
terms of trying to pay and equip that Army is an illusion.
Dr. Mansoor. Thank you, Senator. I think with 48 Active
brigade combat teams, if you want to be able to deploy one
third of them on a continual basis, we're able to deploy 16 at
any given time, if you add the capabilities that I called for
in my testimony, I think you get up to a figure somewhere short
of 600,000.
But I'd like to add on to what Dr. Krepinevich had to say
because I think it goes to something that's really crucial.
That is, it's just not total numbers of soldiers. We need to
substantially increase the number of officers that we have, and
for several reasons. The ability of this Nation to provide
advisers to foreign militaries is a crucial component, I think,
of our military strategy going forward.
Those advisers cannot be trained quickly. They have to be
officers and even senior NCOs with years of experience in the
force. Where the Army used to get these officers and NCOs
during the Cold War was from the U.S. Training and Doctrine
Command (TRADOC). But what we've done in the 1990s is we've
gutted TRADOC, moved those Active officers into Active units,
and instead staffed those positions with contractors. So we've
taken out all the fat in the system, if you will, but we've
made it almost impossible to find the number of advisers that
we need for the kind of requirements that we have.
The other thing I'd say about increasing the officer corps
is it would give our officers time for increased professional
military education in future years, because this is what is
going to be really, really crucial to our Army and Marine Corps
and the other Services as well going forward. We have to have
officers who understand the way the world works well beyond
just the kind of professional military education they get at
Fort Leavenworth or the war college. I think it calls for
additional years of education in the mid-grade period, but
that's going to require a bigger officer corps to make sure
that we can provide the time for them to do that.
Senator Thune. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I think I'm going to run over and vote and
try to come back. Do you want to keep going?
Senator Lieberman. Yes. Senator Burris, are you prepared to
come back or do you want to go forward a little bit?
Senator Burris. Mr. Chairman, mine are quick.
Senator Lieberman. Go right ahead Senator Burris, thanks
for being here.
Senator Burris. My pleasure, Mr. Chairman.
Let me just present this to especially Dr. Krepinevich.
In your statement you say that the Army has understandably
felt compelled to pursue the full spectrum approach owing to
the need to cover a range of missions within the limitations on
its size imposed by fiscal constraints and its all-volunteer
character. You then go on to imply that this approach is not
viable, but to counter the Army's shortcomings the U.S. defense
strategy is based upon the Army's focusing on building up the
military capabilities of threatened states. Then you state that
the Army must give greater attention to supporting this
strategy.
Recently we have been briefed by the 10 unified combatant
commands. I noted that each mentioned their military-to-
military activities, and that they desire to increase these
activities.
Dr. Krepinevich, are the military-to-military activities
specifically what you are addressing in your statement?
Dr. Krepinevich. In part. Military-to-military activities
might be joint exercises or combined exercises with other
militaries. They might be officers attending our staff colleges
and war colleges, or our officers going and attending theirs.
But it might also extend in my estimation to things like
training, organizing, equipping, and operating with their
military units, depending upon the situation in the field and
in combat, if it's a state that's threatened by disorder,
terrorism, or insurgents.
So it's much more expansive than just formal meetings and
exchanges of students at staff and war colleges. I would see
certain Army brigades that are oriented in this way as being
available to support requests from other countries for that
kind of support, for support in enabling them to defend
themselves from internal insurrection or external subversion.
Senator Burris. Do you have evidence or instances where the
combatant commanders are not supporting current U.S. defense
strategies, and could you please help me put this into context
if those combatant commanders are not?
Dr. Krepinevich. I don't have any evidence that they're not
supporting U.S. strategy. In the case of the Army as an
institution, not a combatant commander, my concern is that
their approach in supporting the strategy places too much
emphasis on dealing with the risk of conventional war, which I
think is relatively low compared to irregular war, and not
enough attention on creating the capability and the capacity to
execute what is the DOD strategy, which emphasizes not
deploying our forces to fight their wars for them, but helping
these people build up their own forces, train their own forces,
and advise them when they go into military operations until
they learn to stand on their own two feet.
That is where we have the advantage. We don't have a huge
Army. We don't have a large population that we can draw upon.
We have a relatively small Army for the tasks that it's been
asked to address. Our advantages are we have very high-quality
soldiers that can train and advise. We have a large defense
budget that can help us buy equipment to equip others, so we
don't have to do the fighting ourselves. We do have allies
that, if we engage properly, we can help get them to help
participate in this kind of endeavor.
At the end of the day, the best force to impose security in
a country and a society are the indigenous forces, not external
forces.
Senator Burris. Mr. Donnelly?
Mr. Donnelly. Oh, I'm sorry. On the same question?
Senator Burris. No, this is another question for you,
because I'm trying to deal with your 800,000-soldier force.
Now, given the fact that we don't have a draft, how do you
think we can get that number up, when it's all volunteer?
Mr. Donnelly. First of all, the original All-Volunteer
Force that we raised, trained, and equipped for the Cold War
was that size, 780,000 men. It was all volunteer. It was highly
professional. Senator Lieberman noted at the beginning of this
hearing that the Army had already reached the increased size of
547,000 that originated with the plan that originated with the
Bush administration, that President Obama has indicated his
support for. The Army has reached that number early, before it
was planned to reach that number.
I lament to say this in some ways, but in difficult
economic times the task of recruiting is going to be a little
bit easier. Also, one of the big failings of President Bush was
his failure to appeal to Americans to serve their country in
uniform specifically. I would certainly think that President
Obama has unique moral authority to make that kind of appeal to
Americans.
So I think actually getting the force size up is quite an
achievable goal, and maintaining the quality is also quite
achievable. We shouldn't measure quality by inputs per se, but
rather by the performance of the force in the field. All of us
have said, including the committee has noted, really the quite
remarkable performance of soldiers and marines over the last
couple years in responding to challenges that they did not
anticipate and in fighting a different kind of war than they
were originally organized, trained, and equipped for.
So actually I feel quite confident in the Army's and the
Marine Corps's ability as institutions to shape young Americans
to perform superbly under very stressful conditions. I just
think we need to give them the means to execute the range of
tasks that we have asked for.
Senator Burris. Is there any conflict between you and Dr.
Krepinevich? Because he just said that the quality of the
soldiers when you expand is going down.
Mr. Donnelly. First of all, the measures that we're
referring to are things like scores on Army aptitude tests and
high school graduates and things like that. There has been a
marginal diminution in that quality in the last couple years.
On the other hand, when we again look at the performance of the
force in the field we haven't seen much repeat of things like
the Abu Ghraib scandal or the Haditha killings, for example.
So in my judgment, the performance of the force as we see
it and how it operates on a day-in and day-out basis really
exceeds what I think any of us would have guessed on September
10. If you had told us on September 10, 2001, what was coming
down the pike, we would all have said: ``Oh my gosh, this is
really probably going to break the Army.'' For all the stress
the Army and the Marine Corps have taken on, they've performed
remarkably well, in my judgment. So when we measure quality as
output, I'm quite impressed.
Senator Burris. I see my time has expired. I better go
vote.
Senator Inhofe. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your
testimony. It's kind of good that you don't all agree with each
other and that helps me out a little bit. We can always find
someone who agrees with me and then I can concentrate on them.
[Laughter.]
Senator Burris was pursuing this force strength and the
capabilities and whether we could sustain those numbers. I have
to tell you, I was dead wrong. I was a product of the draft
before most of these guys were born, and I never believed prior
to September 11, seeing the performance that I saw, that we
would have the quality that we have.
The retention has been very good. The recruitment's been
good. Generally that helps a little bit when you're in combat,
to have those results. Do you think we can sustain that kind of
retention and recruitment that we've been enjoying here
recently?
Mr. Donnelly. I'll volunteer. I would never take that for
granted.
Senator Inhofe. No, I know that.
Mr. Donnelly. The thing that really worries me is that we
don't know where the cliff is until we've taken one step too
far. I think the force has responded in ways that far exceed
what our expectations would have been. We're continuing to put
it under a huge amount of stress, and a lot of that just goes
to the fundamental question of asking a small amount of people
to do a whole lot of work, and we have to spread the load a
little bit more by having a larger force.
Senator Inhofe. I agree with that. I think I have probably
made more trips over there than any other member has and I do
take it very seriously. But let me just go on another line of
questioning.
Dr. Krepinevich, I heard your testimony and I know that a
lot of the decisions that are made today in terms of force
strength and modernization are made in conjunction with
expectations of what our needs are going to be. I think that
you guys are smart and we have a lot of smart generals, and if
you're asked what we're going to have to have 10 years from now
you're going to come out with some real good answers and you're
probably going to be wrong.
I mentioned several times that in my last year in the House
and on the House Armed Services Committee, we had someone
testifying that said 10 years from now we won't need ground
troops. So as needs change and times change, I've come to the
conclusion that, even though I know that others are in
different positions than I am, that we really should have the
best of everything for all possible contingencies. We don't
know the asymmetric threats that are out there, or maybe the
conventional threats.
But in terms of strike vehicles, for example, I was very
proud of General John Jumper--this was before he was Chief of
the Air Force--back in the late 1990s talking about the fact
that other countries, and he was referring to Russia at that
time, the SU series fighter aircraft, were cranking out strike
vehicles better than the best that we had, which at that time
was F-15s and F-16s.
To me, I find that just unacceptable. We've had quite a bit
of discussion here about FCS. My feeling there is that if you
take any element that's on the ground that our troops are using
in the defense of themselves and of America, I think they
should be the best of everything. When you see some elements of
FCS, of what we're using right now like the Paladin and the
Non-Line of Sight Cannon. We went through this thing where we
were going to get to the Crusader and correct that thing, and
then that was axed. I'm a Republican and of course George Bush
was a Republican. He did that with almost no warning.
Then I thought that was a blessing in disguise as the
months and the years went by because that led us into the FCS
mentality of just doing something where we can be superior in
every way. I can remember telling this committee that the
Paladin was our best cannon at that time. You had to actually
get out and swab the breach after every shot, World War II
technology. Five countries, including South Africa, had a
better cannon than we did. So I found that to be unacceptable.
I think it was the first confirmation hearing of Donald
Rumsfeld when I said the same thing. I think our kids should
have the best of everything. I said, ``how do you get there if
you would agree with me?'' He said: ``Well, it has to do with
the overall funding,'' and we went through the entire 20th
century with 5.7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) to
support the military, and we went down to as low as just under
3 percent at the end of the 1990s, and where should we be?
Well, he gave me his opinion of where we should be. Let me
just ask you all. You've given a lot of thought to this. Where
do you think we should be in terms of overall funding to defend
America?
Mr. Donnelly. I will always step to a quiet microphone, but
I'd defer to Andy or Pete to go first.
Senator Inhofe. I think I'm going to like your answer
better than I get from the rest of them. [Laughter.]
Mr. Donnelly. Andy I think has rightly suggested that the
United States should employ its competitive advantages, the
things that we have that our adversaries or potential
adversaries don't have. One of the things that we have is
money. Even allowing for our current economic distress, we're a
very rich society. You are quite right, we were able to sustain
during the Cold War on a 50-year basis 5, 6, or 7 percent of
GDP on defense.
So I think we are quite capable of paying at a level of 4.5
or 5 percent absolutely indefinitely until the end of time. So
we can afford the military power that we need, and to constrain
our strategy to a budget number rather than build a force that
will support our strategic requirements seems to me to be
looking through the telescope from the wrong end.
Senator Inhofe. I agree with that.
Any thoughts on that?
Dr. Krepinevich. A couple, Senator. I think perhaps even
more than money, the best thing we can do right now,
particularly at the beginning of a new administration, the
first new administration since September 11, is to engage in
some detailed in-depth strategic thinking. We don't have an
unlimited amount of resources, so whatever we choose to spend,
we want to ensure that we spend it the most effective way
possible.
President Eisenhower, in conducting probably the best
strategic review of any President since the end of World War
II, gave three pieces of guidance to the people who would be
conducting his review for him, and he actively participated in
it. The three pieces were: first, I will not support any
strategy that undermines the economic foundation of this
country, because he saw that as the way of preserving what Tom
Donnelly says is an enduring source of American competitive
advantage, the ability to in a sense compete on a scale that is
impossible for others. Repairing our economic foundation, I
think, needs to be a major consideration. We talk about
tradeoffs and where are we going to allocate resources.
Second, he said: I will not support any strategy that
cannot be supported by those countries we deem to be key allies
of the United States. Here again, an important part of
strategy. You can outsource certain things. Cultivating allies,
I realize, it's not easy to do. But the point is, to the extent
that we can do that we create an advantage for ourselves and we
have resources either to build a bigger army that Tom Donnelly
wants or to do other things that are important to us in terms
of national priorities.
The third piece of guidance was that the President said:
You should not assume that we will be in an improved situation
after a general war. Essentially, he was ruling out a
preventive war against the Soviet Union that had a small
nuclear capacity at the time.
So I think the ability to craft a strategy that plays to
your advantages is important. For example, what I have been
talking about is our advantages do not lie in building an ever
bigger Army, at ever greater expense. Manpower is not an
advantage for us in so many ways. What is an advantage is the
manpower we have is very technically capable and very well-
educated relative to most of the rest of the world.
As Tom said, we still can compete in terms of scale. We
still have a lot of equipment and we can buy a lot of
equipment. If Pakistan were to fail tomorrow, stabilizing
Pakistan according to the levels of forces that we have
deployed to Iraq, for example, would require over 100 American
brigades on a consistent basis. That is a real problem, but
that is not a real solution.
I do think the solution that was developed in the latter
part of the Bush administration, that I hope will be sustained
by the Obama administration, is we can provide the trainers, we
can provide the advisers, we can equip these people with combat
vehicles, artillery, and helicopters, whatever is needed.
That's our strong suit. We should play to our strong suit. We
should get the manpower of other countries engaged, not our
own. Our manpower can be used far more productively in other
ways.
Senator Inhofe. I understand that and I agree with that,
and I know that probably all three of you would be very strong
supporters of 1206, 1207, the Commanders' Emergency Response
Program, the Combatant Commanders Initiative Fund,
International Military Education and Training, and all of
those. We want to do that and we want to be prepared to do
that.
My only point is this, and I find there's something in my
own mind, perhaps my narrow mind, that it is almost un-American
that we would have a soldier on the battlefield or in the air
or in the water that would be up against something that is
better than what we have. That's my goal. I'd like to get there
some time during my lifetime where we wouldn't have that
problem.
Dr. Krepinevich. I think that certainly was a major
concern, as you pointed out, during the Cold War. We were in a
race with the Soviets. We built a tank, they tried to build a
better tank. We built a plane, they'd try and build a better
plane.
There really isn't anyone out there right now that's trying
to build a better version of the Abrams tank or the F-22
fighter.
Senator Inhofe. No, no. But if you take the clock back 10
or 15 years, there was somebody out there. Russia was actually
making something that would be competitive. I can go into the
details and you already know those as to how that would compare
to our strike vehicles when I first started talking about this.
My own opinion is that we don't know what our needs are
going to be in the future. It could be that we're not going to
have the ground capability or the need for it. But I don't want
to take that risk. The only way I see to make this happen is to
have the best of everything.
I agree with you, they're not out there right now. I think
that's because we have gotten beyond that point and we are
talking about the F-22, we are talking about the Joint Strike
Fighter. But for a while that was impaired.
Dr. Krepinevich. The way I've always tried to look at these
situations is from the point of view of what are the major
problems that the U.S. military has to be able to solve. I'm
getting a little bit off track, but I think right now we have a
problem in that we are being progressively locked out of our
ability to project power to the Far East and to the Persian
Gulf. With the advent of the kind of capability that Hezbollah
showed in the second Lebanon war, we are going to be
progressively finding it difficult when we can project power to
defend those things that we seize forward because of the growth
of these extended range rockets, artillery, missiles, and
mortars.
We are going to be confronted with irregular warfare on a
persistent basis, and we are already being challenged in what
the military calls the global commons, which is space and cyber
space, by the Chinese, and progressively the seas and the
undersea, most likely by the Chinese as well. That is a wide
array of problems that I think are clear, they're unambiguous.
There may be others that surprise us, but I think these are
definite.
I think when Secretary Gates talks about a balanced defense
he means you have to cover all these bases. When I talk about a
balanced Army, I talk about an Army that I think is overly
balanced in favor of traditional conventional war and not
sufficiently focused on irregular war.
Senator Inhofe. I don't have the faith in the accuracy of
our crystal ball right now, and that's my major concern.
But thank you all for your testimony and for your comments.
I've abused the time a little bit, but you guys weren't
here.
Senator Lieberman [presiding]. That was interesting.
Thanks, Senator Inhofe.
Let me come back to Dr. Mansoor and ask you a question
about FCS. Based on what you said and to put it maybe more
simply than I should, the choice here is between developing or
investing in systems, equipment, and hardware that is
responsive to actual strategic challenges that the Army faces,
and on the other hand, and I'm going to spin it a little bit,
modernizing for the sake of modernizing. I understand that's
generally a critical comment about FCS.
So let me ask you, if you had your druthers, what would you
be investing in now in terms of better equipping the Army to
face the challenges that it will face in the future? As part of
that answer, are there any components of FCS that you
particularly would continue to develop?
Dr. Mansoor. Thank you, Senator. Actually, I think that
we're on the right track in terms of equipping our force for
counterinsurgency operations. We've spent about $20 billion
equipping our Army with the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected
vehicles that have proven very, very valuable. The Stryker
vehicle has also proven very valuable.
Abrams tanks and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, when
properly modernized and added with added applique armor and so
forth, have been proven very effective. These are the kinds of
things that we can continue to provide our forces with as they
reset and continue to fight these kinds of wars. Meanwhile, we
can continue to conduct the research and development to reduce
that tactical and technical risk that Dr. Krepinevich talked
about, rather than pushing FCS quickly into the hands of our
forces, because it is designed really for high-end combat that
no one at this table, I think, believes is going to happen in
the next decade or two. Therefore, we have some time to get it
right.
In terms of the pieces of the system, because it is being
spiraled out bit by bit into the field, there are pieces of the
system that are really useful. I think the network once it's
proved viable is a very valuable tool, no matter what platforms
it's used on. The unmanned aerial vehicles, especially if
they're armed, have been proven very useful both in
counterinsurgency warfare and in high-end combat. So those are
two examples of systems that I would continue to push forward
into the hands of our troops. There are undoubtedly others. As
Senator Inhofe said, we definitely need to replace our
artillery systems because they're aging beyond the useful life
of the system.
So pieces of FCS are really crucial, but we don't
necessarily need the entire system of systems all at the same
time.
Senator Lieberman. Okay, that's very helpful.
Tom, did you want to add something?
Mr. Donnelly. Yes. It's going to be really hard to pick FCS
apart. That's both the blessing and the curse of the system.
The network, which I think all of us think is probably the
signal attribute of the FCS system, is not going to be as
valuable absent the JTRS or on an M-1, M-2 platform.
So it would be really difficult to go back to the old
system of Army modernization, where you did it in a piecemeal
fashion, and retain the value of the network. The network will
be limited by the most constraining aspect of the things that
plug into it. So you can do it and if you're in a budget
constrained situation you may have to do it. But you're going
to end up getting less return on your investment if you start
taking FCS apart in that way.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks. Thanks for that addition.
Let me turn the discussion quickly to the question of the
size of the Army. Mr. Donnelly has put out a number, but
basically a concept, too. He has said go back to the 780,000 we
were at before. I took you mean to meet both the conflicts
we're going to face, but also to go back to a rotation which
allowed more time here or at base, and also to allow for more
time for individual members of the Army to go to the kind of
educational opportunities that you talked about and have better
training.
Dr. Krepinevich and Dr. Mansoor, please give us your
thoughts about the ideal size of the Army and whether, if you
reject Mr. Donnelly, you do for reasons of what you consider to
be reality, which is we're not going to pay for that size Army,
or whether you think really it's more than we need. To some
extent I hear you, Andy, saying maybe it is more than we need;
even if we could afford it, we'd be better with a smaller force
than that, but one that's highly trained, high quality.
Dr. Krepinevich. Mr. Chairman, Tom spoke about the Army
that I served in, the 781,000-soldier Army. That was a garrison
army. The working environment was very different from the
working environment of soldiers today. That's one of the
reasons why the cost of a soldier has gone up 45 percent in
real terms over the last decade. Even soldiers that according
to the Army's own metrics are of lower quality, that cost has
gone up substantially.
The costs on an annual basis for the 92,000 Army and Marine
Corps plus-up is estimated at somewhere around $13 to $15
billion. That's $13 to $15 billion every year. That's on a
defense budget that is already, according to Congressional
Budget Office estimates, short an average of $25 to $50 billion
a year as far as the eye can see. Adding another 200,000 plus
soldiers to the Army, just doing a linear extrapolation, is
going to cost you about $30 billion on top of the $14 or $15
billion we're already paying.
So that's $45 billion a year every year. Now, would I like
to have a larger, high quality Army? Yes. But I think we've all
had a wake-up call in recent months of just how difficult our
financial situation is. Once we get done spending however many
trillion dollars we're going to spend, we're going to be
working like the devil, according to rosy estimates, to get
deficits down to what only a year or 2 ago, we considered
entirely intolerable.
My thinking is that this is not a realistic option, however
desirable it might be. Again, even if you could create that
Army, there are contingencies that can happen before we go home
this evening; if Pakistan unravels for example. Pakistan's
population is about 180 million. The population of Iraq is
about 27 million. The equivalent number of brigades we would
have to send in to try and begin to stabilize Pakistan is well
over 100. You can't build an Army big enough to deal with some
of these contingencies, and that's why I keep going back to the
path to salvation, if you will, is using our strengths--
training, advising, and equipping indigenous and allied forces.
We do have allies. They do realize they live in tough
neighborhoods.
I would gladly give back a good portion of that 65,000
increase if I could thicken up the officer and NCO corps,
because I want those people to be available to do that training
and advising while I keep my current brigade force as a surge
emergency force, and again not orient more of the Active
brigades on being able to do that well, as opposed to being
deployed and having to play Mr. Potatohead, pulling all this
off and plugging all that in to see if we can get a unit that
can operate at a fairly high level of effectiveness in that
environment.
Senator Lieberman. Would you give us a number? Would you go
up some if you could from the 547,000?
Dr. Krepinevich. If it was a no-cost option, I suspect I
would go up. My emphasis wouldn't be on adding six additional
brigade combat teams. It would be on thickening up the
institutional Army with officers and NCOs and creating the
kinds of support elements that Dr. Mansoor was talking about in
terms of engineers, in terms of intelligence elements and so
on, to make those brigade combat teams much more effective in
an irregular warfare environment.
Senator Lieberman. Dr. Mansoor, I'm way over my time and I
want to give Senator Thune the opportunity. Can you give me a
quick answer to the question, or do you want to wait until the
next round?
Dr. Mansoor. I can do it real quick, Mr. Chairman. In my
testimony I called for restructuring our brigade combat teams
to make them more capable in both a counterinsurgency and in a
conventional warfare environment, which would include
additional infantry, engineers, and staff elements. That would
cost, I think, about 45,000 troops.
We also need to increase our officer corps to provide the
kind of advisory capability that is really crucial to our
national security, and we need to create an institutional home
for this advisory effort as well.
I think when you add all that to the current Army end
strength you get somewhere around 600,000.
Senator Lieberman. Great. Thank you.
Senator Thune.
Senator Thune. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, the Army maintains sets of prepositioned stocks
of combat support vehicles for contingency use. My question is,
given the threats that we face in the 21st century, are these
stocks still important? If so, should DOD ensure that these
stocks are maintained at high levels and expand the program?
Mr. Donnelly. Anybody in particular?
Senator Thune. Nobody in particular. Fire away.
Mr. Donnelly. I think they are less, the environment has
changed. I think those were hedges made against uncertainty and
particularly uncertainty in the Persian Gulf and the Middle
East when you come to land force sets. Again, my view would be
that we pretty clearly see, at least for planning purposes, the
road ahead in the Middle East. That doesn't mean that I don't
think that land force equipment sets don't need to be flushed
out. I just don't think that they need to be in prepositioning
sets sitting in Diego Garcia or in warehouses in Kuwait.
Andy has suggested that one of our strengths could be
equipping new allies like the Iraqi army or the Afghan National
Army. So there would be needs to again build up equipment
stocks to do that, and also to replenish our own equipment
stocks.
But as to the narrow question of the prepositioning sets of
the kind that we used to have, if you gave me more vehicles and
more stuff, I'd use them for other things first.
Dr. Krepinevich. Senator, I think that's a very good
question. One of the things I think that our experience in the
1990s led us to believe is that we don't suffer any attrition
in combat. We lost very little in the Gulf War, very little in
the contingencies in the Balkans, Somalia, and other places.
Yet the Army has really been confronted with a lot of attrition
of its equipment in these wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, to
the point where we have brigades coming back to the United
States that essentially have to leave a lot of their equipment
overseas, and they remain generally underequipped as they begin
to train up for the next deployment.
So I would say, whether you want to call them war reserve
stocks or something along those lines, we need to build up that
kind of an inventory because our industrial base can't surge
the way it did during World War II, cranking out enormous
quantities of equipment.
I would also say that we need to think about how we would
equip indigenous forces, because I agree with Senator Inhofe,
while we might take the approach of wanting the best for our
young soldiers and marines, limits on resources and just other
hard factors may say we don't have to give the best of
everything to indigenous forces or to our allies. We can give
them equipment that is good enough because we do have resource
constraints.
I've spoken to a few Army generals who privately admit that
this makes a lot of sense if you're going to have a strategy
that says the sooner we equip the Afghan National Army, the
sooner we can train them, the sooner we can get them in the
field, the sooner we can begin to draw down our commitment
there and release our forces for other commitments.
So I think the issue of war reserve stocks makes a lot of
sense, both in terms of our own forces suffering attrition, but
also in terms of rapidly being able to equip indigenous and
allied forces.
Dr. Mansoor. Senator, the prepositioned stocks tend to be
heavy brigade combat team sets. The issue with the Army is it
has so many different types of equipment that it's almost
impossible to find a unit that can fall into that set of
specific equipment and use it off the shelf. In addition, the
sets being arrayed in the Middle East and Korea and elsewhere
are very vulnerable to first strikes.
So if I had to make a choice I would save the money by
getting rid of the stocks and putting more money into fast
sealift.
Senator Thune. Let me ask you a little bit about the Army.
It maintains that by organizing around brigade combat teams and
supporting brigades it'll be better able to meet the challenges
of the 21st century security environment, specifically to
jointly fight and to win the global war on terrorism. How do
each of you think that modularity is progressing and what
changes, if any, would you recommend?
Mr. Donnelly. My view would be that I think modularity has
gone too far. As Dr. Mansoor suggested, we redesigned a brigade
that's a heck of a lot smaller and took the manpower savings
from FCS being able to perfectly see the battlefield before we
had the technological capabilities to do so. It's not
surprising that every time a brigade combat team deploys to a
theater of operations now they get plussed up a lot with a lot
of the same things, although some very different things that we
took away, such as military intelligence, engineers, military
police, et cetera, et cetera.
So the brigade organization that we currently have is a
very fragile organization, and in a long war environment you
have to ask yourself, at least above the brigade echelon,
whether we are well-configured for long-term sustainment
operations. In Afghanistan, for example, we're going to require
a lot more support forces just because of the nature of the
dispersed and the immature, undeveloped nature of the country.
So we have designed a perfect little brigade that's a big
risk.
Senator Thune. Anybody else?
Dr. Krepinevich. Just two quick observations. First, I
think the idea of having brigades that are independently
deployable certainly has been a benefit to us and allowed us a
certain amount of flexibility.
Second, the Army is planning to have 19 heavy brigade
combat teams, and 0 brigades that are oriented on irregular
warfare. There was some discussion in the Army G-8 staff
element about security cooperation brigade combat teams, and I
thought, while the Army hasn't followed through on that, some
of the ideas in there fall along the lines that Dr. Mansoor was
talking about. I would like to see about 15 brigades in the
Active Force and 15 brigades in the National Guard that are
oriented on those kinds of missions. The fact that they would
be independently deployable, I think, would enable them not
necessarily even to have to deploy as a brigade. They might be
able to send a battalion to the Philippines to deal with a
specific request, a company to Kenya, and so on. To have
brigades that in a sense can help keep the lid on things and
build partner capacity, as opposed to letting things get out of
control and us having to do it ourselves and deal with a much
more threatening environment.
Dr. Mansoor. Senator, I would have to agree with my
colleagues here at the table. The modular brigades as currently
organized and equipped have insufficient staff for the missions
they're being called upon to execute. They lack engineers and
military police. Most importantly from both conventional and
irregular warfare standpoints, they don't have enough troops.
They lack a third maneuver unit, which almost every historical
study would indicate is needed both in conventional warfare and
would add additional infantry as well for counterinsurgency
warfare.
So I think the Army made a good decision going to modular
brigades and then designed them incorrectly.
Senator Thune. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all very much. I appreciated very much your
testimony and your very candid observations.
Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Senator Thune. I agree, it's
been a very productive afternoon. As we mentioned earlier, we
have to go over to a briefing with Ambassador Holbrooke on
Afghanistan and Pakistan. But I want to thank you.
We have some big decisions to make. It may be that we will
ultimately not make a big decision about the size of the Army,
although I think we should. Maybe we'll be forced to do that by
amendment on the floor. But there's no question that the
administration's budget will confront us with some big
decisions about how to equip the Army. I could be mistaken, but
I don't think I am. I think there's going to be some
recommendations for change.
Really, what you've said today and what you've written in
your very thoughtful prepared statements is very helpful to us.
As a matter of fact, I'm going to give you a request right now,
that when the President's budget does come in in detail, I
invite each of you to respond, particularly on what it does
about equipment and systems, and offer us some alternatives if
you think there are some better ones beyond what we've talked
about today.
Thank you very much. You've done a real service to the
committee and we hope in turn to the country.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Questions for the record with answers supplied follow:]
Questions Submitted by Senator Evan Bayh
SUPPLEMENTAL BUDGET REQUESTS
1. Senator Bayh. Dr. Krepinevich and Mr. Donnelly, according to the
recently signed Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq, American combat
troops will begin leaving Iraq very soon. How do you believe the
administration should address the significant need for equipment
recapitalization and reset while also weaning the Department off of
supplemental budget requests?
Dr. Krepinevich. The Army has estimated the reset cost at $12 to
$13 billion per year, and the Marine Corps has estimated its costs at
$5 billion per year. Funding in previous supplemental appropriations
has been more than sufficient to meet these costs. The budget request
for fiscal year 2010 for Overseas Contingency Operations includes $17.6
billion for this purpose, which also appears to be adequate given the
Services' previous statements. Since we have many years of experience
in the current conflicts, the costs of maintaining and repairing
equipment should be more predictable. Thus, assuming the conflicts in
Afghanistan and Iraq remain roughly at their current levels of
intensity, the Services should now be able to accurately forecast these
costs in their annual budget requests.
Mr. Donnelly declined to respond in time for printing. When
received, answer will be retained in committee files.
2. Senator Bayh. Dr. Krepinevich and Mr. Donnelly, what risks does
the Department of Defense face by continuing to rely so heavily on the
supplemental process?
Dr. Krepinevich. Supplemental appropriations are a useful tool for
dealing with unforeseeable costs that cannot be accommodated through
the regular appropriations process. Supplemental appropriations have
been used to fund previous wars, especially at the onset of conflict,
though not to the extent that they have been used in the current wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Vietnam, for example, supplemental
appropriations were used almost exclusively in the beginning (fiscal
years 1965-1966) when the costs and duration of the conflict were
uncertain. In later years, the Department gradually transitioned
funding of the war to the base budget. By fiscal year 1970, nearly all
of the war costs were funded through the base budget.
Some of the disadvantages of continuing to fund the wars through
supplemental appropriations are that the funding process lacks
strategic planning and erodes discipline in the DOD budgeting process.
The usual process of planning and programming for future years forces
the Services to prioritize needs and to think more strategically about
where to make investments. The use of supplemental has undermined that
process by allowing items that are not funded in the base budget to be
added to a supplemental request--thereby short-circuiting the
prioritization process. Without strategic planning and prioritization,
the risk is that these funds will be spent on misplaced priorities and
weapon systems that do not fit into a long-range strategy. Furthermore,
many of the items in the supplemental appropriations are not one-time
costs. They incur ongoing operations and maintenance expenses that can
tie the Services' hands when it comes to funding future modernization
efforts.
Mr. Donnelly declined to respond in time for printing. When
received, answer will be retained in committee files.
PROCUREMENT AND RESOURCING
3. Senator Bayh. Dr. Krepinevich, Mr. Donnelly, and Dr. Mansoor,
how do you believe the administration should resource forces deployed
to Iraq and Afghanistan? Specifically, how would you advise they
balance the need for counterinsurgency capabilities of today with the
conventional deterrence capabilities that may be needed for tomorrow?
Dr. Krepinevich. For a variety of reasons, including the difficulty
of preparing for both irregular and conventional conflicts, the Army
has continued to place its institutional center of gravity squarely in
the area of conventional warfare. This is true both for the Army's core
modernization program, the Future Combat Systems (FCS), and its overall
force structure. While the FCS program is ``optimized'' for
conventional operations, and while the Army, in the interim, plans to
field an Active component that arguably is overly weighted toward
conventional operations, the Service has also decided against fielding
brigades oriented on irregular warfare missions such as stability
operations, counterinsurgency, and foreign internal defense.
What, then, should the Army do differently? How can it best prepare
for irregular conflicts while still maintaining a dominant capability
for high-end conventional warfare? The answer lies in developing and
fielding a force fully capable of conducting and, if need be, surging
for irregular warfare operations, in addition to its capability to
conduct and surge for large-scale conventional operations. Should
either form of conflict prove protracted, the other wing of the force
could, over the course of the initial 12- to 15-month surge, undergo
training and the appropriate force structure modifications to enable it
to ``swing in'' behind the surge force to sustain operations.
What would this dual surge force look like? First, 15 Army Infantry
Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs) and 15 Army National Guard IBCTs would be
converted to Security Cooperation Brigade Combat Teams (SC BCTs),
oriented primarily for irregular warfare operations. With a 3:1
rotation base in the Active component and a 6:1 rotation base for the
Reserve component, this would allow for seven and a half SC BCTs to be
fielded on a sustained basis, serving as the Army's phase 0 forward
presence forces. It would also provide a pool of 30 brigades to draw
upon in the event that a major stability operations contingency
requires a surge of forces.
Second, because the best strategy when addressing the threat of
irregular warfare is to build partner capacity and engage in other
preventive measures before a friendly country is at risk, the Army
should also develop and maintain a significant training and advisory
capability that can be deployed on short notice when necessary. The
officers and noncommissioned officers for this mission can be sourced
from the institutional Army--the Army's staffs and education
facilities, which should be either fully staffed or slightly
overstaffed in anticipation of the demand for trainers and advisors.
Third, since the Army may need to fill any gaps in the U.S.
interagency effort to restore governance and enable economic
reconstruction, it should strongly consider maintaining the ability to
field Civil Operations, Reconstruction and Development Support (CORDS)
groups capable of providing advice, mentoring, and support to the host
nation's non-security institutions (including its civil administration
and its legal, economic, and healthcare sectors).
Finally, for high-end conventional operations, the Army's primary
capability should consist of 12 heavy BCTs (HBCTs), an armored cavalry
regiment, and 9 National Guard HBCTs. This would give the Army a surge
force of up to 21 HBCTs, in addition to the 6 Stryker BCTs in the
Active component, 1 Stryker BCT in the Reserve component, and 4
brigades of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)--a total of 32
heavy or ``middle-weight'' brigades, far in excess of what is likely to
be required for a conventional major combat operation.
The Army's centerpiece modernization program, the FCS, is really a
cluster of 14 systems of various types. These systems will rely heavily
on being linked to an overarching battle network that also ties them
together with individual soldiers and the U.S. military's joint battle
network. While revolutionary in its concept, given the many technical
challenges confronting it, the FCS program may not be executable at an
acceptable cost. Furthermore, it may not be technically possible to
create the battle network, as currently envisioned by the Army, or to
create it within the timeframe projected. Finally, as the FCS is
optimized for conventional warfare, it is not clear it represents the
best use of resources in this era of protracted irregular warfare
confronting the Army. Given these considerations, Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates made the right decision to cancel the FCS ground combat
systems, while looking to harvest as many FCS capabilities as possible.
At the same time, the Army should strongly consider establishing
war reserve stocks of equipment to support irregular warfare
operations, both to enable the rapid buildup of indigenous forces as
necessary, and to replace the equipment of Army BCTs damaged or
destroyed in the course of conducting irregular warfare operations.
Ultimately, this approach would yield a force more balanced between
the demands of irregular and conventional operations.
Mr. Donnelly declined to respond in time for printing. When
received, answer will be retained in committee files.
Dr. Mansoor. Our land forces clearly need a set of balanced
capabilities to fight the wars we are engaged in today while hedging
against the risk of a much more dangerous conventional conflict in the
future. I do not see these requirements as mutually exclusive.
Designing effective formations that can operate effectively in both
conventional and irregular wars is the most important issue facing the
Army today.
The current BCT organization is fatally flawed. Fixing the
structure will give the Service added capabilities in both conventional
and irregular wars. Brigades that are tailored for counterinsurgency
operations would include a third maneuver battalion (primarily
infantry), a full engineer battalion, more military police, added staff
capabilities, and additional intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance assets--particularly armed reconnaissance units that can
engage the people and fight for information. The need for more infantry
and engineers is especially critical. Reconfiguring the Army's BCTs
will make them more capable not just in counterinsurgency warfare, but
across the spectrum of conflict. I estimate these added capabilities,
when applied across the force, would require an additional 45,000 to
50,000 soldiers to the Army's end strength.
Another important issue is the size of the officer and
noncommissioned officer corps. The officer and noncommissioned officer
corps are too small to provide the numbers of advisers that are
required to meet our national security needs. Advisers help to organize
and train foreign military forces so that they can defend their own
states, rather than having U.S. forces continually engaged on foreign
soil. In an environment where a number of key strategic allies are
threatened with insurgencies, advisers are increasingly critical to our
national security. Advisers are taken mainly from the pool of mid-
career officers and noncommissioned officers. Due to human resource
decisions made in the 1990s, the Army and Marine Corps do not have
enough slack in their personnel systems to provide the increasing
numbers of advisers called for by our combatant commanders. To meet
this need, we should create an institutional home for advisers in the
Armed Forces, along with increasing the size of the officer and
noncommissioned officer corps to enable the armed services to provide
the numbers of advisers necessary to meet the growing need.
4. Senator Bayh. Dr. Krepinevich, Mr. Donnelly, and Dr. Mansoor, if
you were rebaselining the defense budget by taking into account lessons
learned from Iraq, Afghanistan, and war on terror needs, what weapons
systems and training competencies would be your highest procurement
priorities?
Dr. Krepinevich. One of the most important missions our forces
carry out today is training and advising indigenous forces in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and other nations so that they can provide adequate
security for their own people. The Army maintains that the advise-and-
assist mission should be one of the core capabilities in which all
soldiers are trained. To date, the soldiers used in this capacity have
been rotated into this mission area for durations of a few months to a
year. Yet it takes time for soldiers to develop a high degree of
competency in the advise-and-assist mission. Given the lessons learned
in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army should consider establishing a cadre
of trained officers and noncommissioned officers that are specialized
in this mission.
If we are to pursue a strategy of the ``indirect approach'' to
irregular warfare, whereby we build up the ability of indigenous forces
to provide for their own country's security, and deploy large numbers
of our own ground combat forces only in extremis, then we will need to
establish stocks of unit sets of equipment for these indigenous forces.
It does little good to train and advise host nation forces if they
cannot be properly equipped. These ``war reserve stocks'' would
comprise equipment more suited to irregular warfare and to the skills
of local forces. This equipment would be less sophisticated--and far
less expensive--than comparable equipment provided to U.S. troops.
As for equipping U.S. troops, I believe the next big thing in
irregular warfare will be the enemy's use of guided rockets, artillery,
mortars, and missiles (G-RAMM). This follows logically from Hezbollah's
use of unguided RAMM during the Second Lebanon War. In that conflict
over 4,000 RAMM projectiles were fired into Israel. Defenses need to be
established against this threat. Among the priorities for investigation
and potential procurement are directed-energy interceptors (especially
solid-state laser systems), and equipment that would assist ``hunter-
killer'' teams to suppress G-RAMM launch sites, suppress attacks, and
intercept projectiles in their early (or boost) phases. Among the
systems that might play a useful role in addressing this challenge are
long endurance aircraft (manned and unmanned) equipped with kinetic or
directed-energy interceptors, and advanced unattended ground sensors.
Mr. Donnelly declined to respond in time for printing. When
received, answer will be retained in committee files.
Dr. Mansoor. History suggests that the most effective modernization
programs are those aimed at meeting real strategic needs against
specific enemy threats. Our Armed Forces must therefore examine
carefully the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the wide
range of potential threats in other areas of the world, to determine
what capabilities they need. Modernizing our forces based on historical
military theories focusing on imagined or mirror-imaged enemies would
most likely lead to the creation of equipment ill-suited to the wars
our Nation will fight, now and in the future.
High on the list of required capabilities today is the development
of a wheeled combat vehicle with adequate combat capabilities and armor
protection for use in both irregular and conventional conflicts. Abrams
tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles are too heavy and their
tracks cannot withstand movement over extended distances. The Stryker
wheeled vehicle has proven its value in Iraq, but is too lightly armed
and armored. The Army and Marine Corps need to find a happy medium
between these two existing capabilities.
In Iraq and Afghanistan the distances covered by our combat forces
is vast, but most engagements are fought at ranges of less than 500
meters. The roadside bomb threat is substantial and growing. Mines and
underbelly improvised explosive devices are an increasing danger to our
forces. The Army and Marine Corps, therefore, should develop a capable
wheeled combat vehicle that can operate successfully against these
growing threats.
Our forces cannot simply rely on better information to protect
themselves and engage the enemy at extended distances. The fog,
friction, and uncertainty of war will ensure that our troops will
require the capability to engage in close-in combat in the future.
Provision of lightweight armor that can withstand roadside bomb and
mine blasts and rocket propelled grenade fire is therefore essential.
Our Nation should energize the scientific and industrial base to meet
this need. Advances in titanium refining technology, along with new
composite materials, suggest that finding a technological solution to
this need is not beyond our reach.
The Army and Marine Corps can increase the effectiveness of our
forces by networking them together with satellite or wireless command
and control systems. Work should be continued on the FCS network (now
divorced from the FCS ground platforms) to meet this need.
Aerial reconnaissance and fires are critical to the success of our
forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Armed unmanned aerial vehicles in
particular have proven critical and the production of these systems
should be increased. Although unmanned aerial vehicles have proven
their worth, capable manned helicopters are also essential as they meet
a variety of needs that unmanned systems cannot. The top priority in
this regard is the provision of an armed reconnaissance helicopter to
replace the aging OH-58D Kiowa Warrior.
The Army and the Marine Corps have already taken steps to increase
the training of their forces in counterinsurgency warfare, but more can
be done. Counterinsurgency warfare requires a host of added
competencies that preparation for conventional war does not address. In
particular, professional military education needs to be expanded to
ensure America's military leaders are intellectually prepared with a
broader, deeper grasp of the world in which we live to cope with the
requirements needed for the wars America will fight in the decades
ahead. In this vein, increased educational opportunities should be
provided to send the very best mid-grade officers for graduate
schooling at America's universities. Doing so will not only help them
prepare for the murky irregular wars of the 21st century, but will help
to bridge the divide between the military and American civil society as
well.
[Whereupon, at 4:05 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned.]