Tough Choices: Toward a True Strategic Review
Mini Teaser: The upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review will have to go beyond superficial plans, address the international environment squarely, assess real savings and the difficult political decisions that they will engender, and avoid budgetary sleights-of-ha
Well before Bill Clinton was re-elected to office, indeed long before
the Congress required a formal review of U.S. defense posture as part
of the Fiscal Year 1997 Defense Authorization Act, the Department of
Defense realized that such a review was inevitable. As early as 1995
Pentagon leadership recognized that it simply could not fund its
declaratory strategy, which called for supporting two major regional
conflicts (MRC) simultaneously. This strategy had accorded
insufficient attention to the seemingly endless expansion of
peacetime missions under the rubric of the catch-all phrase
"Operations Other Than War" (with its horrible acronym, OOTWA) that
marked the first Clinton term. Moreover, advertised savings from
infrastructure cuts, acquisition reform, and other longtime favorites
of budget cutters had failed to produce the extra resources needed to
support the two MRC force. Defense Department principals therefore
had no alternative but to reconsider the assumptions upon which it
had planned, programmed, and budgeted forces since Mr. Clinton's
first year in office. The Congressional legislation, drafted with
Pentagon input, merely added a bipartisan flavor to the bitter
strategic pill that the Defense Department's leadership knew it would
have to swallow.
But is a true strategic review likely to take place? There are few
indications that a thorough rethinking of American defense posture is
about to occur. The services, as well as related civilian agencies,
appear to be jockeying for programmatic and budgetary position in
much the same way as they did in the past. Long-standing panaceas
have not faded away either; on the contrary, the appeal of false
hopes seems greater than ever. Complicating an already gloomy
budgetary picture is the November 1996 decision to remain mired in
Bosnia, the Russian Duma's failure to ratify start ii, and increasing
pressures to deal with a ballistic missile threat that the General
Accounting Office asserts is nearer than the administration
acknowledges. Nevertheless, the very act of undertaking a Quadrennial
Defense Review, scheduled to be released this spring, affords
Congress and the nation a focused opportunity to ponder future
defense posture and strategy. It is an opportunity that should not be
wasted.
Can We Afford the Forces We Need?
The Congressional legislation mandating the review of American force
structure, coupled with an independent assessment by a "National
Defense Panel", cuts to the heart of the debate over military
sufficiency in the post-Cold War period. The Bush administration's
response to the changing international environment was to identify a
"Base Force" that postulated levels below which, the administration
asserted, the military could not defend America's interests
effectively. The Clinton administration's 1993 Bottom-Up Review (BUR)
carried the reductions authorized by the Base Force one step further,
while adding the strategic gloss of two MRCs. The bur was not
directed against any particular threat as Cold War force postures had
been. Nevertheless, the review posited scenarios that called for
essentially the same American response as did a Central Front war in
Europe. The enemy would launch a major cross-border land attack in a
region proximate to the sea, and with relatively little warning,
though enough of one to allow a major airlift of troops. In the bur's
case the enemy was twin-headed: North Korea would attack across the
38th Parallel; Iraq would attack Kuwait and/or Saudi Arabia. The bur
attempted to structure overall force levels by aggregating individual
building blocks--divisions, aircraft carrier task forces, and air
wings--that were required to meet these two disparate threats. It
also reflected America's proclivity to plan in terms of the past, in
this case our experiences in Korea and the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
In propounding the Base Force and the bur force, neither the Bush nor
Clinton administration looked squarely at America's changing
international situation, given the disappearance of what had been its
major adversary during the previous half century. In particular, the
bur did not address unfamiliar contingencies, and contained little
about the state of America's alliances; it merely noted their
existence. To be sure, it assumed that America expected to fight in
disparate future circumstances at the head of international
coalitions, but it postulated that U.S. "forces must be sized and
structured to preserve the flexibility and the capability to act
unilaterally, should we choose to do so."
More troubling was the fact that the Bottom-Up Review offered a force
that was simultaneously too much and too little for the roles the
United States was most likely to play during the early years of the
twenty-first century. America's two major crises of 1996--in Bosnia
and the Taiwan Straits--set parameters that highlighted the bur's
shortcomings at both ends of the military spectrum. On the one hand,
our ongoing involvement in Bosnia demonstrated that "peacekeeping"
was not a tertiary activity, as the bur had implied, but an ongoing
effort of serious political and budgetary significance. On the other
hand, the Taiwan Straits crisis of late winter indicated that the
forces identified in the bur fell short of those that would be needed
in major conflicts outside the scope of the Review.
The Bosnia operation indicated that the United States, for the first
time in its history, seemed prepared as a matter of course to
dedicate its military capacity in support of the principle of
collective security. The forces required to implement that principle,
within the rubric of multinational peacekeeping or peacemaking
activities, posed unique demands in terms of military skills and
materiel. The training and equipment necessary for these activities
no longer could be considered merely a "lesser included case",
subsumed within the demands of a potential war in Korea or the
Persian Gulf. Indeed, to the extent that peacekeeping promised to
become an increasingly dominant theme of American military strategy,
the Department of Defense would have to find funds to support that
activity. These funds would have to be either in addition to, or in
lieu of, those required by bur-driven force planning. Given budgetary
trends since the mid-1980s, it appeared that peacekeeping funding
would have to come at the expense of other capabilities.
As noted, however, the Bottom-Up Review also fell short of providing
for another potential set of requirements. Had the Taiwan Straits
crisis spun out of control, the United States could have found itself
at war with China. The role of ground forces, other than amphibious
forces, in such a confrontation would have been problematic; the
region is dominated by islands and littoral areas. Naval forces and
land-based aviation--if basing could be found--would have been taxed
to their limits. To the extent that ground forces were called for,
they would either have been of the amphibious variety or highly
mobile units that combined easy and rapid deployability with
considerable firepower. America's armored and mechanized forces would
have been largely superfluous to the conflict, yet they could not
have compensated for the removal of other forward and rapid deploying
units from other theaters worldwide. Thus, while the United States
might have been expected to prevail against China, it would have done
so at the expense of its ability to maintain its forward military
presence anywhere else in the world.
Yet the bur essentially preserved the Cold War allocation of forces
and resources among land, naval, and air forces. Its authors did not
consider that such an allocation could well be inappropriate to a
major regional contingency that was not a replay of the last
successful American war. Nor did it identify systems, such as the
Army's armored combat system, that could significantly increase the
flexible firepower available to ground forces. As in the case of
peacekeeping requirements, the resources needed to support a
contingency requiring greater levels of truly flexible forces could
only have come at the expense of other resources (and therefore forces)
validated by the Bottom-Up Review. Funding shortfalls, in a sense,
though, it would have been pointless for the Bottom-Up Review to
identify new needs since, in reality, there were insufficient
resources even to support the original bur-generated force levels.
The current resource shortfall stems directly from the philosophy
that governed the Clinton administration's basic approach to defense
matters during the first term.
President Clinton came to office emphasizing not only the priority of
domestic matters ("It's the economy, stupid"), but seeking both a $60
billion reduction in FY 1994-99 defense expenditures and a revised
approach to planning defense priorities. The Bottom-Up Review was
tailored to fit within budget ceilings that had already been framed
by the Office of Management and Budget for the future years of Mr.
Clinton's term. The OMB identified all but $13 million of the
five-year "savings" that the Clinton administration announced six
months earlier in April 1993, and promised to find the remainder
within the plan for fiscal years 1995-98. Forces and budgets seemed
to be in balance.
By the time of its public release, however, the bur was effectively a
dead letter. Within weeks of its appearance, budget constraints
forced the administration to lower its force level estimates from
those outlined in the Review. For example, the Review called for a
fleet of 346 ships by fiscal year 1999, whereas the administration
reported in January 1994 that it could at best support a force of
331. The bur likewise retreated from its postulated force of "up to"
184 bombers in fiscal year 1999, stating that it would be able to
field at most "approximately 140 bombers." The longer term budget
prognosis presaged a far greater gap between the bur's postulated
force levels and those likely to be achieved as a result of the
administration's resource plans. Estimates of the budget shortfall
varied from the administration's own belated acknowledgment in
December 1993 that it required an additional $25 billion through FY
2001, to estimates of shortfalls in excess of $250 billion through FY
2010. The latter foreshadowed a 50 percent reduction in active force
levels, thereby rendering the bur militarily unsustainable.
The shortfalls were due to several factors. First, the administration
took office with wildly optimistic notions of its ability to manage
reductions in defense overhead, to rein in the accelerating cost of
weapons system modernization, and to control the historical
exponential growth in operations and maintenance costs. Second, the
administration demonstrated a proclivity to commit American forces to
peacekeeping operations for which budget funds had not been
anticipated. Third, the administration expanded the level of defense
budget funding for non-defense activities, in effect employing
defense resources to support social welfare and other activities that
otherwise might not have been funded. Finally, the administration
pegged its long-range budget hopes on the extension of current low
inflation rates, allowing it to project savings in billions of
dollars. Each of these four factors deserves some elaboration.
Failure to control costs. The administration's optimism about its
ability to control costs was based in part on the expectation that it
would reap the budgetary rewards from the early phases of the base
closure process that had begun in 1987. This process had involved the
creation of a Commission to recommend base closures, thereby
depoliticizing an issue that otherwise would have been impossible to
resolve. The effort became politicized yet again, however, as the
Commission turned to those facilities that were more difficult
politically for the administration to close--notably bases in
California. The original plan for the elimination of seventy-seven
additional facilities in the 1995 round of closures was cut back by
about a third. Moreover, the Commission announced no timetable for
future base closures. Finally, even those bases that were nominally
closed often remained open to house other government agencies. As a
result of all this, the fiscal rewards of base closures simply did
not materialize as expected.
The administration also promised major savings from acquisition
reform, a promise that had been made many times in the past but that
had never been realized. This time, administration principals
asserted, the Clinton team was committed to increasing the
acquisition of off-the-shelf items that were not developed to
military specifications. It promised to cut back on the number and
complexity of specifications, and to speed up the acquisition system.
Yet it failed to reckon with the rigidity of a bureaucracy whose
survival instincts took precedence over any drive for efficiency. As
a result, the savings, such as they were, came far more slowly than
anticipated.
The administration also found that, like its predecessors, it could
not restrain the technology-driven increases in the costs of weapons
system development. One particular and troubling example involved the
much-vaunted F-22 aircraft. Designed to replace the Air Force F-15,
the F-22 is one of three new aircraft in various stages of
development, including the F-18 E&F upgrade of the F-18 C/D, and the
Joint Strike Fighter. The Air Force originally planned to build 648
F-22s at a projected cost of $75 billion. By late December 1996, the
program had been reduced by nearly one-third to 438 aircraft, while a
Defense Department Joint Estimating Team projected that costs could
rise as high as $80 billion, or $182 million per plane.
The price-driven reductions in the size of the F-22 purchase may not
be at an end, however. In order to contain costs, the Pentagon is
planning reductions in the number of test aircraft that it was
scheduled to acquire. "Success oriented" test plans invariably drive
up long-term costs. Adjustments that might have been identified prior
to production are only made after the plane's hard tooling has been
ordered; prices climb higher, and force levels drop even further.
The impact of the F-22's price increase also extends to other planned
aircraft programs. Should the F-22 schedule slip as a result of the
rise in costs, it will interfere with planned acquisition levels for
the F/A-18 E&F and the development-to-production profile of the Joint
Strike Fighter. Indeed, Congress has already alleged that the
administration underfunded the latter two programs when it increased
funding for both in its FY 1997 authorization bill. Clearly, the
prospects for acquiring these two systems at their projected force
levels are uncertain at best.
The impact of technological cost growth extends beyond aircraft to
all classes of weapons systems. The administration's FY 1997 plan for
missile modernization is a case in point. The Authorization Act added
$94 million to the President's request for precision-guided munitions
and a further $55 million for other programs identified by the
service chiefs (who calculated the annual procurement budget
shortfall at $60 billion) and not at all funded by the President's
budget. In both cases, requisite force levels would have been delayed
or not achieved at all without the infusion of these additional
resources.
Infatuation with peacekeeping. Bosnia represented a new high-water
mark for the administration's rather vaguely labeled national
security strategy of "engagement and enlargement", whose "central
goals" were "enhancing (American) security . . . promoting prosperity
at home [and] . . . promoting democracy" abroad. Yet even before the
United States joined NATO's Implementation Force (IFOR), that
strategy had already resulted in an unprecedented level of American
military activity in "operations other than war." By 1996 the Clinton
team had dispatched forces overseas on over twenty-five different
occasions, and had continued to operate forces on missions it
inherited from preceding administrations. The administration
invariably underestimated the cost--and length--of these operations,
and therefore found itself returning repeatedly to Capitol Hill for
supplemental appropriations.
The decision to dispatch ground forces to Bosnia was the most
egregious example of this practice. The Department of Defense
initially calculated the cost of the operation--from start to
finish--at $1 billion. By the end of FY 1996, that cost had more than
tripled. Then, immediately after the 1996 presidential election, Mr.
Clinton announced that 8,500 troops would remain in Bosnia past the
December 1996 IFOR withdrawal deadline. It was not made clear at the
time how long these troops, or some portion of them, would remain in
that troubled country, nor how much the operation would ultimately
cost.
Peacekeeping operations are funded from the operations and
maintenance (O&M) accounts unless the Congress specifically earmarks
funds for them. By underestimating the costs of these operations, the
Clinton administration virtually assured that they would be covered,
at least initially, by other O&M funds. Since these funds would have
been applied to training and readiness--both nominally high on the
administration's list of priorities--those activities in turn had to
be either curtailed or supported by funds diverted from still other
accounts. Ultimately, the modernization accounts replenished the O&M
shortfall, and the reduction in modernization funding meant that
older systems have remained in the force longer than anticipated,
while ongoing weapons programs have had to be "stretched." As always,
stretching out programs increases unit costs, and leads to purchases
of force levels even lower than those resulting from
technology-driven price increases.
Non-defense programs in the defense budget. The defense budget has
increasingly become the repository for programs having little if
anything to do with defense. With Congress as the primary culprit,
departmental expenditures on non-defense related programs rose from
$1.4 billion in FY 1990 to $4.6 billion three years later. By FY 1997
these accounts were in excess of $10 billion. They included funding
for environmental clean-up and compliance, security at the 1996
Olympic Games, and even breast cancer research. These funds were
drawn virtually in their entirety from the operations and maintenance
accounts, further aggravating O&M budgetary shortfalls.
Excessive optimism on inflation. The administration has also resorted
to projecting current low inflation rates through the future year
defense program. Despite consistent warnings from the Federal Reserve
Board that underlying inflation is likely to rise over the longer
term, the administration has identified budget "savings" from revised
inflation rates so as to offset other cost increases. Faced with a
shortfall for the FY 1996-2001 program that it acknowledged to be $49
billion, the administration identified $12.2 billion as savings due
to revised inflation and related cost-of-living estimates.
More outrageously, the Pentagon identified "over $4 billion . . . in
program additions" for FY 1997 as a result of revised inflation
estimates. These revisions, which derived from lowering estimated
annual inflation from 3.0 to 2.2 percent, allowed the administration
to "find" $1 billion for Bosnia in FY 1997. The administration also
claimed that "because of lower inflation, it takes $46 billion less
to buy the FY 96 defense program" and "the FY 1997 FYDP (future years
defense program) buys last year's program but also $30 billion
additional program [sic]." The revised estimate thus enabled the
administration to plan for a rise in procurement funding beginning in
fiscal year 1998, after that account reached its lowest budgeted
level since before the Korean War ($38.9 billion). This, in turn,
enabled the administration to claim that it had allocated additional
procurement funds in the 2000-02 time frame, to which it had deferred
the bulk of its procurement program.
All this is clearly disingenuous. It is unlikely that during the next
six years, when currently planned systems begin to be fielded and
operated, inflation rates will remain as low as they have been over
the past four years. There have not been four consecutive years with
similarly low rates since the 1950s. On the other hand, in two of the
past twenty years inflation exceeded double digits and in four others
it exceeded 8 percent. Leaving out the two years with double-digit
price growth, the average annual inflationary increase for the
remaining eighteen years exceeded 4.5 percent. Under these
circumstances, it would have been prudent to have retained the
assumed inflation rates of at least 3 percent for long-range budget
projections extending into the twenty-first century. As things stand
now, any increase in inflation through the year 2002 will have a
significant impact on the defense budget, further constraining annual
equipment purchases. The department would not only have to endure
further programmatic stretch-outs, but it would also be burdened
either by a further drop in force levels, or by increased O&M costs
to support weapons systems that otherwise should have been retired.
Neither option is especially welcome in the Pentagon.
Policy and budgetary considerations affecting force planning are
conditioned by sociological factors as well. The American public is
reluctant to tolerate casualties in any conflict other than one
clearly in defense of American vital interests. This in turn seems
congruent with the desire of some civilian and military observers to
capitalize on what has been termed the "revolution in military
affairs" (RMA). The RMA is meant to occur, according to former
Defense Secretary William Perry, "when the incorporation of new
technologies into military systems combines with innovative
operational concepts and organizational adaptations to fundamentally
alter the character and conduct of military operations." The
revolution, which focuses on remote sensors and long-range precision
strike weapons, on advances in command and control, and on the
components of "information warfare", seems to promise combat with
fewer troops and even fewer casualties. It therefore appears to be
the panacea for which the American public is looking.
The RMA, however, is unlikely to save the day. The command and
control technologies that comprise its core can be no better than the
inputs that feed it and the end use that is made of it. Artificial
intelligence can best help humans reach rational choices in
pre-ordained circumstances, but warfare is notorious for generating
circumstances that do not fall under this category. Moreover,
resource availability, the bane of current programs, will haunt RMA
technologies as well. Even if they can be developed and fielded as
weapons and systems, such technologies will cost far more than
current budgets provide. Only generally reduced force levels will
enable the so-called RMA to materialize, yet the joint chiefs of
staff have been as resistant to force level reductions as they have
been insistent that both procurement and research and development
funds be increased. Given budgetary constraints, this simply cannot
be accomplished--something has to give.
New Assumptions, New Savings
If it is to be a meaningful exercise, the Quadrennial Defense Review
(QDR) should confront directly the political/military, technological,
and budgetary issues that arose from both the bur and the Clinton
administration's employment of military forces during its first term
of office. The QDR must adopt a "top-down" approach. It must first
examine the fundamental political assumptions that underlie our
current and projected strategy. It must then relate those assumptions
to the realities that govern our system of managing and provisioning
the military structure. Accepting these realities calls for:
acknowledging the limited prospects for altering military
requirements through the "revolution in military affairs";
recognizing the need for honest projections of budgetary savings
(including recognition of the limits to savings that can be achieved
by reforming the acquisition process); avoiding excessive optimism
concerning the prospects for further reform of the defense
infrastructure; and, ultimately, accepting the ongoing imperative of
budgetary constraints on force planning and programming.
As to U.S. strategic and political assumptions about the world, we
need first to take a hard look at the matter of peacekeeping. It has
become increasingly clear that, despite its rhetoric, the Clinton
administration really does not see any major threat on the horizon,
and is therefore prepared to refashion the armed forces for
operations in support of at least sporadic bouts of collective
security. It has broadened its peacekeeping horizons beyond existing
multinational organizations such as the United Nations and NATO; in
proposing a pan-African force, for example, Washington appears ready
to create new and untested vehicles for peacekeeping and peacemaking
to which it will dedicate American forces.
On balance, this is a bad idea. The administration is overlooking
America's true comparative military advantage: the ability to deploy
more forces, more rapidly, over longer distances, than any other
power on earth. This ability should be the cornerstone of force
planning. Missions and capabilities that enhance it should be
encouraged; those that detract from it should be avoided. If that
guideline is applied, it becomes immediately clear that the United
States has no comparative advantage in peacekeeping capability.
Indeed, the advantage lies with several states that have trained and
operated forces for such missions for years, even decades. Sweden,
Canada, Austria, Finland, even Fiji, are far better versed in these
missions than the United States. It is to these states, and to others
with similar capabilities, that the international community should
turn for land force contributions to new peacekeeping missions, even
when the United States takes the diplomatic lead.
To be sure, certain peacekeeping operations will require logistical
capabilities that outstrip those of states contributing land forces
to them. In such cases--as for example, operations in Zaire in the
late 1970s--the United States should be prepared to offer airlift,
communications, and other logistical services. But by staying off the
ground, so to speak, it would not become enmeshed in questions of
command authority, nor in plans for nation-building, both of which
have complicated recent American operations in Somalia and Bosnia.
Similar considerations of comparative advantage lead inevitably to a
case for reducing America's active land combat force levels. It was
not at all clear, even during the height of the Cold War, why the
United States made more strenuous efforts to provide forces for the
Central European front than did many of its NATO allies. In any
event, during the 1970s the United States made do with twelve active
divisions, a level below which the Clinton administration has only
fallen in FY 1996. With the end of a clear scenario for major combat
on land, the case for maintaining a land force that even remotely
resembles that of the Cold War era is simply untenable.
It should be noted that many NATO allies are themselves cutting back
on their active forces, signaling their lack of concern about
potential threats to their security. But in so doing they are also
undermining their contribution to America's security. After all,
alliances are meant to provide benefits to all. The United States
benefited from the ability to operate on its allies' soil in exchange
for the promise of rapid reinforcement and, more importantly, a
strategic nuclear umbrella. Perhaps the time has come for Washington
to reconsider whether such an arrangement works to its best interests
in the case of every NATO member. Such a strategic review might be
just the tonic that some allies need to rouse them into contributing
their fair share to their own defense, especially in the form of land
forces, if they wish to continue to benefit from an open-ended
American commitment to that defense.
Additionally, many unanswered questions about the military
consequences of enlarging NATO need be brought to bear. Unless the
European members of NATO take more responsibility for providing their
own ground forces, it may be impossible for the United States to
offer credible security guarantees to new NATO members under current
budgetary and procurement conditions.
Finally in this regard, the administration has acknowledged the need
for theater missile defense; indeed, it could not have done otherwise
given America's experience with Iraqi Scud missile attacks during the
Gulf War. But on the need to develop a national missile defense the
administration continues to hedge, defying the reality of potential
threats from China and the near-term prospect of threats from other
states. The bur did not address strategic forces, and it is unlikely
that the QDR will do so in sufficient depth. This is unfortunate: No
review of America's long-term force structure requirements can be
oblivious to strategic defense issues. Indeed, should Russia refuse
to ratify the start ii agreement, the case for strategic defense will
take on still greater urgency and America's offensive nuclear posture
will, of necessity, have to be re-evaluated.
It may be possible to solve the latter part of this problem, as the
Clinton administration is reportedly inclined to do, by moving on to
a start iii treaty that would further reduce strategic launch
vehicles from 3,500 to 2,000, but this may prove to be politically
unavailable because of Russian demurral, and unwise to undertake
unilaterally. If there is no start iii and the Duma does not ratify
start ii, the cost of keeping weapons in the force that would
otherwise be retired could amount to more than $5 billion over seven
years--not an insignificant sum. Should U.S. planners decide that
force modernization is required in the absence of start ii
implementation, then costs would rise further. Obviously, this is an
issue that ought to be taken seriously in the QDR for financial
reasons alone.
So much for a more realistic set of strategic assumptions; where do
they and the hard realities of resource constraints lead us in
identifying potential savings?
The Bottom-Up Review's rosy assumptions regarding savings from acquisition reform have served only to mask the gap between resource requirements that the BUR generated and the availability of future funds to meet those requirements. Overly optimistic inflationary estimates only compounded the problem of closing that gap. That said, acquisition reform is a long-standing government objective and it remains a worthy effort. But its potential impact must not be exaggerated. While the Clinton administration has made a major effort in this sphere, it is unlikely that reform will save more than approximately $1 billion annually. Indeed, the Pentagon recently reported on a major aspect of acquisition reform, that of simplifying military specifications for contractors (known as "milspec reform") that conflated cost avoidance (unrealized anticipated expenditures) with actual savings. The authors could not identify even as much as $500 million in annual savings.
There are no quick fixes through acquisition reform or easy solutions through statistical manipulation to the mismatch between defense needs and resources. Claims to the contrary - such as House Speaker Newt Gingrich's proclamation that "we have every opportunity through reform to shrink the Pentagon to a triangle. We have every opportunity to apply the lessons of downsizing, the lessons of the information age" - do far more harm than good. The only way to solve the problem is to give up something in the force structure and, ideally, that something should consist of that which we are likely to need least. This brings us back to the matter of ground forces.
America's strategic concerns, particularly its growing preoccupation with power balances in Asia, militate for a posture more akin to that which it maintained before the Second World War - one that stressed major maritime capabilities, primarily in Asia. The United States should rely on the many alliance relationships that it created in the aftermath of that war for land force manpower - particularly, but not only, in Europe. By reducing the active Army to six divisions, half the level of the 1970s, the United States could still maintain its presence in Korea, its rapid deploying airborne corps, and at least two brigades in Europe. Doing so could save over $7.5 billion in personnel costs, if it were also to reduce the support associated with those divisions (the "division slice"). In addition, it could save over $8.5 billion more in annual O&M and military construction costs. Of course, a portion of the $16 billion in savings could be applied to the procurement of systems to support more flexible, lighter, yet higher firepower Army units. So too could funds originally intended to procure equipment for a ten division Army. Finally, even when reducing the Army by an additional four divisions, the United States would continue to maintain a three division Marine Corps.
As it reduces its active land force units, the United States should also make good on its plans to improve the capability of its reserve units. Reforming the reserves has traditionally been as politically difficult a task as closing bases - and as frequently promised by administrations of the day. The National Guard is a collection of fifty armies that operate at the behest of state governors and often have been a vehicle for gubernatorial largesse to political supporters. Reform of the National Guard, and of the Army Reserve, should nevertheless remain a major national priority. Reserve forces must be able to deploy in short order to remote locales - as the Air Force Reserve has consistently demonstrated it can do, and as Army combat reserves failed to do during the Gulf War.
That said, the case for reducing naval and tactical aviation forces is nowhere nearly as strong. The capabilities of these forces are unmatched by those of other countries. They provide the United States with a rapid response capability second to none. Air forces have limitations with respect to deployability, but, where bases are available, they offer the maximum in firepower that can be marshaled and delivered with the utmost speed. Maritime forces offer presence, deployability, and independence from an overseas base structure that political vicissitudes render endlessly variable.
The specific nature of these forces should be subject to ongoing debate, however. The Navy's desired number of aircraft carriers has been set at fifteen since the 1950s. The Air Force's love affair with bombers continues despite the clear reduction of their strategic value. Other competing weapons platforms should not be dismissed for bureaucratic or sentimental reasons, as has often been the case in the past. There is no place in force planning for longstanding bureaucratic biases against particular naval or aviation systems; such biases frequently surfaced within the secretary of defense's Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation against promising systems such as the Navy's AV-8B Harrier attack aircraft, the Air Force's F-15E long-range fighter bomber, and the Marine Corps's Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
Finally in this regard, mobility forces constitute an especially potent and unique American capability. No other state has a cargo aircraft force capable of moving as much outsized equipment (such as tanks and helicopters) as rapidly for a longer range as the United States. Yet it must be acknowledged that the need for such a large outsize capability has been driven by the Army's infatuation with progressively heavier tanks. New developments on the battlefield, such as lasers or depleted uranium rounds, should strengthen the case for smaller armored units. The need for large and expensive cargo aircraft would diminish in turn, as would the dependence of such aircraft on long, well-developed runways - even if they are capable of operating from poorly prepared airfields, as is the C-17.
Aside from these adjustments in the force structure, there are several other lesser, but hardly trivial, ways to address the imbalance between needs and resources. Five are worth noting.
First, emphasize weapons, not the physical platforms from which they are launched. The case for modernizing weapons, not platforms, extends back to the early 1960s. It is no less valid today. If the RMA has any validity at all, it is to emphasize the importance of new weapons at the expense of platforms. Such an emphasis would have a far-reaching impact throughout the defense structure. Tactical aircraft development could be slowed, with an emphasis instead on upgrading current systems. Such a decision could affect the acquisition of the F-22 and Joint Strike Fighter in particular. Similar considerations could militate against development of a new attack submarine, a system whose justification seems to lie more in preserving the defense industrial base than in military requirements.
Second, protect the O&M accounts from being raided for strategically marginal purposes. As noted above, the costs of peacekeeping invariably have been greater than initially estimated. Withdrawing from much of the peacekeeping business could yield savings in excess of $4 billion annually.
A similar figure could be realized through a more vigorous effort to winnow non-defense spending from the defense budget. It is questionable whether any such programs belong in the defense budget. Even if some do, for example environmental cleanup of defense facilities, these could be preserved in the budget while saving as much as $4 billion by eliminating the remainder of non-defense activities.
Third, curtailing base operations remains a major source of savings. The base closure process should again be initiated. Bases under consideration for closure in 1995 should again be brought into the Base Closure Commission's purview. Bases slated for closure should not be allowed to remain open for the reserves or anyone else. Staff working at those bases should be retired. The buildings should be closed and sold or given to the private sector. The Defense Department should no longer be responsible for police and fire protection and other ancillary costs that never seem to go away even after bases are shut down.
Fourth, the Pentagon should be more ruthless about cutting defense laboratories. There is little that these labs offer that the private sector cannot match. While some capabilities are unique to the Defense Department, these are far fewer than their proponents will admit, and many hark back to technologies that have long since been bypassed by the private sector. In an era when the Pentagon has stressed "contracting out" to civilian defense firms, and, more importantly, has acknowledged that technical leadership increasingly derives from commercial applications, the need for a large defense laboratory structure is simply indefensible.
Fifth, the Defense Department must acknowledge that deep cost reductions can only be realized through personnel cuts. Personnel costs amount to about half the defense infrastructure budget. Civilian personnel will soon cost more on average than uniformed personnel. Therefore the stress should be on eliminating civilian jobs. After all, military personnel assigned to support the infrastructure can also fight wars but civilians, in this regard, are strictly unidimensional. Even a skeptical General Accounting Office acknowledged that a vigorous program to reduce infrastructure personnel would yield a five-year savings of nearly $12 billion. Taken together with an emphasis on weapons procurement in place of platforms, elimination of questionable O&M expenditures, cuts in the defense laboratory structure, and equally important, reductions in force structure, these measures would allow us at least to contemplate a defense posture that serves American security and is both affordable and politically acceptable in Congress.
It is impossible to address in one article the breadth of issues that the Quadrennial Defense Review must confront. The fact that a Review is being undertaken at all is praiseworthy in itself; it is long overdue. It is to be hoped that the Review will not suffer from the shortcomings of its predecessor. To do so, it will have to go beyond superficial plans, address the international environment squarely, assess real savings and the difficult political decisions that they will engender, and avoid budgetary sleights-of-hand. To the extent that it does so, it can provide a most useful blueprint for the United States as it faces the next century, very much alone as the world's sole superpower.
Essay Types: Essay