V. The Implications of the Third Offset and the Renewed Focus on Threat-Based Planning: Should We Tilt Away from Irregular Warfare?

The Third Offset reflects a broader realignment of defense planning now underway that moves the needle back to a more central focus on “great-power” conflicts and high-intensity warfare, to the clear detriment of irregular warfare capabilities.

The broad question faced by the next administration will be whether the Third Offset and shift in defense-planning constructs risks creating an imprudent over-shift away from irregular and low intensity warfare.

A Shift to Threat-Based Planning. In rolling out the 2017 budget, Secretary Carter clearly signaled the reorientation away from a capabilities-based defense planning that has dominated in the last fifteen years, and to a more threat-based approach. Due to changes in the international environment, he observed, the United States needs to focus on developing the capabilities to defeat five specific threats: Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and terrorism (with a particular focus on defeating ISIL).

With Russia and China as our “most stressing competitors,” Secretary Carter highlighted the need to focus more on developing “full-spectrum” capabilities that can deter and defend against “high-end” threats. As a corollary, Deputy Secretary Work has gone even further and stated in clear language that we need to “shift away from irregular warfare and toward high-end adversaries”—namely, Russia and China.

The Pack May Be Back: The Prospects of Reverse Pull

Thus, as noted at the outset, the “Third Offset” is now off and flying. Top level signals have been rippling through the Pentagon, and DoD components are shifting their priorities accordingly: from the policy community, to the R & D and acquisition ecosystem, to the armed services. The effect of such signals cannot be underestimated, and have a serious impact in the large Pentagon bureaucracy, where military officials are trained to follow orders.

Thus, officials at all levels are now marching forward; speeches, PowerPoints and actions at all levels now reflect the Third Offset, autonomy and the like. In the broader defense arena, think tanks have held one symposium after another on the subject, and numerous articles and studies has been written. One can barely attend a conference today on defense without these issues being central. Congress also has gotten into the act, with hearings and legislation reflecting the new concepts. In short, a new “pack mentality” is emerging, in which nearly every program in the Pentagon now will try to associate itself with the Third Offset and “autonomy” to draw off whatever new funding exists for this initiative. The Army is busily rolling out its autonomy strategy for the future.

The Third Offset as the New “Defense Transformation”: An Empty Vessel?

The “pack mentality” has a number of consequences. First, there is a very real risk that the “Third Offset” becomes an amorphous concept bereft of operational or technological meaning. Indeed, the broad language of “autonomy” and “man-machine interface” being used could describe virtually half the DoD acquisition and development programs of record.

This is precisely what happened with the “defense transformation” and “revolution in military affairs” initiatives in the 1990s: they became all things to all people, and eventually were reduced to buzzwords with little or no strategic, operational or acquisition-related meaning. The Army’s assertion at the time that the Cold War–era Crusader program was “transformational” was the ultimate proof the term lacked substance. Indeed, at one point, Bush administration officials began to refer to transformation as a “state of mind” and “a journey, not an end state.”[4]

There is evidence this phenomenon is already at work. Deputy Secretary Work has expanded his original definition of the Third Offset, focused on autonomy and AI, to include hypersonic propulsion for rapid, precision strike weapons, as well as space capabilities. He now speaks of “offset strategies” in the plural, and focuses more broadly on offsets as an approach to maintain conventional deterrence across the board.

In sum, to the extent that Third Offset construct broadens and is not bounded, it potentially will no longer have significance as a technology-based military strategy or future force structure; it would be an empty vehicle without tangible content. Thus, DoD leadership would be wise to bound it, and make clear that it has limited application—lest it become all things to all people.

The Implications for Defense Investments: What is the Proper Balance?       

Finally, there is a real risk that the “pack mentality” will result in a repeat of the post-Vietnam reversion of defense strategy, away from counterinsurgency and other forms of low-intensity warfare that we are more likely to face, in favor of “full-spectrum” capabilities for the “big wars” that we are less likely to fight. This risks short-changing the development of inexpensive, but potentially important soldier systems and other low-intensity and tactical capabilities.

The debate over the future priority of irregular warfare is most significant for the Army, which faces continued questions over its future roles and missions. Even after 9/11, the Air Force and Navy, by the nature of their capabilities, necessarily focused more on high-intensity warfare and the deterrence these capabilities generate. The Army has been the predominant service focused on irregular war in all of its dimensions.

However, there have long been elements in the Army encouraging the drift away from irregular warfare. They view the decade plus of counterinsurgency as a diversion from the Army’s historic mission—its DNA, if you will—which is more along the lines of defending the Fulda Gap. Thus, they welcome the refocus on great power competition, and would prefer to renew the Army’s focus on developing new, and potentially expensive, future fighting vehicles as part of a “full-spectrum” Army: code language for returning to a high-intensity focus.

The risk of over-shift should not be discounted. In recent years, the pendulum had already shifted significantly away from irregular warfare as our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down, low-intensity conflict became politically less desirable, and sequestration created significant budgetary pressures. There is clear evidence that our capability for low-intensity warfare is beginning to attenuate in all of its dimensions, from organizational structure, to training, to defense investment, to the interagency and civil-military component.

To this day, the Army’s organizational embrace of low-intensity warfare remains tenuous—without a true bureaucratic home, clear career paths and the like. The Army’s Irregular Warfare Fusion Cell, created to assess, integrate and coordinate irregular warfare activities and capabilities across the U.S. Army and joint services, was closed its in 2014. The Army’s capabilities for large-scale irregular warfare contingencies have certainly been scaled back, and a review of the Army’s investment accounts indicates a clear focus on high-intensity capabilities such as combat and related vehicles.

The next administration must carefully assess the merits of this shift away from irregular warfare. First, what is the realistic probability that the United States is likely to fight high-intensity wars in the near-to-medium term—do Russia’s limited actions to date and China’s investments and minor provocations really mean we face significant risks in this arena in the foreseeable future?

Second, what changes in U.S. capabilities and investments are needed to address these threats? Even during the last fifteen years, as we focused on irregular warfare operationally, we have continued to sustain sizable investments in the air and naval capabilities needed for these contingencies, and have expanded our efforts in space, cyber and other domains. Thus, while further investments may be warranted at the margin in these areas, do we really need to significantly enhance our capabilities in these domains?

The rubber hits the road with ground combat capabilities for high-intensity conflict. Are there really scenarios in which the United States will need capabilities beyond those provided by the current Bradley and Abrams vehicles? With technology evolving rapidly in many areas, a cogent argument can be made that the most sensible approach for the Army is continued development of prototype vehicles and experimentation, but without committing to any type of expensive new vehicle development programs for the foreseeable future. Modernized versions of existing systems, with lateral technology insertion from experimental programs, could potentially suffice until it is apparent these capabilities no longer address the threat.

Finally, why believe that the next decade or more will be different than the last decade? A reasonable case can be made that irregular and other low-intensity warfare (from counterinsurgency to humanitarian missions to stabilization and reconstruction), with limited high-intensity engagements mixed in, is more likely to be the norm than the exception. One only has to survey the areas of the world in Africa and Asia with open spaces or weak governance to identify situations where radical terrorism may take root and pose a threat to Western interests.

While the United States may not desire to participate in low intensity or irregular warfare scenarios—the bloom is clearly off the rose after years of U.S. engagement with mixed success—nevertheless we may have interests that require our direct engagement in some cases. From Yemen to Syria to Iraq and Afghanistan, we continue to be engaged in these types of operations.