By Bill Rigby
Reuters, 07 December 2006
The heralded "transformation" of the U.S. armed forces into a streamlined, computerized, unified fighting force is dead -- or at least delayed -- leading defense analysts said this week.
Instead, the Pentagon is facing up to the much more urgent task of repairing and replacing traditional military hardware being ground down in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Military transformation has turned into a bad joke," said defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, who spoke at the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 6.
"Transformation was supposed to be Donald Rumsfeld’s core legacy. We’ve spent at least $100 billion on it at this point, but a collection of poorly-equipped insurgents is fighting us to a standstill in Iraq," said Thompson.
Departing defense secretary Rumsfeld launched his grand plan of military transformation early in 2001 after his appointment by President George W. Bush.
His scheme, based on existing ideas at the Pentagon, was to use a relatively peaceful period to create a high-tech, networked force capable of meeting any conventional threat.
But the highly unconventional hijacked aircraft attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, changed all that.
"The moment 9/11 happened, the assumption of a diminished threat environment was out of the window," said Thompson. "From that point on, military transformation began to lose its momentum."
BUDGET CRUNCH
Now, the most urgent use of defense budget dollars is to repair equipment coming back from action overseas.
Armored vehicles, for example, are being worn out at 10 times the usual rate, according to Walt Havenstein, the incoming U.S. chief of British defense contractor BAE Systems Plc, who spoke at the Reuters summit on Dec. 4.
The cost of repairing equipment has helped push the total cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere to $437 billion since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That is in addition to the regular defense budget, which looks set to top $500 billion next year, judging by recent spending requests.
Lawmakers in Washington don’t want to be seen as taking money away from U.S. troops, so the large "transformational" programs are seen as the likely losers.
"Transformation is basically dead," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with Virginia-based Teal Group, who spoke at the summit on Dec. 6. "Three reasons: strategic irrelevance, marketing overhype and budgetary impossibility."
The F-35, a state-of-the-art radar-evading fighter jet being built by Lockheed Martin Corp., is a prime target for funding cuts, as the Pentagon’s most expensive single project with a total program price tag of $276.5 billion.
Future Combat Systems, a mammoth $125 billion program led by Boeing Co. and defense technology firm Science Applications International Corp. -- which is designed to electronically link up Army units and a range of manned and unmanned weapons systems -- is also a prime target for restructuring or delay.
Another vulnerable big-ticket program is the $30 billion Joint Tactical Radio System program, for which Boeing, General Dynamics Corp., Rockwell Collins Inc. and others are developing new radios for the armed forces.
These big programs are in the cross-hairs, analysts said, because it is becoming obvious they are not answering military questions facing the United States here and now, such as tracking down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
"Here’s the bottom line on transformation," said Thompson. "After spending tens of billions of dollars and millions of man hours of reflection on how to do it, we still can’t find the tallest man in Afghanistan."
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Citation: Bill Rigby. "U.S. Military ‘Transformation’ Is Dead: Analysts," Reuters, 07 December 2006.
Original URL: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2409831&C=america
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