It is probably Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, who, with this comment in the Los Angeles Times of 19 December on the QDR-05 crisis, might well have the last word: “The Iraqi insurgents have managed to do what Don Rumsfeld in four years has not managed to do, which is to bring about cutbacks in a lot of these Cold War-era weapons.” We would broaden it to ‘what five secretaries of defense (Cheney, Aspin, Perry, Cohen and Rumsfeld) have been unable to do in sixteen years.’
The current year, 2005, will not be the year of Iraq, but the years of the Quadrennial Defense Review or the QDR. This exercise, first run in 1993 and mandated by the Congress in 1996 (FY ’97), places an obligation on the Pentagon to review its strategy and the structures and weapons programs that underpin that strategy for the following four years. But the QDR was instituted in point of fact for one reason only: to force the Pentagon to reform, to modify it structures and its programming. The 1993, 1997 and 2001 QDRs were failures in this respect. The restructuring and the reprogramming of a system that remains frozen in its Cold War mold just did not take place.
Some might consider that we are living in a bizarre time, a time when the state-of-the-art modernity of American military power are constantly the object of praise, and yet at a time when this very military power has shown itself incapable of undertaking it own fundamental reform necessitated by the end of the Cold War - and this notwithstanding the fact that the other major military powers have undergone such fundamental reform, although with less uniform results. (sic) This time, however, with the 2005 QDR, it would seem that we are finally getting down to business. At least that is what is being said by those whose opinions matter. When one reads the following in the editorial of the December 2004 issue of Air Force Magazine (AFA), you can be sure that the pressure is on: “[General] Mcnabb [formerly deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, USAF] once said the Air Force faced what could be described as a ‘perfect storm’ - a precise convergence of financial and other pressures that could bring new opportunities but also force hard choices.” There are two key issues here: why the use of the expression ‘perfect storm’ and the sentiment within the USAF community that the USAF is faced with ‘hard choices’, but that these could lead to ‘new opportunities’.
In effect, this feeling of inevitableness is overwhelming, for all the players, even those who are accustomed to defending their turf through dilatory bureaucratic actions, actions which in the past have generally had the desired effect. This feeling of inevitability is something completely new. It is explained by the intercession, the intervention, the intrusion in Pentagon business by outside influences. The Pentagon is not left to itself to conduct its QDR. The Pentagon is the object of pressure from two sources (three if you count the Congress): pressure by the White House, beginning to panic in the face of the budget deficit and having announced (the President himself) on 18 December that expenditures must be reduced - and we know that the Pentagon will be obliged to cut $10 billion from its FY 2006 budget forecast - and pressure stemming from the crisis in Iraq. (sic)
Iraq is the Litmus Test
The issue that is plaguing the Pentagon is not solely in the economic field (exponentially mushrooming, yet still inadequate, budgets; the uncontrollable character of budgets for major weapon systems, systems that have become of questionable deployability in new conflicts; etc.) What makes the ’05 QDR so unique is the omnipresence of the presence of the pressures generated by the conflict in Iraq.
Whatever Rumsfeld’s rhetoric, backed by the pretensions of the White House, everyone know (sic) that the force of 150,000 men in Iraq was and remains inadequate to the task. The realistic figures, with no guarantee of success, would be close to the initial estimates by US Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki, who in the spring of 2002 (before being bullied into retirement by the taunts and sarcasm of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz), dared to express the view that 400,000 men was the minimum force to hold Iraq after its initial military defeat or conquest. (sic) Everyone also knows that the US Army and the Marines are in over their heads - that they are under-equipped and that they are living on their reserves (Reserves units and National Guard units) under trying conditions, with involuntary retention on active duty and frequent extensions of overseas tours in combat areas. (sic)
The consensus therefore is that the US Army must be beefed up as soon as possible. The word is that 150,000 additional men are needed over and above the 480,000 currently available. That is considered a minimum: it would just barely permit the formation of two divisions or of six brigades, depending upon the force structure selected. Other sources express the view that that it is possible to forego force augmentation, but that it will be necessary to undergo an in-depth restructuring that will be extremely costly. The cost of either option is estimated to require additional funding of a minimum of $5-$6 billion annually. And (sic) that is an optimistic view. We would be inclined would be inclined to say that $10 billion or more in additional fund annually. This budget increase is being imposed at a time when the White House is cutting $10 billion from the DoD’s FY 2006 budget; at a time when the nation’s exchequer groans under the ever increasing expenditures required to finance the country’s expeditionary military adventures. A new request of the approximately $100 billion is expected, bringing the total cost incurred between September 2001 and September 2005 for the ‘Empire’s’ overseas expeditions to between $250 billion and $300 billion.
Today, the US Army is living on credit. It has been obliged to borrow from its sister service, the US Navy and the US Air Force, in order to be able to face up to high priority operational requirements, requirements that are increasing daily to meet the plethora of problems encountered on the ground. To cite but one example: at a ‘talking point’ with soldiers held by Rumsfeld in Iraq on 8 December 2004, a soldier took the Secretary of Defense to task because of the lack of armor plating for Humvee vehicles; this exchange led to an immediate requirement to accelerate fitting the required armor plating on all Humvees without that protection - at an equally immediate cost of $500 million. (sic) Everyone is claiming their rightful entitlement; the US Army looks to it civilian hierarchy as the budget is strained to the breaking point under the pressure of the deficit, thereby compounding the drop in the dollar and increasing the perception abroad of the fragility of American power.
It is this multitude of pressures converging at a single point (the ’05 QDR), with a single purpose (immediate reforms - structural, if possible - with immediate effect), that explains the situation. Thus, a ‘perfect storm’, a phenomenon of nature whereby all the natural forces gather to unleash themselves in a single, violent atmospheric disturbance, representing the ‘perception’ of the unleashing of the natural, pent-up, rage of the world.
Another Long Wait
In the nineties, the analyses on the future of the Pentagon were a dime a dozen. The end of the Cold War demanded no less. Circles in the know were rife with rumors of reform. The bolder assumptions foresaw the post-Cold War DoD budget falling to around $180-$200 billion in 2000, to stabilize at $150-$200 billion in 2005, depending upon the assumption relating to overseas commitments. We are talking not about a disarmament budget, but a restructuring budget based on requirements, threats and a foreign policy reduced to the exigencies of the continental security of the United States in a context of collective security (presupposing, for example, the dismantling of the majority of America’s bases abroad, whose sole justification was the threat of Communism). (sic)
The harsh reality is that a budget of approximately $360 billion at the turn of the century today exceeds $420 billion. If we add the expenditures chargeable to other departments (which should have declined on the basis of our 1990-92 assumptions, and which have, on the contrary, grown exponentially) and their fiscal impact, we are talking about an overall expenditure for US military power for the year 2004 of $750 billion. Contrary to all the inanities dished out over the past 10 years by the luminaries in the field, we are in a position to gauge, in the light of the situation in Iraq, the extraordinary catastrophe that the process has produced.
What has happened since 1990 is the contrary of the flourishing state of the US military power trumpeted by the sycophantic acolytes. The US armed forces, today confronted with a ‘real war’ of our era (asymmetrical war or 4th Generation War - 4th GW), are showing themselves to be an amorphous mass with sclerotic structures of a different age, to a point that is unimaginable. In 2000-2001, General Shinseki tried in vain to transform the US Army’s heavy divisions into mobile, light brigades; today, in Iraq, the US Army is still operating with a divisional structure. The US Army is still operating with a divisional structure. The US Army, a prisoner of its own bureaucracy and of its gigantesque, Pharonic budgets that dictate its material and equipment, and therefore its doctrine, is showing itself to be locked in a time warp with doctrines dating from World War II, to the point that the attack on Fallujah was reminiscent of the 1945 tank battles that took place in German towns; Fallujah saw the heaviest concentration of tanks in urban combat since Berlin in 1945. (sic) Reform is not necessary - it is crucial. It is a sine qua non for the Pentagon’s very survival.
Writing this, we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we’re not dreaming: Are we merely conjuring up in our imagination once again the long-awaited Pentagon reform that we have been promised so often? Such an eventuality is not beyond the realm of possibility. It is possible - for everything is possible - that the ’05 QDR mountain will give birth to a puny mouse. This has already happened in the past. This time, however, the tropical storm that is looming on the horizon is beginning to resemble the tsunami of recent infamy.
Decadence Sets In
But (sic) the situation is far worse since it is axiomatic that whatever does not progress regresses: if you don’t move forward, you find yourself inevitably losing ground, moving backward. Not only has the Pentagon fought off any idea of reform for the past 15 years, but this same spirit of immobility has undermined the traditional virtues of US military power.
For it must not be forgotten that American military power is a heavy, cumbersome piece of machinery - one that is extremely slow to shift into motion. It has a highly complex logistic organization. That explains the fact that when a war begins, the Americans experience setbacks and take forever to get their act together. (The first US soldiers arrived in France in July 1917; the first real combat took place in May 1918, with the 1st Infantry Division, and only then because the situation of the allies was so perilous that it required the intervention of all available forces.) But (sic) then, gradually, laboriously, the machinery grinds into action. The lines of communication are established and secured. The logistic support facilities become fully operative. The US armed forces, now fully equipped and prepared, are ready to show how effective a fighting force they can be.
That is in the past. Today, the situation is extraordinary, because it is exactly the converse. It was at the very start of the war - the March-April 2003 offensive - that the US Army seemed to be operating full-bore (with some weaknesses here and there, as in a combat helicopter tactic). Since May 2003, the situation has deteriorated at a dizzying pace.
Since the summer of 2004, the situation has reached a point of criticality: combat vehicles are not combat-ready; equipment as essential as radios are in short supply; poor maintenance, defective operation and spares shortages are common at all echelons, down to the infantryman’s rifle. Incident of protest and insubordination are rampant affecting entire units. The latest incident relates to a National Guard unit about to depart for Iraq in December 2004, without its full complement of M60 rifles or with weapons not operationally sound. It must be borne in mind that this state of affairs exists following a year’s preparation before the attack, with an annual budget of $420 billion, with attention totally focused on Iraq, against an insurgency that has no real fire power and only an embryonic organization.
We are compelled to conclude that the bureaucratic sclerosis of the Pentagon going back over half a century has succeeded in undermining the fundamental qualities of the American military. And we are further compelled to conclude that the remedy is not ‘more money’, ‘more technology’ and ‘more equipment’, but rather a change in attitude in philosophy. It is the organizational machine that has somehow broken down at the human level. The soul-searching inquiry required must go very deep. In such a context, one has to wonder whether the Pentagon has the capability of reforming itself at a time when reform has become a matter of life or death. For now, the outlook is bleak.
A Psychological Crisis
An Army in Serious Disarray
We must highlight the extent to which the ’05 QDR will be obliged to come to grips with a critical budget conundrum that poses serious psychological problems for the military establishment. Our analysis leads us to consider two factors - one negative, the other positive. The negative factor boils down to ‘budgetary constraints’, including the expenditures for the current commitments on the ground, especially in Iraq. Under this aspect, there is what appears to be the new orientation of the Bush Administration to combat the budget deficit, with the directive provided to DoD by the White House Office of Management & Budget to reduce its FY 2006 budget by $10 billion.
The second factor, generally deemed more positive, is a reformist buildup coming from the ‘transformational school’ of the Pentagon that wants to take advantage of the current state of turmoil to introduce changes in force structures and program choices, until now successfully resisted by the bureaucracy.
Our view, however, is that this somewhat rosy picture must be strongly toned down by a factor that is both practical and psychological - the practical aspect determining the psychological aspect - because of the unprecedented situation in Iraq as its affects America’s armed forces, essentially the US Army. The situation is dramatic, less because of the pressures of the insurgency than because of the inadequacies of the US armed forces themselves, inadequacies that have an extraordinary impact on the general situation of the forces. One can be sure that of the forces is dramatic when Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld recognizes, as he did on 6 February on CNN: “The US military is clearly stressed and recruitment of new troops is falling short of plans.”
During the same interview, Rumsfeld, realizing that such an admission constitutes a reflection on his performance as Secretary of Defense, hastens to add: “The US military is clearly stressed, … but they’re performing brilliantly. They’re doing a fabulous job and we’re adjusting the incentives and the number of recruiters that are out there.”
This optimistic note introduced by the Secretary of Defense is far from being confirmed by the officers in charge of various corps being engaged in Iraq. The National Guard, which supplies a stupefying 40% of the troops on the ground in Iraq, is - according to Lieutenant General Steven Blum, Chief, National Guard Bureau, in a pathetic state: “As it pertains to the National Guard in particular, we were woefully under-equipped before the war started,” Blum told the House Armed Services Committee on 27 January. (sic) “It’s getting - it gets a little bit worse every day.”
In January 2005, the National Guard chalked up an impressive recruiting shortfall, meeting only 56% of it recruitment quota. America’s prestigious Marine Corps has also had it recruitment adversely affected by the War in Iraq, with 97% of its January 2005 quota - the first time since 1995 that the Corps has missed its monthly target.
The issue is not only a matter of men, material and statistics, however. There is also a psychological component. According to a source close to the Congress: “The morale of the fighting forces has never been this low since Vietnam. That is felt here, in the Congress, where the lawmakers are very sensitive to the human aspect of the setbacks suffered in Iraq. It threatens to bring a great instability, with likely repercussions on the budget, primarily in the appointment within the overall budget envelope.”
This instability will weigh heavily on the budget process and on the ultimate apportionment of the funds allocated. The attention of the Congress can be expected to look for the money where it can find it. This might, at first blush, seem to give Rumsfeld an ideal opportunity to launch his program of ‘transformational’ reforms. It will soon become apparent, however, that Rumsfeld is not the captain of his own ship - at least not when it comes to having the last say on the Pentagon budget.
Flash: The Cold War Is Over!
At the same time as it is confronted with the pressure of the Iraq conflict, the Pentagon also confronted with the prospect - rather the certainty - of having to restructure its programming completely, on the basis of what from the Pentagon seems to have been a well-kept secret: The Cold War is Over! (sic)
Our fascination with US military power since the end of the Cold War has always obstinately pushed to one side the obvious: US military power was created in response to, and as a response to, the Cold War. The war the West had to prepare for was a strategic war, waged on a planetary scale, with a nuclear component (as well as a nuclear component at the tactical level). Structurally, nothing has changed since 1989-91. The Pentagon thought it could capitalize on what it already had and transform that force into a mobile, agile expeditionary military power solely by high technology. The failure in this regard could not be more glaring, as we see daily in Iraq. The ’05 QDR will be a moment of truth - not the only moment of truth, however, since nothing is ever certain in this world of ours.
The cuts envisaged as the ’05 QDR gets underway are impressive. Let us cite two of them, affecting the two military services that are the main consumers of high technology, that were being bruited about in Washington as early as mid-December 2004:
- The US Navy was reported to be working under the ‘worst-case’ scenario of a cut in the number of aircraft carrier groups from twelve to nine over the next 15 years.
- The USAF was reported to be considering a cut of one-third (900 aircraft) of its orders for fighter aircraft over the next 20 years (more then 2,500 aircraft).
These were, we repeat, only working assumptions, which broadly transcend the ’05 QDR itself. But (sic) they make it possible to get a handle on the breadth of the cuts which are reported to be under consideration, cuts which would effectively approach one-third of the forces planned until 2005. Moreover, these working assumptions indicate the system and programs on which the axe is expected to fall first - those born of the Cold War.
USAF Is Alone
Another service, the US Air Force, is especially affected by the present situation - this time by an anticipation cut in credits the first of which was a Wolfowitz memo at the end of December. The main measure is a cut in the F/A-22 program from 277 to 180 aircraft for a savings of $10.5 billion of a total of $72 billion in total program costs. This cutback, which is to take effect in the 2008-2009 timeframe, is not exactly a masterpiece of economic planning: it sacrifices one-third in program production for a savings of under 15% and causes the F/A-22 to rise to a unit cost of $341.6 million (the fighter was announced in 1987 at a unit cost of $37 million). (sic) We are not far from the case of the B-2 bomber which got totally out of control to the point of becoming a budget absurdity (following various cutbacks and slippages, technical problems and disastrous management, over 15 years, the B-2 climbed from $180 million to $2.4 billion per bomber aircraft (sic).
This completely unexpected attack against the F/A-22 (the program had just begun to come into it own in 2004, having initiated its entry into service phase caught the USAF totally off guard. The USAF finds itself at an extremely delicate juncture in terms of its place in the Pentagon’s bureaucratic pecking order.
- The Druyen KC-767 scandal (See Context No 80, To the Point) considerably weakened the USAF position, psychologically and in terms of its prestige within the Pentagon bureaucracy. Several important general officer nominations have been blocked in Committee by Senator McCain.
- The civilian leadership of the USAF has been decapitated as a result of the forced resignation, in response to the scandal, of Air Force Secretary James Roche and his Assistant Secretary Marvin Sambur. This outcome was probably unfair to the two men, neither of whom was directly involved in the scandal. Be that as it may, the USAF has lost a very competent civilian leadership, Roche having been the most effective proponent of the F/A-22. Pending the nomination of their successors, the Air Force lacks the civilian leadership so vital to Pentagon bureaucratic infighting.
The issue has been joined: Does the Air Force find itself in danger of being defeated in the battle on budgetary cutbacks that has just begun? Does the Air Force risk seeing the F/A-22 sidelined? Such an outcome would be a catastrophe for the USAF - it would be a tremendous blow to the very prestige and status of the United States Air Force as a national institution. But (sic) the battle in this case, does not come down to a Rumsfeld/OSD versus USAF confrontation. The Congress will play a decisive role, especially since the cutbacks in the F/A-22 program will take time before coming into effect (2008-2009) and since, in the interim, funds can be restored. As a staff assistant of Senator Warner, Chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, commented: “We expect a lively debate on these cuts.”
The important issue for now is elsewhere. When it was informed of the cutbacks on the F/A-22, the USAF made a counterproposal to keep the program at 277 F/A-22’s: it offered to reduce its JSF order from 1,700 to 1,200 aircraft. The answer from OSD was a categorical refusal. It was at that point that the thesis began to emerge attributing ‘transformational’ qualities to the JSF, fitting right into Rumsfeld’s plans. That means that Rumsfeld’s OSD is aligning itself clearly on the side of the JSF against the F/A-22, with the USAF taking the converse position - its ultimate aim being to restore the F/A-22 to at least the production figure of 381 in order to be able to provide an F/A-22 squadron to each of its ten Air Expeditionary Wings. (sic)
The face-off between the two competing fighter aircraft programs is a highly significant development, and the battle is far from over. For the first time since the launch of its production phase, the JSF finds itself in the thick of the bureaucratic crossfire. Until now, the JSF had managed to distance itself from that arena, as a program that was sacrosanct and beyond the reach of the bureaucratic infighting. Today, the issue has been joined: the fate of the F/A-22 depends on what lies in store for the JSF. It would be the height of rashness to believe that we have heard the last of the battle of American’s aspiring tactical air programs - each contending for supremacy over the other.
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Citation: "The Perfect Storm," Context, February 2005.