QDR to Consider 'Powerful Trends' With Potential to Produce Security 'Shocks'

April 29, 2009 -- The Pentagon today announced the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review will examine the national security implications of "powerful trends" that "will dramatically complicate the exercise of American statecraft," including the global economic crisis, climate change, cultural and demographic shifts and the increasing scarcity of resources like water and energy.

The announcement signals the Obama administration is effectively adopting a strategic framework for considering new security challenges the Pentagon began developing in June 2006, when Donald Rumsfeld was defense secretary, to better prepare for “shocks” to international order that are caused by non-military factors by scrutinizing global “trends” across a wide range of disciplines (DefenseAlert, Sept. 5, 2007).

On April 24, Defense Secretary Robert Gates signed a one-page memo approving a seven-page, classified terms of reference document for the QDR that calls for the Defense Department to examine an increasingly complex set of security challenges. The Pentagon today made public a two-page “fact sheet” summarizing the terms of reference.

Gates’ QDR guidance is considerably shorter than the 40-page classified terms of reference for the 2006 QDR that Rumsfeld issued. Gates' guidance does not include plans for a new defense strategy, sources say, leaving Pentagon officials to assume that the 2008 National Defense Strategy will be the strategic backdrop for the assessment.

In addition, Pentagon officials say Gates has not set forth guidance on risk management -- specifically how he wants the military services to consider where to cut investments to fund higher-priority needs.

The summary outlines the broad set of security challenges the 2010 QDR will consider as well as explaining the specific “areas of emphasis” for the assessment, many details of which have been previously reported by InsideDefense.com.

“The strategic environment we face is complex and the security challenges -- both current and those on the horizon -- are wide-ranging,” states the fact sheet. “The global economic downturn adds to the complexity.”

Among the security challenges the QDR will consider are violent extremist movements, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, rising powers with sophisticated weapons, failed or failing states and increasing encroachment on the globally common areas of air, sea, space and cyberspace.

“U.S. strategy must also increasingly account for a series of powerful trends that are reshaping the international landscape and will dramatically complicate the exercise of American statecraft and overseas relations,” according to the fact sheet.

While considering how everything from the economic crisis to climate change might require a U.S. military response, a paramount concern will remain the need for the Defense Department to “prevail in current conflicts while preparing for future contingencies,” states the summary.

In addition, the terms of reference codify plans to accomplish what Gates has repeatedly called for publicly: “Institutionalizing capabilities such as counterinsurgency and foreign military assistance and maintaining the United States' existing conventional and strategic technological edge against other military forces.”

Five issues teams are carrying out the work of the QDR. Issue Team 1 is examining how to ensure irregular warfare capabilities are expanded and adopted across the defense enterprise; Issue Team 2 is examining high-end asymmetric threats; Issue Team 3 is focusing on how to strengthen Defense Department support to civilian agencies in both domestic and overseas operations; Issue Team 4 is focusing on recalibrating U.S. military presence around the world; and Issue Team 5 is working on managing the Defense Department's “internal business processes to improve their efficiency and effectiveness,” according to the fact sheet.

In addition to the work taking place inside the Pentagon, the 2010 QDR will be informed by corollary reviews at the Department of Homeland Security, across the intelligence community, and by the National Security Council, according to the statement. -- Jason Sherman

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Pentagon Announces Official Start of FY-10 QDR, NPR

Pentagon Announces Official Start of FY-10 QDR, NPR

April 23, 2009 -- The Defense Department today formally launched a pair of sweeping reviews that will form the basis for a new Pentagon investment blueprint and the main vehicles Defense Secretary Robert Gates will use to "rebalance" U.S. military capabilities to better handle not only major conventional wars but also improve the ability to wage irregular operations.

Senior Defense Department officials announced the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review and Nuclear Posture Review are now being conducted after a nearly two-month delay caused by the revision of the fiscal year 2010 budget.

“The purpose of the QDR is to assess the threats and challenges the nation faces, and then integrate strategies, resources, forces, and capabilities necessary to prevent conflict or conclude it on terms that are favorable to the nation now and in the future," Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a statement.

Bill Lynn, the deputy defense secretary, said in a statement today that the QDR “takes a long-term, strategic view of the Department of Defense and will explore ways to balance achieving success in current conflicts with preparing for long-term challenges. The review will also look at ways to institutionalize irregular-warfare capabilities while maintaining the United States' existing strategic and technological edge in conventional warfare."

In a statement, the Pentagon said it plans to consult with other government agencies as part of a “whole-of-government” approach to national security, and will also consult with key allies and partners.

“The 2010 QDR will address emerging challenges and explore ways to improve the balance of efforts and resources between trying to prevail in current conflicts and preparing for future contingencies, while also institutionalizing capabilities such as counterinsurgency and foreign military assistance,” according to the Pentagon statement.

The Nuclear Posture Review will be conducted in tandem in collaboration with the Energy and State departments; the purpose of this assessment is to “establish U.S. nuclear deterrence policy, strategy, and posture for the next five to 10 years and to provide a basis for the negotiation of a follow-on agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START),” according to the statement.

Both assessments are required by Congress. Previous QDRs were conducted in 1997, 2001 and 2005; NPRs have been conducted in 1994 and 2002. -- Jason Sherman

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Norman Augustine: A Businessman Looks At Procurement Reform

A Businessman Looks At Procurement Reform
Former Lockheed CEO says Congress needs to change its oversight of Pentagon weapons-buying programs.

by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Norman Augustine, retired chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, has held multiple positions in the Pentagon and the private sector since 1958. A legendary figure in the defense industry and a regular contributor to National Journal's National Security expert blog (security.NationalJournal.com), Augustine spoke to NJ about his decades in military procurement. An edited transcript follows.

NJ: Why have the problems in military procurement persisted for so many years?

Augustine: This isn't the real world of competitive business. You've got a monopsony [a market with a single buyer]; you've got monopolies within the monopsony; you've got the media all over you.

In the private sector, if you run a grocery store and you're having a problem with people stealing cans of soup, you'd probably put a guard on the loading dock. If you're the government, you put a guard on every can of soup because you can't afford the publicity of a can of soup being stolen. So the price of soup doubles.

[And] we buy such small quantities that the unit costs are so high. If you go to a commercial firm and say, "I don't want the product you normally make; I want a different kind of product, and I want 10 of them," they probably wouldn't do business with you, but if they did, the cost would be out of sight.

NJ: So how do you prevent overruns and delays?

Augustine: A lot of it comes down to having really experienced people. More and more, we're finding people in government with no experience in business and people in business with no experience in government; and we do that to avoid conflicts of interest, [but as a result], it's just really hard to get people who are really experienced and good at procurement in government. It's an esoteric business.

And the environment today is so politicized that I'm afraid it's not a very pleasant place to work. Not long ago I was asked to chair a commission, unpaid. They sent me a package of 72 pages of forms that I had to fill out. And if you make a mistake on one of them, somebody may try to put you in jail. There's nothing in law or the Constitution that requires all that.

When I first was asked to serve in government, in 1965, you didn't turn down an invitation to serve in government. It was your duty; it was a great place to make a contribution, to work on really challenging things. Today there's a long line of people turning down the jobs. As a result, we get some very good people, but we also get some that are the 15th choice.

NJ: What's your take on the reform proposal from Senators Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz.?

Augustine: I think it's clearly in the right direction, and I also think that reform will have to come from both sides of the river. The Defense Department alone or Congress alone can't bring this about, but together they can. And Congress has got to look at how it conducts itself, because it's a nontrivial part of the problem.

The Founding Fathers were setting up a country, not a business process. They imposed many, many checks and balances that produced inefficiencies, but the price was worth it. [But] nowhere did the Founding Fathers say that Congress had to get into the details of how to execute the business--how many rotor blades a helicopter should have or how many tons a tank should weigh. The role of Congress is to set objectives, to provide resources to carry out those objectives, monitor, and make changes where necessary.

NJ: What would your approach to reform be?

Augustine: If I were king for a day, I would do a lot more prototyping. Some of the systems I just wouldn't put into production. I would get things that were high-risk, high-payoff, and prototype them. If they worked, I might decide to put them in production then. And when you prototype, as opposed to designing an aircraft for production, the costs are much less.

One of the most perishable pieces of a corporation, most difficult to replace, are design teams. They're not huge, but that's where a key piece of your talent is. One way to keep those design teams is to do prototypes. The Lockheed Martin "skunk works" [a secret operation that developed stealth aircraft] is an example of what can be done. They would draw the centerline of an aircraft and have one flying nine months later. It was not an aircraft you could ever put in production, probably, without redesigning it, [but] it's a great way to test new technology and to keep design teams alive and doing useful things.

Time To Fix Military Procurement

Time To Fix Military Procurement -- Again
Momentum is building for real reform of one of government's most intractable problems.

Saturday, April 25, 2009
by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

The Defense Department's process for buying weapons is byzantine, tedious, and yet a matter of life and death. A system that produced $640 toilet seats was bad enough when the enemy was the Soviet Union, a slow-moving target with bureaucratic troubles of its own. Against the low-budget innovators who attack Americans with box cutters and roadside bombs, the Pentagon has somehow managed to spend more than $100 billion a year on procurement and still fail to deliver the right gear on time.

"Our enemies are adapting faster than we are," said Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who heads the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Improvised explosives became the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq soon after the 2003 invasion, he noted, but "it takes us until about 2007 until we get a sufficient number of [mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles] in the field -- and that takes an extraordinary action by the secretary of Defense to overrule the acquisition system."

On April 6, that secretary, Robert Gates, announced the biggest cutbacks and cancellations since then-Secretary Dick Cheney began the post-Cold War drawdown in 1991. Gates also promised one massive new investment: the addition of 13,000 civil service positions to the Pentagon procurement workforce, which was slashed in half during the 1990s and never recovered, even after the procurement budget that employees administer rebounded back to 1980s-buildup levels after 9/11.

Cutting home-state spending at weapons factories while expanding the federal workforce is hardly a way to win over members of Congress. Yet key Capitol Hill leaders have been cautiously approving. Meanwhile, Congress is working on its own procurement reforms, which Gates, in turn, cautiously endorsed in his speech. A bipartisan bill to toughen standards on cost estimation and weapons testing has passed the Senate, where it was sponsored by the two top members of the Armed Services Committee, Michigan Democrat Carl Levin and Arizona Republican John McCain. The influential House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., has introduced a companion bill.

The House's elder statesman on defense, Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., is reserving judgment on the McCain-Levin plan. "The Senate bill has some flaws," he told National Journal. Skelton is awaiting recommendations from the ad hoc subcommittee he set up to propose procurement reforms, led by New Jersey Democrat Robert Andrews. (See "A Lawmaker Looks at Reform," p. 42.) "They're going to do it right and not rush the process," Skelton said. He and Andrews announced their own initial proposal on the 23rd.

Even some defense-industry officials acknowledge, guardedly, that the pressure and prospects for change are unprecedented. One veteran Hill staffer now working in aerospace, said, "For the first time in probably 15 years, I've seen a coincidence of thinking in Congress and in the administration that suggests an appetite for big changes in acquisition policy -- capital 'A,' capital 'P.' "

Much of the willingness to change, however, stems from the unprecedented breakdown of the system. In March, the Government Accountability Office surveyed 96 "major defense acquisition programs" and found overruns totaling $296 billion.

How did this happen? Both parties have kicked the can down the road for almost two decades since Cheney staged the last round of major cuts. The Clinton administration trimmed programs across the board during the drawdown, while the second Bush administration boosted them across the board after 9/11, but in both cases officials let a lot of troubled projects limp along without either canceling them outright or funding them adequately. Until April 6, no one had the combination of political will and strategic vision to kill not one program here or there but a half-dozen at once. Meanwhile, weapons bought during the Reagan buildup are wearing out.

"The problem grew much, much worse under the [George W.] Bush administration," said Anthony Cordesman, a top defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If you don't make hard decisions for nearly a decade -- which is what took place both at the end of the Clinton administration and in the Bush administration... your problems are cumulative."

Part of the breakdown, however, long predates the Bushes, or Clinton, or even Reagan. The procurement system has been delivering weapons over budget and behind schedule since at least the Korean War. "People were saying that in the second Eisenhower administration," Cordesman said. "People have been talking about exactly the same reforms ever since."

Making a fix that sticks, this time around, requires understanding why previous attempts have so consistently failed. Past reformers have fired one would-be silver bullet after another, with each brainstorm tending to contradict the previous one: centralizing procurement decisions, then decentralizing them; imposing strict contracting rules, then freely granting waivers; building parts to strict military specifications, then buying from commercial vendors on the open market; outsourcing major decisions to corporate "lead system integrators," and then bringing them in-house again; holding contractors to a fixed price on some contracts, and reimbursing them on others for overruns on a "cost-plus" basis; developing some technologies in prototype before starting large-scale production, and launching others in "spirals" between one production lot and the next.

Impervious to all of these procedural changes, the underlying problems remained. As long ago as 1967, Norman Augustine, then a Pentagon official and later a defense-industry executive, calculated the trend lines at which each generation of weapons was growing more expensive than the last and predicted, only half in jest, that by 2054 the entire Defense Department budget would cover just one airplane. "I'll never live that down," Augustine, now retired, told National Journal with a chuckle. "Unfortunately, it's still true." (See "A Businessman Looks at Reform," p. 44.)

Some of the highest technology, and the severest problems, are in the Air Force, whose top civilian and military leadership Gates ousted last year. The service's F-22 fighter plane has become a poster child for cost overruns and delay. The program began in the 1980s as the Advanced Tactical Fighter with a plan to build 750 aircraft at $35 million each to sweep Soviet planes out of the skies over Europe. After the Soviet threat evaporated and the defense budget started declining in 1991, the program limped along through successive delays -- which meant paying contractors' fixed overhead costs for longer than planned -- and through reductions in quantity -- which meant applying those overhead costs to ever-fewer airplanes. In his speech, Gates finally put the F-22 program out of its misery at just 187 aircraft costing on average $185 million apiece to build, or more than $350 million each counting the years of research-and-development costs.

While the F-22, a high-performance stealth fighter, represents the expensive pinnacle of American technological ambition, more-modest Air Force programs have had troubles of their own. In 2007 and '08, the service awarded two major contracts, each protested by the losing bidder and overturned by the GAO: the CSAR-X combat search-and-rescue helicopter -- which Gates canceled on April 6 and the KC-X midair refueling tanker -- which Gates will put out for bids again this summer.

In each case, an understaffed and undertrained procurement workforce made basic mistakes. "When you lay down a requirement for a new system, you try to establish the 'key performance parameters,' or KPPs," said retired Gen. Lawrence Skantze, who was chief of Air Force Systems Command (disbanded in the workforce cuts of the 1990s). "You shouldn't have more than 10, for the most part," Skantze said. "In the case of the KC-X, they had 37 KPPs and then they broke them down into 800 subrequirements." Yet the plethora of requirements did not make them any less ambiguous or more comprehensive, and planners somehow omitted a basic "concept of operations" for how the tanker was to be used, Skantze found in his review for the Air Force.

"You have to go back to square one," Skantze said. "A lot of what happens in the front end is, everybody wants to get going, and if you've got any questions, 'We'll straighten that out later.' But oh, you pay for it."

The perverse incentives to overpromise at the outset of a major weapons program, setting it up to underdeliver later, arguably account for the most fundamental, intractable problems in the defense procurement system. One independent study by the Rand think tank showed that the actual costs of weapons systems exceeded original estimates, on average, by 60 percent.

"I know for a fact that the estimates that we give are the best estimates we can give," said one defense procurement expert with experience in both business and government, who asked to remain anonymous. "Now, should we add 60 percent to our multibillion-dollar development estimates that we give at the outset? The answer of course is, we wouldn't get picked."

Like a contractor bidding to renovate a home, a defense contractor has every incentive to lowball the initial estimate to get the job and then jack up the price through change orders later. But unlike you or me looking to redo a kitchen or basement -- a decision we will have to pay for and live with -- a Pentagon program manager has every incentive to go along with the contractor.

In complex defense programs, overruns may take years to show up, often after the original program manager has moved on. But the immediate, pressing task, on which the program manager's job depends, is to persuade one's superiors to keep the program in the budget. And those superiors, in turn, have every incentive to accept lowball estimates so that their total budget looks smaller to their bosses, all the way up through the Defense secretary, the Office of Management and Budget, and ultimately Congress.

Bottom line: It is Congress that creates the perverse incentives by voting to fund programs that pull this 'lowball now, overrun later' bait and switch. "When rigorous cost estimates are rendered at the outset of a program, it makes it less likely that the program will be funded at all," said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute and a consultant close to industry insiders. "By beginning a program with very optimistic estimates, you not only can get it funded but you also can almost guarantee that down the road there will be more jobs and more rewards for the political system in keeping it going. Whenever we have a cost overrun on a program, that money goes somewhere: It goes to a political district. And so the system doesn't actually punish cost overruns most of the time."

The obvious solution to fluctuating cost estimates is to fix the price paid to the contractor in advance -- obvious and, given the inherent uncertainties of inventing high-tech weaponry to order, also impractical. "Ultimately, you cannot get it under control until you go primarily to fixed-price contracting, but you can't go to fixed-price contracting when you're pushing the envelope in R&D, because, by its nature, since you're in development, you don't know how much it's going to cost," said John Lehman, Navy secretary during the Reagan buildup and an adviser to McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

Even on simpler systems with proven technology, much of the slip in cost and schedule results from the Defense Department's constant second-guessing of what it wants to build. "No company who has any semblance of sound management would bid fixed-price on a program that does not have the design settled, and hardly any of them do now, because everybody can write change orders," Lehman said.

Procurement veterans call this phenomenon "requirements creep," the military's tendency to up the ante for what a system is supposed to do after the contract has been signed. On the nominally low-cost Littoral Combat Ship program, for example, the Navy was issuing 75 change orders a week at one point, including a total overhaul of the standards for damage resistance and fire safety -- arguably necessary, but requiring costly do-overs that doubled the cost.

Every additional requirement is somebody's bright idea, and each might be justifiable on its own terms. But as the bright ideas accumulate, the impact on cost and schedule is exponential. And the irony is that reforms often add extra layers of supervision, which means that more officials and organizations feel entitled, even obligated, to impose their own ideas, and on and on.

Experts who agree on little else join in warning that neither Congress nor the Pentagon can simply reorganize its way out of the problem. Ultimately, process matters less than people.

"The secretary has the tools he needs," said William Perry, Defense secretary under Clinton and probably the last person who successfully made large-scale changes to the weapons acquisition system. "What is required is the political will to act. The only person who can bring discipline to that system is the secretary of Defense, and with this speech that Secretary Gates made recently, he was making an important step in that direction. If he doesn't do it, nobody does."

This is the 14th in an ongoing series looking at an issue on President Obama's agenda. The entire series can be found at NationalJournal.com/agenda. Next week: Medicare financing.

Gates Stresses Realism in QDR Scenarios

CARLISLE, PA, April 16, 2009 -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates said today he had directed the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review team to be "realistic" about the scenarios in which direct U.S. military action might be required.

This means considering where, for instance, “it would be necessary or sensible to send a large conventional ground force,” he said. “The QDR will also take a look at the Army’s force mix of heavy and light, active and Reserve, and assess whether shifts are needed.”

Gates, who spoke at the Army War College in Carlisle, PA, said the Defense Department must be prepared for the wars America is most likely to fight -- not just the wars U.S. forces have traditionally been best suited to fight or the threats “we conjure up from potential adversaries who also have limited resources.”

The answer is not necessarily buying more technologically advanced versions of vehicles, ships and aircraft designed to stop the Soviets during the Cold War, Gates said. This will be the first QDR in which defense planners will be able to fully incorporate the numerous lessons learned on the battlefield these last few years, he added, citing “lessons about what mix of hybrid tactics future adversaries, both state and non-state actors, are likely to pursue.”

InsideDefense.com reported this week that the QDR will examine 11 scenarios, including regime collapse in North Korea, cyberattacks on the United States and a major conflict with China over Taiwan. The scenarios have been divided into four categories: U.S.-led stability and reconstruction operations; steady-state demands; major conflicts against state adversaries; and defense of the homeland and civil support. -- Christopher J. Castelli

QDR War Game to Examine Wars with China, Russia, 'High-End Asymmetric' Threats

April 17, 2009 -- How might China, Russia, Iran or North Korea wage a "high-end asymmetric" attack against the U.S. military? That question is the focus of a high-stakes Pentagon war game next week whose results are expected to help inform another round of major weapon-system investment decisions that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will hand down this summer, according to defense officials.

The scenarios will examine what sort of threats the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines can expect to face in a major conventional war, focusing on vulnerabilities that could blunt the U.S. military's high-tech advantage -- such as disabling satellites or a strategic cyberattack against critical infrastructure.

The classified questions the tabletop exercise will examine are being briefed today to Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright and other members of the Deputy's Advisory Working Group, according to Pentagon officials.

The scheduled two-day war game is being run by one of six teams formed to conduct the Quadrennial Defense Review; the team is headed by Amanda Dory, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy in the policy shop; Matthew Shaffer, deputy director for conventional forces in the office of program analysis and evaluation; and Brig. Gen. Lori Robinson, deputy director for force application on the Joint Staff's J-8 directorate.

This team, along with another examining irregular warfare, are expected to produce recommendations for further shaking up the military's investment plans in the fiscal year 2011 budget that will be prepared this summer, with the aim of increasing the flexibility of U.S. forces to deal with a wider array of challenges than the current plans.

Gates, speaking today on the second leg of a two-day trip to the Army War College in Pennsylvania and the Naval War College in Rhode Island, said that part of the rationale for changes to the FY-10 budget he is recommending to the president are based on “the need to think about future conflicts in a different way to recognize that the black and white distinction between irregular war and conventional war is an outdated model.

“We must understand that we face a more complex future than that, a future where all conflict will range across a broad spectrum of operations and lethality,” Gates said this morning at the Naval War College. “Where near-peers will use irregular or asymmetric tactics that target our traditional strengths -- such as our ability to project power via carrier strike groups. And where non-state actors may have weapons of mass destruction or sophisticated missiles. This kind of warfare will require capabilities with the maximum possible flexibility to deal with the widest possible range of conflict.”

Gates later added that he has “directed the QDR team to be realistic about the scenarios where direct U.S. military action would be needed -- so we can better gauge our requirements.”

To the degree real-world examples inform “realistic scenarios,” the Defense Department may be considering China's ability to impair -- or destroy -- U.S. communications or navigation satellites, in light of Beijing's 2007 shoot-down of an aging weather satellite which is widely viewed as a demonstration of the communist nation's anti-satellite weapon capability.

Russia's invasion last summer of Georgia combined armor and artillery operations with what Pentagon officials say was accompanied by sophisticated cyberattacks that began weeks before kinetic operations kicked off (DefenseAlert, Nov. 10).

The issue of “high-end asymmetric threats” picks up issues examined during the 2006 QDR under the heading of “disruptive” technologies. It is a subject of continuing DOD interest.

The Pentagon's acquisition executive last summer commissioned the Defense Science Board to examine how to avoid being caught flatfooted by an adversary wielding an unexpected capability that could cancel out the advantages of the world's most advanced armed forces.

On April 7, the Defense Intelligence Agency -- through the National Academy of Sciences -- announced plans to convene a one-day, classified symposium on “Avoiding Technology Surprise for Tomorrow’s Warfighter.” -- Jason Sherman

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Scenarios Selected for Quadrennial Defense Review; Team Leaders Named

Scenarios Selected for Quadrennial Defense Review; Team Leaders Named

April 14, 2009 -- The Defense Department has identified 11 scenarios, including regime collapse in North Korea, cyber attacks on the United States and a major conflict with China over Taiwan, to be assessed as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review, according to internal Pentagon documents that offer great detail on the review’s schedule and broad scope.

The documents show how Defense Secretary Robert Gates plans to tie the QDR process directly to the budget he has pledged to overhaul, noting the review will allow for further “divestment” decisions presaged in last week’s announcement of proposed weapon systems cuts and kills.

They also lay out in unprecedented detail the five issue teams that will do much of the work, as well as the kinds of real-world possibilities Pentagon planners will study as they lay the groundwork for those divestment decisions.

The previously unreported scenarios are outlined in an April 2009 Pentagon briefing reviewed by InsideDefense.com. Marked "for official use only," the briefing is also stamped for "discussion purposes only."

The scenarios, used to shape national security capabilities for the next 20 years, have been divided into four categories: U.S.-led stability and reconstruction operations; steady state demands; major conflicts against state adversaries; and, defense of the homeland and civil support.

Specifically, the Pentagon plans on examining operations in Iraq (post-2003) and Afghanistan, regime collapse in North Korea and a loss of control over nuclear weapons in Pakistan. These are lumped together as U.S.-led stability and reconstruction scenarios, according to the briefing.

Under steady state demands the briefing refers to SSSP, or steady state strategic planning, according to a Pentagon official. In this scenario, the Pentagon aims to capture daily activities by the combatant commanders that have not traditionally been accounted for in terms of planning and programming, the official said.

A source outside the Pentagon, who is following the QDR closely, added that steady state strategic planning addresses the operations of combatant commanders who conduct several short-term missions on a routine basis that require a persistent level of effort.

Concerning major conflicts against state adversaries, the QDR will examine relations between China and Taiwan, Russia and its “coercion of Baltic states,” and an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.

Finally, the QDR will study homeland defense and protection, consequence management (actions taken in the aftermath of a disaster) and cyber attacks.

Because Gates has already made a number of programmatic proposals, which were announced last week, this QDR will focus on a specific set of problem areas rather than a full soup-to-nuts review, the source outside the Pentagon said.

While Gates has not yet signed the QDR’s terms of reference -- the formal guidance for the review’s goals -- his office has selected leaders to oversee the five issue teams that will guide substantive reviews of military capabilities.

In addition to the areas of irregular warfare, defeating high-end asymmetric threats, civil support at home and abroad, and global posture, there will be a fifth team to study the business processes and cost drivers behind defense programs, as Inside the Pentagon reported last month.

The five issue teams will report to the QDR analysis and integration cell, led by Dave Ochmanek, deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development in the Pentagon's policy shop, according to the documents. In 2007, during his stint at the Rand Corp., Ochmanek co-authored an influential report, "A New Division of Labor: Meeting America's Security Challenges Beyond Iraq," in which he called for a realignment of strategy, weapon systems investments and composition of the military services, InsideDefense.com reported last month.

Ochmanek will be joined by Eric Coulter, deputy director of strategic assessments and irregular warfare within the program analysis and evaluation (PA&E) directorate. Serving as Joint Staff contacts are Lisa Disbrow, deputy director for force management at the Joint Staff, and Rear Adm. Philip Davidson, deputy director for strategy and policy from the Joint Staff's J-5 directorate.

Each issue team is assigned an executive secretary and one representative from policy, PA&E and the Joint Staffs:

* For irregular warfare capabilities, Garry Reid, now principal director of special operations capabilities and counterterrorism, will head policy. Reid is being promoted to become deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations, Inside the Pentagon reported earlier this month. Joining him on the team are Timothy Bright, director of PA&E's irregular warfare division; and Maj. Gen. William Troy, vice director for force structure, resources and assessments at the Joint Staff's J-8 directorate.

* Amanda Dory, deputy assistant secretary for strategy, leads policy for the high-end threats group; Matthew Schaffer, deputy director of conventional forces at PA&E, joins her; and Brig. Gen. Lori Robinson, deputy director for force application at the Joint Staff's J-8 directorate, serves as the Joint Staff representative.

* For the civil support team, Christine Wormuth, most recently a senior fellow in the international security program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, and soon to be the principal deputy assistant secretary of homeland defense, is in charge of policy; joining her is Dennis Evans, director of the strategic defensive and space programs division at PA&E, and Scott Norwood, deputy director for global security affairs at the Joint Staff's J-5 directorate.

* Heading the global posture group is Janine Davidson, a former Air Force pilot and current deputy under secretary of defense in charge of planning; joined by Krysty Kolesar, director of PA&E's force and infrastructure cost analysis division; Lisa Disbrow and Rear Adm. Davidson will represent the Joint Staff.

* The fifth issue team -- looking at cost drivers -- includes Pentagon Deputy Comptroller Kevin Scheid to head policy, Jerry Pannullo, director of the economic and manpower analysis division at PA&E, and Brig. Gen. Glenn Walters, deputy director for resources and acquisition at the Joint Staff's J-8 directorate.

The services have been asked to provide only one subject matter expert for each issue area team and the analysis and integration team.

Serving as the lead at the executive secretariat level is Jennifer Zakriski, director of force development within the office of the under secretary of defense for policy, according to the documents. In this role, she serves as the QDR chief of staff.

As reported by Inside the Pentagon on March 26, the policy review that will take place between April and June will be directly tied to the budget and execution review that will occur this fall. During that period of assessment, the department will “review program change proposals and budget change proposals,” as well as “refine decisions and divestment across [the] defense program,” according to the documents.

The review's governance structure has the Defense Senior Leaders Conference (DSLC) -- a group that includes the nine combatant commanders, the service chiefs and civilian Pentagon leaders -- at the top.

Below the DSLC is the Deputy's Advisory Working Group, which is made up of the service secretaries, the vice chiefs and various under secretaries of defense; combatant commanders and others are also invited. Reporting to the DAWG are the QDR stakeholders, according to the documents. They include service, OSD and combatant commander three-star representatives.

The next QDR stakeholders' meeting is scheduled for April 16, when they will issue work plans.

A two-day-long war game on high-end threat scenarios is planned for April 23 and 24, according to the calendar included in the briefing.

Additionally, a QDR web site has been established on the Pentagon's secure Intranet, states the briefing. The site hosts calendars, read-aheads for stakeholder meetings, contact information and briefing documents. -- Kate Brannen

4142009_april14a

‘IRREGULAR WARFARE’ TERM STIRS DEBATE AS DOD PREPARES FOR QDR

Paper focuses on ‘cooperative security’
‘IRREGULAR WARFARE’ TERM STIRS DEBATE AS DOD PREPARES FOR QDR

In the run-up to the Quadrennial Defense Review, there are increasing signs the Pentagon will shake up its bipolar distinction between conventional and “irregular” warfare, a framework criticized publicly by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and privately by other defense officials advocating for certain missions now deemed “irregular.”

A QDR issue paper developed late last month at U.S. Southern Command argues that security cooperation efforts and so-called phase zero missions aimed at preventing conflict should not be described as irregular warfare (IW) because key “interagency and multinational partners” shun the term.

This point should be emphasized in QDR discussions, according to the issue paper, which argues that using the term is counterproductive given the need to work with and through interagency and multinational partners. Instead, the paper advocates referring to “cooperative security” to counter irregular threats. Adm. James Stavridis, who leads SOUTHCOM and was tapped last month to lead U.S. European Command, has publicly stressed the importance of the security cooperation mission.

“Our job at U.S. Southern Command is simply to build cooperative security relationships and to promote U.S. military-to-military interests in the region,” Stavridis noted in his March 17 prepared testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Though the issue paper pushes for a change in language for certain missions, it defends the ideas and concepts of irregular warfare as “fundamentally sound.” Inside the Pentagon reviewed a copy of the document.

Gates has publicly signaled the Defense Department will move away from simply describing missions as conventional or irregular. During an April 7 conference call with online security writers he noted “this black-and-white division of conventional and irregular warfare is something of a fiction that does not reflect the real world.” In fact, there is a “spectrum of conflict,” Gates added.

“In an insurgency you have a guy who’s carrying an AK-47, but he may also be planting an [explosively formed penetrator] that can take out a million dollar-tank or [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle],” he said. “And you’re going to have cyber involved in all of this in a way that hasn’t been before, and that could happen at any place along that spectrum.” Gates has embraced the term “hybrid warfare,” which includes low-end and high-end asymmetric attacks.

A service official tracking the issue said there is “a very good chance” that a broader continuum spanning security cooperation, contested stability operations, irregular warfare, hybrid warfare and major conventional operations will displace the overly simplistic, bipolar framework that has been in vogue.

As ITP reported last month, one of five Pentagon issue teams that will play a key role in the QDR will focus on irregular warfare. InsideDefense.com reported this week that the IW capabilities team will include Garry Reid from the DOD policy shop, Timothy Bright from the program analysis and evaluation shop and Maj. Gen. Bill Troy from the Joint Staff. Cmdr. Jerry Hendrix will be the group’s executive secretary.

The SOUTHCOM paper notes the 2006 QDR called for DOD to do a better job addressing irregular, catastrophic and disruptive challenges. That QDR also identified the need to wage protracted IW on a global scale to defeat non-state irregular threats, which led DOD to prepare a roadmap, directive and joint operating concept.

The December 2008 directive defines IW as a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population. It also states that IW favors indirect approaches by working with and through others. Further, the directive says IW is as strategically important as traditional warfare and inclusive of steady-state operations. The joint operating concept, approved by Gates and penned by U.S. Special Operations Command and the Marine Corps, stresses the need to work with interagency and multinational partners.

“The ideas and concepts articulated in the series of IW related documents are fundamentally sound,” according to the issue paper. “They recognize that whole of government solutions and partnerships are essential to countering irregular threats.” But terms such as “irregular warfare and the indirect approach” should be dropped, the paper argues.

“In numerous venues, interagency and multinational partners have expressed their distaste for the term ‘irregular warfare,’” according to the paper. “Steady-State or Phase Zero operations -- before a violent struggle begins -- should not be categorized as IW. Law enforcement activities and transnational crime are also incorrectly categorized as IW activities.”

Multinational partners also dislike the term “indirect approach” because it implies manipulation, the paper continues, noting at a recent IW conference, a large group of multinational officers advocated for using the term “cooperative security” vice “indirect approach.”

The term “irregular warfare” has been criticized for some time. In a 2007 monograph titled “The Rise of Hybrid Wars,” Frank Hoffman wrote, “What we ironically and perhaps erroneously call ‘irregular’ warfare will become normal, but with greater velocity and lethality than ever before.” Foes will eschew rules and use unexpected, ruthless modes of attack, predicted Hoffman, a research fellow at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. In his recent Foreign Affairs essay, Gates cited Hoffman’s contention that hyrbid warfare merges “the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervor of irregular warfare.”

Barak Salmoni, now a senior political scientist with RAND, skewered the term “irregular warfare” in a 2007 essay for RUSI called “The Fallacy of ‘Irregular’ Warfare.” The term is “fallacious” because “those functions, operations and environments that are dubbed ‘irregular’ are in fact so regular -- in fact the dominant mode -- in the reality of what conventional militaries do and have done, that one should not think of them as irregular,” Salmoni wrote. The fallacy of “irregularity” risks conceptually blinding military professionals, policymakers and others to “the realities of military endeavor,” he argued. -- Christopher J. Castelli

PENTAGON-25-15-6

QDR POSTURE REVIEW EYES ENGAGEMENT, RESPONSE AND INTERAGENCY ISSUES

POSTURE REVIEW EYES ENGAGEMENT, RESPONSE AND INTERAGENCY ISSUES

The upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review’s reassessment of America’s global military footprint will emphasize building ties with foreign forces, enabling rapid responses to crises and bolstering interagency involvement in the global defense posture, according to a senior defense official.

The reassessment is expected to draw on insights from combatant commanders, recent lessons learned and assessments of future threats, the official said last week.

The Bush administration’s 2001 QDR led to the first major, formal, post-Cold War shift in the U.S. global posture. In 2004, a related Pentagon report, which identified overseas bases to be closed or consolidated, called for redeploying about 70,000 troops, plus 100,000 family members and civilian workers from Europe and Asia. It also created what the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments later dubbed “a new type of global expeditionary posture that supports rapid U.S. power projection operations, and one specifically designed to maximize U.S. global freedom of action.”

Now the Obama administration is poised to take a fresh look at that posture.

“Many of the COCOMs have come forward with insights about where we need to go,” the official said. “And while many of the changes envisioned still seem to make sense, there are some that the COCOMs have come back and said, ‘Maybe we want to rethink this a little bit’ in light of the recent years of experience. And of course, we want to make sure that the posture reflects the strategy of the new administration, going forward.”

The Defense Department will look at exactly where forces are stationed on a permanent and conditional basis, where DOD is investing in infrastructure and where DOD is investing in terms of regular cooperative work with allied partners, according to the official.

The global defense posture is a “critical manifestation” of the department’s strategy, the official added.

The review will not throw out the posture “wholesale,” the official said, but rather will seek to make adjustments based on lessons learned over the last several years and challenges anticipated for the future.

Pentagon leaders want a posture that enables forces to respond as rapidly as possible when needed, the official said. Also, the global defense posture study will aim to find ways to build on the DOD posture and make it more of an interagency posture, perhaps “a lot more” so, the official added.

InsideDefense.com has reported the new QDR will mull where, and in what formations, U.S. forces should be positioned worldwide to implement persistent presence, an idea centered on having forward-deployed American forces work with foreign militaries to prevent wars and bolster security in fragile countries (Inside the Pentagon, April 9, p22).

Retired Gen. James Jones, who was U.S. European Command’s leader and NATO’s top commander from 2003 to 2006 and has since become President Obama’s national security adviser, has in recent years voiced concerns about the need to preserve overseas bases to foster ties with allies. When Defense Secretary Robert Gates slowed the departure of Army forces from Europe in 2007, Jones cheered the decision.

“To me, forward basing is extremely important,” the general told ITP in an interview at the time, noting forward basing is not only a privilege, but also a way to prevent wars, stay engaged in parts of the world and promote peace.

“At the end of the day, I thought we cut too deeply into the Army forces in particular,” Jones recounted in the 2007 interview. “What was agreed upon to do in Eastern Europe started getting softer in terms of it being a full-up rotational brigade,” he said. There were other discussions about curtailing the presence of special forces and finally the general concept of forward basing, he said.

In another interview with ITP last fall, shortly before he was named national security adviser, Jones said the new administration must ensure U.S. combatant commanders receive adequate resources to support essential, global engagement activities that have faced budget challenges in wartime (ITP, Nov. 24, 2008 p1).

Supporting engagement activities has been hard for EUCOM due to the cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the minutes from a secret-level meeting of EUCOM advisers conducted last July in Garmisch, Germany. The meeting focused on ways EUCOM could successfully execute its mission despite “diminishing resources” and competing global force requirements for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that have “cut EUCOM’s ability to plan for and build partner capacity,” according to the document.

Such problems must be fixed, Jones argued in the interview. “So if a commander says, ‘I no longer have enough money to execute the engagement plan,’ recognizing that EUCOM just lost Africa in terms of its territorial engagement responsibilities -- if in fact the budget has also been overly adjusted, then I would say the EUCOM commander should be beating on the table and say ‘I don’t have enough to do my job,’” Jones told ITP. “And if that’s the case, they should adjust it because it’s really important.”

In an article published last fall in Washington Quarterly, Pentagon policy chief Michèle Flournoy and her assistant Shawn Brimley highlighted some of the key questions for the upcoming posture review.

“For example, how should the need to contain and counter growing Iranian influence in the Persian Gulf shape U.S. military posture in the Middle East region?” they wrote. “Is a more distributed global posture needed to support a sustained campaign against violent extremism over the coming decades? What kind of posture would best support a long-term U.S. commitment to help build the security capacities of key allies and partners in critical regions? Answers to these questions will help the Army and Marine Corps decide whether and how to shape their forces for long-term training and advisory missions in pre- or post-conflict environments.”

Such answers will also help the Air Force and Navy prioritize the relative importance of forward presence in critical regions versus the ability to project power over long ranges from the United States, the authors noted.

“Although many of the changes wrought by the Bush administration may still make sense, it is important that the next administration review additional ones in light of changed realities,” the article says. -- Christopher J. Castelli

PENTAGON-25-15-8

The Future of War and American Military Strategy

The Future of War and American Military Strategy
Michael C. Horowitz and Dan A. Shalmon

Over the last several years, in response to the American-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the events that followed, a group of people committed to studying how the United States can better prepare for and fight asymmetric wars against insurgents has gained prominence in the American defense community. Sometimes called the “counterinsurgency, (or COIN) community,” this loosely-affiliated group of advocates, working both within and outside the armed services, argue that the U.S. military needs to recognize that future wars are likely to be asymmetric and irregular. Future wars, in this view, are likely to differ greatly in character compared to the tank battles and aerial duels that the American military focused on during and after the Cold War. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has endorsed much of this view, arguing that while it is difficult to predict the future, and the United States must hedge against uncertainty, the top priority is preparing for irregular and asymmetric wars, not engaging in “Nextwaritis.”1 Most members of the COIN community argue for new defense strategies and planning concepts that would bolster irregular warfare capabilities.

An alternative vision comes from defense scholars like Michael Mazarr and others who share the COIN community's belief that the majority of future conflicts will be complex, asymmetric, and difficult for conventional American military forces to win. However, rather than recommending a transformation to enhance America's COIN capacity, they argue that successful COIN is so difficult and expensive that it will rarely be in American interests to deploy troops on the ground. Additionally, Afghanistan and Iraq have shown that most of the effort should be non-military. Defense strategy should shift away from expensive and futile irregular warfare because COIN investments trade off with the primary task of the American military—maintaining the conventional dominance necessary to deter major conflicts.

While elements of both views are accurate, each misses some vital issues worth considering. First, although it seems intuitive to view irregular warfare as the dominant future concern, it is exceedingly difficult to predict accurately the future security environment. As Secretary Gates noted on May 13, 2008, Winston Churchill stated in 1900 that he viewed war with Germany as very unlikely. In 1920, he said there was not the “slightest chance” of war with Japan during his lifetime.2 Some modesty is necessary when predicting the future of war. “Thiswaritis” might be as risky as “Nextwaritis.” Second, the principal factor underlying the current security environment is American conventional military dominance, especially air and naval dominance. Without conventional superiority, dealing with failed states and fighting insurgents to prevent the development of larger asymmetric threats would fall quite a bit lower on America's priority list. A loss of conventional superiority would also undermine the ability of the American military to win those irregular conflicts it does fight. On the other hand, a fundamental adjustment in America's grand strategy is improbable in the short-term, so U.S. forces must train to win the conflicts they are currently most likely to fight: wars of insurgency.

Unfortunately, in the medium-term, the rate of change in military power is not a constant and U.S. conventional superiority is far from assured. Information-age innovations could alter the requirements for producing military power faster than anticipated, placing U.S. conventional superiority at risk. While the United States could strategically “die” by a thousand cuts from wars of insurgency, it could also “die” from a single interstate knockout blow. The worst-case scenario, where the United States loses conventional superiority and actually faces the specter of a great power war or even defeat in a great power war, although low-probability, is far worse than the security environment the United States currently faces.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the character of emergent threats will depend on how the United States focuses its resources. Paradoxically, no matter what it emphasizes, the military threats the United States is—or will be—most capable of defeating are the ones it is least likely to face, since potential adversaries will be deterred and seek other ways of confrontation. Early twenty first century adversaries have chosen asymmetric strategies precisely because U.S. conventional superiority forecloses conventional options. American military analysts have noted that this makes irregular war “the smart choice.”3 This strategic logic simultaneously suggests that if the United States emphasizes irregular capabilities to the detriment of conventional warfighting, it will render conventional warfare a relatively more effective option for America's adversaries. That, in turn, would make a different set of actors—nation-states—more capable of challenging the United States. To use an example often cited by COIN advocates, if the United States had focused on irregular warfare after Vietnam, instead of focusing on the Soviet Union, it probably would have been well equipped for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, such a choice would have posed a counterfactual risk: not a twenty-first century Osama bin Laden-led mechanized corps, but the hideous possibility that at the peak of Warsaw Pact military strength, Soviet armor might have launched across the Fulda Gap.

With some smart and careful investments, the United States military can both lock in its conventional dominance and continue to improve its ability to succeed in the irregular wars most likely to dominate the landscape in the short to medium term. The United States should recognize that not all parts of the military have to be optimized for the same task.4 A strong Air Force, Navy, and nuclear forces are critical to deterring rising powers and others from even considering conventional military action. Simultaneously, some components of the Army and Marines can—and should—be optimized more for asymmetric campaigns. Moreover, different capabilities have varying per-unit capital costs. A dollar spent on infantry does not generate the same amount of force as a dollar spent on a fighter plane, yet both are necessary. While simple and attractive, dollar-for-dollar comparisons do more to obscure meaningful strategic questions than answer them. Finally, the development of some systems, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and capabilities like precision strike and global and tactical surveillance are vital to both COIN and future high-intensity campaigns.
The COIN/Insurgency Vision

A diverse group of advocates and practitioners have advanced a counterinsurgency-centric vision of the threat environment, along with a set of insurgency and terrorism-focused force structure proposals. Retired Marine Colonel T.X. Hammes, a prominent member of the COIN community, argues that irregular warfare now takes the form of fourth generation warfare (4GW). He writes, “[e]very potential opponent has observed… the success of the Somalis and the Sandinistas… Chechnya, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. They will not fight with conventional means.” Hammes also contends that irregular forces constitute the gravest threat to U.S. interests because “only unconventional war works against established powers.”5 A recently retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and a member of the staff that wrote the new Army/Marines Counterinsurgency Field Manual, John Nagl, approvingly references General Peter Schoomaker's claim that Afghanistan and Iraq offer “a peek into the future.” He contends that COIN will “continue to be the face of battle in the twenty first century,” which necessitates that the United States “build a very different. … Army than the… conventionally focused one we have today.”6

Andrew Krepinevich, whose research spans several schools of thought within the military establishment, argues that the most likely future conflicts are irregular and that the United States military, especially the Army and Marines, should be preparing accordingly.7 Criticisms of current U.S. force structure and budget allocations are a fixture of the COIN school. Army Brigadier General-select H.R. McMaster assails what he describes as “self-delusion” and “faith-based argument” about the future character of war. He assails advocates of “defense transformation” and the “Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)” who rely on a “fundamentally flawed conception of future war;” elevating speed, technology and information superiority over labor-intensive COIN, state-building and land warfare generally. He asserts that powerful corporate interests and institutional inertia have prevented the military from abandoning “years of wrongheaded thinking,” implying that the U.S. force structure is inappropriate for future conflicts.8 McMaster's critique of the military's focus on technology and air power exemplifies what a recent RAND report describes as a belief “in vogue” with “mainstream” military opinion: that “COIN requires boots, not bytes.”9 Extending this argument to the level of grand strategy, Jonathan Morgenstein, a senior program officer at USIP, and Erik Vickland of the Joint Special Operations University suggest that a global COIN effort should “become the guidepost for all major U.S. Foreign Policy.”10

The advocates we are lumping together into the COIN school disagree with each other on some issues, but share the idea that overwhelming U.S. conventional superiority means the United States should emphasize COIN and COIN-related capabilities because they are expensive, complex and difficult to build.
The Traditionalist Vision

Others, labeled here as “traditionalists,” posit a competing vision of the future of warfare. Most concur with the COIN community that irregular warfare will occur more frequently than interstate war. However, they disagree about the relative strategic significance of state-on-state war and criticize the COIN community's focus on mid-twentieth century conflicts. Furthermore, they agree with COIN experts’ description of the difficulties involved in irregular war, but believe adapting to fight those wars will be so difficult that the United States military should not plan to engage in large-scale or protracted irregular warfare. They advocate focusing on state-based threats and using non-military tools to counter the effects of state weakness.

Steven Metz notes that an accurate view of the future of warfare must drive American planning. If Iraq is a “unique occurrence,” then the United States can return to its conventionally-focused defense transformation agenda, but if Iraq is a “portent of the future,” and similar wars will be the “primary mission” for U.S. forces, “then serious change must begin.”11 Metz has claimed that economic interdependence and U.S. conventional dominance make conventional, state-on-state warfare unlikely. In his view, competition for resources, resentful globalization “losers,” and struggles over post-colonial nation building will increase “tensions that generate violence.”12 Consequently, intrastate or indirect (proxy) interstate war is “likely to dominate the global security environment during the next three decades.”13 MIT professor Barry Posen writes that globalization, diffusion of effective small arms and information technology and the increased salience of identity politics and religion make irregular war both increasingly common and intractable.14

Some scholars question the notion that state-on-state warfare has become unlikely. Army Colonel Gian Gentile argues that the COIN community's analysis “more than anything else… stakes a claim on the future,” concluding that Iraq does not provide a “model” for America's future wars.15 U.S. Air Force (USAF) Major General Charles Dunlap has argued that land forces “will be of little strategic import in the next war.”16 Gentile disagrees with Dunlap but also with the COIN community, writing that “‘legacy’ large-scale battles… might, in fact, still be looming on the horizon.” Citing Iranian, North Korean and Chinese threats, he argues that planners “could (and should) imagine many types of conflict in the near-to-medium term, not all or even most of them counterinsurgencies.” 17 Michael Mazarr assails the “naïve… assumption that the world has been rendered immune from the requirement for deterrence of major conventional war,” referencing possible threats from rogue states, Russia and the People's Republic of China (PRC).18 Referencing similar threats, Dunlap attacks the COIN community for believing that “human nature will change, that peer competitors will not arise and that the rest of the world will not attempt to challenge U.S. air power.”19

Metz calls for defense thinkers to “jettison the concept of counterinsurgency,” which he describes as having “outlived its usefulness,” and rethink how they understand irregular threats, since “not all armed conflict is war.”20 This is similar to Mazarr's argument that the use of military force is not the most effective way of winning COIN operations. Whereas COIN advocates argue for minimizing the costs of irregular warfare commitments by dedicating units to enhancing the capabilities of friendly regimes—especially those facing Islamic radicalism—Posen and Metz oppose most capacity-building efforts because twenty first century insurgency is “not simply a variant of war” but is rather “part of systemic failure and pathology,” requiring comprehensive social re-engineering.21 Consequently, host nation governments and the United States have inherently conflicting interests. Mazarr makes an even broader argument, claiming that given the character of twenty first century irregular warfare, militaries should de-emphasize COIN and focus on conventional warfighting.22 Reversing McMaster's argument, the essential traditionalist claim is that focusing on irregular war, for which violent tools are ill-suited, will undermine the U.S. military's role in doing what it does best—preventing and winning full-scale interstate wars.
Assessing the Debate

One interesting observation about the dominant debates over defense strategy is that, despite their apparently strident disagreements, these two schools of thought share three linked assumptions that drive their evaluation of the security environment. First, both believe that, other things being equal, future wars, are more likely to be insurgency-centered or irregular than “regular” or conventional. Second, both schools agree that the United States military has traditionally—and even currently—focused its efforts primarily on preparing for conventional conflicts and that the budgets of the armed services are the clearest indicator of this tendency. Both also agree essentially that the United States has an enormous edge in conventional military capabilities. Third, while the schools radically disagree about the extent to which the United States should transform its military to focus on insurgency warfare, both agree that to do so would require significant changes in strategy, force and bureaucratic structure.23 Designing a COIN-centric force will be expensive and hard.

To varying degrees, both approaches rely on additional sub-assumptions about the security environment, developments in warfare, and American strategy. They identify issues at the core of how American agencies, civilian and military, prepare for future military contingencies and implement foreign policy. Unfortunately, none of the three assumptions that undergird much of the current debate is beyond reproach. They both also underestimate the uncertainties inherent in planning for the future as well as some of the synergies in capabilities that the United States can leverage as it prepares for that future. By questioning these assumptions, it is possible to highlight a middle ground that may offer a way for the United States military to both deepen its conventional superiority and maintain the hard-earned COIN knowledge gained in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is important to recognize at the outset two key points about United States strategy and the potential costs and benefits for the United States in a changing security environment. First, the United States is very likely to remain fully engaged in global affairs. Advocates of restraint or global withdrawal, while popular in some segments of academia, remain on the margins of policy debates in Washington D.C. This could always change, of course. However, at present, it is a given that the United States will define its interests globally and pursue a strategy that requires capable military forces able to project power around the world. Because “indirect” counter-strategies are the rational choice for actors facing a strong state's power projection, irregular/asymmetric threats are inevitable given America's role in the global order.24

Second, the worst-case scenario is a loss of U.S. conventional superiority. Losing military control of the sea and the air, “the global commons,”25 would render American global strategy outmoded in an instant. The idea that the United States must improve its capacity to fight counterinsurgency operations presumes a need to do so beyond defending the homeland and that the United States will have the capacity to intervene in future conflicts around the world. However, while it seems unlikely at present, what if developments in warfare cut down and then eliminated the conventional military superiority of the United States? The loss of conventional military superiority by the United States would probably make the current strategic environment look like a picnic.26

For example, currently a Marine unit deploying to Afghanistan or Iraq focuses most on the post-deployment battlefield tasks. However, imagine a world where commanders and soldiers, like their World War II forbears, must fear being sunk on a transport ship or shot out of the sky on the way over, or being targeted by electronic, nanotechnological, or directed energy or precision guided munitions when preparing to search a village for insurgents.27 In such a strategic environment, overseas deployments to win hearts and minds in a low intensity war or wipe out radical jihadi groups would likely—and logically—take a backseat to more “traditional” concerns: convoys, tank battles, air and coastal defenses, and crash programs to build a new generation of naval and air weapons to take back the seas and skies. Meanwhile, in the interim, the United States homeland would be more at risk than at any point since the World War II—arguably more threatened than in its entire history. What John Mearsheimer has called the “stopping power of water” previously functioned to shield the United States, with its oceanic buffers to the east and west, from existential threats. However, in the information age and if the United States no longer controls the waterways of the world, water may not be enough. A world without American conventional military superiority would also encourage aggression by regional actors eager to settle scores and take advantage of the fact that the United States could no longer destroy their military forces at a low cost, to say nothing of the global dangers inherent in the competition among major powers that could result. The latter scenario is the worst case and it bears mentioning only because it should inform the framework in which any debate about defense strategy occurs.
The Most Likely Future of War

Predicting the future of the security environment is difficult. While it currently seems like stability operations and low-intensity conflicts are the most likely future contingencies, it is hard to be sure. Empirically, the “next” war is rarely like the preceding one—especially when comparing larger conflicts. While groupings of smaller conflicts, like the Banana Wars of the 1920s and 1930s and the humanitarian operations of the 1990s occur, the next time U.S. forces land on foreign soil with hostile intentions the war is unlikely to look exactly like the post-2003 Iraq war. Moreover, the historical record suggests we should be very modest in our ability to peer ahead beyond the very short-term.

Consider how well the typical analyst would have done in predicting the future security environment twenty years hence, once every decade starting in 1900.28 Focusing on twenty-year increments, a futurist projecting linearly from 1900 to 1920, 1910 to 1930, and so on, would have done quite poorly. Linear extrapolations would have missed both World Wars, and the rise of the Cold War. World War I did not appear on the horizon in 1900 (or 1910 for that matter), while in 1920 and 1930, Germany's lightning wars against France and Poland were not widely anticipated. Projections from 1950 and 1960 would have nailed the overall global security environment in 1970 and 1980. However, such analyses probably would not have predicted the significance or outcome of the Vietnam War. Furthermore, the 1970 and 1980 predictions would have missed the end of the Cold War, while a linear prediction in 1990 would probably have missed the events of 9/11 and the rise of al Qaeda. The point is not related to any specific prediction—systemic failure simply suggests that it is incredibly hard to accurately predict the future security environment. It often changes quite a bit faster than people like to think and in ways that are difficult to foresee.
Is American Conventional Military Superiority Inevitable?

There is a big difference between ways of warfare that are outmoded and strategically choosing to rest on one's laurels, a distinction that is ignored by some analysts. For example, Steve Metz and Raymond Millen compare a military focused on “rapid decisive operations relying heavily on standoff strikes” to a “16th century armored knight or mid-20th century battleship.”29 Technological changes, such as the advances that rendered cavalry obsolete in the twentieth century can sometimes render capabilities unnecessary. When a category of weapons is no longer necessary, it means militaries do not need that capability anymore. In a completely different situation, a state may be far enough ahead of the opposition in the area of a given capability that it can safely relax—for a time. For example, the F-22 procurement is probably a good example of over-building where the United States already has an extensive edge. However, no one would deny that America needs air superiority. It would be irresponsible for U.S. defense planners to rest on their collective laurels and not attempt to deepen and extend American advantages in areas with continuing relevance. This is especially true since once the defense industrial base is lost in a given area, it cannot be resuscitated quickly in a crisis, meaning the United States will simply lack the ability to produce certain types of equipment.

Limited foresight also applies to predicting future military innovations and the future of military power. The rate of change in military capabilities is far from constant. For example, while the battleship, in one form or another, dominated naval warfare for several centuries, the aircraft carrier replaced it at the center of the most powerful global navies within a single generation. While the British had utilized primitive aircraft carriers by the end of World War I, positing in 1920 and 1930 that the carrier would replace the battleship in the next war as the centerpiece of naval power would have struck most naval officials, even U.S. Navy carrier advocates, as ludicrous.30

Technology also does not always determine capabilities in a linear manner. Difficult as it is, it is much easier to track hardware—technologies in the arsenals of adversaries—than to predict or understand “software”—how future adversaries will use technologies, organize their forces and institutions, and use those forces when war begins. For example, military professionals had studied the submarine for over a century before it made its strategic debut during World War I. However, nearly everyone, including the Germans, had ignored the potential of the submarine as a commerce raider.31 Navalists studied the potential for submarine-on-submarine warfare, the ability of submarines to sink battleships, and other force-on-force concepts. However, when the war started and the German Navy found itself overmatched despite its massive shipbuilding program over the preceding decade, it turned to U-boat warfare and nearly destroyed the supply lines keeping the British alive in the war. Similarly, small technological changes can have massive, unpredictable impacts on the conduct of war: the Gatling gun, repeating rifle, and telegraph in the U.S. Civil War, the machine gun, dirigible, airplane and tank in World War I, stirrups, rifling, magnetically-fused torpedoes, radar, sonar, code-breaking, self-sealing fuel tanks in World War II and the use of cellular phones and the internet in irregular warfare today are just some of the many examples.32

Information-age developments that render capital-intensive platforms less relevant to successful conventional warfighting are one example of the type of change that could place America's conventional superiority at risk. Such a change, if the United States does not lead the transition, would level the playing field and potentially allow rising powers and other states to develop conventional capabilities that could threaten the United States.

Most importantly, traditionalist and COIN-centric visions of the future security environment tend to be one-sided, looking at the future and presuming that the United States can choose its strategy in response. There is an action–reaction cycle inherent in both the choice of strategy on the part of the United States and the character of the global security environment. Former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld once famously said, “[t]he enemy has a vote.” Adversaries exist in an international context, one that is unpredictably changed when any powerful actor makes a strategic choice.33

In addition to inherent uncertainties regarding both the future security environment and the significance of particular military capabilities, there is an interaction or feedback loop between the military strategy chosen by a dominant power, in this case the United States, and the likely wars of the future. Different enemies will engage at different levels of intensity and asymmetry, depending on the kinds of threats the United States prepares for and how that influences its foreign policy. If the United States optimizes for a given threat, logically, it makes actually facing that threat less likely but makes a threat for which U.S. preparation is sub-optimal more likely. The fundamental issue is one of risk and consequences.
Are Asymmetric and Conventional Wars Really Distinct?

The distinction between asymmetric/irregular and so-called conventional war is not as clear as some authors and analysts assume. The concept of “hybrid wars” is one attempt to capture the complex and varied interactions between conventional and asymmetric warfare.34 Indeed, this concept is a vast improvement on the rigid distinctions often used in more traditional analyses.35 Hybrid war advocates point out that the distinction between interstate or “conventional” war and irregular/guerilla warfare is fuzzy, at best. Future wars are likely to feature interlocking elements, some of which are more irregular and some of which are more conventional. It is possible to take this point even further to argue that the strategic-level linkages between irregular and conventional forms and phases of war necessitate preparing the American military for a range of contingencies that include both forms of conflict.36

Major state-to-state wars nearly always include irregular elements and phases. World War II, which some COIN advocates perceive as a pivotal event shaping expectations for conventional wars, contained irregular elements: the Burma Theater and the Philippines from 1942 onwards, for example. America's involvement in Iraq demonstrates that a single conflict can, for practical purposes, include both “regular” and “irregular” wars. That case also demonstrates that postcolonial great powers tend to face irregular threats after demonstrating they are capable of achieving conventional victory.37 Even the Vietnam War, so often treated as the paradigmatic COIN war, included conventional phases that arguably precipitated a logical North Vietnam and the Viet Cong strategy of indirect, irregular war. Even if the United States were to strategically prioritize countering terrorist attacks, the logic of hybrid counter-strategy would make an irregular warfare-only response ineffective. A strike on the homeland might mean something very different if the attacker is largely state-sponsored, rather than a diffuse network like Al Qaeda. Some state sponsors of terrorism and insurgency possess fairly large traditional militaries as well as dedicated terrorist or insurgent-sponsoring organizations. Examples include Iran in Lebanon, Israel and Iraq, Pakistan in Kashmir and Afghanistan, and Russia in Georgia and Nagorno Karabakh.38

A rigid separation between irregular and conventional war is also problematic. In an uncertain international security environment, small-scale events can spiral unpredictably, triggering large-scale conflict. The canonical example is, of course, that state-linked terrorists assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, exacerbating international tensions that unexpectedly triggered the beginning of World War I. More recently, the escalation from the kidnapping of a few Israeli soldiers to the summer 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel surprised many observers at the time. While such escalatory chains are the quintessential low-probability, high-impact scenarios, they are dangerous enough to keep in mind when planning defense strategies.
Considering Hybrid Wars Under Conditions of Pervasive Uncertainty

While many of the states that have “failed” since the end of the Cold War, like Somalia, were poor, geopolitically marginal, and did not possess arsenals of highly sophisticated weapons, planners should not assume this will be the case in the future. Before the recent oil boom, analysts openly contemplated the collapse of the Russian state and feared a worst-case WMD-rich hybrid war, including U.S. military involvement.39 History suggests this is not as far-fetched as it might seem; the United States joined the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War, itself a hybrid outgrowth of the conventional conflict in World War I. Unfriendly regimes could also experience state weakness. A potential WMD-frought North Korean implosion and/or explosion is one obvious example. State failure or radicalizing, violent regime change in Pakistan is another hybrid war scenario.40 High technology capabilities for counter-proliferation and counter-WMD operations have relevance in these hybrid scenarios.

Even ruling out involvement in any hybrid war involving a WMD-armed foe, future “small wars” in resource-rich areas could include high technology threats to U.S. air and naval assets. Recently, the serving Special Envoy to Sudan bluntly warned that he considers Sudanese state failure a high-probability short-term possibility. This would produce a multi-faceted civil war, dwarfing the ongoing Darfur catastrophe.41 An American peacekeeping commitment to Darfur or Sudan is a distinct possibility, and the country could easily become a textbook hybrid war.

Unfortunately, the United States’ technological edge does not eliminate the risk of high-technology hybrid threats. Ironically, this is true partly because today's ally in the war on terror may be tomorrow's state sponsor of terrorism/insurgency. Beyond Pakistan's internal problems, vulnerable states include Saudi Arabia, Colombia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Indonesia.42 All are economically vital, oil-producing states friendly to the United States and occupying strategic geographic positions. Each faces a combination of multi-faceted internal threats: insurgency, inter-communal strife, violent criminality and/or widespread radicalization. If their militaries politically fragment, the United States could find itself embroiled in a sporadically technology-intensive “small war” or stability operation.

Finally, the “soft” side of COIN—understanding foreign cultures, ideologies, engaging in political warfare, etc. is also relevant to conventional warfighting.43 The United States engaged in large-scale psychological operations (PSYOPs) and propaganda in World War I and World War II. And translated documents show that the Chinese military considers mass mobilization and control of information to be critical aspects of twenty first century warfare.44 Every country has “human terrain,” which always affects the conduct of war. But human terrain is often ignored simply because militaries generally lack the wherewithal and resources to collect the data and map it. Normally, academics conduct these studies; anthropologists in World War II performed “national character” studies and psychologists did “operational code” analyses during the Cold War. In the future, when the United States tries to figure out how to keep a limited war with a major high-tech adversary limited, it will want to know how adversaries perceive the world as well as weigh costs and benefits in the war. Efforts to counter Chinese influence in Africa and Latin America, are textbook examples of “political warfare,” which is usually discussed in “irregular warfare” contexts.

The implication of these inter-linkages between terrorism, irregular warfare, and conventional warfare is that it would be a mistake to plan for a future threat environment that focuses on one to the exclusion of the other. While traditionalists might want the American military to get out of the business of doing counterinsurgency, even a more cautious American foreign policy will likely require more instances of peacekeeping and stability operations by American forces and some of the skills required for successful COIN operations are essential for conventional warfare as well.
Moving the Defense Debate Forward

For the near future, the United States and its military will remain heavily engaged in the world, whether through a direct footprint or over the horizon, meaning the United States has to construct a national strategy and military strategy to help achieve its goals. Given the ongoing financial crisis and the long-term pressure on the budget created by entitlement program outlays, it is unreasonable to assume that the United States defense budget will continue on its current upward trajectory. American defense spending, in constant dollars, has nearly doubled since 2000.45 Such increases are not sustainable. In a world of limited budgets, there are hard choices to make about where to spend defense dollars today to ensure that the United States can defeat current threats, while simultaneously ensuring long-term security and prosperity. While dollars are fungible and budgets are zero-sum, claims advanced by some COIN advocates that COIN suffers because it lacks budgetary equivalence with conventional war expenditures are a red herring.46

It costs different amounts to generate different capabilities, so an equally sized budget cut in one area might only entail small risks, while the same cut in another could generate enormous risks. For example, take the oft-quoted figure that it costs $1.2 billion a year to add 10,000 troops to the Army or Marines.47 In theory, because the largest input in land forces is personnel, expenditures can be broken down to the level of individual soldiers; if you spend half of a given amount, you could still generate half the capability. By contrast, many capital-intensive military platforms, like carriers, bombers, and advanced fighters, are all-or-nothing investments. If it costs $5 billion to build a new aircraft carrier—and the USS George H.W. Bush, the last Nimitz-class carrier, cost $5.4 billion to build—expending only $2.5 billion does not provide half of the carrier's capability—it produces nothing.48 This point is particularly salient since investments to ensure naval and air superiority are likely a precondition for creating situations in which large-scale COIN deployments are in the realm of possibility.

Furthermore, given that a lot of the key investments in COIN are in training rather than technology (and in building the capacity of the State Department and other non-military organizations), it is not clear that improving American long-term COIN capabilities requires a huge defense expenditure footprint, though it does require culture-shifting in training and promotions. If the United States wants friendly forces to develop robust COIN capabilities, this might be an argument for leaner, meaner U.S. deployments. When U.S. forces commit to low intensity wars abroad, even a small number of casualties can rapidly collapse U.S. political support for the operation. COIN operations are labor and casualty-intensive. A less well-known fact is that COIN best practices require that advisors sometimes allow Host Nation commanders to make operational errors. Given these realities, U.S. advisors will periodically end up exposed to disproportionate risks and rapid, precision-guided air support has a legitimate role to play. Regardless, the key should be devising an optimal level of expenditure that, balanced with other policy priorities, generates the necessary capabilities. Asking for budget equivalence or a mandatory percentage share of the budget for any particular service or form of warfare is more likely to cause officials to expend funds simply to meet and justify the budgetary targets, rather than wise and efficient utilization.

Hedging will be the optimal strategy for the U.S. military in the short-to-medium term, even in a world of almost inevitable budget cuts. Hedging especially makes sense relevant given uncertainties about the security environment. The defense officials who choose force structure and military strategy do not necessarily choose the wars a democracy like the United States will fight. Elected officials do the latter while in office, but they fight with their predecessor's militaries and fund militaries for their successors. In contrast, unelected bureaucrats and officers do the bulk of force planning and training. Rigging the game so that a future leader lacks the option of fighting a labor-intensive COIN campaign (as the U.S. military did in the post-Vietnam period) or a state-to-state high tech war (if the United States chose to focus exclusively on COIN—an unlikely prospect for sure) is a recipe for disaster.

While it is important, as Secretary Gates argues, to fight, fund, and win the wars you are in, the United States military must also budget and plan for the future. It is important to avoid a situation where the U.S. military optimizes for conflicts that end up not being the most important ones because it deters some enemies while creating vulnerabilities that other potential adversaries use to their advantage. Concretely, George Kennan described the United States—and democracies in general—as prehistoric dinosaurs with very small brains, stupidly unable to anticipate and deal with problems until they become life-threatening but simultaneously capable of enormous destruction once a truly dangerous threat is upon them.49 This mirrors the classic American fallacy that there is one big threat, or type of enemy, that deserves attention to the exclusion of all others. Ironically, given the COIN community's propensity to elevate irregular war over other forms of conflict, it is this strategic fallacy that led to the degradation of COIN capabilities after Vietnam in the first place.

Given that the United States must be ready for future irregular wars but must also maintain and strengthen its conventional warfighting capacity, it is entirely possible to have parts of the Army and Marine Corps optimized for COIN while optimizing the Navy and Air Forces for higher intensity engagements. This sort of division of labor makes sense given that most foreseeable conventional contingencies are likely to rely heavily on naval and air assets, though ground assets will play an important role as well. Hoehn et al's report for the RAND Corporation on the future of the American military offers one potential blueprint for adopting a more clear-cut division of labor scheme. They argue that U.S. ground forces should orient themselves primarily, though not exclusively, towards dealing with irregular challenges, while the Navy and Air Force should primarily, though not exclusively, devote themselves towards maintaining American power projection capabilities and conventional superiority over the global commons.50

Within the land services, good infantry and mechanized tactics, techniques and procedures are as necessary for fighting the Taliban as they were for fighting the Soviets. Adding crowd control and civil-military operations to the list of basic skills for infantry would never practically mean not training them how to operate against other conventionally trained infantry. The Chinese/Russians have tanks, and al Qaeda does not—but they do use vehicles. Calling in fire or using infantry weapons are pretty much the same tasks no matter the target.

Some key questions for U.S. land forces involve doctrine, officer training, and procurement. Some members of the land warfare community have argued that the newest Operations manual (Manual 3-0) borrowed too heavily from COIN doctrine. This implies that all Army operations for the near future will be governed by principles and structures ideal for operating in an irregular war, specifically, Iraq.51 Many of the things that the Army should do to make these systems/processes better – for example, including culture in planning and assessment – should be done anyway, and in planning for every contingency, not just COIN. Not every part of every service has to do the same job—there are air assault divisions and mountain divisions in the Army, so why not have COIN-focused BCTs with advising specialists?52 Moreover, one outcome likely to be wasteful in a budgetary sense is if the Army fails to resolve its debate over its future and maximizes for both conventional operations and COIN. Neither will be necessary if the United States Navy cannot get Army units to a future conflict and the Air Force cannot protect them from air strikes.

Fortunately, just as training troops to understand foreign cultures and other elements of the “soft” side of COIN are helpful for building the capabilities necessary to win conventional wars, many “high” technology elements essential for conventional wars, like rapid over-the-horizon strike capabilities, UAVs, satellite phones, etc., are also helpful for COIN and asymmetric warfare. Even asymmetric conflicts on the sea and in the air require conventional platforms—or at least the most advanced platforms. One example of investment overlap could be next-generation UAVs. UAVs based on similar research and development streams, might be useful both for the COIN role for which they have been praised and the fighter-replacement role. The Air Force may fight hard because of the way it will disrupt the its fighter pilot-dominant organizational hierarchy. In the meantime, the United States will still need carriers for power projection and to protect the flank of U.S. forces deployed in theater. Another example of the links between COIN capabilities and air and naval forces comes from the methods used by the American military to assist its units or Iraqi Security Forces when they call for help. Air-dropped precision guided munitions (PGMs) and UAVs have replaced indirect artillery in many cases since they are faster and more accurate. Over the last year, when Iraqi Security Forces have engaged insurgents without a massive U.S. land force component backing them up, or when they call for help, it is U.S. fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft that have played a decisive role. For example, in Basra, when Coalition Forces backed up Iraqi Security Forces who struggled to implement Operation Knights’ Charge, air support made an important difference.

Finally, investments in basic defense science are essential. As is logical, given that the United States is fighting two wars, increases in defense spending in this decade have gone mostly towards personnel, as well as operations and maintenance (O&M). Between the “peace dividend” taken at the end of the Cold War and the budgetary focus of this decade, investments in basic research and development for the weapons of the future has suffered. While the FY2009 budget contains an increase of 2 percent in the base DOD budget to $76.9 billion, current defense projections call for a 20 percent decrease in research and development from FY2009-2013, with the savings going into procurement for existing weapons systems. If anything, uncertainty about the future character of war should lead to a greater emphasis on research and development spending. By spending a modest amount of money in promising research areas, the United States can help ensure that it not only leads the way in this generation of military weaponry, but in the next generation as well. In particular, funding for basic defense science—detached from systems close to production—is essential. While results-based funding helps ensure accountability, it also leads to a focus on incremental research that discourages the experimentation necessary to lead to breakthroughs. However, the FY2009 budget proposed only $11.5 billion in Science & Technology (S&T) funding, a decrease of 3 percent from FY2000.53
Conclusion

At present, the dominant strands of defense strategy debates feature COIN advocates that wish to transform the American military to focus more on counterinsurgency and irregular wars and traditionalists who seek to return the American military to focusing exclusively on conventional wars. This debate presents a false choice. The national strategy of the United States calls for remaining actively engaged around the world, which will sometimes require using military force abroad. It is necessary, in a world of limited budgets, to move beyond the COIN v. Conventional War debate, especially because by embracing a zero-sum vision of future war, and trading one capability for the other, it makes facing the neglected threat more likely. Given uncertainty about the future security environment and the future character of war in the information age, a hedging strategy seems prudent. By optimizing different aspects of the military for different campaigns, recognizing significant differences in the types of campaigns that are most likely at different levels of intensity, investing in defense systems with applicability to both COIN and conventional campaigns, and bolstering funding for basic defense science research, the United States can ensure that it remains the leading global military power not only for this generation, but also for the next, as well.

The authors wish to thank Mike Noonan, Mac Owens, Allan Stam, and the members of the FPRI Study Group for their helpful comments and suggestions.

1 Robert M. Gates, “Remarks to the Heritage Foundation,” May 2008, http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=1240 (accessed 10/1/08).
2 Gates, 2008.
3 Steven Metz, Learning From Iraq: Counterinsurgency in American Strategy (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, January 2007), pp. 59–60.
4 Andrew Krepinevich, “The Future of U.S. Ground Forces: Challenges and Requirements,” April 2007, http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/T.20070417.The_Future_of_US_G/T.20070417.The_Future_of_US_G.pdf (accessed 10/2/2008), pp. 12–3.
5 Thomas X. Hammes, “Insurgency: Modern Warfare Evolves into a Fourth Generation,” Strategic Forum, January 2005, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/sf214.pdf (accessed 10/3/08), pp. 2, 5.
6 John Nagl, “Institutionalizing Adaptation: It's Time for a Permanent Army Advisor Corps,” June 2007 http://www.newamericansecuritycnas.org/files/documents/publications/Nagl_AdvisoryCorp_June07.pdf (accessed 10/20/08).
7 Krepinevich, 2007, pp. 5–9.
8 H.R. McMaster, “On War: Lessons to be Learned,” Survival, March 2008, pp. 19–21, 25–6; H.R. McMaster, “Learning from Contemporary Conflicts to Prepare for Future War,” Orbis (Fall 2008). RMA/Transformation advocates have become much less vocal over the last few years. To some extent, this has to do with the perception that Rumsfeld overreached with his transformation vision. However, this group still exists and its views could still influence American defense strategy depending on developments over the next several years.
9 David C. Gompert, et al., War by other means: building complete and balanced capabilities for counterinsurgency (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2008), xii, p. 80.
10 Jonathan Morgenstein and Eric Vickland, “The Global Counter-Insurgency: America's New National Security and Foreign Policy Paradigm,” Small Wars Journal Magazine, 2008, http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs-temp/2-morgenstein-vickland.pdf (accessed 10/24/08).
11 Metz, January 2007, p. viii.
12 Steven Metz and Raymond Millen, Future War/Future Battlespace: The Strategic Role of American Landpower (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, March 2003), pp. 9–11.
13 Metz, March 2003, p. 17.
14 Barry R. Posen, “The Case For Restraint,” The American Interest, December 2007, http://www.the-american-interest.com/ai2/article.cfm?Id=331&MId=16 (accessed 10/4/2008). However, Posen does not think it is worth fighting these wars since he thinks they are not vital to American interests.
15 Gian P. Gentile, “A (Slightly) Better War: A Narrative And Its Defects,” World Affairs Journal, Summer 2008, http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2008%20-%20Summer/full-Gentile.html (accessed 10/4/2008).
16 Charles J. Dunlap Jr., “America's Asymmetric Advantage,” Armed Forces Journal, September 2006, http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/09/2009013 (accessed 10/4/2008).
17 Gentile, Summer 2008.
18 Michael J. Mazarr, “The Folly of ‘Asymmetric War’,” The Washington Quarterly, Summer 2008, pp. 41, 47.
19 Dunlap, September 2006.
20 Metz, January 2007, pp. vii, 80.
21 Steven Metz, Rethinking Insurgency (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, June 2007), pp. 54–5.
22 Mazarr, 2008, pp. 36, 44–5.
23 Metz, June 2007, pp. 51–5.
24 Shawn Brimley and Vikram Singh. “The Indirect Approach and American Strategy,” Orbis, Spring 2008, pp. 312–31.
25 Barry Posen, “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” International Security, 28:1 (2003), pp. 5–46.
26 Zalmay Khalilzad, “Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War,” The Washington Quarterly, 18:2 (Spring 1995), pp. 87–107.
27 Andrew F. Krepinevich, “Defense Investment Strategies in an Uncertain World,” 2008, www.csbaonline.org/2006-1/1.StrategicStudies/LongHaul.shtml (accessed 10/10/2008).
28 The authors would like to thank Allan Stam for making this point clear.
29 Metz and Millen, 2003, p. 21.
30 Krepinevich, 2008, p. 24.
31 The French Jeune Ecole was one exception. Erik J. Dahl, “Net-Centric Before Its Time: The Jeune Ecole and Its Lessons for Today,” The Naval War College Review, Autumn 2005.
32 Michael Howard and John F. Guilmart, “Two Historians in Technology and War,” Presented at US Army War College Fifth Annual Strategy Conference, July 1994, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ssi/2hist.pdf (accessed 10/1/08).
33 David Kilcullen and Justin Kelly, “Chaos Versus Predictability: A Critique of Effects-Based Operations,” Australian Army Journal, 2:1 (Winter 2004), http://www.pixoo.net/cd/AAJ_Winter_2004.pdf#page=88 (accessed 10/2/08).
34 Frank Hoffman and James N. Mattis, “Future Warfare: The Rise of Hybrid Wars,” Naval Institute Proceedings, 132:11 (November 2005).
35 Erin M. Simpson, “Thinking About Modern Conflict: Hybrid Wars, Strategy, and War Aims,” Working Paper, April 2005, http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/not, vert, similaresimpson/papers/hybrid.pdf (accessed 10/2/08).
36 Michele A. Flournoy, M.A. and Shawn Brimely, “The Defense Inheritance: Challenges and Choices for the Next Pentagon Team,” The Washington Quarterly, Autumn 2008, pp. 63–4.
37 Michael R. Melillo, “Outfitting a Big-War Military with Small-War Capabilities,” Parameters, Autumn 2006, p. 26.
38 Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
39 Olga Oliker and Tanya Charlik-Paley, Assessing Russia's Decline—Trends and Implications for the United States and the U.S. Air Force (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2002), pp. 97–111.
40 C. Raja Mohan, “What If Pakistan Fails? India Isn’t Worried … Yet,” The Washington Quarterly, Winter 2004–2005, pp. 124–5, 127–8.
41 Andrew S. Natsios, “Beyond Darfur—Sudan's Slide Toward Civil War,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008, pp.77–93.
42 Robert I. Rotberg, “The New Nature of Nation-State Failure,” The Washington Quarterly, Summer 2002, pp. 89–93.
43 Krepinevich, June 2007, p. 8.
44 Toshi Yoshihara, Chinese Information Warfare: A Phantom Menace or Emerging Threat (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, November 2001). pp. 7, 20, 28.
45 U.S. Department of Defense (2008) “National Budget Estimates for FY 2009.” Available at: http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2009/FY09Greenbook/greenbook_2009_updated.pdf (last accessed 10/3/08).
46 David Ucko, “Innovation or Inertia: The U.S. Military and the Learning of Counterinsurgency,” Winter 2008, pp. 290–310.
47 Adam Ward, “Expanding the US Army,” Strategic Comments, 13:1 (February 2007) http://www.iiss.org.proxygw.wrlc.org/publications/strategic-comments/past-issues/volume-13---2007/volume-13-issue-1/expanding-the-us-army/ (accessed 10/4/2008).
48 John Pike, “CVN-77,” 2006, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/cvn-77.htm (accessed 10/3/08).
49 George Kennan, American Diplomacy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 66.
50 Andrew R. Hoehn et al., A new division of labor: meeting America's security challenges beyond Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007), xv-xvi, pp. 80-84. Also, see Posen, 2003.
51 The authors wish to thank Christopher Alexander for raising this point.
52 Nagl, 2007.
53 Steven Kosiak, Analysis of the FY2009 Defense Budget Request, (Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments, 2008), http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/R.20080421.Analysis_of_the_FY/R.20080421.Analysis_of_the_FY.pdf (accessed 10/10/2008), pp. 20–2; John F. Sargent et al., “Federal Research and Development Funding: FY2009,” CRS Report for Congress, Order Code: RL34448, Updated August 15, 2008, http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL34448_20080815.pdf (accessed 10/10/2008).
Vitae

Michael C. Horowitz is assistant professor of Political Science at The University of Pennsylvania, as well as an FPRI scholar.Dan A. Shalmon is a Senior Analyst at Lincoln Group, LLC., and a graduate student at Georgetown University.