Inside Defense
Aug. 19, 2009 -- Ongoing deliberations about a new force-sizing construct for the U.S. military are fueled, at least in part, by complaints from military planners that the current approach is too vague, according to defense officials.
The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review introduced the idea of modeling the size and composition of U.S. forces along three major functional themes: homeland defense, counterterrorism and irregular warfare, and conventional warfare. Combined with a series of variables -- like the projected duration of conflicts, their intensity or the environment in which they take place -- defense leaders aimed to create a very high-level formula for translating the complexities of a post-September 11 world into concrete force-sizing guidance.
Officials commonly refer to the planning construct built from this thinking as the “Michelin Man” for the oval depiction of its three major themes, stacked on top of each other, in briefing slides and documents.
But following the transition in the White House earlier this year, military planners and budgeteers from the services and combatant commands pointed to what they thought were shortcomings of this approach in conversations with the new cadre of officials in the Pentagon's policy shop.
“What we heard over and over again was, 'We need a new force-sizing construct,'” Kathleen Hicks, the deputy under secretary of defense for strategy, plans and forces, said in an Aug. 6 interview.
“What we often would hear was [that] there was not enough specificity provided in the Michelin Man -- that it created an inability to control demand for forces,” she added. “It might have worked for a period of time when resources were never ending. But when budgets are becoming constrained, you need a finer mechanism for determining what forces you actually are required to have,” she said.
There was also a recognition that the preceding force-sizing construct, the so-called “1-4-2-1” model, was “too constricting,” Hicks said.
The model dictates that the United States must have sufficient forces to simultaneously defend the homeland, deter aggression in four regions of the world, swiftly deter aggression in two conflicts, and win one of these conflicts decisively.
Officials working on this year's QDR have tried to come up with specific force-sizing “criteria” as well as “planning assumptions and approaches” that will soon be vetted in greater detail, Hicks said. Officials included “interim” guidance to that effect in the recently signed Guidance for the Development of the Force, she noted.
Earlier this month, Inside the Pentagon reported the framework of the new construct as being four-pronged: prevail in ongoing conflicts; prevent and deter; prepare for contingencies; and preserve and enhance the force.
With the Michelin Man concept considered too vague and the 1-4-2-1 model considered too prescriptive for the unknowns of present-day warfare, exactly where the new force-sizing construct will fall is considered one of the key questions of the defense review.
For now, officials are still working on the conceptual underpinning of the new construct before worrying about what to label it, according to Hicks.
“We're very cognizant of our need to be able to translate that into something that is understandable to the public [and] is understandable to Congress,” said Hicks. “But in my mind that is the second step of the process. The first step of the process is getting it right analytically.” -- Sebastian Sprenger
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