Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has signed classified guidance advocating increased investment in military capabilities designed for high-end war among major powers, according to sources familiar with the document.
The Pentagon is "not walking away" from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, fought largely by soldiers and Marines trained in counterinsurgency operations, but the discussion of potential threats in Panetta's Aug. 29 Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) signals a "new seriousness about major-power war," which could trigger a "flowering of air and naval power," said a former service official familiar with the guidance.
As it draws down forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and cuts security spending by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade, the Defense Department is likely to reduce Army investment and boost funding for key Air Force and Navy capabilities associated with countering China, said current and former defense officials.
Although DOD's budget topline in fiscal year 2013 remains to be decided, the department is planning to reduce capability for conventional military operations and counterinsurgency, shrink the size of the military, maintain counterterrorism capability and invest more in countering high-end threats like long-range weapons being developed by China that could challenge U.S. power projection capabilities in the Western Pacific, said a military official familiar with Panetta's guidance.
Panetta's press secretary and a Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment on the classified guidance. But Panetta told reporters last week that DOD's budget review will develop "a smaller, more agile and more flexible force for the future."
The Air Force and Navy have been developing an AirSea Battle concept to address "anti-access and area-denial" weapons being developed by China. The concept's proponents also see applications elsewhere, including in NATO's recent naval and air strikes on the Libyan regime of Moammar Gadhafi.
"It seems clear there will be increased emphasis on AirSea Battle approach going forward," said a senior defense official. "Libya is a good illustration of this."
In remarks last week to Business Executives for National Security, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen stressed the importance of investing to keep pace with the growth of China's military. And Mullen questioned the wisdom of continuing to treat the Army, Navy and Air Force as fiscal equals, noting the "one-third, one-third, one-third" approach to funding the three military departments could be obsolete.
"I don't know if that's right," said Mullen, who is due to step down Friday. "Actually, if it isn't right, we need to change that."
John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security and a retired Army officer, said the budget share has "shifted substantially over the past decade" because ground forces received substantial funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the "overseas contingency operations" account, which is outside the base budget. "Save for that accounting trick, the Army share of the overall budget would have been appreciably more than one-third," he said.
"The Army share of the budget is very likely to drop over the next decade," Nagl said. "We have underinvested in Air Force and Navy platforms during the wars." The QDR Independent Panel, which Nagl was a member of, recommended a larger Navy given emerging threats in the Western Pacific. He also said Air Force planes need recapitalization, arguing it would be best to invest relatively more in stealthy drones and less in manned stealth platforms.
"The ground forces can expand or contract more quickly than can the capital-intensive air and sea forces," he said. "They are likely to decrease in size over the next decade, and should focus on retaining mid-grade officer and NCO strength in order to be able to expand rapidly when required."
If the budget comes out with the "one-third, one-third, one-third" ratio intact, the comprehensive review "should be judged a complete failure," an administration official said. The Army's topline will likely be cut harder than other services, the official said.
"Gates was right -- there aren't many contingencies for which we'll use 100,000 troops to invade and occupy a country," the official said, noting the Marine Corps will "get smaller and lighter."
"The Navy and Air Force are positioned to do well -- but I imagine business as usual for them won't be an option either," the official said, noting unmanned aircraft will need to be a prominent feature for both. The Navy needs to "get serious" about unmanned combat air vehicles "if they want to keep carriers relevant" and the Air Force "needs to rethink whether the long-range bomber will be manned," the official said.
Adm. Jonathan Greenert, who became chief of naval operations last week, cited warfighting as the Navy's top priority in a Sept. 23 message. Still, the Navy's fleet is expected to shrink due to budgetary pressures. Today, the fleet has 284 ships in its battle force, despite a 313-ship goal. That goal could fall as low as 225, an industry source said.
Mullen's successor, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, said at his confirmation hearing in July that the 313-ship goal is reasonable for DOD's current strategy. He noted shipbuilding supports the AirSea Battle concept. But he also warned the new strategy being developed in conjunction with budget cuts might not support the 313-ship goal.
Next-war-itis no more
Panetta's predecessor, Robert Gates, used to complain that the defense establishment had a case of "next-war-itis," meaning it was too focused on potential needs for future conflict. But the new guidance shows it is now OK to talk about potential future wars, said the former service official, noting there are more threats on the department's mind.
Charges against Gates that he neglected the future are "a little unfair," a former Pentagon official said, noting Gates made key decisions about the nuclear triad and the need for long-range strike capabilities that addressed "anti-access and area-denial" threats. But on Gates' watch the department focused mostly on today's wars, the source said, noting that now DOD is increasing its attention on the potential for war with countries such as China and Iran.
Some of DOD's discussion with President Obama about "alternative futures" -- and what the military ought to be able to do in the years ahead -- centers on "continued instability in the Middle East [and] a growing concern and a need for stability in the Asia-Pacific region," Mullen said last week.
DOD annually issues guidance on defense planning to steer development of the armed services and defense agencies' long-term investment plans. But the Aug. 29 guidance is Panetta's first DPG -- and it comes as the department faces hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts over the next decade.
Panetta listed an array of national security challenges beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during a recent talk at National Defense University.
"We're involved in two wars; we're in a NATO mission in Libya; we're confronting other threats from Iran and North Korea; we continue to be in a war on terrorism; we're fighting a concern about cyberattacks, increasing cyberattacks here," he said. "And we have rising powers -- nations like China and India and Brazil, not to mention Russia -- that we have to continue to look at in terms of their role in providing stability in the world. And we're facing resource constrictions, budget constrictions now."
Last year, Gates issued a classified document called the Defense Planning and Programming Guidance (DPPG) to lay out the department's priority missions, force-sizing construct, major force-planning assumptions and key capabilities to size and shape the future force. Panetta's DPG addresses such issues with "varying degrees of depth and success," the former service official said. A Pentagon official said Panetta's guidance omits programming instructions, which were not ready for inclusion. It is difficult to give precise programming instructions when the FY-13 budget topline remains undetermined due to overarching deliberations about slashing the federal deficit, said a second military official.
Defense officials maintain they are developing a strategy to inform the planned defense-spending cuts. The former service official said Panetta's guidance "does not provide what any serious student of strategy would consider a strategy," but it does include "big-picture muscle movements" that suggest "echoes or shadows" of a new strategy.
Current and former defense officials said the department's long-term strategy for investment and budget cuts remains a work in progress that is being debated. The part of the debate concerning "anti-access and area-denial" threats is not whether to boost investment in countering such weapons but rather "how much more, how quickly and in lieu of what," said the former Pentagon official.
Capitol Hill has both proponents and skeptics of AirSea Battle. "The AirSea Battle advocates clearly want a defense establishment oriented on the higher end and air/naval forces for dealing with anti-access/area denial," said a congressional source. "But they seem to ignore, and no one is asking, the 'then what?' question. Kicking in the door is one thing, but then what?" Wasn't it [former Secretary of State Gen. Colin] Powell who said, 'you break it, you bought it'?"
A fundamental choice
Earlier this year, Gates predicted the department would have to choose between putting a new emphasis on high-end threats and continuing to focus more on counterinsurgency operations.
"One of the fundamental choices is, do we focus our force structure on being able to deal with high-end sophisticated threats and then assume that that will handle all lesser included cases?" he said May 24 at the American Enterprise Institute. "Or do we continue to emphasize what we've been emphasizing in the last few years, which is counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, with less emphasis on the high-end threats? You know, that's the analysis that we're doing."
Mullen said last week the U.S. military is a "heavy counterinsurgency force right now, and we've got to rebalance that." Similarly, last month he called for the military to "renew" its training as a force with a "broad spectrum of capabilities." In the process of becoming "the best counterinsurgency force in the world," the U.S. military has had to "sacrifice some . . . training and capabilities in other areas . . . of what I would call our . . . multispectral capability that we've got to have," Mullen said in an Aug. 1 talk with troops in Mosul, Iraq.
Earlier this year in congressional testimony, Mullen said the Pentagon's future force would likely "involve a greater emphasis on [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance], command and control, long-range strike, area denial, undersea warfare, missile defense, and cyber capabilities." He also noted the military "must continue to adapt some of our systems and tactics to counter anti-access and area-denial strategies, which may involve both the most advanced and simplest technologies."
A retired senior military official said phrases like "major power war," and "high-end asymmetric threat," seem to be "code for China because no other major power, including Russia, has significant potential to affect" the United States. North Korea, Iran and Venezuela "are surely not major powers," the source said, noting India, Brazil, Japan and the European Union are "non-threatening excepting commercial competition."
A recent Pentagon report to Congress warns that China is "pursuing a variety of air, sea, undersea, space counterspace, information warfare systems and operational concepts" to achieve anti-access and area-denial capabilities. The report cites China's "sustained effort to develop the capability to attack, at long ranges, military forces that might deploy or operate within the Western Pacific." On June 3 in Singapore, Gates said DOD is "investing significant sums of money" to address the long-term challenge posed by such high-end threats.
DOD is also concerned that the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, armed fighters in Afghanistan or other potential foes could wield guided munitions that are simple compared to high-end Chinese systems but still amount to deadly anti-access and area-denial weapons. In Singapore, Gates referenced Hezbollah's possession of "anti-ship cruise missiles with a range of more than 65 miles that potentially puts our and other ships at risk off the coast of Lebanon."
"While Iran is unlikely to initiate or launch a preemptive attack, it could attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz temporarily, threaten U.S. forces and regional allies with missiles and employ terrorist surrogates worldwide," Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Ron Burgess told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March.
The Naval Research Advisory Committee recently launched a new study on Marine Corps capabilities for countering precision weapons. "The intel community is seeing greater proliferation of relatively inexpensive Guided Rockets, Artillery, Mortars, and Missiles (G-RAMM), which can pose a great threat to future Marine operations," states the draft terms of reference for the study. "This threat is yet another example of cheap technologies with the potential to have a huge impact on future missions, much like the [improvised explosive devices] have had on recent ones."
But the near-term battle facing the department could have more to do with budgetary infighting. Even as Mullen last week proposed dividing DOD's budget differently among the armed services to better posture the military for tomorrow's challenges, he cautioned institutional resistance could make such change "very difficult" to accomplish. He warned against letting spending cuts devolve into a parochial squabble for resources among the armed services.
Although it is healthy for the services to see the world in different ways, DOD must be "careful" in its choices, he said. Allowing friction among the services to dominate the budget review -- which aims to cut "more than $450 billion" over a decade -- could "set back" jointness and readiness, he warned. "Frankly, our record of change without squabble is checkered at best," Mullen said. "We didn't do this well in the '70s. We didn't do it well in the 90s." But failing to be "thoughtful" about the strategy could leave the department with the "wrong force at the wrong time," he said.
Panetta's guidance is not the endgame of the FY-13 budget process but rather an opening salvo in a budget debate tethered closely to efforts to slash the massive federal debt. Much depends on whether the congressional supercommitee this fall triggers huge additional defense cuts by failing to achieve prescribed deficit savings. That outcome could break the Pentagon by hollowing out the military, senior defense officials argue. -- Christopher J. Castelli
The Pentagon is "not walking away" from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, fought largely by soldiers and Marines trained in counterinsurgency operations, but the discussion of potential threats in Panetta's Aug. 29 Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) signals a "new seriousness about major-power war," which could trigger a "flowering of air and naval power," said a former service official familiar with the guidance.
As it draws down forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and cuts security spending by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade, the Defense Department is likely to reduce Army investment and boost funding for key Air Force and Navy capabilities associated with countering China, said current and former defense officials.
Although DOD's budget topline in fiscal year 2013 remains to be decided, the department is planning to reduce capability for conventional military operations and counterinsurgency, shrink the size of the military, maintain counterterrorism capability and invest more in countering high-end threats like long-range weapons being developed by China that could challenge U.S. power projection capabilities in the Western Pacific, said a military official familiar with Panetta's guidance.
Panetta's press secretary and a Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment on the classified guidance. But Panetta told reporters last week that DOD's budget review will develop "a smaller, more agile and more flexible force for the future."
The Air Force and Navy have been developing an AirSea Battle concept to address "anti-access and area-denial" weapons being developed by China. The concept's proponents also see applications elsewhere, including in NATO's recent naval and air strikes on the Libyan regime of Moammar Gadhafi.
"It seems clear there will be increased emphasis on AirSea Battle approach going forward," said a senior defense official. "Libya is a good illustration of this."
In remarks last week to Business Executives for National Security, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen stressed the importance of investing to keep pace with the growth of China's military. And Mullen questioned the wisdom of continuing to treat the Army, Navy and Air Force as fiscal equals, noting the "one-third, one-third, one-third" approach to funding the three military departments could be obsolete.
"I don't know if that's right," said Mullen, who is due to step down Friday. "Actually, if it isn't right, we need to change that."
John Nagl, president of the Center for a New American Security and a retired Army officer, said the budget share has "shifted substantially over the past decade" because ground forces received substantial funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the "overseas contingency operations" account, which is outside the base budget. "Save for that accounting trick, the Army share of the overall budget would have been appreciably more than one-third," he said.
"The Army share of the budget is very likely to drop over the next decade," Nagl said. "We have underinvested in Air Force and Navy platforms during the wars." The QDR Independent Panel, which Nagl was a member of, recommended a larger Navy given emerging threats in the Western Pacific. He also said Air Force planes need recapitalization, arguing it would be best to invest relatively more in stealthy drones and less in manned stealth platforms.
"The ground forces can expand or contract more quickly than can the capital-intensive air and sea forces," he said. "They are likely to decrease in size over the next decade, and should focus on retaining mid-grade officer and NCO strength in order to be able to expand rapidly when required."
If the budget comes out with the "one-third, one-third, one-third" ratio intact, the comprehensive review "should be judged a complete failure," an administration official said. The Army's topline will likely be cut harder than other services, the official said.
"Gates was right -- there aren't many contingencies for which we'll use 100,000 troops to invade and occupy a country," the official said, noting the Marine Corps will "get smaller and lighter."
"The Navy and Air Force are positioned to do well -- but I imagine business as usual for them won't be an option either," the official said, noting unmanned aircraft will need to be a prominent feature for both. The Navy needs to "get serious" about unmanned combat air vehicles "if they want to keep carriers relevant" and the Air Force "needs to rethink whether the long-range bomber will be manned," the official said.
Adm. Jonathan Greenert, who became chief of naval operations last week, cited warfighting as the Navy's top priority in a Sept. 23 message. Still, the Navy's fleet is expected to shrink due to budgetary pressures. Today, the fleet has 284 ships in its battle force, despite a 313-ship goal. That goal could fall as low as 225, an industry source said.
Mullen's successor, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, said at his confirmation hearing in July that the 313-ship goal is reasonable for DOD's current strategy. He noted shipbuilding supports the AirSea Battle concept. But he also warned the new strategy being developed in conjunction with budget cuts might not support the 313-ship goal.
Next-war-itis no more
Panetta's predecessor, Robert Gates, used to complain that the defense establishment had a case of "next-war-itis," meaning it was too focused on potential needs for future conflict. But the new guidance shows it is now OK to talk about potential future wars, said the former service official, noting there are more threats on the department's mind.
Charges against Gates that he neglected the future are "a little unfair," a former Pentagon official said, noting Gates made key decisions about the nuclear triad and the need for long-range strike capabilities that addressed "anti-access and area-denial" threats. But on Gates' watch the department focused mostly on today's wars, the source said, noting that now DOD is increasing its attention on the potential for war with countries such as China and Iran.
Some of DOD's discussion with President Obama about "alternative futures" -- and what the military ought to be able to do in the years ahead -- centers on "continued instability in the Middle East [and] a growing concern and a need for stability in the Asia-Pacific region," Mullen said last week.
DOD annually issues guidance on defense planning to steer development of the armed services and defense agencies' long-term investment plans. But the Aug. 29 guidance is Panetta's first DPG -- and it comes as the department faces hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts over the next decade.
Panetta listed an array of national security challenges beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during a recent talk at National Defense University.
"We're involved in two wars; we're in a NATO mission in Libya; we're confronting other threats from Iran and North Korea; we continue to be in a war on terrorism; we're fighting a concern about cyberattacks, increasing cyberattacks here," he said. "And we have rising powers -- nations like China and India and Brazil, not to mention Russia -- that we have to continue to look at in terms of their role in providing stability in the world. And we're facing resource constrictions, budget constrictions now."
Last year, Gates issued a classified document called the Defense Planning and Programming Guidance (DPPG) to lay out the department's priority missions, force-sizing construct, major force-planning assumptions and key capabilities to size and shape the future force. Panetta's DPG addresses such issues with "varying degrees of depth and success," the former service official said. A Pentagon official said Panetta's guidance omits programming instructions, which were not ready for inclusion. It is difficult to give precise programming instructions when the FY-13 budget topline remains undetermined due to overarching deliberations about slashing the federal deficit, said a second military official.
Defense officials maintain they are developing a strategy to inform the planned defense-spending cuts. The former service official said Panetta's guidance "does not provide what any serious student of strategy would consider a strategy," but it does include "big-picture muscle movements" that suggest "echoes or shadows" of a new strategy.
Current and former defense officials said the department's long-term strategy for investment and budget cuts remains a work in progress that is being debated. The part of the debate concerning "anti-access and area-denial" threats is not whether to boost investment in countering such weapons but rather "how much more, how quickly and in lieu of what," said the former Pentagon official.
Capitol Hill has both proponents and skeptics of AirSea Battle. "The AirSea Battle advocates clearly want a defense establishment oriented on the higher end and air/naval forces for dealing with anti-access/area denial," said a congressional source. "But they seem to ignore, and no one is asking, the 'then what?' question. Kicking in the door is one thing, but then what?" Wasn't it [former Secretary of State Gen. Colin] Powell who said, 'you break it, you bought it'?"
A fundamental choice
Earlier this year, Gates predicted the department would have to choose between putting a new emphasis on high-end threats and continuing to focus more on counterinsurgency operations.
"One of the fundamental choices is, do we focus our force structure on being able to deal with high-end sophisticated threats and then assume that that will handle all lesser included cases?" he said May 24 at the American Enterprise Institute. "Or do we continue to emphasize what we've been emphasizing in the last few years, which is counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, with less emphasis on the high-end threats? You know, that's the analysis that we're doing."
Mullen said last week the U.S. military is a "heavy counterinsurgency force right now, and we've got to rebalance that." Similarly, last month he called for the military to "renew" its training as a force with a "broad spectrum of capabilities." In the process of becoming "the best counterinsurgency force in the world," the U.S. military has had to "sacrifice some . . . training and capabilities in other areas . . . of what I would call our . . . multispectral capability that we've got to have," Mullen said in an Aug. 1 talk with troops in Mosul, Iraq.
Earlier this year in congressional testimony, Mullen said the Pentagon's future force would likely "involve a greater emphasis on [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance], command and control, long-range strike, area denial, undersea warfare, missile defense, and cyber capabilities." He also noted the military "must continue to adapt some of our systems and tactics to counter anti-access and area-denial strategies, which may involve both the most advanced and simplest technologies."
A retired senior military official said phrases like "major power war," and "high-end asymmetric threat," seem to be "code for China because no other major power, including Russia, has significant potential to affect" the United States. North Korea, Iran and Venezuela "are surely not major powers," the source said, noting India, Brazil, Japan and the European Union are "non-threatening excepting commercial competition."
A recent Pentagon report to Congress warns that China is "pursuing a variety of air, sea, undersea, space counterspace, information warfare systems and operational concepts" to achieve anti-access and area-denial capabilities. The report cites China's "sustained effort to develop the capability to attack, at long ranges, military forces that might deploy or operate within the Western Pacific." On June 3 in Singapore, Gates said DOD is "investing significant sums of money" to address the long-term challenge posed by such high-end threats.
DOD is also concerned that the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, armed fighters in Afghanistan or other potential foes could wield guided munitions that are simple compared to high-end Chinese systems but still amount to deadly anti-access and area-denial weapons. In Singapore, Gates referenced Hezbollah's possession of "anti-ship cruise missiles with a range of more than 65 miles that potentially puts our and other ships at risk off the coast of Lebanon."
"While Iran is unlikely to initiate or launch a preemptive attack, it could attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz temporarily, threaten U.S. forces and regional allies with missiles and employ terrorist surrogates worldwide," Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Ron Burgess told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March.
The Naval Research Advisory Committee recently launched a new study on Marine Corps capabilities for countering precision weapons. "The intel community is seeing greater proliferation of relatively inexpensive Guided Rockets, Artillery, Mortars, and Missiles (G-RAMM), which can pose a great threat to future Marine operations," states the draft terms of reference for the study. "This threat is yet another example of cheap technologies with the potential to have a huge impact on future missions, much like the [improvised explosive devices] have had on recent ones."
But the near-term battle facing the department could have more to do with budgetary infighting. Even as Mullen last week proposed dividing DOD's budget differently among the armed services to better posture the military for tomorrow's challenges, he cautioned institutional resistance could make such change "very difficult" to accomplish. He warned against letting spending cuts devolve into a parochial squabble for resources among the armed services.
Although it is healthy for the services to see the world in different ways, DOD must be "careful" in its choices, he said. Allowing friction among the services to dominate the budget review -- which aims to cut "more than $450 billion" over a decade -- could "set back" jointness and readiness, he warned. "Frankly, our record of change without squabble is checkered at best," Mullen said. "We didn't do this well in the '70s. We didn't do it well in the 90s." But failing to be "thoughtful" about the strategy could leave the department with the "wrong force at the wrong time," he said.
Panetta's guidance is not the endgame of the FY-13 budget process but rather an opening salvo in a budget debate tethered closely to efforts to slash the massive federal debt. Much depends on whether the congressional supercommitee this fall triggers huge additional defense cuts by failing to achieve prescribed deficit savings. That outcome could break the Pentagon by hollowing out the military, senior defense officials argue. -- Christopher J. Castelli