Answering the Army’s Three Questions
Answering the Army's Three Questions by Kevin Benson, Real Clear Defense.
In a July 18 blog post, Hoover Institution fellow Kori Schake called out the U.S. Army for failing to make its funding case to the president, Congress, and the American people. “For the Army leadership to get ahead of the train and craft an outcome different from cuts of another 100,000 soldiers,” Schake warned, “it will need to be much more forthcoming and much more analytically persuasive than [Chief of Staff Ray] Odierno has been.”
Schake’s focus was on the size of the active component of the Army and why the number 490,000 is important and relevant to the needs of the nation. Among the more problematic aspects of Schake’s argument was her citation of a state adjutant general’s assertion that the National Guard is more cost effective than the regular Army…
This is a load of …
“We need an active force of 490,000 because policy decisions are never made in time to meet the alert, mobilization, training and deployment time needed to bring the reserve forces into readiness for deployment. Only a force in being at a high state of readiness can meet this requirement.”
This would be true if the active duty consisted only of Airborne and light infantry. Reality is that Heavy forces take a long time to get into theater and, concurrent with that effort you could be mobilizing the reserve. The trick is to have an system that is built to do that. The new ARFORGEN cycle does this as long as it is maintained.
Why the focus on numbers instead of capabilities and the capacity needed for each capability?
Furthermore, I see little discussion on why we need to retain a large force beyond having a viable crisis response capability. In my opinion that does not represent our total requirement. Our military since WWII has been instrumental and relatively successful in deterring conflict and securing our nation’s interests (making safe from attack) around the world, and our diplomacy in some parts of the world would be ineffective without a capable military behind it. It is about more than crisis response. Obviously the value of underwriting much of the global security system is impossible to measure, but I suspect its value would become more apparent if we demonstrated to the world we weren’t willing to play that role anymore. What happens if the current global security system unravels? What if nations that have depended upon the U.S. playing the global sheriff believe we are withdrawing from that self-imposed responsibility? Will see more arms races, new coalitions, and increased risk of war over time? Of course none of us can answer those questions with any degree of confidence, but they need to be considered. There is more to strategy than bean counting, and in many cases the beans defy counting. We could be risking long term national security objectives for short term savings.
Moving on to the article’s points on how much we should have in the active, reserve, and guard components. I’m certainly no expert when it comes to reserves and the guard other than noting like others they’re not as well trained the active duty, so we will assume risk if we feel compelled to employ them somewhat rapidly. However, I think that argument side steps the capabilities needed debate. Based on the projected threats we will face in 2020, to include threats to our homeland can we afford to sustain Guard forces that are not ready for operations in response to crisis? For example, shortly after the attacks on 9/11 the National Guard was patrolling our airports with socks stuck in their magazine wells because their leadership didn’t trust them to have loaded weapons. Admittedly after 10 years of war I hope that has changed for the Guard, but it won’t take long after the war before we get back to that level. Threats to the homeland include Mumbai style attacks, catastrophic terrorist attacks, cyber-attacks, nuclear weapons from a wider range of actors, etc., and of course the enduring risk of major natural disasters and pandemic diseases. Is the homeland the Guard’s domain? If so, does retaining the Guard in a partial state of readiness what we really want? Putting our heavy forces in the Guard will do little to enhance their readiness to defend the homeland unless we expect the Chinese, Iranians, Russians, or North Koreans to somehow conduct a mechanized attack on the homeland. There for it seems logical to me to put more of our heavy forces in the Army Reserve, and look at restructuring the Guard to better defend the homeland against emergent threats.
It seems we may be missing key future force design considerations when we only focus on numbers of personnel and legacy capabilities when we’re supposed to be looking at what the Joint Force 2020 should consist of based on a projected future environment.
I think Schake’s point’s that Army “will need to be much more forthcoming and much more analytically persuasive” is valid to a degree but so much is determined by our political leaders as well world events beyond our control. What would have happened if Bush 41 went for Bagdhad in Desert Storm? What would have happened if Bush 43 had not blundered into Iraq? China may be a threat but do we want to size our Army for a land war in China? I don’t know.
What I do know is that it is better to have the best military force possible at any given time, not only to deter enemies, but to stomp on them quickly should they rear their head. Active duty forces are by design the most responsive and so the justification for a large AC force as possible is that we just don’t know what the future holds and we create more risk in rapid response the more we put into the Reserve Component. There is a lot of hyperbole coming out of RC leaders as the force of choice, operational reserve, etc. They are finding out that budgets and the end of the wars are forcing them back to their traditional roles as a strategic and operational reserve and NOTHING on the scale of GWOT.
Schake needs to ask an all important 4th question: Why do we have so many Generals, redundant commands and bloated staff structures? I think one of the greatest threats to our national security is the sheer ammount of excessive flag officers and bloated staffs that waste so much taxpayer money. Too many flag officers are protecting their little fiefdoms at the expense of combat power that can be projected rapidly across the globe. Perhaps Macgregor should be SECDEF to address this problem. Bottom line: DoD needs to trim the fat now before combat soldiers on the ground pay the ultimate price in the future. SECDEF Hagel will have to kick some flag officer ass in order to get this done.