Robert David Steele Vivas
A Notional Grand Strategy – Evidence-Based, Affordable, Balanced, Flexible
November 4, 2015 Robert Steele
NOTE: The below essay started out to answer the question, “does the U.S. Army need to be able to fight a conventional war with China and/or Russia outside the USA?” The answer is no. How I got to that answer should inspire a conversation. I include a concept for getting Congress to go along with radical change by making such change job and revenue neutral from district to district.
Request for Comment (RFC)
This RFC requests comments that challenge and enhance elements of the below “grand strategy.” Please respond directly to the author via email to robert.david.steele.vivas at gmail dot com.
DOC (31 Pages): Strategic Insights Notional Grand Strategy 2.4
Introduction
If we are to better understand the possibilities for a notional grand strategy that is evidence-based, affordable, balanced, and flexible, it is helpful to do three things we have not done before:
– Acknowledge that we do many things, from support to dictators repressing their own publics to covert and overt regime change operations to predatory economic and financial attacks on entire economies, which can reasonably be said to inspire varied forms of hostile response.
– Acknowledge that we do misrepresent reality and do not do holistic analytics or true cost economics, and therefore really do not have a grasp of how we might better manage both national and global responses to all high-level threats to humanity, by intelligently harmonizing investments across all policy domains from Agriculture to Water.
– Acknowledge that we are not trained, equipped, and organized to do Whole of Government strategy, policy, acquisition, and operations, and that we also have a very strong tendency to substitute spending on military technologies in place of all other possibilities.
Formula for Building the Force
Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), then Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), whose quote guides this work:[1]
I am constantly being asked for a bottom-line defense number. I don’t know of any logical way to arrive at such a figure without analyzing the threat; without determining what changes in our strategy should be made in light of the changes in the threat; and then determining what force structure and weapons program we need to carry out this revised strategy.
As Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Representative Max Thornberry (R-TX) focus their respective Armed Services Committees on defense reform, with a particular eye on the “broken” acquisition system, while being equally concerned with our seeming inability to achieve global mobility and sustainable influence, the time is right for us to not only re-invent the Army, but also to re-invent everything else.
What Is the Threat?
The current Army perspective is that of Two Two Two One. This refers to two heavyweights (China and Russia), two middleweights (North Korea and Iran), two networks (al-Qaida and transnational organized crime) and one domain (cyber).[2]
Perhaps because of World War II and the strong relationship between that war and how we shaped our instruments of national power in its aftermath, the American tendency has been to view the concept of national security in conventional military terms.
The ten high-level threats to humanity as identified by Dr. Brent Scowcroft, LtGen USAF (Ret), then serving as a member of the United Nations (UN) High Level Panel on Threats, and Challenges and Change (and the other members of the panel) are as follows, in priority order:[3]
01 Poverty
02 Infectious Disease
03 Environmental Degradation
04 Inter-State Conflict
05 Civil War
06 Genocide
07 Other Atrocities
08 Proliferation
09 Terrorism
10 Transnational Crime
Figure 1: Ten High-Level Threats (2004)
The first military in modern times to grasp the reality that they could not limit their mission and roles to armed uniformed forces, was that of the Republic of Singapore. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) out of China between November 2002 and July 2003, was their wake-up call. They realized that the ability to detect and contain unarmed civilians infected with SARS was part of their mission and one of their roles. This altered how they trained, equipped, and organized henceforth, devising a strategy of “total defense.”[4]
The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) has in prior decades sought to inspire reflection on asymmetric versus symmetric threats, and on whether the U.S. Army and the other services should continue to plan and program from two Major Theater Wars (MTW).[5] SSI has also sought to inspire reflection on the need to rebalance the instruments of national power.[6]
Even earlier, in 1989, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Al Gray, USMC, sought to sound the alarm on the difference between conventional threats and emerging threats; on the importance of the counter-narcotics mission as a “type” threat, and on the need for Whole of Government planning and programming sufficient to fund and execute “peaceful preventive measures. [7] Below is the core element of that first high-level call for restructuring the force.
Conventional Threat
· Governmental
· Conventional/Nuclear
· Static Orders of Battle
· Linear Development
· Rules of Engagement (ROE)
· Known Doctrine
· Strategic Warning
· Known Intelligence Assets
Emerging Threat
· Non-Governmental
· Non-Conventional
· Dynamic or Random
· Non-linear
· No constraints (ROE)
· Unknown doctrine
· No Established I&W
· Unlimited 5th column
Figure 2: Conventional vs. Emerging Threats (1989)
In 1992 further work was done at the Marine Corps University, as depicted below, but it was not introduced to the Army’s annual strategic conference until 1998:[8]
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Figure 3: Four Threat Classes (1992)
Originally created as part of teaching nuanced intelligence sources and methods at the Marine Corps Command & Staff College, the intent of this graphic was to show that indications & warnings are deeply different depending on which of the four threats (or any mix of threats in hybrid form) was/were being considered; by extension, so also do we need four forces after next.
Put another way, there are four main antagonists in the world today: nation-states, banks & corporations, gangs, and publics defined by neighborhood to religion. The “deep state” is a hybrid gang, a parasite listing within the nation-state host.[9]
This then is the context for further reflections on both grand strategy as a device for marshalling ends, ways, and means intended to address all threats to the homeland and its global interests, and for devising how we plan and program not just military, but Whole of Government force structure and capabilities.
What Is Our Grand Strategy?
In theory, the USA always has a grand strategy, R. D. Hooker of the National Defense University (NDU) posits four enduring or core interests:[10]
Defense of American territory and that of our allies
Protecting American citizens at home and abroad
Supporting and defending our constitutional values and forms of government
Promoting and securing the U.S. economy and standard of living.
The theory is far removed from reality, but our objective here is not to be critical.[11] We need to explore what a genuine evidence-based grand strategy might yield in the way of a re-invented Army and re-invented everything else.[12]
Professor Hooker offers a useful distinction between the ends of grand strategy, and means and ways of grand strategy, extracted and listed below:
Means of Grand Strategy
Strong alliances
Bilateral security agreements
Survivable nuclear deterrent
Balanced powerful military
Intelligence services
Powerful economy
Industrial base
Military reserve
Educated skilled population
Democratic political system
Ways of Grand Strategy
Meet threat far from homeland
Forward presence
Economic assistance
Military assistance
Treaties
Coalitions of the willing
Use all instruments of power
Figure 4: Means and Ways of Grand Strategy
Most compellingly for the purposes of our exploration, he points out in his conclusion that the successful grand strategy will often preclude the use of force. A major justification for investments in strategic nuclear weapons, whether missiles or manned bombers, has always been that core point. So also does this point justify greater investments in diplomacy and development. However, the White House and Congress must agree on the Grand Strategy prior to the commencement of the Planning, Programming Budgeting System and its Execution (PPBSE).[13]
As we come to the end of the “peace dividend” years,[14] it seems timely to define a new national strategy that is not driven by financial stakeholders (the “Military Industrial Congressional Complex” or MICC), ideology (the neoconservatives), or political convenience, but instead focused on creating a “Good Peace” in the public interest, firmly rooted in evidence-based decision-support.
A Starting Point
Below is a starting point that is intended to be as holistic as one person can achieve on their own, and provocative, with the direct intent of eliciting intellectual and moral aid from the rich diversity of minds that belong to the SSI network and the larger U.S. Army and joint military and civilian communities. This strategy is focused on achieving peace and prosperity.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Figure 5: Operationalizing the “Good Peace” Strategy[15]
Overview of the “Good Peace” Strategy
This preliminary exploratory work uses the traditional four levels of analysis so ably popularized by Edward N. Luttwak,[16] and takes a “quick look” at four major stove-pipes impacting on the formulation of national security capabilities: the White House and Congress, Intelligence & Covert Operations, Diplomacy & Development, and the Armed Forces.
Transformation is not modernization. Right now a number of deeply expensive and inappropriate programs are on “automatic pilot.” Among these are Air Force strategic bombers and the J-35, Navy big ships, and Army infantry vehicles that weigh 55-60 tons. In restructuring our forces, we need better, not bigger, and certainly not more of the same.[17]
Transformation is also not exclusively technical or human or financial or conceptual. It is a total package that must, as Luttwak illustrated so ably,[18] integrate radical changes at all four levels of analysis, across all service and civilian boundaries, and perhaps most importantly – my addition – in the arena of moral and intellectual understanding of both changes in the domestic and foreign environments, changes in the nature of all instruments of national power including the public and the private sector, and changes in the art of the possible given globalization, the Internet, and rather substantial cause and effect relationships. In brief, transformation is more about thinking than it is about technology.[19]
The greatest threat to U.S. national security and prosperity is the inability of our own “system” to create and act on holistic intelligence (decision-support) with integrity.
Below is a concept for a thoughtful government able to think in time and space across all boundaries:
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Figure 6: Holistic Governance at All Four Levels over Time and Space
Strategic Transformation
White House and Congress
At the strategic level, one First Principle is clearly “stop doing bad stuff.”[20] At the political level we appear to be suffering from a lack of ethical leadership and the absence of any form of true cost accounting in the public interest.[21] A foreign policy coup is said to have occurred – according to General Wesley Clark, USA (Ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).[22] Despite having a Democratic Administration in office, “regime change” is the order of the day, and our foreign military assistance programs continue at full strength.[23] It is a matter of record that we are treating 40 of the 42 dictators on the planet as our “best pals.”[24] On top of this cavalier dismissal of our purported commitment to exporting democracy, a previous Democratic Administration removed all controls on the U.S. banking industry, which then willfully collapsed the economics of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, while imposing severe economic hardships on everyone else.[25] It must be clearly stated: the City of London and Wall Street manipulated interest rates (the London Interbank Offered Rates or LIBOR scandal) with impunity.[26] In the USA, Wall Street has paid fines in the low billions for multi-trillion dollar crimes,[27] while receiving taxpayer bailouts on the political notion that banks are “too big to fail.”
Two points merit emphasis in this strategic context, but before presenting them, let me first offer this wisdom from a global corporate leader:[28]
When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it.
Point One: the fact is that the rest of the world – as well as U.S. citizens – have legitimate grievances associated with USG policies and practices that favor dictators, banks, and predatory toxic corporations (Monsanto, for example) over public health and human rights as well as the spread of democracy and distributed prosperity for all.[29]
Point Two: we seem to have difficulty speaking truth not just to power, but to the public. From unemployment to inflation to our subversion of the Ukraine and Syria to the real reason for the Keystone Pipeline to the secret clauses of the Transpacific Trade Partnership (TPP), the truth is difficult to come by for a citizen. Neither academics nor the media nor think tanks appear disposed to stray from the approved narratives, at the same time that no one is held accountable, at the political or professional level, for blatant lies. To get to an affordable, balanced, flexible grand strategy, we need to start with the truth about both the outside world, and the home front.[30]
Intelligence & Covert Actions
Drone assassinations by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are carried out without legal due process,[31] and have a collateral damage ratio of 24 to 1 – for every alleged (rarely proven) terrorist CIA kills, CIA also kills 24 women, children and non-belligerent men.[32]
Kidnapping, rendition, and torture by the CIA and its contractors as well as select allies has aroused world-wide condemnation and been denounced in the USA by intelligence and counterintelligence professionals including Admiral Stansfield Turner, former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI).[33]
Apart from regime change, drone assassinations and regime change operations, CIA is sponsoring hundreds of Uighur and Chechen terrorists to send back from Syria to operate against and strive to destabilize China and Russia[34] – an act of war not approved by Congress. Apart from “stop the bad stuff” there is the matter of whether the U.S. intelligence community is providing actionable full-spectrum decision-support to all of our political and professional leaders. I think not.[35] Should another First Principle be “Get a grip on reality!”[36] I will not belabor this topic that I have written about for a quarter-century. Suffice to say that General Tony Zinni, USMC, then Commanding General (CG) of the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) and engaged in 2 wars and 12 forward-deployed task forces, is on record as saying that while he was CG of USCENTCOM, he received, “at best,” 4% of what he needed to know from secret sources and methods.[37]
In my view, the critical missing link in reaching informed consensus between our political and professional leaders in relation to creating a grand strategy that promotes peace and prosperity over time, is intelligence with integrity. We do not have it. We must demand it. Harking back to one of the best ideas the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) ever had, GRANDVIEW,[38] I believe that military intelligence cannot be produced in a vacuum and restricted to military factors. As a veteran of the CIA, I am sorry to say that if DoD wants to achieve intelligence with integrity for the development of strategy, policy, acquisition, and operations, it needs to forget about relying on CIA for anything and clean house within defense intelligence.[39] DIA should become a four-star billet, and assume responsibility for expanded commercial imagery procurement, sharply delimited foreign signals intelligence, and a completely new open source geospatial baseline married to a massive multi-level security relational database…not something the secret world is capable of achieving in my lifetime. The Open Source (Technologies) Agency that I have proposed and discuss below, will address these needs in the near-term, and help achieve a transformation of defense, diplomacy, and development (D3) intelligence and D3 innovation,[40] while offering dual-use possibilities on the home front for neighborhood and domestic economic development.
Diplomacy & Development
The commitment of the Secretary of Defense (SecDef ) to the D3 concept is clearly documented in his recent (September 2015) sponsorship of the D3 Innovation Challenge.[41]
Our Country Teams overseas are dysfunctional. Diplomats are in the minority, have no money for representational activities or the purchase of legal ethical open source information services, and are surrounded by a mob – I use the word advisedly – of singleton representatives from all the other government agencies that do not have faith in the ability of the Department of State (DOS) to be our lead agency overseas. The only U.S. Government (USG) personnel operating overseas who have money to spend – and they spend a great deal – are the spies who only recruit those prepared to betray their employers along very narrow lines. One study has shown that the average Country Team as a whole connects to perhaps 20% of the relevant information available to them, and in the process of sending it back to Washington, usually in the diplomatic pouch so as to avoid the coordination required for electronic communications, spills 80% of that information. Washington is operating on 2% of the relevant information.[42] It must be noted that intelligence is not considered relevant to the exercise of power as we now practice the exercise of power in Washington, DC. This from Henry Kissinger:[43]
Intelligence is not all that important in the exercise of power,
and is often, in point of fact, useless.
As long as the exercise of political and professional power is divorced from reality, not informed by intelligence (decision-support), and lacking in integrity, we will continue to build the wrong things at great expense, while executing operations that may enrich a few but are inherently bad for everyone else including our veterans – Iraq and Afghanistan have produced – in addition to the normal toll of dead and wounded – several thousand amputees,[44] hundreds of thousands of disabled veterans,[45] and continue to contribute to a veteran suicide rate that is at least 50% higher than that of those who have not served.[46] At the strategic level, if we are to be effective at D3 operations, we need to reinforce our diplomats with funds and Whole of Government expertise that reaches out into the provinces of each country where they represent our interests; we need to create Foreign Area Officer (FAO) regiments for each country so as to achieve a deep bench in at least 34 languages;[47] and we need to manage all fifteen slices of Human Intelligence (HUMINT), shown below, as a whole.[48] The human domain matters![49]
Click on Image to Enlarge
Figure 7: The Unappreciated Human Intelligence Domain
Army, Air Force, Navy & Marines
This brings us to the strategic role of the Armed Forces. At the strategic level there are several possibilities offered for consideration, and I will just list them here along with supporting references.
Big War is over. We are not going to engage China or Russia in a land war on their home ground, nor are we likely to engage them in Europe or the Southeast Asia peninsula.[50]
In a defensive strategic confrontation, it will be strategic nuclear forces – ideally missiles not bombers – that will be the deterrent. [51]
Closing all of our bases overseas is the single best thing we could do to diffuse global tension while simultaneously pressuring our so-called allies into providing adequate investment and capabilities thresholds for their own defense.[52] Our medium-capability Army should be the strategic reserve for our allies; it should not be expected to carry the entire war on its own. Defense must be our focus.
What we do need now that we do not have is an Army designed for rapid force closure via air and sea, an Air Force sufficient to do long-haul quick force closure[53] as well as aerial superiority, and a 450-ship Navy that is globally distributed and able to put a platoon of Marines with Cobras overhead anywhere in the world within 24 hours.[54]
Below is a summary of how the Air Force allocates its budget core mission capabilities, all of which are nearing end-of-life: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), air-air fighters, long-haul lift and aerial tankers.[55]
Click on Image to Enlarge
Figure 8: USAF Spending Overview — Out of Balance
I am not going to get into the failure of the Air Force in the Space and C2ISR arena at this early stage, but this is a major problem for the Army and on balance I am leaning toward the need to take satellites away from the Air Force, refocusing them on ICBMs, and aircraft that support joint and land force operations.
Although further reflection is needed in relation to the needs of the Army for rapid force closure, three points have become clear from the preliminary look at the Air Force:
01 The Air Force has plenty of tankers for long-haul support because of their original reliance on fighter escorts for long-range bombers, both of which required constant refueling – whatever the age issues, there is no lack of tankers for long-haul lift refueling enroute.
02 The real constraint on moving the Army is not Air Force cargo capacity, but rather the Maximum on Ground (MOG) limitations at the Aerial Point of Delivery (APOD). The Expeditionary Environment is characterized by MOGs of 1 and 2 instead of the preferred MOG used in thinking about the Interim Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) of 6-8.[56]
03 The Air Force has plenty of fighters for establishing air superiority, but it does not have a sufficiency of A-10 Close Air Support (CAS) aircraft, and has been doing everything possible to bury the A-10.[57] AC-130 gunships numbers appear low – they are particularly essential when the Army is forced to make do without its complete artillery capabilities.
Below is a table of the current Air Force inventory of key aircraft – for simplification the command and control and other miscellaneous aircraft have been left off this table.[58]
Click on Image to Enlarge
Figure 9: USAF Attack, Cargo, Fighter, &Tanker Inventory[59]
The above has two implications that are touched on in the Tactical Transformation overview sections:
First, from an infantry perspective, the A-10 is sacrosanct. Not only does the Air Force have to be told the A-10 is inviolate, but an attack follow-on is required – the F-35 will not do. If the Air Force is not prepared to meet this demand, the time has come to revisit the Key West Agreement[60] and transfer CAS – both the A-10 and the AC-130 gunships – to the Army.
Second, the Army has to come to grips with MOG 1-2 conditions. This is a weight issue. The U.S. Army got it right on the concept for the Stryker Brigade – a 20 ton weight-limit – and totally wrong on the implementation – not only is the vehicle oversized so as to require a waiver from the Air Force, but it has to be broken down and transported on two C-130s instead of one.[61] The requirement should have been “consistent with USAF loading guidelines, the Stryker with all ammunition, fuel, water, and crew as well as passengers, will be transportable via a C-130 taking off under hot humid conditions, and able to drive on / drive off in full combat readiness.” There is work to be done, but Army started out with the right concept.
If the Air Force is the primary force at the strategic level (augmented by naval nuclear missiles), and the Army is the primary force at the tactical level, the Navy & Marines are the operational force that bridges the gap. Below is one possible approach to creating the 450-ship Navy I designed in 1992 – a number the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) finally embraces.[62]
Click on Image to Enlarge
Figure 10: A 450-Ship Navy, Globally Distributed, with a Peace Fleet[63]
Operational Transformation
White House and Congress
There are three things the White House and Congress can do to radically accelerate the transformation of our government, our D3 capabilities, and our home front.
First, offer complete truth in government information. The two biggest areas of concern pertain to unemployment and inflation. The actual unemployment rate is 23%, not 5% (U1) or 10% (U6).[64] This is a fundamental measure of the health of our economy and society. It is not possible to make sound decisions at any level of governance in the face of information that is so fundamentally inaccurate. With respect to inflation, we have to confront the reality that the USG cannot be relied upon for due diligence. One case study of active malfeasance found the government ignoring a change in product packaging that reduced the quantity provided, for the same previous price, resulting in 72% inflation.[65]
Second, create an Open Source (Technologies) Agency that simultaneously solves the Whole of Government and multinational information-sharing and sense-making challenge, and serves as a foundation for D3 Innovation, and offers localities across the USA opportunities to develop localized energy, water, food, and shelter solutions, as well as digital access solutions, helpful to the re-creation of the middle class. Below is a representation of some – not all – of the open source technologies relevant to the D3 innovation imperative.[66]
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Figure 11: Open Source (Technologies) Agency for D3 Innovation
Third, launch a national transformation initiative in citizen education and citizen fitness. An honest evaluation of our education and food systems would rapidly conclude that our existing educational system does not meet our needs for citizen-soldiers in the 21st Century, and that 7 out of 10 of our young people are not qualified for military service because of the prevalence of obesity and diseases stemming from decades of unhealthy foods being approved by the government for liberal sale as well as serving in schools.[67]
Intelligence & Covert Actions
We should cease and desist from all covert actions, and especially those seeking to destabilize China and Russia. I give the US and Israeli intelligence services great credit for preventing political, religious, and financial ideologues – many of them agents of foreign powers – from marching to war on Iran. Treating Venezuela as a threat is laughable.
A radical shift – which is to say a transformation – is needed in how we approach intelligence. We need to shift from an obsession with technical collection of digital secrets and bi-lateral information-sharing as well as dependence on individual foreign services for HUMINT “hand-outs,” and move instead toward a robust multinational information-sharing and sense-making system that includes a Multinational Decision-Support Center perhaps associated with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Transformation Command, and a global open source information capture network that is able to access all information in all languages across all boundaries. Below are listed the eight “tribes” of information that we must integrate into a universal local to global system.
01 Academic
02 Civil Society*
03 Commerce especially small business
04 Government especially local
05 Law Enforcement
06 Media including Bloggers
07 Military including Gendarme
08 Non-Government/Non-Profit**
* Includes labor unions and religions ** Absolutely off-limits to clandestine services
Figure 12: Achieving Universal Open Source Information Access
Thomas Jefferson, among several Founding Fathers, understood that “A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.” Making the leap to free education (as well as free energy creating clean and desalinated water) is the linchpin for global stabilization that I posited in my writings for SSI in the 1990’s that we urgently needed a Digital Marshall Plan.[68] While some are beginning to understand this, we are still far from appreciating what I tried to put forward decades ago, to wit, information peacekeeping is the purest form of war – and how we defeat the enemy without fighting.[69]
The Open Source (Technologies) Agency should fund the Digital Marshall Plan, free online education in 33 languages, and a School of Future-Oriented Hybrid Governance, perhaps to be based at the NDU and playing a central role in a new National Peace College that trains multinational whole of government leaders.
I do not want to belabor the lack of analytic models in the USG, but have to observe we are frighteningly ignorant about the specific pre-conditions of revolution. This is something I defined in 1976; the USG is still severely deficient on this point.[70]
Diplomacy & Development
As intelligence is transformed away from secret technical collection that is very expensive and largely worthless to commanders and their staff,[71] and toward open source information sharing and sense-making with multinational value, diplomacy and development become subject to transformation as well.
Honest holistic intelligence that addresses all threats and can document the true costs of neglecting threats such as poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation will make the case for substantially increased investments in diplomacy and development.
Two specific initiatives are recommended: First, begin training our D3 officers as an inter-agency group, at the entry-level, at mid-career, and upon entrance to the Senior Executive Service (SES) and flag rank. A National Peace College should complement the National War College. Second, transfer $150 billion a year from Program 50 to Program 150. This has been discussed for decades.[72] The present SecDef appears to have the vision necessary to make this happen,[73] it will change everything about how we wage peace and war – a major legacy.
Army, Air Force, Navy & Marines
At the operational level, the Navy & Marines become the central force for ad hoc power projection under the 96 hour/4 day timeline, and the Army becomes the primary force for both Operations Other than War (OOTW) and medium-weight interventions including anti-access operations, that require sustainable capability beyond 90 days, as well as direct support to D3 operations using the Army as the hub for Whole of Government and multinational operations.
While respecting our existing treaty operations, the time has come to end the free ride we have giving Europe and Japan. South Korea to its credit has taken its military obligations most seriously. Along with withdrawing all our forces and turning over all our bases to the host governments, we should set minimum threshold standards for host country investments in military capabilities as well as diplomacy and development.
The new joint force concept of operations should emphasize a globally-distributed Navy capable of providing the sea-basing and sea-based “lily pad” functions needed to do light and medium weight missions,[74] while the Air Force restores its ICBM capabilities and increases its long-haul capacity. Satellite vulnerability is now critical. The U.S. military grinds to a half – goes deaf, dumb, and blind – if the satellites are lasered out of service.[75]
This is the point at which the Army needs to consider a transformation away from “one size fits all” full spectrum forces, toward specialized brigades or “four Armies after next” as I suggested to the Marine Corps in 1992 and to the Army in 1998.[76] The difference between my thinking then and now is that I no longer believe we need a BigWar Army on a continental scale.
Click on Image To Enlarge
Figure 13: Four “Type” Forces Specified in 1992
In the above graphic created in 1992, called One Plus Triple Eye (1+iii), the 50% reduction of Big War force structure includes the eradication of the waste that is now documented at between 45% in weapons acquisition toward 75% in Afghanistan.[77] In other words, we seek to keep the same budget, but spend it more effectively across a range of complementary D3 capabilities. Perhaps paradoxically, setting aside the need for a Big War Army does not reduce the importance of the Army or its need to develop new capabilities with new funding. Below is my depiction of how important the Army can be in the 21st Century.
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Figure 14: U.S. Army as Core Force at Home and Abroad
The Army actually becomes central to a transformed D3 approach in which the Army is the hub both at home in elevating the fitness and educational maturity of our citizens, and abroad, where it becomes the hub for integrated Whole of Government operations over the long-haul with very substantial “thinker” roles as well as ground truth roles not now met by the secret intelligence world or conventional diplomatic and commercial and defense attaches.
Tactical Transformation
White House & Congress
At the tactical level the White House and Congress need to be assisted in understanding that we have gone over the cliff and are in free-fall with respect to over-investment in technologies that deprive us of resources needed for human domain development and balanced D3 operations abroad as well as home front reconstitution and strengthening. Our highest priority should be to avoid and resolve conflict, rather than seeking elective wars for corporate profit.[78]
John Poole, Tom Mangold, and James G. Zumwalt among others have illuminated how Third World armies with almost no technology have defeated us and will continue to defeat us if we stay on this course of substituting expensive unsustainable technology for human intelligence and willpower.[79] The U.S. Army must reach back into the Native American tradition and begin a transformation of how it ingests, trains, and nurtures humans as the central element in waging peace and war.[80] Shades of the First Earth Battalion![81]
The U.S. Air Force should be central to strategic nuclear deterrence. At the tactical level, we need to put a stop to their delusional claims associated with RAPID HALT.[82] Airpower is not going to stop anything by itself, particularly since our secret intelligence community is incapable of providing targeting information for fast-moving low-intensity conflicts.[83]
Put another way, the Air Force will be central at the strategic level, the Navy & Marines will be central at the operational level, and the Army will be central at the tactical level.
Intelligence & Covert Actions
At the tactical level our greatest need is for processed all-source decision-support on the one hand, and deep dives into culture, history, language, politics, and sociology on the other.[84]
At the tactical level we continue to lack 1:50,000 combat charts (maps with contour lines and cultural features) for most of the world – in Somalia we are still using 1:100,000 Soviet-era military maps for our daily operations.[85]
At this level, and given the implicit commitment to do more with open sources and more with multinational engagement, the Open Source (Technologies) Agency becomes a central player in providing information assurance, multinational information-sharing security and sense-sense-making tools, and public information assistance including innovation blueprints helpful to Diplomacy and Development. Cyber-security will be built in, along with the rights of anonymity, identity, and privacy.
Regional Multinational Transportation Commands (RMTRANSCOM) should be established, and all information gathered to enable multiple allies to come together in any given region to manage rapid force closure including humanitarian assistance flights, such that available big airports and ports are all used to the fullest extent possible as intermediate delivery points. We need to become proficient at breaking down big cargoes into small cargoes, and doing the final miles with a mix of C-130s, landing craft, and precision parachute drops using the now relatively mature Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS).[86]
Diplomacy & Development
At the tactical level there are two implementation initiatives.
First, we need to empower the diplomats with the discretionary funding needed to harvest all open sources of information relevant to our interests. The secret world refuses to take open sources seriously, and within DoD, OSINT is treated as a technical “surf the web” money hole rather than as the human face to face global scout function that is was meant to be when I first sounded the alarm in 1988 out of the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity (MCIA).[87]
Second, we need to see the wisdom of Ashraf Ghani, now President of Afghanistan, and his co-author Clare Lockhart, who understand that the central obstacle to fixing failed states is the fact that 80% or more of all donor funds get syphoned off by intermediaries before ever reaching the target population.[88] Their signal recommendation: electronic banking down to the village level, thus eliminating all intermediaries and exposing any corruption or misallocation.
This recommendation is best implemented within a Digital Marshall Plan organized by the Open Source (Technologies) Agency that simultaneously provides open source tools for multinational information-sharing and sense-making; open source innovation blueprints particularly for Open Source Provisioning (renewable energy, clean water, pressed brick shelter, composting, and aquaponics); and Open Source Infrastructure including open spectrum, mesh networks, and electronic banking possibly excluding conventional banks and instead creating community banks at the village level.
Army, Air Force, Navy & Marines
As we have seen over and over again, most recently at Kunduz in Afghanistan,[89] the Air Force simply does not do CAS and it is culturally incapable of meetingt Army needs. The manner in which the Air Force has sought to decommission the A-10, the one CAS platform that works as intended and is both inexpensive and reliable, should be sufficient to confirm this finding. The A-10 as well as the AC-130 gunships should be transferred to the U.S. Army, and the Air Force should be put on notice with well-documented Army needs for paratroop transport, long-haul lift of light and medium brigades, and intra-theater transport.
At the tactical level, the U.S. Navy should be able to provide missiles and naval gunfire support, at least one hospital ship, and communications and geospatial positioning “lily pad” as well as regional surveillance services if needed in the event of a loss of satellite capability, to any deployed Army brigade.
It is at this level that we can also revitalize the concept of Pathfinders and develop a capability to do Reverse TPFDD (Time-Phased Force Deployment Data). In an era where we face “complex and seemingly ‘headless’ challenges,”[90] the ultimate balance and flexibility does not come from pre-planned streamed capabilities but rather from the combination of a smart human with excellent situational awareness and secure communications being able to call in “just enough, just right, just in time” capabilities delivered on 6, 12, and 24 hour cycles, generally by air inclusive of JPADS.
In the D3 arena, Open Source Ecology and Earth Intelligence Network have been developing a “village in a box” concept that when dropped via precision parachute, opens up to provide everything needed in the way of open source technologies to set up (largely without an instruction manual) solar energy, water desalination, pressed-brick shelters, a local mesh network with free cellular and a satellite uplink for the Internet, and everything needed for aquaponics.
Technical Transformation
Technical transformation will be the hardest form of transformation to achieve because our entire system is “rigged” in favor of mindless undocumented and untested investments in technologies of dubious value, whose true cost has never been calculated.[91]
The Marine Corps concluded in 1987 that by their very nature the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCAP) and the theater Operational Plans, which were supposed to be determining priorities, were always “worst case least likely” scenarios. They also tended to assume “best case” lift and logistics. This bias was pervasive within both the intelligence and the planning and programming communities. I believe these problems persist today. We are simply not as professional as we pretend to be.[92]
White House & Congress
As others have suggested as far back as 1997 in my own memory, we need to do D3 PPBSE across Whole of Government, with a special emphasis on better integrating how we plan and program for defense in tandem with diplomacy and development.[93] Ideally we should do Whole of Government PPBSE.
If the Inter-Agency Development Corps is funded as proposed at the operational level, then this becomes, as Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) has envisioned, the left hand end of the spectrum focused exclusively on human terrain.[94]
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Figure 15: Inter-Agency Multinational Operating Environment (ARSOF Vision)
The White House has asked for a 30% cut in the defense budget. Defense waste is known to be on the order of 45% in weapons acquisition toward 75% in Afghanistan. Congress continues to subvert the effectiveness of the military by forcing unwanted big ticket items into the budget, and watering down if not eliminating the testing and evaluation needed to prevent dubious technologies from moving forward in the acquisition milestone process.
Congress can stop a strategic make-over with ease. One approach to gaining Congressional support would be to recognize that Congress has a legitimate interest in jobs and revenue, and to show specific Members of Congress how D3 as well as home front needs can be met with job and revenue neutrality from district to district. We should create an Industrial Base Plan and do deliberate strategic PPBSE so that specific companies and entire industries can be transformed in partnership with D3 needs, assuring Congress of job and revenue neutrality from district to district. Given the major investments that are required on the home front across all policy domains, an integrated national strategy should easily allow for striking a balance with Congress, particularly if we emphasize the human domain and mobilize voters accordingly. The value of open source technology for home front innovation and development can also be pitched to Congress. The strategic elegance here is in changing what we build and buy.
As many as 100,000 people – perhaps even as many as 250,000 – are going to be put out of work in the next five years as defense draws down and the recession deepens. On top of that we have 23% unemployment with 40% of all Americans over 16 not actually working (this includes students, invalids, prisoners, and retirees).[95] A revolution is brewing in the USA, one that needs as much attention and as much money thrown at it as any possible threat from China or Russia or other countries we avoid identifying that are state-sponsors of terrorism – Saudi Arabia, for example.[96]
During the Reagan Era a truly excellent plan was drawn up jointly by the Departments of Defense and Labor, “Building a Post-Cold War Workforce for the 21st Century: Our Manpower Peace Deficit.”[97] The time has come to dust off that plan, update it, and use military training facilities to retrain the American workforce, giving precedence to veterans.
Intelligence & Covert Actions
At the technical level, we should be focusing on discovering, sharing, advancing, and implementing open source everything engineering (OSEE).
Diplomacy & Development
At the technical level we need to recognize that in-country training, particularly in strife-torn areas, is not working. Technical training colleges are needed, and long-term plans need to be fully funded for bringing out of each country a cadre from across all eight information “tribes,” to be trained as entry-level, mid-career, and senior executive cohorts. This could even be developed as an international civil service corps with cross-fertilization among United Nations, Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and other bodies. Especially important will be the training of military and police officials with civilian officials, building up trust over time.
We must finally achieve the vision so brilliantly articulated but then abandoned by the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA), as tested in STRONG ANGEL. More recently in Afghanistan the same team created UnityNet with support from NDU. There is an urgent need for an open source analytic tool-kit that enables secure information sharing across all boundaries, and shared sense-making across all boundaries.[98]
Army, Air Force, Navy & Marines
The Air Force may need to give up the idea of billion dollar long-range bombers and invest instead in updating its ICBMs and ensuring that they actually work.
The Navy & Marines need to reconnect to their excellent idea, “From the Sea…” while correcting several major short-falls in naval capabilities. The lack of naval gunfires, with the Navy 5” consistently out-gunned even in the Third World, call for a new 8” standard. Missiles must be replenishable at sea.
The Army needs to revisit its 20 ton limit – every unit needs to be able to drive off the C-130 on a hot humid day with crew, fuel, ammunition, water and passengers – ready to shoot.
Conclusion
The above is nothing more than a starting point for a broader discussion. The time/distance challenge must be joined by the weight/energy challenge, with the lethality challenge and the fiscal challenge always present. We can no longer afford to pretend to be strong. We can no longer afford to accept Congressional largesse that detracts from our ability to create real capabilities needed in the real world. We can no longer accept “budget share” as the foundation for defense allocations. We can no longer afford to short-change diplomacy and development. We can no longer afford to make decisions lacking in intelligence and integrity.
Epilogue
I have not addressed the severe burden the military places on both the discretionary budget and the total budget. We know that military spending is 54% of discretionary spending in 2015, 60% if counting Veterans’ Benefits. Within the total budget the military is 16%, roughly four times the percentage characteristic of China and Russia, and eight times that of other nations.[99] We also know that for one third of what the world spends on all militaries, we could rapidly meet all of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), with particular reference to the eradication of destabilizing poverty and a sharp reduction in disease and environmental degradation.
The question has to be asked: at what point does an irresponsible budget become the greatest threat to the security and prosperity of the United States of America?
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Figure 16: Cost of Peace & Prosperity in Contrast to Cost of War[100]
Endnotes
Digital addresses are provided only for those sources not easily found online via title search.
[1] As read in Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) papers while serving at Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps (HQMC).
[2] “Two, Two, Two, One” is the force structure (often mistakenly called a strategy) conceived by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, USA. It refers to two heavyweights (China and Russia), two middleweights (North Korea and Iran), two networks (al-Qaida and transnational organized crime) and one domain (cyber). Cf. Daniel Goure, “General Dempsey’s “Two, Two,