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 Bibliography0 wallclock secs ( 0.19 usr + 0.03 sys = 0.22 CPU) 25 hits
Budget Request Begins Shift Toward Balanced Defense Posture
05/07/2009 Today’s release of the Obama Administration’s FY 2010 budget request signals a new direction for the Department of Defense. While the top-line budget figures and many of the programmatic decisions have already been released, the detailed budget unveiled today provides some clues as to how the new administration plans to remake the Defense Department. It begins the process of rebalancing the DoD’s portfolio of programs and activities to align them better with the national defense strategy.
Gates Submits Reform Budget for FY2010
05/07/2009 Secretary Gates termed the FY 2010 defense budget a “reform budget.” With today’s release of the detailed budget request, we begin to see what shape that reform will take and where he intends to lead the Department. This budget is a departure from the previous administration’s budgets.
The Project on National Security Reform: Challenges and Requirements
03/19/2009 Testimony Before the U.S. House of Representatives House Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation 
Integrating Disruptive Technologies in DoD
09/04/2008
Language and Cultural Awareness Transformation
07/09/2008 Prepared testimony for the record
A New Global Defense Posture for the Second Transoceanic Era
04/20/2007 Whenever the nation contemplates making a major shift in its global defense posture, planned changes should be seriously and broadly debated, because these changes will shape and constrain US strategic options for some time. While the broad outlines for the ongoing shift in the US defense posture appear to be headed in the right direction, the changes have generally been made without much public or even internal governmental debate. Several important questions remain to be fully answered, and further changes will likely be required to address several existing or looming 21st century strategic challenges.
A New Transformation Plan for the Navy's Surface Battle Line
04/19/2007 This report is an expansion of a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments Backgrounder entitled Know When to Hold ’Em: Modernizing the Navy’s Surface Battle Line, dated September 20, 2006. It provides a broader, historical-based analysis of the Navy’s current plans to modernize and recapitalize its fleet of guided-missile cruisers, guided-missile destroyers, and general-purpose destroyers, and proposes a different transformation approach than the one now being pursued.
A New Global Defense Posture for the Second Transoceanic Era
04/13/2007 Slides from Future Defense PLanning Needs seminar for Senior Congressional Staff
Modernizing the Navys Surface Battle Line
09/20/2006 The 84 guided missile cruiser and destroyers soon to be in commissioned service in the Navy's surface battle line, all equipped with the superb AEGIS anti-air warfare combat system and the flexible vertical launch (missile) system (VSL), will represent pe
Evolving Military Affairs
05/22/2006 Significant change in the security environment is under way. However, the Pentagon is yet to catch up with these changes in the way wars are conducted.
The Quadrennial Defense Review: Rethinking the US Military Posture
03/14/2006 Executive Director, Andrew Krepinevich, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee on March 14th, 2006.
QDR Does Little to Improve Affordability of Long-Term Defense Plans
2/03/2006 An initial look at the Quadrennial Defense Review from an affordablility perspective.
To Take and Keep The Lead:"A Naval Fleet Platform Architecture for Enduring Maritime Supremacy
12/01/2005 This monograph attempts to define the future maritime competitive environment and to design a naval fleet platform architecture attuned to its emerging requirements.
Long-Range Strike: Imperatives, Urgency and Options
04/06/2005 Long-range precision strike (LRPS) is a core strategic capability of the United States in the post-Cold War era, and the US Air Force. Is the Defense Department doing enough to sustain sufficient US capability and dominance in long-range strike? What should be done in the short, medium and long term to capitalize on long-range strike?
Winning the Race: A Naval Fleet Platform Architecture for Enduring Maritime Supremacy
03/01/2005 Slides from Robert Work's presentation on alternative fleet architecture study.
The Revolution in War
12/01/2004 Michael Vickers and Robert Martinage offer an insight of a decade-long assessment on the changing nature of conflict and the Revolution in Military Affairs.
Moving Forward On Long-Range Strike
09/27/2004 This backgrounder analyzes the US Air Forces ability to deliver long-range strike, now and in the long term.
The War in Iraq: A Thin Green Line
08/14/2004 This backgrounder is the third in a series analyzing the War in Iraq, as well as the Army force structure and personnel requirements for a protracted and counterinsurgency operation.
Intelligence Reform and the Next CIA Director
08/07/2004 A historical review of CIA directors and their influence on operations and policy. What does the next CIA director need to have?
Matching Resources With Requirements: Options for Modernizing the US Air Force
08/01/2004 Can the Air Force afford its modernization plan? Steven Kosiak finds it unlikely and provides four alternate models for maintaining air superiority.
Analysis of the FY 2005 Defense Budget Request
04/11/2004 The $423.1 billion funding request for FY 2005 is about 5 percent higher in real terms than the FY 2004 enacted budget, without including supplemental spending for the War on Terror. Whether the requested increase in defense spending is necessary to meet US security requirements adequately is unclear. Fully implementing the administration’s defense plan would likely require spending substantially more on defense than proposed by the administration.
Naval Transformation and the Littoral Combat Ship
02/25/2004 Three slide presentations featuring the report Naval Transformation and Littoral Combat Ship.
Naval Transformation and the Littoral Combat Ship
02/18/2004 A report examining the Littoral Combat Ship, its requirements, necessity, design and recommendations for testing and acquistion.
Future Warfare 20XX Lessons Learned Final Report
12/01/2001 A final report on Future Warfare 20XX Wargame Series
Restructuring for a New Era: Framing the Roles & Missions Debate
04/01/1995 Today, the United States faces a major challenge: restructuring its defense establishment to function efficiently and effectively in a new, dynamic security environment. This paper offers a framework for meeting that challenge. |
Transformation StrategyWhat is Transformation Strategy? Transformation strategy encompasses plans and actions which have the aim of inducing, sustaining and exploiting revolutionary change in the conduct of war. Transformation strategies emphasize qualitative change over quantitative, and discontinuous change over incremental. The tools of transformation strategy are alternative visions of future warfare, alternative defense investment options, experimentation, institutional reform and alternative force postures. Transformation strategies can encompass a single warfare area or several. The warfare area(s) exploited by transformation strategy can be either transformative (one form of warfare renders obsolete or subordinate another) or emergent (a strategically important new form appears). Transformation strategies can likewise be either anticipatory or reactive, trading off uncertainty with respect to the rate of change, scope and distribution of emerging military capabilities for increased near-term risk. There are no generic transformation strategies. Revolutionary change in the conduct of war can stem from a single technological breakthrough, from broad, societal political, social and economic change or from institutional innovation. Transformation strategies are explicitly tied to the characteristics of the military revolution they seek to exploit and are path-dependent. Elements of Transformation A comprehensive transformation strategy must incorporate several elements. Key tasks include:
Experimentation and Institutional Change Forms of RMA Experimentation:
RMA Experimentation Challenges:
Barriers to Transformation
Success Breeds Complacency Success Breeds Complacency In the last decade, the US military has won the Cold War, emerged victorious in one of the most lopsided military campaigns in history during the Persian Gulf War, and became generally regarded by informed observers as the world’s preeminent military. This sense of overwhelming predominance, combined with the fact that the US defense budget dwarfs that of any other state, has led some senior defense officials to conclude that only the US military is fiscally and technically capable of effecting a large-scale leap in military capability. Thus, while verbal homage is paid to the concept of transformation, the Pentagon has adopted a slow and steady approach to transformation. This gradualist approach worked well during the Cold War, when the threat was well understood and technology was progressing at a relatively leisurely pace. But, as noted above, this condition no longer pertains. Transforming a large military organization is a difficult and time-consuming process, often taking several decades to bring about. The US military thus finds itself in a race against time–the time needed to effect a transformation matched against the time its competitors will need to develop asymmetric strategies to defeat today’s American way of war. Given recent precursor events–the denial of forward bases to US forces during recent Gulf crises, the concerns voiced by US commanders in Korea over the lethal combination of North Korean missiles and chemical and biological agents, the use of Sarin nerve gas by a radical group on the Tokyo subway, and the continued growth of electronic attacks on the US information grid–a strong argument can be made that the race has already begun. Thus what is required is not complacency but, rather, a sense of urgency. Refighting the Last War In the absence of a clear challenge, military organizations sometimes fall into the trap of anticipating that the next war will be very much like the last. Unlike other large, competitive organizations (i.e., corporations) the US military receives feedback on its effectiveness rather episodically. The US military’s last major conventional war data point is the 1991 Gulf War. Its previous major conventional war occurred nearly forty years earlier, in Korea. There seems to be a natural tendency to baseline performance against the Gulf War experience. All the Services performed well beyond initial expectations. Perhaps it comes as no surprise, then, that much of the wargaming that supported both the 1993 Bottom-Up Review and the 1997 QDR were oriented on Desert Storm-like contingencies in the Persian Gulf and on the Korean Peninsula. Service Culture Preparing to refight the last war is tempting in that it offers defense planners the illusion of certainty, but also because it does not challenge the current dominant military service cultures, which are centered on armored warfare on land, short-range tactical fighters in the air, and carrier battle groups at sea. Yet if General Fogleman and Admiral Johnson are correct, it will be extremely difficult to rapidly deploy heavy digitized Army Force XXI divisions into a threatened region. It also will be difficult to base short-range tactical aircraft, like the F-22 and Joint Strike Fighter in these areas, or to move large surface combatants like aircraft carriers through narrow choke points, as in the Strait of Hormuz. In short, dominant Service cultures may well see their influence erode, at least somewhat, as the transformation occurs. The Services, however, have found it difficult even to contemplate that those combat systems and organizations that have worked so well in the past may be less central in a post-transformation regime. Short Tenure of Senior Leaders< The major US military innovations and transformations during this century were characterized by support from senior military leaders whose tenure was far longer than is typically the case today. This makes intuitive sense, since innovation often takes considerable time, and military revolutions tend to play out over several decades. Admiral William Moffett, who headed up the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics during the critical infant years of naval aviation, served in that position from 1921 to 1933. Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy, led the Service’s program for several decades. General Hamilton Howze, the leader in the effort to create the only new Army division type in the last half century–the Airmobile (now Air Assault) Division–served in a series of positions directly related to air mobility for nearly a decade. Individuals do matter in successful military transformations, and they matter a great deal. For example, the choice of General Hans von Seeckt as head of the German Army following World War I as opposed to General Walter Reinhardt was crucial to the Reichwehr’s development of blitzkrieg. Simply stated, von Seeckt had a vision of military transformation centered on elite, highly mobile, mechanized forces, while Reinhardt believed static warfare would dominate future conflict as it had in the recent war on the Western Front. Von Seeckt also served in his position for seven years, allowing sufficient time for his vision to take root. Had Admiral Jackie Fisher not been its First Sea Lord from 1904-10, it is doubtful that the Royal Navy would have moved so aggressively in divesting itself of over 150 ships of the passing military regime, while plunging forward with the transformation of naval forward presence operations, the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought, and fast battle cruisers. The opportunity to institutionalize a process for change is arguably far more difficult for today’s military leaders. Senior officers shuttle from one position to the next, completing touch-and-go assignments, often after only a year or two. Four years is the maximum time a senior officer can serve as a chief of Service or as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Thus, today’s leaders barely have enough time to enunciate a vision of transformation, let alone institutionalize a process for achieving it. Short tenures also have a way of promoting emphasis on near-term problems and solutions. People are naturally concerned with things not going wrong on their watch. They also want to point to clear accomplishments when they depart their positions. One suspects that they also are loath to start something during their tenure whose ultimate fate will rely on the good will of their successors. Antiquated Analytic Tools Most of the Defense Department’s analytic methodologies that help determine military requirements were developed during the Cold War, to include the wargame models that played such an influential role in the 1997 QDR deliberations. These models, such as TACWAR, are highly limited in their ability to incorporate effectively the information dimension of warfare, which is a driving force behind the need for military transformation. Reflecting their Cold War heritage, these models tend to emphasize attrition (as opposed to maneuver) warfare and linear operations along well-defined front lines–characteristic of the kind of military operations many experts anticipated twenty years ago had war erupted between the Warsaw Pact and NATO. But many US military leaders today do not see future war resembling these operations, and thus view these legacy models as being unhelpful at best, and likely counterproductive to military transformation. In short, current models, with their focus on past forms of warfare, by and large, tend to be biased in favor of traditional military operations (and traditional or legacy systems), and thus act as barriers to transformation. The Defense Department also continues to place great reliance on systems analysis, introduced during Robert McNamara’s tenure as Defense Secretary, to determine future requirements. Systems analysis tends to focus on the cost-effectiveness of various options, with the intent of arriving at the most efficient solution. While a powerful analytic tool, systems analysis has become too heavily focused on the near-term future, particularly on the six-year period covered by the Future Years Defense Plan. This approach may have worked well during the Cold War, where the threat was immediate, the time horizons arguably short, and technology was not progressing at the breakneck pace it is today. But the twin geopolitical and military-technical revolutions that are the basis for transformation have created a far higher level of planning uncertainty. Whereas generating maximum near-term efficiencies may be realized by assuming away uncertainty about the future to identify the best solution, this also runs the risk of planning for the wrong future. Simply put, a defense plan that is very efficient for a specific future may produce a very ineffective military if the future turns out quite differently from what is expected. The Maginot Line built by France in the interwar period would no doubt have been both an efficient and an effective use of defense resources if the static trench warfare that characterized the Western Front in World War I dominated in 1940 as well. When it became clear that blitzkrieg, and not World War I redux, was the future, France was left with no viable alternatives against the German onslaught. Today, systems analysis may be helpful in determining an efficient mix of the three new tactical aircraft in the Pentagon’s modernization plan, which is based primarily on Gulf War-era contingencies. But systems analysis is not especially useful in capturing the uncertainties of the longer-term, or post-transformation, competitive environment. Yet these aircraft are expected to be in service for at least two or three decades. As US access to forward bases is increasingly placed at risk, the value of tactical aircraft may depreciate rapidly, leaving the US military with relatively ineffective air forces. Field Exercises Field exercises are the ultimate war game, coming as close as the military can get to the experience of war. In the past, field exercises have proven critical to the success of military transformation. The US Navy could not have developed the principles of carrier battle group operations without the series of Fleet Problems undertaken during the 1920s and 30s. The German military, in developing blitzkrieg, relied heavily upon its own field experiments. Moreover, during its period of disarmament following World War I, the German Army carefully studied the field experiments of other militaries, especially the British, while testing tanks and aircraft covertly in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, US military field exercises today are rarely joint, and typically do not focus on post-transformation operational challenges (e.g., projecting power in the absence of forward bases). The 1997 QDR declared that the number of man-days to support joint exercises would be reduced by 15 percent. However, pressure from congressional leaders has led the Pentagon to charge Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), formerly Atlantic Command, with responsibility for joint experimentation. This represents an encouraging development. Still, it remains to be seen how well joint experimentation will be supported in terms of troops and exercise funds. The Budget How does the defense budget hamper transformation? On the one hand, the US defense budget seems more than adequate to support the transformation of the military, at minimal risk to near-term readiness. Our defense budget far exceeds that of any other nation–indeed, by some measures it exceeds the combined budgets of all the other great powers. If the budget is viewed as a kind of insurance premium to cover near- and long-term security risks, as it is by some, a budget in excess of a quarter trillion dollars a year should cover it. Unfortunately for those espousing the insurance premium view of defense budgeting, military transformation is closely linked to the shape of defense investments, as well as their magnitude. For example, if one examines French and German military expenditures during the twenty years following World War I, it shows France enjoying a clear lead for nearly the entire period. Yet Germany was able to transform its military to execute the blitzkrieg form of war and defeat France in a campaign lasting all of six weeks. An examination of the US Navy during the same period would find its budgets constrained by the Great Depression. Nevertheless, during this time the Navy was able to lay the groundwork for the carrier-dominated battle fleet, while Japan was able to do the same at a time when its production of manufactured goods was less than one-fifth that of the United States! Sadly, much of the defense budget debate today revolves around the question "How much is enough?" to sustain the current defense program. A more important question to ask is "How wisely are we investing?" in order to support the goal of transforming the US military to meet the very different kinds of challenges it will begin to confront over the next decade. The budget problem is made worse still, as the US military today is afflicted by a condition known as the "volunteer’s dilemma." Its primary attributes are a defense program that cannot be sustained by current and projected budgets, and a national security leadership that favors near-term military capability over long-term readiness. The result is that, to resolve the program-funding mismatch, Defense Department leaders have continually shifted money programmed for modernization to support current operations. This almost certainly is subversive of efforts at Service transformation. When, for instance, in 1994 the Navy volunteered to go below its authorized fleet size in order to free funds to develop future capabilities, senior defense officials siphoned off much of the anticipated savings to help offset budgetary shortfalls. The lesson has not been lost on senior military leaders. When it came time for the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review, the Service chiefs quickly realized that the process was primarily a budget cut drill, designed to bring the program-budget mismatch into balance. Consequently, the Services sought to protect existing programs and forces, rather than running the risk of losing budget share if they reduced near-term capability to support military transformation. The Defense Acquisition System With few notable exceptions, the Defense Department’s acquisition system remains oriented, as during the Cold War, primarily on large-scale serial production of military equipment. Yet the history of successful military transformation over the last century is characterized by an emphasis on avoiding system lock-in during these periods of rapid technological progression and relatively high uncertainty, while promoting wildcatting whenever possible. The former term refers to buying large quantities of long-life equipment whose value may decline rapidly during the shift in military regimes, such as buying battleships during the interwar regime shift. The latter term pertains to experimenting on a broad scale with limited numbers of emerging systems to identify their prospective value in the post-transformation regime. Examples of this are the three classes of carriers (but only four carriers in all!) built by the US Navy in the interwar period, and the over sixty types of attack aircraft the Army Air Corps experimented with during that same period. To be sure, buying in bulk helps keep unit costs down, an important consideration for a military whose force structure is overly large for the kind of modernization effort planned by the Pentagon. Correspondingly, canceling a major new system, with its substantial research and development costs, is anathema in today’s military. Indeed, Service program managers are evaluated primarily on their ability to move their system into large-scale production. This produces a bias on the program manager’s part to avoid taking the kind of risks that produce innovation in favor of safe design choices. However, the incentives to reduce costs, while laudable in many respects, also serve to undermine transformation by limiting wildcatting and promoting lock-in. The defense acquisition system’s ability to support transformation also suffers from a dramatic shift in the size and character of the defense industry that sustains it. As demand for defense products declined dramatically with the Cold War’s end, the industry was left to consolidate itself under what was, until only recently, a laissez-faire attitude on the Pentagon’s part. The consolidation has dramatically reduced the number of suppliers–and bidders–for the Defense Department. For example, only two major aircraft manufacturers remain to compete for defense business. Fewer competitors, combined with the Pentagon’s preference for buying a relatively small number of systems in great quantities, does not augur well for innovation, let alone transformation. The Process A vision of a dramatic shift in the US military must be supported by a process that translates its vision of the future competitive environment into action. Yet a strong case can be made that the process by which the Defense Department develops strategy, translating it into the planning guidance that shapes military programs and, ultimately, budgets, has broken down. The Department’s PPBS (planning, programming, and budgeting system) while quite logical in theory, has declined to little more than an annual budget drill. The Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) that is intended to guide planning and budgeting is routinely produced too late to be of value, and is generally ignored. Its planning scenarios typically reflect a future that is little more than a linear extension of current contingencies, and not the transformed environment envisioned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Secretary. The DPG’s inability to influence the allocation of defense resources is reflected in the budget shares of the military services, which have remained astoundingly stable over the last forty years, despite major changes in strategy, technology, and the geopolitical environment. Efforts to remedy the problem have met with limited success. The Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC), designed to compete military programs across Service boundaries and in emerging mission areas (e.g., information warfare) has had no significant effect on the allocation of defense resources. Thus it comes as no surprise that some members of Congress have concluded that the defense planning, programming, and budgeting process requires a major overhaul. |
