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I'd always been suspicious of newspapers, even
Important Ones, making sweeping recommendations about defense acquisition
policy. For one thing, I never saw any Industrial College of the Armed Forces courses
as pre-requisites for the J-school at Columbia. I just don't think they're in
there. Also, I've watched over the course of my service years as the
Times
in particular demanded that whatever it was that we were doing in the name of
national defense, we ought to be doing it with a great deal less of everything.
People. Gear. You know, stuff. It costs so much money, all that stuff. And
they'd have really liked to spend it elsewhere, on other things. (I can not
recall them ever offering to give it back to the taxpayers. I might be wrong,
though - but it doesn't seem in character.)
In fact, when it comes to acquisition programs, I
can't think of a single one the
Times
wouldn't have liked to kill in its cradle. The FA-18, and F-15, the M1A1, the M2
Bradley Fighting Vehicle, Peacemaker. Had we listened to them, we'd have fought
OIF in Sherman tanks and P-39's. Newspapers are good at reporting what happened
yesterday. They're OK in putting into context what happened last week. They've
proven no better than anyone else in predicting what's going to happen 20 years
from now - and with today's acquisition cycles, that's the horizon into which
military planners must peer.
There are some good recommendations in there: The
Times
thinks that the Navy could do without one of its carrier strike groups, and I
actually agree with them. In fact, I'd go so far as to tell them which one to
get rid of: USS John F.
Kennedy. She's old, and tired and a burden
to the fleet. Which is why SecNav tried to retire her last year. But, he was
over-ruled by Congress, who also gets a say. For my own part, as the Navy moves
to a more flexible deployment capability in the FRP , and away from a peacetime, rotational
force, the old rationale for 12 carrier strike groups doesn't hold up. So I'd
keep her escort ships, but send Big John off the bone-yard.
But the Gray Lady runs some risks, too: They'd
like to re-jigger service budgets in light of the world's new realities. I used
to think that made a good sense too, especially when I saw how much money the
USAF could afford to plow into Quality of Life programs as contrasted to the
other services. But - the good thing about the fixed ratios is that it prevents
the kind of Pentagon in-fighting over budgets that wounds everyone, makes
planning assumptions simpler and limits prediction risk - the
Times
is right that we did a suboptimal job assessing what warfare would look like
this decade during the last one. Problem is, that if we'd have made the kinds of
assumptions they're asking us to make now back then, we'd have been even less
prepared: No one foresaw the need for a standing army of occupation, and there
was lots of talk about bringing the troops home from Europe - it'd been a short
road from their homecoming to their dissolution. And the risk of getting it
really wrong by guessing going forward is also non-trivial. If something
happened in the Taiwan Strait, North Korea or in Southwest Asia, different kinds
of force packaging are needed. Plus, canceling air and ship acquisition programs
leave us with a fleet that is both increasingly expensive to operate, and
diminishingly capable. Ships and aircraft are mechanical and especially with
current operating tempos, you cannot make them last forever. Wishing will not
make it so.
But what to do with those theoretical savings?
Hire people. The
Times
thinks we ought to bring on 100,000 more soldiers. That's a nice, round number:
100,000. I wonder what percentage they recommend for combat arms, and how many
they'd put in support? Doesn't say - maybe that will come out next
weekend.
But if gear is expensive, so are people. If you're
going to train and equip ten new divisions - and that is a process that will
take, conservatively, a decade to accomplish, you've got a bill running out for
the next thirty to forty years which is bound to make Army budgeteers lose
sleep. And, if you were an Army recruiter right now, you'd have to wonder how
you'd fill 100,000 more boots. But fortunately, the Times has an answer for that
one, too:
"(R)ecruits should be attracted by
allowing enlistees to fulfill their entire service obligation through four years
of active duty and ending senseless and offensive restrictions on openly gay
people serving in the military and on women serving in combat."
Ah.
I honestly don't know how many potential recruits
are dissuaded from enlisting by the prospect of post-enlistment involuntary
reactivation. But the idea that there are between 50,000 to 100,000 openly gay
prospects who won't sign the dotted line because of "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" is
risible, as is the idea that there is an equal pool of Warrior Princesses who
refuse to serve because they can't be promised Combat Arms billets. Unless the
Times
purports to say that there is a huge swell of otherwise patriotic service
candidates who are neither gay nor female at places like Harvard and Columbia
who are refusing to serve because the military "discriminates" in this fashion.
No doubt in the social circles in which the members of the
Times
editorial board moves, that's a popular thing to think.
Ludicrous, but popular.
The
Times
takes the Secretary to task for thinking, well... futuristically, as he makes
his plans for the future. It's a strange criticism to make and in fact recalls
the the classic mistake all too often attributed to the military itself: In the
Navy, we call it "steering by the wake," but whatever you call it, it boils down
to preparing for the last war.
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