US Military Force Structure
One view of the force structure (UNCLASSIFIED), via a briefing originated at JFCOM. This briefing like others should be available from the SecDEF’s office.
This is a USMC brief on the next coming fiscal years for them but applicable to much of DOD (at least the military services portion) and probably a lot of the rest of the Federal govt as well. Pretty bleak.
This brief (attached) was originated at JFCOM and has made the rounds in OSD, Joint Staff, all Service headquarters, and the QDR. It has also been briefed to the Obama transition team who has scheduled two follow-up sessions with the authors.
Bottom line:
1. Supplementals will end, AND the defense budget has to go down in the next 4 years to pay for domestic programs.
2. Current Force structure and readiness plans are inadequately funded even at their current levels.
3. Force structure is severely imbalanced to accomplish the current ops tempo and there is no significant effort to realign the current force.
4. Even with resetting force structure across all the Services, fiscal realities will drive DOD into an undetermined end state based on fiscal realities and with no long-term plan.
5. “The Obama administration has the opportunity to set the stage for US military forces for the next 50-100 years”.
SLIDES: (see the attachment)
Slide 2. Competing demands in the federal budget FY-09 and beyond are in the range of $7.5 Trillion per year. The price tag alone for recoring the 283 nuclear plants (built in the 70s & 80′s that depend on federal assistance to recore) is $2.5b per plant…comes to over $7 Trillion.
Slide 4. Budget options laid out represent a 20, 30 and 40% budget reduction Sound familiar?
Slide 6. Issues not in the present budget but they are reality. Health care, acquisition overruns etc are not factored in the current budget projections. In 2007 GAO reported that DOD acquisition were typically 8 years behind schedule and had cost overruns of 100%. In March 2008, GAO adjusted the overruns to 150%!
Slide 8. Recommends reducing force structure by tactical blocks, rather that salami slicing. For instance, reduce brigades, squadrons, ships and MEBs in total. Reducing depot maintenance or unit size by 20% reduces the capability of all units, therefore reducing their effectiveness. Reducing by tactical blocks gives the same level of capability, with less capacity.
Slide 9. Recommends changing the service splits of the pie. Based the total force on what is needed to do the mission, not “equitable across the board”.
Slide 10. The starting point assumes the level of forces approved in the Bush administration. the 202K Marine Corps is assumed to be stood up.
Slides 11-14. Click thru these quickly and you can see the reduction in “building blocks” by each option.
Slide 17. The Cold War ended in 1991 but it took 9/11 to get DOD to start working toward a new paradigm. In the period between 1991 and 2001 we continued with an old force structure and acquisition programs based on the cold war threat.
Slide 18. US offers three unique capabilities unmatched anywhere: (1) Night carrier capability, (2) forcible entry from the sea, and (3)ability to close on and sustain the force in combat. These should be sustained.
Slide 19. New Paradigm needed. “Soft Power”. The notion has been accepted but the force structure- manpower and equipment to support has not changed, Investments do not support this strategy.
Slide 20. What is the right balance? Marine Corps notion of the long war represents new thinking but we have not changed anything to reflect that strategy. Canadians have come to the conclusion that you can NOT train a force to do both kinetic war and win “Hearts and Minds” the psychological imbalance not only precludes a force from doing both, but when you try, you fail at both.
Slide 21. Talks to the imbalance of the force. In 2001 90% of the force was expeditionary (warfighters) We gave lip service to SASO with 10% of our forces (actually about 8%). In 2007, 25% of the force was in expeditionary operations, 75% were in SASO operations. but we did not significantly change our acquisition investments or force structure. And even then a significant percentage of the force was improperly engaged.i.e. artillery units serving as MPs and civil affairs and logisticians action as convoy security. The plan into 2010 continues this percent of the mix, again without any force structure adjustments.
*** The conclusion at this point in the brief is that if the 1/3 (expeditionary) 2/3 (SASO) paradigm works for how we want to employ our forces, then make the adjustments in force structure and acquisition.
Slides 30-35 then talks to the ideas that our current direction of recapitalization cannot be sustained in the face of fiscal realities, and it is probably the wrong direction anyway. Give the delays in new programs and the “LULL” that will exist in delivering them, there is about a 5 year gap in the 2013-2018 timeframe when our current readiness will drop below operational levels. Our current inventory was built on non-wartime metrics.
The 5 years of combat we have had has aged equipment 16-20 years and acquisition programs cannot keep pace and they are unfunded at even that level. For example HUMVEES were programmed for 8000 miles per year. The current inventory in the past 5 years has surpassed the 20 year life of the vehicle (i.e. the average is in excess of 150,000 miles). The vehicles replacement is due in 2014, but is expected to slip to 2018.
Conclusion: What the next administration does with regard to force structure and force missions will have a significant impact well beyond the 4 or 8 years that they will serve. DOD needs to be an active player in that discussion and each Service needs to make significant adjustment immediately.
Presentation is attached. This brief has no restrictions as to released or distribution.
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Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
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January 4th, 2009 at 1:43 am
We can’t afford to maintain bases in Iraq or Afghanistan or Japan or any number of other places the US has scattered around the planet.
The Balad airbase alone is the second busiest airport in the world. As Secretary Gates recently wrote in an editorial, the US needs to rethink defense and how it relies on the military and a major component of that is more emphasis on counter terrorism. Our enemies are now stateless entities with no formal structure. That kind of threat requires an increasing reliance on human intelligence and and moving away from fancy weapons systems. Think light and nimble.
The lobbyists will fight change tooth and nail as will our various representatives in DC as they try to hang on to expensive outdated programs in their districts. It’s gonna take balls to fight the military industrial complex but they are fast becoming our own worst enemy.
Obama promised change. Well, now is the time to bring it on.
January 4th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
To Dow:
1) au contraire, we can’t afford NOT to maintain bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan (please ad to the list also: Korea, Germany, Italy, UK, Diego Garcia, etc). Our enemies are NOW stateless because we have prevented STATES to become our enemies (with a few exceptions…). No bases in Japan? really? how do you know they wouldn’t have rearmed by now? Perhaps no NATO? really? The Romans said: if you want peace, prepare for war.
2) The military industrial complex, our enemy? Really? and who do you expect to do the dirty jobs around the world? Look at Darfur, Somalia, Kosovo…if we don’t step in, all hell breaks loose. Or are you just harping on the military now because you cannot whine about gas prices and how bad the oil companies are? Common, read the facts and above all, try to understand the dangerous times we live in…
January 4th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
A very nice read, my compliments!
In Nov 2007 it was already easy to foresee that present US military spending could not drag on much longer at these very high levels (700 billion US$ a year included 200 billion in emergency spending that does not account for the official deficit).
The Future Combat programs are about 300 billion over budget; who cares?
The remark on HUMVEES at the end is may be the most tale telling; due to replacement in 2014 but it will be 2018 or beyond…
Let the good times roll & lets see how the average American citizen reacts on downsizing the US military! The funny thing is: Downsizing the US military will bring more economical troubles because at a 700 billion US$ a year budget she is a large part of the US GDP.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Having troops sitting and drinking coffee in Japan, Germany and dozens of other places does nothing to defend America. It has everything to do pork-barrel politics and an egotistical attitude toward the world. If the goal were really defending America, we would have someone actually noticing we have borders.
While we have spent 60 years defending everything else in the world EXCEPT America, our allies have used the free pass to pay for free college, free health care and excellent mass transit systems. Meanwhile, we know a healthy military requires a healthy economy, and with the crumbling neglected infrastructure that aspect is in serious jeopardy.
In short, we have wasted 60 years of investment. BOTH the military infrastructure AND the homeland infrastructure are in state of careless neglect, while special interests got fat. That is what the decline of the Roman Empire looked like. Obama inherits a time when almost everything is breaking down at once. He is only human. We need a leader of unprecedented strength and wisdom to counteract the fierce opposition that he will face. There isn’t enough treasure in the world to upgrade everything at once. A few high priorities must be funded and everything else needs to be eliminated.