Military operations will also place less emphasis on dying and destruction. The ever-present television camera ensures that the horrors of war are broadcast worldwide. War's immorality should some day lead to its banishment. Unfortunately, that day is probably a long way away. Nonetheless, weapons of war and their employment tactics must minimize death and destruction. This is not a call for non-lethal weapons; it is a call for military forces to get right to the heart of the enemy and conclude operations as rapidly and efficiently as they possibly can given their equipment, training, and doctrine. This means there must be wide flexibility in how they may function. Military operations will be across a wide spectrum of warfare and will demand flexibility. Modern war will require our military leadership to navigate through a changing spectrum of political constraints and ever changing political goals as each scenario unfolds. We must make our forces capable of dampening the capacity of the enemy to use force by controlling the conflict rapidly even when surprised. We failed to do that tactically in Desert Storm in the case of the SCUD missile attacks, but were fortunate that the Iraqis were equally inept at taking political advantage of this card they held and skillfully employed on the battlefield. We must also look for efficiency before we even join in battle.
Defense spending has declined as a percent of federal outlays since the end of the Cold War. Given the leadership role the United States plays in the world, one could think a reasonable sum to devote to defense might be three percent of our gross national product, certainly an amount much smaller than what an average family expends for its security by means of life, health, causality, car, medical insurance, and retirement benefits. Given the prospect of long-term, constant funding, the Department of Defense could then give more thought to how to build the most modern, efficient military force within the dollars available. We would no longer define our forces against some mythical threat or scenario which generates impetus to protect force size rather than quality. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and space forces would be required to build a team based on a salary cap. You might be willing to pay big bucks for a B-2 superstar quarterback, but you will also need lower cost and capable riflemen or destroyers to block and tackle. Most of all, you would reward the Service or Agency who would innovate to provide efficiency.
Manpower has become the driving cost in the all-volunteer military force. Investment cost of a ship, tank, aircraft or satellite might be high, but it is the operations and maintenance costs that will drive how much resources we are required to expend to gain and maintain a given military capability. Again turning to Desert Storm, the huge advantages of overflight precision munitions dropped from stealth aircraft has not been understood or accepted by the operations analysts who argue what we should build or buy next. If it had been, would the Navy have allowed the A-12 program to fail, would the Air Force be pouring hundreds of millions if not eventually billions of dollars into equipping forty year old B-52s with conventional missiles, or would the Army be maintaining heavy divisions at a personal cost of $60 billion for 35 years of ownership? Why not build a Division force equivalent using technology and doctrine to provide a "heavy division equivalent" force using far fewer troops featuring speed, shock, precision fire while avoiding the manpower costs of dollars that in peacetime include added costs for recruitment, training, and sustaining and in war have an even greater added cost computed in blood? Why don't we do this? The answer is because it would require rare innovation, trust, and support from the equally intransigent federal funding authorities. Most importantly, the Services are not rewarded for innovation which recognizes the contributions of another Service or Ally.
Jointness has become an altar at which all military personnel must worship even if they don't understand or believe. Defenders of the status quo argue that there is merit in duplication or redundancy and these arguments have some validity. The question becomes how much overlap or redundancy between land, sea, air, and space forces can the nation afford, and what is the opportunity cost to the core competency of the land, sea, air, or space force that builds and/or maintains the duplicative force structure. A second yet vastly different question arises when considering the unique capabilities a Service provides to support itself and the other services. For example, how much the Air Force should spend on airlift forces is not cast in terms of what the envisaged requirement is for airlift, ton miles per day, to support the mythical scenarios. The alternative sea, land, and space lift requirements can be postulated; however, if the Navy, Army, or Air Force do not satisfy those sea, land, and space lift requirement, then there is a shortfall which will in turn generate a need for more airlift!
During Desert Storm, nearly 90 percent of the deployed equipment arrived by sea, but not in time if the Iraqis had continued their first attack in August. A majority of overland movement was provided by Saudi Arabian civilian trucks and drivers, and the Army had neither the resources nor the responsiveness to activate reserve forces needed to meet the truck and rail support requirements of our military forces. As a result, costly airlift was used to move forces that should have traveled by land and sea. If added space capabilities had been needed, there was almost no capability for the timely launch of a satellite. Would it not be wise to index spending on land, sea, air, and space launch on one and other, postulate lift requirements on what the new force needs as it innovates and slims down. The need to respond on a moment's notice adds to the value of airlift and prepositioned ships. The outcome though would be not to allow any of the Services to divert general support money into core competencies and thereby shift the jointness burden to another Service.
Innovate. Use the carrier to haul the army to war, and then fly the fighters aboard after the helicopters or tanks are unloaded. Accept the benefits of Federal Express that can be federalized during times of national emergency as a costly, but ready augmentation to military supply lines that has no cost during the much longer periods of peacetime. Our nation has other industrial capacities that also have duplicate military capabilities. They may be 80 percent solutions, but the cost of ownership could prohibit creation and maintenance of a military owned and operated 100 percent solution. Iridium telephones may not be jam-resistant or secure, but 80 percent of the time they will satisfy the need for 2 percent of the cost. Of course, this avoids the problem we have created for ourselves with our medieval acquisition system.
Finally, we must acquire hardware of a type and at a pace that will assure the future force capability will be enduring. We cannot keep up with technology using our current ways of acquiring military hardware and training our people in how to use and maintain it. In many areas we would be better off to throw it away when it breaks given the low cost, durability, and reliability of modern solid state electronics. Why train technicians? Give the troops a gold card and a telephone number and they know how to spend money more efficiently than do our government agencies. Make sure the equipment we do buy not only integrates with that of other services and functions, but that it can integrate with both older and newer equipment designated to do the same function. The fighter aircraft secure radio must be capable of communicating with the ground and sea based forces command and control, as importantly it must be able to communicate with the next generation fighter aircraft radio.
The added dimension is the realization that we are unlikely to fight alone in the future. We gain valuable legitimacy from forming coalitions, plus it makes up for the growing feeble force structure we maintain in declining budget years. An enduring force must also recognize the necessity to operate cooperatively with the forces of other nations. This means we must more freely release our technologies to foreign nations so that our military forces can fight side by side, so that our deployment forces can draw from stocks of others while our logistics system seeks to catch up with the rapidly deployed combat force.
In the final analysis, all of this shaping and sharpening of our military forces will be for naught if there is not an equal change in the policy side of the equation. What good are highly trained, efficient, capable land, sea, air, and space forces if the implementing authorities are incapable of defining principles, goals, and integrating strategies for their employment? While this is not the province of the military to solve, the military must understand how disjointed policy, weak political leadership, or dysfunctional international cooperation will preclude success on the battlefield.
Again, one of the missed lessons of Desert Storm was the difficult and successful integration of international leadership achieved by the President, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congressional leaders, and allied National Command Authorities as well as many others. It was this leadership, coupled with the ineptness of the enemy, that covered over the failures of our Cold War-equipped and trained forces that fought Desert Storm. This does not take anything away from the military victory, but it does make it difficult to glean the right lessons for the future. Perhaps that is why we are so loathe to change our forces at a time when change is demanded by a new strategic environment and new threats to our national security. Defining alternative forces in light of the changed national security environment, goals and strategy raises two questions: what kind or mix of military force and how much best balances the requirements and funds available.