The upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review is resurrecting a debate over Army force structure. Two camps are already visible; neither, however, is a proper guide.
The first camp is forming around conventional combat forces. This camp claims that Army combat, combat support and combat service support units should be organized, trained and equipped to fight conventional combat. Such forces, this camp argues, have the capability to fight a "high-end" enemy in conventional combat and, with some adjustments to training and equipment any other lesser enemy. This camp has history on its side - this approach served us well during the Cold War.
A second camp argues that there is no high-end conventional combat on our horizon. What conventional threat there is, they believe, can be de- feated primarily by U.S. air and mis- sile forces. Furthermore, this camp holds that if a significant conventional threat emerges, America will have the time to retool its forces; therefore, the Army should organize its forces around "middle-weight" units like Stryker brigade combat teams aug- mented with the right mix of combat support and combat service support organizations needed to fight wars like those in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Both camps rely on false assumptions. The conventional camp assumes that what worked in the past will work in the future; the niche camp assumes it can predict the future. Neither reflects the essence of our current and projected strategic environment: uncertainty, ambiguity and unpredictability. Neither a model that worked in the Cold War, when relative certainty and predictability was the norm, nor a model that bets on one of the many possible futures, fits the kind of strategic environment we face today or in the foreseeable future.
The simple model of deducing force design from known or predicated threats no longer works. The threats and the conditions that give rise to crises are too varied; the world, too complex; the shelf life of knowledge and prediction, too short. Complexity is compounded when the essential ambiguity and unpredictability of the strategic environment merges with the physics of force design - time and cost. Raising, training and equipping forces takes time and money. What the Army has now must last; what it will must last even longer - and succeed in a future certain to be different from that envisioned. The belief, for that one could build a niche force, anticipate when that force would no longer be useful and build a new one to match an emergent ensimply flies in the face of the physics of force design and the history American intelligence's predictive ability.
What practical guides might help in this essence /physics paradox? A set of three principles: First, avoid optimizing the Army's force structure; Second, inArmy depth and flexibility; increase innovation.
Optimizing ground forces in the face of uncertainty is the height of folly. When faced with such a wide range of possible scenarios unwhich Army forces might have to and succeed - especially the Army of a nation with global inter- one must expand, not limit, options. Depth, flexibility and innovation together.
The strategic environment will demand that the Army bring together its leaders, soldiers and units with those other services, agencies and nations ways that fundamentally differ from whatever is envisioned. Insuffidepth, flexibility or innovation limit the options available not to America's strategic leaders but to Army operational and tactical These principles illuminate aspects of Army force structure design.
The Army lacks sufficient depth. It is mostly fixed and too small. Many are concerned about the stress on our forces and families, and for that concern, all are grateful. The recent announcement to increase Army end strength is as welcome as it is necessary. The pace of operational deployments has not dropped significantly, nor will it. We are fighting a global insurgency, a protracted war. Although we tried to make it short and decisive, the nature of the conflict will not allow it. Our enemy will not just give up; they will move to other theaters even when we push them out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, given the world we live in, we must understand that other contingencies will emerge, ones that we will not have predicted. If we could not fully predict or appreciate the speed at which our financial world changed in the past year, how can we assume that the international security environment will be any more stable or our ability to predict the next crisis any more reliable?
The Army's flexibility is too limited. Rexibility is limited first by having too few units to employ. It is also limited by having an insufficient industrial base and too little transport. The pace of adjusting the equipment of an army is not just a function of what is on hand; it is also a function of how quickly an operational need can be manufactured and delivered. The Army's flexibility is limited further by having an insufficient number of officers and sergeants. This deficiency can be seen in the fact that many new headquarters are staffed by "robbing Peter to pay Paul," a method also used to staff many advisory formations and to fill existing units to a 24/7 capability.
Innovation in the Army is mixed. The innovation of our officers, sergeants and soldiers in the field is unquestioned and unmatched - not so when one looks at the processes that generate and support the fielded forces. The level of creativity, speed or consistency with which our bureaucracies identify and gain access to capabilities in the Army is sufficient. How quickly will our bureaucracies be able to translate the recent end-strength authorization into fielded capabilities? Speed matters in war. Designing forces is not just about the number and types of units of employment. It is also about having processes in which the norm is creating new capabilities out of existing organizations, adapting methodologies in ways not previously envisioned and reshaping organizations - all at the speed of requirements. Such innovation is not the strong suit of Army bureaucracies - the very bureaucracies charged to design forces in an era of ambiguity and unpredictability.
The Army will not return to its relatively stable past; rather, what we are experiencing is the new "norm." The question of how to design forces in a strategic environment of ambiguity and unpredictability is not just a question of either avoiding the conventional and niche camps or determining how many combat, combat support and combat service support units are needed and of what type. To approach the problem in either of those ways demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the task at hand.
The Army will have to apply the per- spectives of depth, flexibility and innovation to its active and reserve components as well as its operating, supporting and generating elements. The Army also has to argue against op- timizing in the face of constant and un- expected change and the resultant un- predictability. But in the United States, security is a shared responsibility. The Obama administration and Congress have important obligations in seeing that the Army and its sister services are resourced commensurate with our national interests and strategy as well as organized to fit the strategic environment in which they will employ our forces. Fixing some of the limitations of depth, flexibility and innovation is beyond the Army's reach, for some limitations are found in law, policy or regulation.
In the kind of strategic environment we face, designing forces is also about designing systems - inside the Army and outside - that govern, support or generate those forces. A Quadrennial Defense Review that focuses only on threat descriptions and derived force requirements will miss the target.
[Author Affiliation]
By LTG James M. Dubik
U.S. Army retired
[Author Affiliation]
LTG James M. Dubik, USA Ret., is a former commander of Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq and a senior fellow of AUSA's Institute of Land Warfare.
No comments:
Post a Comment