Rethrreading (AKA Back on Track)
I think the economics discussion has hijeacked this thread ong enough and has adequately reponded to MarcT's allusion to the Chinese economic nuclear option.
I wan t to respond to other points raised and remind all that this thread started with discussing an article that claims we are misusing history to make doctrine and policy decisions.
Two respondents wanted more clarification on my point about AirLand Battle (ALB) being used to justify the Big 5 weapons systems. I was pointing out that had two effects, one cathartic and one expensive. I submit the need for catharsis has passed. However, I am concerned that we now have some much invested (both in the services and in the defense contracting world) in big weapons systems that it becomes hard to jump off the "big war" horse that was allowed to grow during the Reagan years. The Army "needs" to have a big war mindset in order to be a winner in the budget turf battles. Troops on the ground are a very cheap investment compared to a littoral combat ship, an F-22 or F-35, and even an MRAP vehicle. In a world where the size of your budget dictates where you stand in the power pecking order (which I submit is the world of the US Federal Government), bigger is always better. Small wars tend to come with small price tages (at least in terms of investment portfolios/procurement and RDTE and dollars). The Navy figured out a while ago that you need a big fleet in order to be able to justify a big O&M budget. Similarly, the Army "needs" big wars in order to justify big budgets. I accept Tom's point about the need for the Big 5 in the world of the Soviet Threat. (Well, maybe the Big 4--DIVAD was little more than a bailout of Ford Aerospace, which speaks to my point about being wary of the military industrial complex.) We probably still need some big ticket systems, if for no other reason than as a conventional war deterrrent. This last brings me to MarcT's "refutation" regarding Rome's status.
At least until the time of the Emperor Julian, the Persians were only a regional power. They were deterred from doing more than fooling around on the Roman Empire's eastern border because of the capabilities and reputation of the Roman Legion. Usually Rome lost battles to Persia when it tried to expand further east, using poor generals (like Crassus). Once the Seljuk Turks arrived, things started to change. But by then, Rome was fragmented, just as deserving of the title "the sick man of Europe" as the Ottoman Empire a millenium later and its former military might held no deterent power.
Regarding MDMP: MDMP provides, to folks who need it, an organizational construct to conduct effective and focussed critical thinking. When done right, MDMA helps folks to stay on task and not get too distracted or mired in minutiae. Unfortunately the process sometimes becomes more important than the desired end state. In this regard using it is like applying tactics (or almost anything else that requires some creativity); some folks just don't really get the hang of it and confuse following a process correctly with success.
Rethreading (AKA Back on Track)
I think the economics discussion has hijacked this thread long enough and has adequately reponded to MarcT's allusion to the Chinese economic nuclear option.
I want to respond to other points raised and remind all that this thread started with discussing an article that claims we are misusing history to make doctrine and policy decisions.
Two respondents (Tom and Nat) wanted more clarification on my point about AirLand Battle (ALB) being used to justify the Big 5 weapons systems. I was pointing out that ALB had two effects, one cathartic and one expensive. I submit the need for catharsis has passed. However, I am concerned that we now have so much invested (both in the services and in the defense contracting world) in big weapons systems that it becomes hard to jump off the "big war" horse that we remounted during the Reagan years. The Army now "needs" to have a big war mindset in order to be a winner in the budget turf battles. Troops on the ground are a very cheap investment compared to a littoral combat ship, an F-22 or F-35, and even an MRAP vehicle. In a world where the size of your budget dictates where you stand in the power pecking order (which I submit is the world of the US Federal Government), bigger is always better. Small wars tend to come with small price tages (at least in terms of investment portfolios/procurement and RDTE dollars). The Navy figured out quite a while ago that you need a big fleet in order to be able to justify a big O&M budget. Similarly, the Army "needs" big wars in order to justify big budgets.
I accept Tom's point about the need for the Big 5 in the world of the Soviet Threat. (Well, maybe the Big 4 :D--DIVAD was little more than a bailout of Ford Aerospace, which speaks to my point about being wary of the military industrial complex.) We probably still need some big ticket systems, if for no other reason than as a conventional war deterrrent. This last brings me to MarcT's "refutation" regarding Rome's status.
At least until the time of the Emperor Julian, the Persians were only a regional power. They were deterred from doing more than fooling around on the Roman Empire's eastern border because of the capabilities and reputation of the Roman Legions. Usually Rome lost battles to Persia when it tried to expand further east, using poor generals (like Crassus). Once the Seljuk Turks arrived, things started to change. But by then, Rome was fragmented, just as deserving of the title "the sick man of Europe" as the Ottoman Empire a millenium later, and its former military might held no deterent power.
Regarding MDMP: MDMP provides, to folks who need it, an organizational construct to conduct effective and focussed critical thinking. When done right, MDMA helps folks to stay on task and not get too distracted or mired in minutiae. Unfortunately the process sometimes becomes more important than the desired end state. In this regard, using it is like applying tactics (or almost anything else that requires some creativity); some folks just don't really get the hang of it and confuse following a process correctly with success. So I agree with Mark O. And Mark, I do not see Col Foresman as prescient. Instead, I agree with his view that we are misusing history. More specifically, we are using too shallow a view of history.
On this last point, I submit that much of the 1976 FM 100-5 fell afoul of the same flaw--it was a kneejerk response to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The 1986 version of 100-5 cleaned up a lot of the short-sighted inclusions. I view the two documents as a set wiith the 1986 version serving as an important revision that corrected misperceptions by too many in the field regarding what was really important in the 1976 version.
I've rambled on too long with this riposte.
Some thoughts on the political economy of the thing...
I don't know whether anything is ever obvious about the behavior of the Federal government... One of my political science buddies used to pull a pack of cigarettes from his pocket as an illustration of the sometimes fractured and incoherent nature of public policy in democracies, in an introductory class on same, saying to students "For example, the Federal government has both 'grow it' and 'don't smoke it' policies for this."
Having said that I think y'all rightly point out that, however military spending was historically parceled out, that creates a constituency against change in the manner of that spending. But I think that is defeatable in the medium to long term; it is simply a matter of slowly building an alternative coalition.
I am not so sure of the argument from bigness. It may be a far more economically wasteful act to chop up the pork (profits and jobs) flowing from the production of five big systems into 435 shares, than it would be to chop up the pork flowing from fifty smaller systems into 435 shares. Here, by waste, I mean the economist's notion of "lost surplus" or "deadweight cost"...if you like, "potential pork" that simply goes up in smoke, that is goodies that no interested party gets to pocket. Other things equal, the political economy of democracies does indeed like to parcel out more as opposed to less pork. So if pork goes up in smoke, that's a bad thing from the viewpoint of Bismarckian sausage-making (less sausage to go around). If there were an alternative way of spending the same amount of taxes and spreading more sausage around, leaving other things equal, then in general a democratic legislature would prefer that.
My hunch is that bigness vs. smallness (of individual weapons systems and/or spending categories) is probably a red herring, political-economy-wise. Total levels of spending, and historical patterns of spending, though, are real considerations here, I think.
Many things are axiomatic including most
axioms... :)
My point was that your comment alluded only to the DoD reactions (wrong though they be). While "...getting Federal funds flowing to the constituents of our elected representatives, especially to those who make big campaign contributions, was the underlying source of enpowerment to the various parts of the Executive Branch (like the various Military Services)" may be intuitively obvious to the casual observer, the fact that Congress drives that and effectively forces DoD and others to play their game needs to be trumpeted loudly at every opportunity else the corrupt, flawed and inefficient system will not change...
No, I don't wonder why ship procurement is five year money and aircraft procurement is three year money and most other procurement is one or two year money. I know why -- and that, too, needs to be stopped. Those turkeys use the Constitution when it suits, regularly defeat efforts to put the Federal government under GAAP and use the convoluted budget process to buy votes while totally obscuring the tricks they play on the electorate.
Agree on the TTP and also on the self image bit. Pity that Gordy's campaign wasn't more effective. That it was not is partly the Army's fault but more the fault of Congress and the way they do business. Lot of SASC and HASC staffers have pet rocks...
Diffrentiated Persians versus undiffrentiated Persians...
Quote:
...Same is true for the Egyptians--the last Pharoah was supplanted about the time of Julius Caesar, whose realm was analogous to the America of Teddy Roosevelt, I think."
We can disagree on that.
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"...My hunch is that bigness vs. smallness (of individual weapons systems and/or spending categories) is probably a red herring, political-economy-wise. Total levels of spending, and historical patterns of spending, though, are real considerations here, I think."
You are correct in the political economy sense but very wrong in the political and practical senses. It isn't a red herring, it drives the train and it is wasteful, inefficient, ineffective all too often, unresponsive to true military needs. Far more importantly, it is a very significant contributor to that total level of spending..
Imagine the correlation away, and think like salesmen do.
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Originally Posted by
Ken White
You are correct in the political economy sense but very wrong in the political and practical senses. It isn't a red herring, it drives the train and it is wasteful, inefficient, ineffective all too often, unresponsive to true military needs. Far more importantly, it is a very significant contributor to that total level of spending..
Ken, I think it would be a real shame for ideas like yours, and those of others, to not happen due to undue pessimism about the political economy of the thing, so I'm going to stay with this a bit more.
It is true that as a historical matter total defense spending and very big and expensive systems have gone up together, that historically those two things have been correlated. But that correlation isn't inevitable. Part of creative engineering is imagining one's way around what seem to be inevitable correlations, say as between the weight of an engine and the torque it generates. To the extent a clever engineer can figure out how to relax such a correlation, say by the use of innovative materials, she can engineer an improvement in zero to sixty.
Replacing five big packages costing 50 Bil apiece by fifty small packages costing 5 Bil apiece is quite possibly such engineering from the viewpoint of political-economic selling. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it is actually easier to sell the fifty small than the five big packages...not only from a strict political economy perspective, but also from a psychological one.
Salesmen well understand the principle of dividing a large cost package into its components and selling them one at a time...the cost of each part being smaller, it is easier to sell it. This is a frequent tactic when you buy a new pair of glasses or a car...it is to get you to accept a sequence of small additional costs. The same principle has been studied in the realms of the psychology of political persuasion and escalation of commitment.
I submit that, if anything, the intuition that it is politically easier to get to total budget X by means of 5 large steps of size X/5, versus 50 smaller steps of X/50, is probably backwards, given almost everything I know about political economics and the psychology of selling. If y'all would rather have the fifty small packages rather than the five large ones, and fifty small ones will generate the same or even more total pork for legislators to deliver back home at equal total defense spending, the thing seems doable to me. All that is needed here is to imagine the 50 smaller packages...and this is what you do so well, and I enjoy learning so much from you.
Nat, I appreciate the compliment. I believe you know
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Nat Wilcox
Ken, I think it would be a real shame for ideas like yours, and those of others, to not happen due to undue pessimism about the political economy of the thing, so I'm going to stay with this a bit more.
It is true that as a historical matter total defense spending and very big and expensive systems have gone up together, that historically those two things have been correlated. But that correlation isn't inevitable. Part of creative engineering is imagining one's way around what seem to be inevitable correlations, say as between the weight of an engine and the torque it generates. To the extent a clever engineer can figure out how to relax such a correlation, say by the use of innovative materials, she can engineer an improvement in zero to sixty.
Replacing five big packages costing 50 Bil apiece by fifty small packages costing 5 Bil apiece is quite possibly such engineering from the viewpoint of political-economic selling. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it is actually easier to sell the fifty small than the five big packages...not only from a strict political economy perspective, but also from a psychological one.
Salesmen well understand the principle of dividing a large cost package into its components and selling them one at a time...the cost of each part being smaller, it is easier to sell it. This is a frequent tactic when you buy a new pair of glasses or a car...it is to get you to accept a sequence of small additional costs. The same principle has been studied in the realms of the psychology of political persuasion and escalation of commitment.
I submit that, if anything, the intuition that it is politically easier to get to total budget X by means of 5 large steps of size X/5, versus 50 smaller steps of X/50, is probably backwards, given almost everything I know about political economics and the psychology of selling. If y'all would rather have the fifty small packages rather than the five large ones, and fifty small ones will generate the same or even more total pork for legislators to deliver back home at equal total defense spending, the thing seems doable to me. All that is needed here is to imagine the 50 smaller packages...and this is what you do so well, and I enjoy learning so much from you.
or you should, anyway, that I completely agree with you -- in theory. I have made precisely the same argument to a good many senior people over the last forty years (well, the first thirty of that forty). They all agreed -- but when they got in a position to affect some of those changes, they were overcome by alligators and nothing changed.
While I am in concert with you on the need and possibility, I'm all too aware of the rather more twisted realities.
My suspicion -- nah, my very firm belief -- is that a large part of the problem is the bureaucracy and, in this case, specifically the DoD and the service bean counters. They, too have a vested interest in keeping the system opaque and convoluted; it enhances their power, enlarges their empires and they stoutly resist any attempts toward openness, sensible procurement law or, more importantly, accountability. They are masters at diffusing responsibility. You haven't lived until you've been an attendee several years of large command Program and Budget Advisory Committee meetings and watched the almost criminal ability to cast things so that a committee decision is made confirming what the J8 guys want and thus no responsibility accrues to the Eight. No one is accountable, the Committee said...
Agree that a clever engineer can do what you suggest. In fact, I've seen a number of folks do just such engineering jobs, even done it myself and I'm not that clever. Some slip through particularly if you have a slow resource guy -- and a lot of them are but the smart ones will catch you -- most fall prey to business as usual. In the eyes of the budgeteers and the procurement community, the system ain't broke and they durn sure do not want it fixed. Thus, I think the issue is not ability to do what you suggest but a concerted effort on the part of some to insure that does not happen.
The congressional staffers were mentioned ecause they are a big part of the problem in that regard and they have clout in DC that far exceeds their capability... :(
And as I said, a lot of those folks have pet rocks -- or axes to grind. They also do not want that to happen; they like their power as well.
Pure politics also enters the fray. In 1964, we troop tested the AR15 (M16 to be), recommended keeping the M14 for worldwide service and buying a few AR15s for special purpose units. DA agreed. DoD said no. The fact that the then M14 contract holder, TRW, had contributed to Nixon's 1960 campaign and Colt had contributed to Kennedy's I'm certain had no bearing on Robert Strange McNamaras decision...
Fast forward to 1977. The Army was testing two tanks and two helicopters. The fact that Bell and GM were doing well at the time meant their slightly better products were sidelined to buy a Chrysler tank and a Sikorsky helicopter because the latter two companies were in the doldrums. The purchased products are good enough; the ones rejected were just slightly better. Politics, not economics rule.
Go to the MRAP procurement; look at what was bought and where the plants are.
Another significant factor -- that is also, in its own way, political -- is the friction and trading between communities in the Army. The Bradley M3 was a quid pro quo from the Armor School for Infantry School support of the M1 buy -- a deal that also chopped the M8 MPG that the Airborne Division could've used though that vehicle itself was a political compromise and the Armor School did not want it.
Shy Meyer tried to fight the system, so did Sullivan, Shinseki and Schoomaker. The system just waits them out and then settles back down.
Wheels inside of wheels. Add to that the inter service trade offs.
What you suggest is totally possible, I'd applaud it. Been banging that drum since the late 60s. Have met a lot of fairly senior people who agree and also beat the drum. Yet...:o
I think petty politics, vote buying (to include Committee vote buying by the Services, an important factor -- without it, there'd be no Nuke carriers or V22 Ospreys), bureaucratic empire building, turf protection and risk aversion are far, far more powerful forces than they should be. Sad state of affairs.
We just have to keep pinging 'em and get the right guy in the right place... ;)
Funny you mention DIVAD...
We went to dinner with some old friends; he's also retired. We were talking about the soon to be shoot off between the HK 416, the SCAR, possibly some others and the M4. We both opined that the Army did not want to be 'embarrassed' by the M4 losing and would probably try to spin the results in front of Coburn who fought to get that shoot off. That caused me to recall then VCSA Riscassi testifying that "...the Dragon is the best man portable antitank weapon in the world" just before the Army junked it after a few video clips of wild rounds appeared (and Risacassi went off to be CG EUSA); that caused my friend to recall the CG AMC, one Louis Wagner, testifying that DIVAD was the answer to all prayers -- just before it zapped the vent fan in the latrine in front of network cameras...
We are not filled with hope over the upcoming rifle shoot off; the Army will do backflips to avoid any embarrassment and protect itself and justify its decisions (no matter how bad). Regrettably, most of those backflips tend to fall apart in mid air and the fallout almost invariably is more embarrassing than the disclosure or a factual accounting would be. I have not given up hope they will stop trying to tap dance on the head of a pin and substitute for a really neat PP a simple piece of acetate, a grease pencil and some brutal honesty -- but I continue to get closer to that loss of hope almost daily.
The overwhelming sentiment I hear from most of my fellow retards ranging in rank from 1SG to COL is "what the h31! is happening up there" in reference to the five sided funny farm. None of us has any sweat with the troops; they're doing absolutely great and the kids are better than we were and we know it -- and are glad of it. Not apparently true -- the doing great part -- for some of the the senior folks...
I hear what you're saying about quantity having a quality of its own but I'll respectfully disagree. Serving at the height of the so-called Cold War, I was never one ounce concerned with fighting the USSR. I got my first taste of quality versus quantity in Korea in November of 1950 and I''ll take quality every time. That was initially as a tanker, BTW. Costly hardware at the time.
I later saw a bunch of studies all the way up to and including named classifications for Echelons Above Reality (to include DYBR Clearance required) the vast majority of which offered as recommendations the solution desired by the originator of the study. None of them ever convinced me to get upset about quantity; that just means more targets... :D
The key, as you say, is if you have enough quantity and right now the only folks that can outdo us on that are the Chinese and the Indians. The Indian Army, like all Brit legacy forces is good -- but I'm not worried about either of them. Future coalitions ar possible from other corners but adequate warning time will be available. Admittedly, I'm not serving now but one son is -- and he's not remotely worried about them or the near future either.
You, BTW, are speaking like a true Boyd devotee -- as you may discern, I'm not one... :wry:
I'm not a detractor, just not a great believer. I agree with much he says and admit to not being an Air warrior but suggest that a great deal of his theory does not translate well into ground warfare. He probably did a great service in enunciating the OODA loop -- but intuitive fighters had been doing that for thousands of years.
Nor will I be able to wake you for the next POM cycle. I'm lazy and tend to sleep through them. I always went into those PBAC things with my devious flank attacks laid beforehand, slept through them and left with most of what I needed. :)
The key, BTW to the SWA problem is simply more light infantry on foot. They negate IEDs and such. Unfortunately, the 30 year focus on the wrong threat to justify big hardware caused a continuing cut in said PBI and we are where we are. The new Brigades, BTW, are a step in the right direction but the design is flawed; they need three Infantry Bns and the Cav Sqn; two is not enough. Four rifle companies per Bn would be beneficial as well. Part of the problem there -- and Congressional aides and the GAO will not only tell you this, they'll beat you over the head with it -- is that the most cost ineffective thing in the world is a rifle company in peacetime. That you need them, usually quickly, in wartime and adequate training today is costly and time consuming is immaterial.
Your third paragraph is correct, of course and my only point on that item has been that Congress sticks its nose way, way too far into that bucket; DoD and the Services (and their RM folks in particular) share blame with the Congress, no question but that conglomeration is slightly more at fault simply because they are the only ones that can change the process and fix the sorry mess.
I think that proves that seven wrongs don't make a right... :wry:
Again, we're in broad agreement on what's need in those POM cycles, I just think it's far more difficult to get this ponderous elephant of a bureaucracy to shift its direction to get there. It is not impossible to shift the effort, it will just be immensely difficult.
Before you attack, you gotta pick the correct target (s)...
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