Of course, after September 11th, some things did change. The base defense budget – not counting spending for the wars – increased by some 70 percent over the next eight years. During this period there were important changes in the way U.S. forces were organized, based and deployed, and investments were made in new technologies such as unmanned aerial vehicles. However, when all was said and done, the way the Pentagon selected, evaluated, developed, and paid for major new weapons systems and equipment did not fundamentally change – even after September 11th.
Indeed, the kinds of equipment, programs, and capabilities needed to protect our troops and defeat the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were not the highest priority of much of the Defense Department, even after several years of war.
I learned about this lack of bureaucratic priority for the wars we are in the hard way – during my first few months on the job as the Iraq surge was getting underway. The challenges I faced in getting what our troops needed in the field stood in stark contrast to the support provided conventional modernization programs – weapons designed to fight other modern armies, navies, and air forces – that had been in the pipeline for many years and had acquired a loyal and enthusiastic following in the Pentagon, in the Congress, and in industry. The most pressing needs of today’s warfighter – on the battlefield, in the hospital, or at home – simply lacked place and power at the table when priorities were being set and long-term budget decisions were being made.
So the most important shift in President Obama’s first defense budget was to increase and institutionalize funding for programs that directly support those fighting America’s wars and their families. Those initiatives included more helicopter support, air lift, armored vehicles, personnel protection equipment, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, we also increased funding for programs that provide long-term support to military families and treatment for the signature wounds of this conflict – such as traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress.
But, while the world of terrorists and other violent extremists – of insurgents and IEDs – is with us for the long haul, we also recognize that another world has emerged. Growing numbers of countries and groups are employing the latest and increasingly accessible technologies to put the United States at risk in disruptive and unpredictable ways.
Other large nations – known in Pentagon lingo as “near-peers” – are modernizing their militaries in ways that could, over time, pose a challenge to the United States. In some cases, their programs take the form of traditional weapons systems such as more advanced fighter aircraft, missiles, and submarines.
But other nations have learned from the experience of Saddam Hussein’s military in the first and second Gulf wars – that it is ill-advised, if not suicidal, to fight a conventional war head-to-head against the United States: fighter-to-fighter, ship-to-ship, tank-to-tank. They also learned from a bankrupted Soviet Union not to try to outspend us or match our overall capabilities. Instead, they are developing asymmetric means that take advantage of new technologies – and our vulnerabilities – to disrupt our lines of communication and our freedom of movement, to deny us access, and to narrow our military options and strategic choices.
At the same time, insurgents or militias are acquiring or seeking precision weapons, sophisticated communications, cyber capabilities, and even weapons of mass destruction. The Lebanese extremist group Hezbollah currently has more rockets and high-end munitions – many quite sophisticated and accurate – than all but a handful of countries.
In sum, the security challenges we now face, and will in the future, have changed, and our thinking must likewise change. The old paradigm of looking at potential conflict as either regular or irregular war, conventional or unconventional, high end or low – is no longer relevant. And as a result, the Defense Department needs to think about and prepare for war in a profoundly different way than what we have been accustomed to throughout the better part of the last century.
What is needed is a portfolio of military capabilities with maximum versatility across the widest possible spectrum of conflict. As a result, we must change the way we think and the way we plan – and fundamentally reform – the way the Pentagon does business and buys weapons. It simply will not do to base our strategy solely on continuing to design and buy – as we have for the last 60 years – only the most technologically advanced versions of weapons to keep up with or stay ahead of another superpower adversary – especially one that imploded nearly a generation ago.
To get there we must break the old habit of adding layer upon layer of cost, complexity, and delay to systems that are so expensive and so elaborate that only a small number can be built, and that are then usable only in a narrow range of low-probability scenarios.
We must also get control of what is called “requirements creep” – where more features and capabilities are added to a given piece of equipment, often to the point of absurdity. The most flamboyant example of this phenomenon is the new presidential helicopter – what President Obama referred to as defense procurement “run amok.” Once the analysis and requirements were done, we ended up with a helicopter that cost nearly half a billion dollars each and enabled the president to, among other things, cook dinner while in flight under nuclear attack.
We also had to take a hard look at a number of weapons programs that were grotesquely over budget, were having major performance problems, were reliant on unproven technology, or were becoming increasingly detached from real world scenarios – as if September 11th and the wars that followed had never happened.
Those of you with experience in the technology or manufacturing sectors have at some point probably faced some combination of these challenges in your own businesses. But in the defense arena, we faced an additional, usually insurmountable obstacle to bring rationality to budget and acquisition decisions. Major weapons programs, irrespective of their problems or performance, have a habit of continuing long after they are wanted or needed, recalling Ronald Reagan’s old joke that a government program represents the closest thing we’ll ever see to eternal life on this earth..
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