I unavoidably compress what is a serious and respectful struggle about resources, military strategy and political ideology. The weapons in this discreet conflict include budget requests…
Really excellent thread.

One more thing I believe deserves serious consideration is the financial aspect of this so-called Pentagon war. Reading the op-ed, the words “struggle for resources” and “budget requests” are what captured my attention more than the other aspects, either because I have a special interest in such issues or I’m just really cynical

I believe (actually the real experts in defense economics do and I merely trust them) that the coming budgetary environment is particularly tough for defense spending, in light of our current fiscal situation. The next administration may be disinclined, to say the least, to support another $150 billion/year (or so) supplemental for the war in Iraq on top of the $500+ billion defense baseline budget. In addition to O&M costs of maintaining troops in the theater and the reset costs, there is also the issue of the costs of adding enough soldiers to make such long-term deployments sustainable without “breaking the force.” For example, the “Grow the Force” initiative, the administration’s request to add 65k to Army and 27k to Marines active duty strength, which was designed to allegedly make it easier to sustain future COIN campaigns, is estimated by CBO to cost $108 billion over the 2006-2013 period, and $15 billion per year after that.

In short, I believe that the chiefs are worried (with good reason) that trade-offs will have to be made eventually and they are afraid that their investment accounts will be raided, especially the capital-intensive ones - the Navy and Air Force. It’s no secret that most of the “transformational” programs are designed for force-on-force warfare, so it’s no surprise that some people feel our ability to wage war against future high-tech “conventional” enemies is imperiled. I don’t necessarily buy that, but I can see where they are coming from.

While I agree with the points made about the flexibility that one can introduce in doctrine so that soldiers are “full spectrum” general-purpose forces, I believe that when you talk about force structure there are REAL trade-offs that need to be made. You can have different doctrines for different operations, but by and large you have one set force structure over the medium term: so many BCTs, so many air wings, so many carrier groups, so many MEFs, etc.

Unlike doctrine, force structure in the context of limited resources is much more of a zero-sum game.

And while the Army pretends that their BCTs will be all things to all people, I am not yet persuaded by that. Even if it were so, at the most basic level, it’s ultimately also a question of numbers. Most people agree that COIN/irregular warfare ops are manpower-intensive, and you either have enough troops to sustain long-term presence or you don’t. Yes, you can make marginal modification at the sub-unit level, but only to a certain point.

So even if our troops can perform equally well in all types of operations with the proper training, I still think that there is very important debate going on, as the article suggest, on what we want our military to become in the medium-term future.