Combat Power, Conflict Resolution, and US Economy

[Fuchs]

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

There is no guarantee

The other stuff was superfluous. Understand this quote and you'll probably get my view on military spending.

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

I think the glance at the USA, USAF, and USN trends suggests that the post-Cold War cuts did in fact significantly hollow out America's military power.

Entirely wrong metric. Watch the difference between "to hollow out" and "to shrink".

For a change, I will refer not to my blog but to another useful one, "Ink Spots":
http://tachesdhuile.blogspot.de/2011...-and-isnt.html

A "hollow force" is a force that supposes to be more than it is. It's not a small force. Insufficient training and repair budgets lead to a hollow force, a budget cut does not need to do the same at all.
A hollow force is a failure of high-level leadership to adjust properly to a budget, it's about "not all is gold that shines" problem.

[AmericanPride]

US Yearly GDP and TOA to Services Growth


This is a comparison between US GDP growth and growth of TOA appropriations to each military service by year. US GDP growth has averaged about 3% since 1973, while the growth of the budget has averaged about 1%. So, what this tells me is that the US economy is actually expanding its capacity to support military power over time. But it is important to note that this only remains true to the extent that US per dollar purchasing power remains fixed relative to the combat power purchased. If one US dollar purchased X amount of combat power in 1973, what difference from X does one US dollar in 2012 purchase?

As discussed in a previous post, in the case of the F-35 replacement of the F-16, this problem is evident. The F-35 is 11 - 13 times more expensive than the F-16 but does not provide 11 - 13 times more combat capability; the US intends to purchase far less than the approximately 1,600 F-35s necessary to replace the combat capabilities of the F-16 inventory. In this situation, one US dollar is purchasing a smaller rate of combat capability. When aggregated for the whole defense establishment, if this reduction in purchasing power is greater than 3%, then US economic capacity to purchase military power is shrinking. If the reduction is greater than 1%, then the ability of the defense budget to sustain US military power is also shrinking.

Originally Posted by Fuchs

Watch the difference between "to hollow out" and "to shrink".

See above to see why both are occurring.

[Dayuhan]

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

Read the document.

I did. I see nothing providing real support to the assertion of unprecedented danger.

I'm not sure anyone's speeches, and in particular speeches made by those representing institutions whose budget allocations depend on the perceptions of danger, are a good place to start assessing levels of threat.

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

This is not necessarily true. How many soldiers, aircraft, and ships has the US used in combating Al-Qaeda and the Taliban? There are X amount of soldiers on the ground, Y amount of aircraft providing tactical, logistical, intelligence, etc support, and Z amount of ships moving to and fro (at times with escort) moving supplies, combat aircraft, etc. Then there are overhead assets that enable communication, etc, with their operators also. Whether or not all of this is necessary for defeating a terrorist group (with or without WMD) is besides the point; it can and is being used for that purpose. Your objection is one of military effectiveness, which will be looked at when I investigate conflict resolution.

To what extent are these assets being used top combat AQ - the terrorist group in the picture - and to what extent are they being used to try to establish a government in Afghanistan that will be acceptable to the US? These are two entirely different goals.

If we assume that in order to avert these "unprecedented dangers" we need to run around deposing governments and installing new ones, then we might be pardoned for assuming that large expensive conventional forces are needed for the task. Those assumptions seems to me highly questionable. Again, the key to achieving goals is not only the amount of force you can apply, but the goals you select and the means you choose to try to achieve them. If we can't succeed in transforming Afghanistan into a Western-style liberal democracy it won't be because we couldn't apply enough force, it will be because we selected a goal we can't achieve and tried to pursue it by inappropriate means. If your hammer won't drive a screw, you don't need a bigger hammer.

The question remains: what exactly are the threats that produce these "unprecedented dangers", and what exactly is needed to combat these threats? If we're talking about the threat of non-state actors, transnational criminals, terror groups, etc, I see no rational point in assessing our capacity by the number of ships and aircraft we can deploy. The number of F-35s or F-22s or carriers we buy may be proportional to our economic means, but I'm not convinced that it has any great impact on our capacity to counter these threats.

Military spending in general is not only related to GDP and government revenue, but also to perceived levels of threat and the nature of perceived threats. If we're at war or faced with imminent threat, we're willing to spend a higher percentage of GDP on the military. If the perceived threat appears to be from conventional force, we'll be willing to spend more on conventional force. The threat of WMD-armed terrorists makes a poor justification for spending more on F-22s, for obvious reasons.

[AmericanPride]

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

I did. I see nothing providing real support to the assertion of unprecedented danger.

Dempsey did not claim any new emergent threat existed. He claims that the "unprecedented danger" is the simultaneous diffusion of threats horizontally and the proliferation of threat capabilities vertically. The testimony of DNI Clapper agrees with Dempsey's assertion.

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

I'm not sure anyone's speeches, and in particular speeches made by those representing institutions whose budget allocations depend on the perceptions of danger, are a good place to start assessing levels of threat.

This criticism would be more relevant and substantial if it also recommended a better metric.

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

The number of F-35s or F-22s or carriers we buy may be proportional to our economic means, but I'm not convinced that it has any great impact on our capacity to counter these threats.

As I've stated before, I will look at conflict resolution after looking at economic capacity and military expenditures. The information I have gathered so far indicates that US military power is shrinking as is US capacity to support said military power. Though GDP growth outpaces defense appropriations growth, US purchasing power relative combat power is reducing. In order to maintain the same level of combat power over time, the US must spend an increasing amount of dollars. Without reform, we will either reduce our military capacity or catch up and surpass GDP growth with military expenditures (so far, my assessment is that we are reducing military power in order to (1) profit private defense interests and (2) protect other government programs from defense appropriations). Regardless of what threats we face and the most effective means in defeating them, this is the real problem.

EDIT: Further, this problem exists before the costs incurred by the GWoT, which highlights the inefficiencies of the defense establishment. IMO, the GWoT should be a shot over the bow to the defense establishment and American public about the true costs of maintaining the status quo. In the US case, the armed forces have the double cost of maintaining, and then the operational costs of actually using it, which happen to exceed the costs of maintaining, even though we employed only a tiny fraction of combat power at any one time. This is the primary reason why we have abandoned the "two simultaneous major theater wars" idea; we can't afford the costs of maintaining our current force at levels necessary to fight them, and the current force levels cannot sustain two major regional wars. Activating the reserves is not a solution (even though that's historically the US strategy) because that only adds to the final cost. That's a major security dilemma which we avoided by simply abandoning the policy. I'm not confident that the Air-Sea Battle concept will provide any outlet for this problem if the failure of the "revolution of military affairs" (FCS, for example) is any indication.

[Ken White]

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

As discussed in a previous post, in the case of the F-35 replacement of the F-16, this problem is evident. The F-35 is 11 - 13 times more expensive than the F-16 but does not provide 11 - 13 times more combat capability...

You're comparing two aircraft of vastly different age, production status, capabilities and design parameters and for the older one you're using the cost of a stripped variant after years of production.

A far more apt comparison would of the the F-16IN recently offered to India (but beat out thus far by the Dassault Rafale). That variant of the F-16 is perhaps the most capable and it still won't quite match the F-35 in many respects. Flyaway costs run about $111M for the F-16IN versus $197M for the F35A. That's a factor of only 1:1.7 -- call it two times more cost and then ask the question on combat capability...

[Dayuhan]

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

Dempsey did not claim any new emergent threat existed. He claims that the "unprecedented danger" is the simultaneous diffusion of threats horizontally and the proliferation of threat capabilities vertically. The testimony of DNI Clapper agrees with Dempsey's assertion.

"The simultaneous diffusion of threats horizontally and the proliferation of threat capabilities vertically" seems almost intentionally vague.

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

This criticism would be more relevant and substantial if it also recommended a better metric.

What about simply describing and assessing the specific perceived threats... who exactly are we afraid of, and what exactly are we afraid they will do? Would any such process support a claim that we live in a period of "unprecedented danger"?

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

The information I have gathered so far indicates that US military power is shrinking as is US capacity to support said military power. Though GDP growth outpaces defense appropriations growth, US purchasing power relative combat power is reducing.

Do we need to look at the military power we have relative to what we had at any time in the past, or at what we have relative to what we need to deal with today's perceived threats and the threats that are expected to emerge? Maybe we no longer have the power to stop Soviet tanks from rolling through the Fulda Gap, but is that a power we still need?

The challenge is not necessarily to maintain the same level and type of military power, but to maintain a level and type of military power suited to realistic assessments of the threat environment that we face. I expect that trying to quantify that and illustrate it with charts would be a frustrating process, but luckily I don't need to do it!

[Fuchs]

IIRC inflation is being measured by assuming that predecessor and successor are the same thing. Technological progress is a different thing, measured differently. Comparing both properly is usually beyond the capabilities of the methods known to mankind so far.

The only real military #1 status challenge is the PRC (and so far only regionally). This challenge is founded on industrial capabilities; the production during the last years prior to war can easily be much more important than legacy equipment. Think of China as an equivalent of the '1933' Soviet Union. Ships, aircraft, tanks and even guns produced during the 1920's were largely irrelevant by '41.

Thus I'd compare

* economical sustainability of the economy (excluding ecological and resource sustainability)
* industrial capacity that's suitable for a war industry
* dependence on unsecured resource imports
* secured finished product or resource export capacity, currency and gold reserves, secured military goods import capacity (ability to import arms)
* qualified personnel base beyond that (mechanical and electrical engineers mostly)
* size and quality of the officer corps
* size and quality of the senior noncommissioned officer corps
* quantity of able-bodied personnel with basic (para)military training age group about 18-30 yrs old
* political stability (ability to sustain war; remember Austria-Hungary and Russia in WW1)
* quantity of able-bodied personnel without basic (para)military training about 18-30 yrs old
* allied power of the same sorts

[AmericanPride]

Originally Posted by Fuchs

The only real military #1 status challenge is the PRC (and so far only regionally). This challenge is founded on industrial capabilities; the production during the last years prior to war can easily be much more important than legacy equipment. Think of China as an equivalent of the '1933' Soviet Union. Ships, aircraft, tanks and even guns produced during the 1920's were largely irrelevant by '41.

I appreciate your analysis and I would argue that long-term security trends are currently in favor of PRC, not the US. While I am interested in your proposed metrics, I don't think there is much in the way of disagreement about current conditions. My primary interest is investigating if structural problems in the US economy is having a detrimental impact on US military power. I think the data so far illustrates that military power is declining; first, in a reduction of military capacity, and second, in a reduction of purchasing power of military capacity. My question is if this trend is at all related to the downward structural trends in the US economy?

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

"The simultaneous diffusion of threats horizontally and the proliferation of threat capabilities vertically" seems almost intentionally vague.

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

What about simply describing and assessing the specific perceived threats... who exactly are we afraid of, and what exactly are we afraid they will do? Would any such process support a claim that we live in a period of "unprecedented danger"?

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

Do we need to look at the military power we have relative to what we had at any time in the past, or at what we have relative to what we need to deal with today's perceived threats and the threats that are expected to emerge? Maybe we no longer have the power to stop Soviet tanks from rolling through the Fulda Gap, but is that a power we still need?

As I stated before, I am first looking at the economy and military capacity. Conflict resolution will be later. In the meantime, I recommend reading the Congressional testimony of DNI Clapper that I cited earlier if you are interested in a review of current and emerging threats. So far, the data suggests that independent of which threats exist, US military capacity now is less than in 1973, and the purchasing power for military capacity is also reduced. Again, this is the real security problem.

Originally Posted by Ken

A far more apt comparison would of the the F-16IN recently offered to India (but beat out thus far by the Dassault Rafale). That variant of the F-16 is perhaps the most capable and it still won't quite match the F-35 in many respects. Flyaway costs run about $111M for the F-16IN versus $197M for the F35A. That's a factor of only 1:1.7 -- call it two times more cost and then ask the question on combat capability...

The US does not operate the F-16IN so it is not useful in measuring US combat power. But I would like to note that this is an excellent example of inflating prices far along in the platform's history. William Hartung's book provides an excellent overview of Lockheed Martin's practices in this regard; and I think it's a fair representation of the acquisition process as a whole.

[Dayuhan]

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

So far, the data suggests that independent of which threats exist, US military capacity now is less than in 1973, and the purchasing power for military capacity is also reduced. Again, this is the real security problem.

I don't see how you can determine "the real security problem" without assessing current capacity relative to current threat. Current capacity relative to 1973 capacity is irrelevant, the Cold War is over and the threat environment has changed. Once you decide that the analysis must be "independent of which threats exist" the analysis begins to float off on thin air, because any analysis of security is fundamentally dependent on which threats exist.

I don't think anyone doubts that military power ultimately stems from economic power, and that as the US loses absolute economic superiority (that doesn't necessarily mean US decline, as others can also rise) it will necessarily lose absolute military superiority. That doesn't necessarily have unmanageable security implications, it just means we have to learn to manage the new security environment. Is absolute superiority to everyone, everywhere, all the time essential to our security?

I don't think anyone doubts that reforms in US military procurement would be desirable; that's close to being self-evident. It would be interesting to know if any concrete, practical changes have been proposed...

[Ken White]

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

The US does not operate the F-16IN so it is not useful in measuring US combat power.

Nowhere did I imply that it was operated by us; that isn't the issue; combat capability or your combat 'power' are nominal owner independent issues, as is price. The issue at hand is your use of inappropriate and thus potentially invalid costs in comparing the costs of an F-16 of Block 30/32 or below with an F-35. Machts nichts to me, really, it's your study and I was simply pointing out a potential pitfall...

But I would like to note that this is an excellent example of inflating prices far along in the platform's history...

Is it price fixing or is it much added -- and more expensive -- capability? The F-16IN AN/APG 80 AESA Radar for example offers many improvements in capability and thus combat power (and some USAF F-15s C/Es are being retrofitted with a similar set as likely will be some F-16s) but it is an order of magnitude more expensive than the older mechanically scanned sets. Built in IRST (which the USAF used to foolishly reject), Current EW systems and helmet mounted cueing all available in the F-16IN are not only items designed into the F-35 but also far more expensive than the Boyd / Spinney / Wheeler beloved f-16A. Those gentlemen not withstanding, the USAF and most other purchasers of the F-16 have opted for far more capability than the A-model possessed. You get what you pay for. And one must pay for what one gets...

William Hartung's book provides an excellent overview of Lockheed Martin's practices in this regard; and I think it's a fair representation of the acquisition process as a whole.

We can disagree on that last item and I'll again point out that the Congress really like things the way they are; i.e. LM couldn't do what they're rightly or wrongly accused of without the assent -- even encouragement -- of Congress. Allow me to say that your choice of 'believable' sources is, er, interesting and they certainly generally are supportive of your views

[Ken White]

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

I don't see how you can determine "the real security problem" without assessing current capacity relative to current threat... Is absolute superiority to everyone, everywhere, all the time essential to our security...I don't think anyone doubts that reforms in US military procurement would be desirable; that's close to being self-evident...

Quite accurate, as well.

[Fuchs]

Two countries in today's world have a problem with the classic line that goes approx. like this:

One countries' perfect security is all other countries' insecurity.

One country seeks perfect security for itself only in its own region, the other has completely lost its mind.

[AmericanPride]

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

I don't see how you can determine "the real security problem" without assessing current capacity relative to current threat. Current capacity relative to 1973 capacity is irrelevant, the Cold War is over and the threat environment has changed. Once you decide that the analysis must be "independent of which threats exist" the analysis begins to float off on thin air, because any analysis of security is fundamentally dependent on which threats exist.

As I have repeatedly stated, this has nothing to do with the first part of my analysis which, I stress again, is about measuring US military capacity. Yes, it is a major issue if US purchasing power is decreasing. In order to maintain the same level of military power, the US must increasingly spend more money. This decline is not related to the existence of other security threats or the development of other national military forces. The fact that other national powers may represent future threats only highlights the underlying economic problems that are reducing US military capacity. In other words, it is possible that US military is reducing relative both to US economic capacity and to foreign national threats (the former is what I have been discussing, the latter I have not looked at).

Originally Posted by Dayuhan

I don't think anyone doubts that military power ultimately stems from economic power, and that as the US loses absolute economic superiority (that doesn't necessarily mean US decline, as others can also rise) it will necessarily lose absolute military superiority. That doesn't necessarily have unmanageable security implications, it just means we have to learn to manage the new security environment. Is absolute superiority to everyone, everywhere, all the time essential to our security?

You mean relative "economic superiority" since US GDP growth is outpacing the growth of the DoD budget. Nor has my analysis even addressed this problem yet, which, again, I said I would investigate when I explore conflict resolution. Right now, the data indicates that US purchasing power is decreasing. This decrease is not dependent on the existence of any threat.

Originally Posted by Ken

Allow me to say that your choice of 'believable' sources is, er, interesting and they certainly generally are supportive of your views

My sources in this thread have been:
- General Dempsey's speech
- DNI Clapper's congressional testimony
- Frank Spinney's congressional testimony
- OPM's federal employment statistics
- Naval History and Heritage Command (USN inventory)
- Arsenal of Airpower: USAF Inventory
- FY2010 DoD Green Book on national defense estimates
- World Bank

These are all primary sources so I doubt the substance of your objections about my sources. My conclusions are based on the numbers provided by these sources.

[Fuchs]

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

You mean relative "economic superiority" since US GDP growth is outpacing the growth of the DoD budget.

That is a very, very recent development.
The spending craze of the Bush Jr administration when the U.S. applied its classic strategy (of throwing resources at a problem till it drowns) looked very different.

http://blogs.cfr.org/geographics/201...ense-spending/

[Ken White]

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

These are all primary sources so I doubt the substance of your objections about my sources. My conclusions are based on the numbers provided by these sources.

I'm sure you do doubt, no surprise there. However, after listening to, reading and watching all those you cite and / or their predecessors, cohorts, sycophants and fellow travelers as a highly interested and even involved party for a great many years, I'm far more comfortable with my assessment of their questionable overall credibility on the matters at hand.

Even OPM. As a former DAC and Civil Service retiree as well as a military retiree, they. IMO, are probably the most credible source you cite and they are far from being error or bias free. They, like most of the others, have to agree (or strongly disagree, individually and incumbent administration political party dependent) with each current administration no matter what they believe or think

Question everything, not just things that annoy you. Agendas abound...

[Dayuhan]

Originally Posted by AmericanPride

As I have repeatedly stated, this has nothing to do with the first part of my analysis which, I stress again, is about measuring US military capacity.

And as I have repeatedly stated, I see no point in measuring military capacity in ways that do not measure capacity against actual or realistically expected threats. The point is to have as much as you need, not as much as you once had. Maintaining or buying more capacity than needed is in itself an economic threat.

To be frank, it looks a bit like you've selected study parameters that make the outcome a foregone conclusion: the desired end point seems to be that US capacity to purchase military power is declining, that this represents a great threat to our security, and that the economy, the military procurement system, and possibly a few other things are broken and need to be fixed.

I'll be interested to see what repairs you recommend.

Originally Posted by Ken White

Question everything, not just things that annoy you. Agendas abound...

Amen.