Posted by galrahn in UncategorizedYou can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
In addition to the Quadrennial Defense Review, the DoD has also recently released the Ballistic Missile Defense Review, and is working on the Nuclear Posture Review and Space Posture Review. With the Nuclear Posture Review and Space Posture Review not released yet (due March 1, 2010 I believe), the point was raised today that perhaps in 2014 all of these various reports should be consolidated into the QDR. I think that recommendation is worth considering, because we already have a QDR without a new National Security Strategy or National Defense Strategy from the new administration, and the QDR is supposed to be driven by “the most recent” NSS and NDS. It isn’t the first time things have been done out of order.
At West 2010 General Cartwright discussed some of the debate taking place in the nuclear posture review, and specifically discussed the development of a construct replacement for Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). He noted that nuclear weapons still have a place in the 21st century, but they must be safe, world class, reliable, and secure. More importantly though, he discussed how the QDR and NPR seeks to be more realistic and addresses the requirement to deter more likely adversaries who may want to use nuclear weapons. He flat out said MAD will not work in the 21st century because the tenants of MAD that drove policy between the US and Soviet Union do not apply to non-state actors who seek these weapons. While addressing the need to reach out and find, secure, and protect nuclear materials and weapons throughout the world under various constructs, he also sees the need for a robust global detection system. He also asserted that Ballistic Missile Defense is a deterrent of the future, and is a piece of the construct to replace MAD under development.
But then he outlined Ballistic Missile Defense as a deterrent. See if you spot what raises my level of unease.
- distributed, networked BMD
- builds deterrent strategy under a sum greater than the parts model
- shares awareness
- defuse before going kinetic
- burden sharing – common systems globally interconnected
- sensor network is global
Ballistic Missile Defense is already enormously complicated, and now we appear to be looking at a globally, interconnected international model as the holy grail of BMD. Sorry, I don’t buy it. I like the idea that it is possible that friends and allies can cooperate, but what I heard sounded a lot like reliance on global partners for BMD. This is a bad starting point in my opinion. BMD as a capability already involves rapid reaction to one of the fastest moving weapon systems in the world, and the requirements for effective BMD are not trivial. I highly question what it does to our deterrence when pieces of our defense are in other places. This was one of my biggest problems with the Bush administrations approach to BMD and one of the reasons why I thought the Obama administration was right to move to a sea based deterrent system.
When a capability requires perfect integration and rapid reaction, one might question how much complexity is added and assurance is subtracted when integrating critical systems of a BMD architecture on foreign soil. I’m all for partnership buy-in, that is a good thing, but should a ballistic missile defense system be reliant on systems we do not have ownership of? Any ballistic missile defense system that approaches international cooperation as anything other than redundancy to the US BMD system is severely flawed in my opinion. The risk to reward ratio is too great, in my opinion, to rely on systems that we do not have ownership of when the stakes are on par with Mutually Assured Destruction.
Nothing is decided yet, but I admit I saw the global approach to network integration as something less good than the way General Cartwright described. Partnership adds redundancy to BMD, which is fantastic and should be sought where possible, but it does not substitute – ever – when the stakes are nuclear deterrence.
On the topic of nuclear deterrence, Ronald O’Rourke discussed buying the SSBN(X) in the context of in and out of the Navy budget. He raised a great point. If the Navy has to buy the SSBN(X) “out of hide” which Ron means from the SCN budget, the fleet is going to shrink in a hurry. He made several points worth consideration.
The 5 year plan in the FY 2011 budget calls for about 50 ships, and about half those ships are LCS and JHSVs. It is starting to look less likely we will build 55 LCS, but more likely we will build more JHSVs than previously planned. Building these ships will only take place over a period less than a decade, and these two ships represent almost all of the relatively inexpensive ships the Navy plans to build. In other words the Navy plans on building 10 ships a year in the near term, but what kind of ships will the Navy be building once they build 30 LCS and 25 JHSVs? At that point we will be back to building exclusively large surface combatants, and at the same time, the Navy may be eating the SSBN(X) from SCN.
If we transition towards just a 250 ship Navy, how much confidence does the rest of the world place on our security commitments? Are we sure those who are hosting critical BMD radar sights are going to stand by us if the Navy shrinks to 250, or 200, or even 180? These are serious issues, and I strongly believe the only way the nation addresses this issue is by keeping the fleet large enough (numerically credible at 280+) and approaching international BMD as an approach for building resiliency and redundancy to BMD, not as an operational model.
Don’t be fooled by the 10 ship average of the 5 year plan, because once LCS and JHSV aren’t there, the number of ships that will be purchased annually will drop. If the fleet shrinks below 280, the message that the US sends globally will undermine our national strategic priorities for partnership. Unlike land forces, naval power brings assurance to allies without requiring borrowed soil. With BMD now moving to sea, with the SSBN(X) program beginning in FY11, and applying the naval forces role of assuring partners and allies to this situation suggests we need to get serious about what our fleet is going to look like in the future. That answer directly influences any constructs that may or may not replace Mutually Assured Destruction – and to treat the fleet size as something other than a strategic communication to partners and allies when integrating with those same partner and allies on BMD is very questionable.
If you have a QDR in one hand, a Nuclear Posture Review in the other, and a Ballistic Missile Defense Review in your third hand… perhaps these things are more integrated. I just hope the DoD hasn’t created three separate reports that fail to recognize how closely they are by intersecting as a strategic deterrence. Time will tell.
2 Responses to “Pondering the MAD Replacement Construct”
Leave a Reply
Recent Posts
Subscribe
How much coverage does the current 10 carrier strike-force navy provide? I mean, how much of the world’s waters can the US Navy effectively patrol and control and what is the current number of ships in the fleet?
Personally, I understand that having a larger fleet helps, but if forced to trade off, I would prefer US military installations on foreign soil. To look at recent history, in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the US had no military bases in the middle east, and was forced to ship and fly the forces there just to get ready for Operation Desert Storm. That must have been extremely expensive. However, with US military bases in Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the 2003 operation should not have had those logistics costs. Obviously, we would still need a decently sized blue water navy to ensure supplies could reach those bases in times of need. How many ships that is I have no idea.
As for BMD and burden sharing, does that mean connecting US BMD systems with British or German systems? Or does it mean putting some US BMD systems on US bases in Japan (that only interconnect with US military systems) and complementing with BMD naval warships? I can understand the latter, but connecting US BMD systems with non-US systems I can see some dangers…
February 3rd, 2010 at 1:10 pmGalrahn, I agree with you that reliance on global partners for BMD would not be a very wise decision. Allies (except maybe for the Japanese navy) are just not following the same time frame as the US with BMD.
However, if you want redundancy it’s best to convince your allies to also put resources in BMD and make sure you can use their data. Those allies will do nothing if they think the US is going to provide everything (read: the US pays, Europe is a free rider once again). So you’ll have to lure them. This can be done by saying that you want to cooperate, because you can’t do it alone. That tells them not only you need them, but that if they want BMD they’ll have to put resources into it.
And if you want those allied radars to be able to preposition anywhere (i.e. be sea based and not land based), you’ll need the Netherlands to speed up their efforts. That’s because they are the ones doing (funding) the Thales SMART-L development, which is also used by the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Denmark.
Their plans are a FOC by 2018 at the moment, but an official ‘go ahead’ has yet to be given by the Dutch Parliament (a decision is expected some time this year).
NATO, with its ALTBMD programme, is off course already studying on how to connect all NATO and national missile defence systems together.
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:56 pm