There is a battle that needs to be fought in order to make sure our military will be properly resourced and structured to be ready to win the next war that is coming.
Oh, it’s coming. We don’t know the time, place, or opponent, but one thing history clearly tells us is this one thing – it will come.
About every 40-years there is a large restructuring of our national security apparatus. We had the National Security Act of 1947 followed 39 years later by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986.
It’s been 34 years, now is far past the time to replace a structure that was defined by the challenge of the Soviet Union. If we want to modernize by the end of the 2020s, we need to start thinking and positioning now.
One of the smartest minds in this area is Mackenzie Eaglen. In a must-read article at War on the Rocks, she takes an aim at one of the more dysfunctional children of the Goldwater-Nichols Era – the Combatant Commanders.
Today, combatant commands continue to make demands that are impossible for the services to meet in full, let alone in an “efficient and effective manner.” The question becomes: are the expectations of combatant commanders practical, driven by strategy, and bound by reality? Increasingly the answer appears to be no.
Sadly, in many cases the COCOMS and their staffs behave in a manner more in line with aggressive salesmen from various competitive companies vying for contract dollars.
Spinning, hustling – pushing the most impressive aspects of their company’s product, while at the same time emphasizing the weakness in competitors’ product, and throwing shade at what they push.
It is unseemly and at the end of the day, is detrimental to the larger national security posture of the nation.
Fundamental imbalances in the requirements-generation process and Pentagon resourcing decisions have favored combatant commanders over service chiefs for years. Combatant commanders rely on ever-growing headquarters staffs and consistently make substantial (and outsized) demands for forces that outmatch or over-tax supply. Determining the urgency and necessity of combatant commander force requests around the world for steady-state missions below the threshold of conflict is a frustratingly opaque and unproductive process, prominently leading to the creation of the Global Force Management system — a new bureaucratic power center within the Joint Staff. As the Navy, Army, and Air Force confront the prospect of flat or declining budgets, there should be more honesty surrounding the insatiable demands for presence along with the opportunity, readiness, and financial costs of constant action.
This disconnect leads to abuse of personnel as reflected in obtuse deployment lengths and an abandonment of the concept of stewardship of your capital assets in peace so they are ready for war.
We need Admiral No and General Noncuncur;
The Air Force, and all the services, should say “no” to themselves more often. Restraining the appetite for presence, assurance, and deterrence missions is essential to harvesting people, money, and risk to better focus on achieving strategic goals.
Leaders should ask themselves: Does the instinct to “do something now!” solve short-term problems but cause harm in the Future Years Defense Plan by wearing out man and machine faster? More prudent employment of forces is required. Great-power competition is a decades-long effort, and the Defense Department cannot hope that a series of sprints will be enough to prevail.
Natsec leaders from both parties have spoken of years about “scrubbing,” “streamlining,” and other tinkering around the edges of the massive and unproductive staffs and sub-empire building within empire building.
That is only chasing down symptoms. If you want to go after the underlying causes, you have to grab a set of pliers and a blowtorch to go after Goldwater-Nichols, the COCOM structure, and all the adhesions and accretions they’ve accumulated since all eyes were on the Fulda Gap and the Red Banner Northern Fleet.
Four decades is enough. Time for an upgrade to the firmware.
