Is America’s Military Slowly Becoming Obsolete?
In The Australian last November, David Kilcullen argued that the Wests failed counter-terrorism strategy requires a complete rethink. Set aside for the moment James Fallows screed in The Atlantic last December. Thirteen years of not-quite-winning two wars in the Middle East and South Asia, despite overwhelming material advantage, is not a good track record for national strategy. At this point, the air campaign against ISIS may be holding the line, but it is not rolling anyone back, and cannot do so alone. Frankly, as I argued here more narrowly a few days after Kilcullen (see Software is Eating the War, 3 November 2014), the West's whole defense-industrial strategy could use a thorough rethinking too. Ominously, though, shifting economic and technological trends are rendering questionable its hitherto highly successful massed-precision way of war-fighting. If technological rescues arent available soon, a fundamental reorganization of the forces may be necessary.
Around Washington DC, the first question about any change involves budgets. But while Under Secretary Kendall may complain about being out-invested on half a trillion dollars a year, money isnt the only factor driving innovation. After all, in the 1920s and 1930s, the Army and Navy Departments produced some pretty innovative conceptsfleet submarines, aircraft carriers, dive bombers, heavy bombers, fast tanks, and a whole suite of equipment and doctrine for amphibious assault. At the time, all the services were working without much money, and the Navy in particular within strong treaty limits.
In the 1950s and 1960s, money flowed freely to stop the Red Menace, and competition amongst the Army, Navy, and Air Force encouraged a similar burst of innovation, particularly in aircraft and missiles. Treaties didnt bar much either. The resulting massive build-up of nuclear weapons and the doctrine of Massive Retaliation were together called the New Look, but they've since been recast as the First Offset strategy. There was, however, bound to be blowbackwhat to do when the Soviets returned fire with their own battlefield nuclear weapons? The brief answer was the Pentomic Divisiona formation of five small infantry regiments with accompanying light artillery that could theoretically disperse widely and quickly in hopes of fighting through the glassing. (Maybe with Iron Man suits and Master Chief
but no.) In any case, the Pentomic organizational structure was widely considered to have hobbled the Armys ability to fight a conventional conflict, and was thus abandoned by the mid-1960s. The follow-on was a structure similar to that of an armored division of the Second World War, just with more armor.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/america%E2%80%99s-military-slowly-becoming-obsolete-14054
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Economically Unsustainable Spending Requires a Thorough Rethinking of Defense-Industrial Strategy
Software, Josh Marcuse told us, is eating the war. An advisor on innovation to the under secretary of defense for policy, Marcuse was speaking at the 2014 Defense Entrepreneurs Forum (DEF), held from 24 to 26 October at the University of Chicago. Echoing Marc Andreessens 2011 essay in the Wall Street Journal on Why Software is Eating the World, he was reminding us of how demand for new electronic capabilities has been killing affordability. He might have said that costs are eating the war. The problem per se is not that missile defense costs too much, or that aircraft carriers cost too much. Its that everything costs too much. For as my Atlantic Council colleague Harlan Ullman wrote in this mornings Washington Examiner, "the soaring cost for pay, allowances, healthcare, retirees and the gamut of weapons and supporting systems, cannot survive even inside military budgets that are "economically unsustainable. The question is what we are going to do about it.
My concern with a smaller force built on F-35s and LRS-Bs is that it's a glass slippervery fragile. It may prevail today, but will it in 2025? And it's not going to be scalable given lead times under that level of complexity. It preserves a narrow sliver of the defense industrial base that wont support a larger build back if and when that occurs.
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/defense-industrialist/software-is-eating-the-war
I can no longer define innovation, but I know it when I see it, and that is not it. I