Improving National Security by Unlocking US Advantages

David C. Gompert

RAND Europe

Introduction

Before looking ahead, as this paper is meant to do, let’s understand the current national defense predicament, taking into account all that has happened in the last eight weeks:

• First, it is more vividly clear now than ever that we face highly diverse risks and demands at times, in places, under circumstances, and against enemies not of our choosing. To meet diverse challenges, we need military capabilities that are more versatile, forces that can more easily be tailored, and concepts of operation that are more imaginative than those we have. The contrast between the current anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan and our “standard” notion of a rapid and decisive campaign against a large regional aggressor suggests just how versatile our forces must be for hostilities, not to mention if one also takes non-hostile contingencies like peacekeeping and humanitarian operations into account.

• Second, after years of talk, homeland defense must now be addressed in earnest. In addition to ballistic missile defense, this might have to include littoral, air, border, infrastructure, and installation protection. Easier declared than done: these are potentially vast undertakings whose practicality, cost and order of priority are largely unexamined. Although we know that absolute homeland security is neither attainable nor affordable, determining what vulnerabilities we can live with will not be easy, politically or analytically. And we should not overestimate the relevance for homeland defense missions of all these forces we have built for offensive strike and maneuver operations far from our shores. Homeland defense is essential to preserve the national resolve to project power, but the capability to project power provides no homeland defense.

• Third, the requirement for the United States to be able to project power on a large-scale to protect its interests and international peace against regional aggressors is as great today as it was before September 11. (This could change if all the world’s nation states joined an enduring coalition against terrorism; but we can hardly count on that.) State support of terrorists is yet another reason to have strong US power projection forces. Yet, anti-access capabilities, e.g., integrated air defense, advanced surface-to-air missiles, mines, cruise and ballistic surface-to-surface missiles, WMD, and IW, are sure to increase in the years to come. Consequently, so are the dangers and difficulties of bringing force to bear in distant regions.

• Finally, let’s face it, the national economy and federal fiscal situation are not healthy. In political and macroeconomic policy terms, an extra dose of defense spending at the moment is uncontroversial. But affordability will return with a vengeance as a major constraint on national defense, unless and until sustained national economic growth returns. Consequently, the difficulty of tackling a plethora of security dangers in bad economic times as well as good could be with us well after al Queda and co. are gone.

So, what is to be done? The details of what needs to be done have been widely debated, are to some extent recorded in the QDR report and the work that preceded it, and are being refined by discussions such as this. But there is one crosscutting idea that I would like to suggest and develop here: This country is sitting on enormous potential advantages in military capabilities, and we can be far more resourceful than we have been in unlocking this potential.

By more resourceful, I don’t mean just being more efficient. I mean being more ingenious. As an American living in Holland, I can assure you that resourcefulness is not ingrained in the character of our nation of plenty. But with challenges as diverse and acute as those facing us, and with the future security environment so unclear, resourcefulness must characterize American national defense.

Being more resourceful must begin by identifying important locked-up advantages. I will mention five. None involves some bold new revelation. Together, however, they suggest that there is considerable under-exploited potential.

1. Using IT in military capabilities and operations as creatively and comprehensively as this technology has been used in non-military sectors.

2. Closely related, taking jointness to the next level of integration in how we prepare for and conduct operations.

3. Reducing force structure in ways that would not weaken national security, provided we do better at using IT and integrating joint forces.

4. Getting more combat contribution out of our most able and reliable allies – starting with some key Europeans (not only the UK).

5. Using reserve component forces strategically.

For each, we need to understand what blockages – institutional, technical, and conceptual – exist and how they can be removed with practical measures.

1. Exploiting IT

The defense sector in general, including that of the United States, has straggled through the first two decades of the information revolution. The specific reasons for this are no mystery:

· a procurement process that is unfriendly to IT market forces;

· insufficient recognition of the dividends of investment in C4ISR;

· vested bureaucratic, industrial and political interests in platforms and weapons;

· ambivalence toward the defense market, for business reasons, on the part of information technology providers;

· resistance to organizational and operational change of the sort needed to take full advantage of the technology;

· failure to realize in defense systems the extraordinary cost declines in commercial IT.

To these, I would add two less tangible impediments: compared to non-military organizations, lack of imagination and lack of a sense of urgency.

Of course, the potential advantages of IT are well understood in the military research community and are central to the case for transformation: ISR helps make up for uncertainty, puts a spotlight on the enemy, and permits faster operations. Tactical digital data links enable forces to be networked – distributed but integrated. Networking of forces increases blue survivability, blue coherence, blue options, and red bewilderment.

I would add that IT offers the chance not only to use but also to alter cyberspace. We tend to think that our potential adversaries depend little on IT and therefore are not vulnerable to information operations (IO). This is changing, as IT is becoming easier to acquire and use for many potential adversaries, even fairly backward ones. For the adversary, integrated air defense, coordinated missile attacks, targeting of US forces, and countering US tactics all depend increasingly on IT. What we would consider unsophisticated use of IT can thus provide an enemy with important benefits in resisting US intervention. In turn, more extensive enemy reliance on IT could give us a chance to degrade enemy operations severely with IO.

Given the enormous advantages, how can we exploit IT better than we do? First, we have to level the playing field on which C4ISR must compete with platforms and weapons, for resources as well as for the prominence it merits in operational concepts and plans. Doing this requires changes in ways of thinking and ways of analysis.

There is a subtle but crucial difference between the mentality of non-military IT players, on the one hand, and the military establishment on the other. The former do not constrict their thinking by asking how IT can be used advantageously, which is what I have the impression military planners and technologists do. Instead, they come at it from the other end. They imagine new operational concepts that could give them competitive advantages, and then they examine whether and how IT can be developed and applied to make such concepts feasible.

Thus, new concepts of military operations that provide decisive advantages should not begin with consideration of technological possibilities but rather with imagination of what concepts could be decisive if only feasible. The starting point must be desired effects, not technology. This is the beauty of such a liberating technology. DoD processes for concept development should be designed to emulate this phenomenon.

Related, and on a more concrete level, it is important to incorporate into analytical models ways of estimating the effects of C4ISR on combat outcomes. This is difficult stuff, especially because the C2 aspects involve human cognition and responses, which are hard to simulate. But unless it is done, it will be hard to demonstrate, in the “hard currency” of DoD resource competition, the utility of C4ISR the way the utility of platforms and firepower can be estimated. I am convinced that DoD’s under-investment in C4ISR over the last ten years is partly the result of the failure to model what difference it makes.

2. Implementing Jointness

One of the greatest benefits of IT is that data networking permits all elements of a force to work together in real time. But this can only be realized to the extent that jointness is taken to the next level of integration in operational and organizational terms. To preach jointness in this church is to take coals to Newcastle. Therefore, I will only mention several ideas for improving jointness on which I wish the QDR had gone further – ideas that could yield greater operational effectiveness for a given level of resources.

The first is that joint regional (“war-fighting”) commands should have standing control over those fundamentally joint assets that are virtually certain to be needed in any complex contingency they could face. These assets would include not only planning cells but also ISR assets, joint C2 systems and grids, IO capabilities, Special Operations Forces, and battle management systems for missile defense.

Obviously, not all such assets should be locked into one or another joint regional command, lest flexibility be lost. However, for the joint command to possess at least some such assets on a standing basis – perhaps enough to defeat an attack in the region -- would permit a joint force to be organized, assembled and deployed more swiftly and employed more decisively. The core of the force would thus already exist and be ready under its commander. That core would facilitate the integration of the rest of the joint force.

Relatedly, joint regional commands should be held explicitly accountable for the readiness of joint forces. Since it cannot be known just what a joint force will be until it is formed for a given purpose, peacetime joint readiness is a tall order. Of course, there must be continued reliance on the separate services to maintain readiness of the units they furnish. But readiness of the whole is more than the average of the parts, since the joining up, C2 integration, rapid deployment and battle management of joint forces could break down even if each part was ready.

This suggests a need to develop standards and metrics for joint-force readiness, as well as a strategy to train and exercise jointly, in addition to service-unit training. Joint exercises will not only improve readiness but will also provide opportunities to test, strengthen and field new concepts of operation.

Finally, there needs to be a fresh, objective look from the joint perspective at the units of combat structure that are best suited for diverse, decisive joint operations. All else being equal, service units that are smaller, modular, and less dependent on larger service structures are better for tailoring, integrating, and rapidly engaging joint forces. Joint planners should tell the services how they want capabilities packaged for integration into joint forces, and the services should evolve peacetime structures accordingly.

3. Eliminating Force Structure

As if such ideas for greater integration of joint forces are not controversial enough, let me turn to force structure as a whole. Rather than merely opining that some existing force structure is non-essential, let me instead walk through the logic of the QDR’s new paradigm for testing the adequacy of existing and planned forces. To paraphrase, US forces must be able to:

· defeat acts of aggression swiftly in any two regions during overlapping timeframes;

· defeat decisively one of the aggressors itself, irrespective of its strength;

· effectively perform a wide range of lesser missions;

The QDR does not say that decisively defeating an act of aggression means decisively defeating the aggressor, which is precisely why the second measure – defeating any aggressor – had to be spelled out. The QDR does say that decisively defeating an aggressor could mean occupation, regime change or destroying that aggressor’s ability to threaten again.

Unquestionably, meeting these tests requires large, superior and versatile forces. It will also require some better capabilities, particularly those that can contribute to rapid response and destroying enemy forces, including hard-to-hit ones.

However, the tests, strictly applied, do not necessarily translate into a requirement for all the forces currently in the structure. In particular, the requirement for conquest and occupation of enemy territory – winning “the old-fashion way” -- is lower than that in the 2-MTW standard, and it could be reduced further as US forces improve their ability to defeat an adversary without having to conquer and stay on its territory.

What, then, is implied by the new paradigm in terms of higher and lower priority forces?

Clearly, ISR, joint C2, flexible airlift, long-range and penetrating short-range strike, IO, SOF, rapidly deployable ground forces, and in-theater mobility will be in greater demand to meet the new standard. The need for these capabilities has been reinforced by what we now know about anti-terrorist operations. In contrast, questions can, should, and sooner or later will be raised about how great the need is for heavy ground forces and any other forces that are late to engage, compared to the need for such forces under the 2-MTW standard.

4. Getting More from US Allies

Since the end of the Cold War, NATO allies generally have failed to build the sorts of forces that can carry out important tasks in demanding combat operations outside of Europe, where the need is greatest. Their modest ability to perform peace operations within Europe relieves some of the burden on US forces there. However, with dangers rising around the periphery of Asia, and Europe increasingly secure by comparison, it must remain an important goal of the United States to get at least key allies to build forces that can augment and operate effectively with American forces in non-European, non-peacekeeping contingencies. At a minimum, given their ample resources and their own strategic interests, the NATO allies ought to be willing and able to commit substantial forces to help defend common interests in Southwest Asia.

Lagging European capabilities have left US defense planners little choice but to program forces and develop operating doctrines that discount allied involvement. US reluctance to depend on allies is reinforced by doubts about whether their forces, improved or not, would in fact be made available when push comes to shove. US planners are especially wary of any implication that US force structure could be reduced in view of the possible availability of allied forces that might have adequate capabilities and might be interoperable with US forces.

As US capabilities and doctrines are transformed, effective participation of allied forces will become even more difficult. Already in some US military circles, allied involvement in complex combat operations is even viewed as a potential handicap -- to be suffered, if at all, for political purposes but certainly not for military efficacy. Allied awareness that the United States is prepared to fight non-European wars with or without them has further de-motivated allies to build and commit forces that could help. Why should they make the effort if the defense of their interests does not depend on whether they do or not?

The root cause of these problems is not lack of resources: Europeans clearly have the economic, technological and human wherewithal to do much more; indeed, they are the world’s second largest reservoir of military capacity. The root cause is one of motivation. Western European publics have felt increasingly safe for a decade now, and European politicians have chosen not to disabuse them of this sense of security by pointing out the dangers in the world beyond their continental horizon. With some exceptions – notably, Great Britain and France – neither frightening the electorate nor advocating strong defense has been good politics in Europe. As long as European leaders employ such vague and euphemistic expressions as “crisis management” and “peace enforcement” instead of, say, “power projection” and “war”, there is little chance their publics will understand clearly why they need armies at all, let alone why they need more expensive ones. Put differently, if the purpose of European forces is merely Balkan peacekeeping, there is little need to increase their strength.

Warnings throughout that 1990s of an impending “gap” in US and European capabilities did not motivate allies to build relevant capabilities. Nor, despite some momentary hope, did the manifestation of that gap in the Kosovo conflict. More recently, we were told that the political endorsement by allies of a European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) was sure to motivate them to do more on the grounds that they could thus reduce their unhealthy, unseemly dependence on the United States. But so far, ESDP has produced no wave of public support for defense because it does not confront the underlying problem: European publics believe that their world is secure.

This belief may have changed starting on September 11. Since that day, Europeans are more aware – at least momentarily -- that security is global. Indeed, by invoking Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, they agreed in principle to use force outside of Europe in response to an attack on an ally outside of Europe. Moreover, we can hope that, in light of September 11, Europeans will understand that global security requires greater contributions from them – i.e., that they cannot concern themselves only with local peacekeeping while the United States takes care of nastiness in the rest of the world.

The forthcoming stance on counter-terrorism by the German chancellor and other European leaders could provide the political inspiration and straight talk that have been missing. We have a new opportunity to convince allies to build better forces not by just admonishing them to do so but by telling them that we are actually counting on it.

The United States would do well to capitalize on this opportunity by accepting allied offers to provide forces for operations against terrorists and those who shelter them, even if those offers are not compelling in purely military logic.

If NATO allies can now be motivated to strengthen their forces, further attention is needed on what capabilities they require to be able to conduct a wide range of operations, whether in or beyond Europe. The NATO Defense Capabilities Initiative provides a broad foundation; but a sharper focus and new political impetus are needed. The highest priorities for allied capabilities parallel those of US forces: ISR, interoperable C2, special operations forces, precision strike aircraft and munitions, strategic airlift, rapidly-deployable ground forces, in-theater mobility, and lean logistics for distant operations.

In the face of rising and diverse demands, the United States lacks sufficient capabilities in these high-leverage categories; therefore, allied augmentation would be valuable. This points not toward a grand US-allied division of labor – a bad idea -- but rather toward comparable and interoperable forces. At the same time, the allies need not possess all the capabilities the United States has. They could, for example, rely on US long-range precision strike, space-based ISR, and BMD.

The value of improved allied forces depends in large part on whether they are able to operate effectively with US forces. The most important single step to ensure interoperability of US and allied forces is the creation of a NATO C4ISR grid – a unifying architecture, connectivity standards, common software platforms, and associated C2 procedures – along the lines Martin Libicki has proposed.

The key for the United States is to focus on those allies with the potential to participate effectively in demanding operations outside of Europe. The UK is the model for such a strategy. I suggest that the United States work out with the UK a commitment of forces to confront together threats to common interests in Southwest Asia – a commitment on which the United States can plan.

While more complicated (to say the least), France and Germany should also be encouraged to plan jointly with DoD the capabilities needed for coalition contingencies and the measures, US and allied, needed to ensure interoperability. Still others – Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden – have shown a willingness to contemplate participation in such operations and should be encouraged.

In all cases, it is crucial for the United States to make clear that allied preoccupation with European peacekeeping will widen the strategic and capabilities gap. The United States will update and extend its military presence in Europe so long as the allies prepare to operate alongside US forces in combat elsewhere.

5. A Strategic Mission for Reserves

After the NATO allies, the other great reservoir of military potential is of course the US reserve component. Instead of being an afterthought in overseas operations, reserves should be made the bulwark of military defense of the United States proper. They would thus support the authority and augment the capacity of civilian agencies in domestic protection, while ensuring that active-duty forces could remain focused on overseas engagement and power projection.

The US treatment of homeland defense in the QDR report, while emphatic enough, contains little that was not already declared policy, or at least “in play”. This suggests that DoD made the (correct) judgment after September 11 that failure to stress homeland defense in the report would be grossly out of step with the national situation. But DoD did not try to invent a homeland defense strategy between September 11 and the issuance of the QDR. This is fine, since the QDR is not meant to end analysis and debate on homeland defense but rather to begin and steer it.

Specifically, the QDR states that homeland defense could entail:

· a role for reserve forces

· a single joint command to organize and deliver military support

· protection of critical infrastructure, including information networks

· improved border and littoral security

· missile and air defense of US territory

The first three ideas have been in favor for several years, and of course ballistic missile defense has been a top priority of the current administration. In contrast, the idea of air defense of US territory had not received serious examination before September 11; although it is a natural reflex to the recent attack, its practicalities have not been assessed. The same can be said for improved border and littoral security.

This said, the QDR is clear – and correct -- on three fundamental points about homeland defense that are likely to endure and inform further planning:

· Homeland defense does not replace power projection as the chief mission of US forces but is instead the other side of the same coin. The US world role demands both the ability to bring military power to bear in dangerous regions and the means to protect US territory from those who might threaten it because of that very US role.

· Similarly, the international engagement of US forces in peacetime will not be curtailed because of the need for homeland defense. It is as important now as it was before September 11 for US forces to contribute directly to stability, reassurance, dissuasion, and deterrence in critical regions.

· Finally, military forces involved in homeland defense will act mainly in a support of civil institutions, which have primary responsibility, for practical and legal reasons, to provide domestic security.

The creation of the Office of Homeland Security, outside of DoD, confirms that the US is very mindful of the need to keep civil authority and capabilities foremost in meeting homeland security needs. This approach will also help ensure that DoD and US combat forces do not lose their focus on fighting abroad.

Insofar as military forces are needed for homeland defense, there are strong reasons to rely on reserves:

· Their utility in rapid decisive power projection is marginal at best, yet political support for a meaningful national mission for the reserves is strong.

· Reserves have advantages over combat forces in many homeland defense tasks – infrastructure and installation security, border monitoring, emergency response, population control, civil affairs experience – and are institutionally “plugged in” to key civil agencies with responsibilities for domestic protection.

· The use of active forces in homeland defense could be a costly and counter-strategic diversion. No adversary should be given to think that US power projection could be foiled or degraded by a threat to US territory. The natural role for active combat forces should be to prevent and react to homeland attacks at their source rather than at their target.

One possible new mission is homeland air and cruise-missile defense. Short of massive investment in continuous wide-area air-defense, there are practical limits on what can be done (e.g., vis-à-vis commercial and private domestic flights). The diversion of the air and cruise-missile defense capabilities of power projection forces is unwise and unlikely. Defense of US territory against potentially hostile aircraft would be a natural responsibility for the Air National Guard, especially as its contribution to rapid power projection operations shrinks. Guarding the coasts is, of course, the responsibility of the Coast Guard. In periods of heightened alert, US Naval Reserves could reinforce. Virtually the entire active-duty fleet is needed for overseas engagement, crisis response, and joint combat operations. The last thing we can afford during an international crisis is to have our carriers steaming off US coasts.

In sum, the strategy for protecting US global interests hereafter should include a combination of projecting power and thwarting large-scale attacks on US territory. This gives our reserve forces a strategic mission of vital importance for which they are well-suited and should be well prepared.

Conclusion

What do these prescriptions for unlocking US potential add up to? Conceptually, they mean giving the nation’s defense the full advantages of the nation’s strengths – its human resources (reserves), its inventiveness (IT), its ability to adapt (shifting force structure), its friendships (allied capabilities), and its intolerance toward barriers to cooperation (jointness).

Operationally and materially, the prescriptions add up to: enabling US forces to act with unprecedented knowledge and speed; expanding the forces available to us without adding cost; shifting toward capabilities with the biggest pay-off in deterrence and decisive victory; tackling homeland defense without weakening power projection; and strengthening our principal alliance.

It looks like the national demands of the next decade or so will be more difficult than at any time since the Soviet Union presented a major threat. Already, these demands appear more diverse and fluid than ever. Risks could well rise sharply in the future. Resources will be limited. But the Nation’s potential is vast, and we should do a better job of tapping it.