A recent Chinese military machine exercise
WASHINGTON: During the Cold War the American military machine boasted enormous advantages inward financing over the Soviet Union together with smaller militaries, thus it could brand enormous together with ofttimes enormously risky investments together with accept xv to twenty years to come across the results. It ofttimes worked, but it was irksome together with the basis exactly isn’t that way anymore. Everything the Pentagon is doing today speaks of speed, avoiding large, irksome programs and, mayhap most importantly, beingness able to tackle an incredibly broad hit of threats from terrorists to guerrilla armies to Russia’s Little Green Men to the massed military machine of Democratic People's South Korea together with China’s increasingly advanced together with powerful regional forces. And the US of America must last able to tackle them anywhere together with at whatever fourth dimension across the globe. That requires change, something the US of America military machine isn’t ever skilful at.
The Heritage Foundation, 1 of the few Washington organizations that the Trump Administration doesn’t sneer at, has published the first inward a serial of papers designed to assist the US of America military machine remake itself. Dakota Wood, the author, brand the points inward a higher house together with argues convincingly that the Defense Department should do lots of nation of war games, accept the lessons from them together with experiment, experiment, experiment. Upgrade your weapons. Try novel ways of using them. Tie them together inward novel ways. (Wood is a skilful origin for a study similar this. He’s 1 of those precious commodities nosotros acquire from the military machine every instantly together with then, a persistently fresh heed capable of absorbing the enormous history together with information warfare generates, non beingness overwhelmed past times it together with withal able to focus on what actually matters.)
The Army did something similar what Wood advocates inward the mid- to late-1990s inward pursuit of Force XXI. The Advanced Warfighting Experiments taught me a neat bargain near the military, together with I know they taught the Army much. Push applied scientific discipline likewise far likewise early on together with human face it to solve large problems together with you’re going to last disappointed. (Wood, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, sure enough knows the Marines are using the exact same terminology today together with fifty-fifty create got a website dedicated to their Advanced Warfighting Experiment. Doug Macgregor, a fellow member of the Breaking Defense Board of Contributors, wrote an op-ed for us pushing a similar idea.)
I asked Wood, later reading his report, if I read it right, that he was talking near this assort of work. He said I had “the pith though non the whole of it.” Read his total comment together with come across what he means. The stakes are high, equally he says: “I retrieve the kickoff battles of the side past times side ‘real war’ volition last a real painful jounce of reality for the US of America military machine establishment.”
What needs to alter to ensure nosotros don’t sense that painful jolt?
“I retrieve service officials acquire likewise caught upwards alongside the latest technological advancement together with start out to believe ‘war’ volition last fundamentally changed past times it. In around narrow cases, this is truthful — nuclear weapons is 1 example, satellite-based comms together with sensors another, guidance systems on weaponry a third. But at that topographic point are lots of incentives for the strength to brand what I telephone telephone ‘big bets’ on singular solutions.
“The demand for efficiency leads to winner-take-all contract awards (presumably reducing redundancies equally an inherently desirable outcome) that touching on the industrial base of operations together with Pb to unmarried platform/system capability throughout the force. Thus if the service gets it wrong, or the platform/system has around exploitable flaw or characteristic, an entire capability is a risk. I retrieve a contributing chemical component is loss of focus/lack of existent study of warfare…a loss of ‘professionalism’ throughout the force. We’ve developed technologists together with theorists at the expense of students together with practitioners.
“Ten years of no opponent, next the collapse of the USSR, together with then 17 years of COIN, CT, together with stability ops has led to a strength that has only forgotten what ‘real war’ is actually similar together with the demands it volition house on the force.
“Add to this reduced budgets that create got led to a shrinking of the force, piece maintaining high operational tempo, together with yous create got a strength that doesn’t create got the time, awareness, or capacity to actually devote itself to the assort of experimentation, plain exercises, together with preparation that would bring out what it needs to know.”
Taking the approach of experimenting together with upgrading tech should, Wood thinks, construct a strength that “would last to a greater extent than ‘current’ together with to a greater extent than operationally effective, than whatever competitor.”
The path to getting at that topographic point is almost equally of import equally the goal, Wood’s study makes clear. If yous don’t smasher away at the problems, accept smaller steps to solve them together with contain all you’ve learned equally yous give-up the ghost along, together with then yous won’t actually give-up the ghost to a greater extent than effective.
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