![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/usnavy.jpg\")
London: To hear the anguished cries of critics of the Obama administration\u2019s defense plans, one would think the nation is disarming.\u00a0 We are told that at a projected end strength of 450,000 active duty Army personnel, ground forces will be headed to pre-World War II levels.\u00a0 The Navy, with some 290 ships or less, will be down to the size of the pre-World War I fleet.\u00a0 Is the sky falling?<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the first complaint is misleading.\u00a0 And the second dismisses the fighting power of today\u2019s Navy. Worse, the real dangers to the future size and capability of the U.S. military are entirely ignored.<\/p>\n
Regarding the size of ground forces, America still has something called the U.S. Marine Corps.\u00a0 While the Marines will be reduced to about 175,000, that still leaves a total of 625,000 soldiers and marines.\u00a0 Unless we are planning to go to war with China, that number seems large enough to deal with the full range of possible contingencies.<\/p>\n
About a smaller Navy, at the end of World War II, the USN had nearly 6800 ships including 27 large aircraft carriers; 71 smaller carriers; and 23 battleships.\u00a0 Now suppose a war game set the Navy of 1945 against the Navy of 2015 with its 11 carriers and 280 supporting ships.\u00a0 Does anyone doubt the outcome?\u00a0 The point is that numbers alone can be misleading.<\/p>\n
Worse, these superficial critiques obscure the real challenges to the Pentagon.\u00a0 These arise over vital matters of strategy; budgets and costs; and people.\u00a0 The current strategy is so flexible that spending for any reasonable force level can be justified.\u00a0 Hence, the case for spending more or spending less on defense rests on other arguments.<\/p>\n
The defense budget request for 2015 totals about $700 billion.\u00a0 Sequestration mandates defense cuts of $50 billion a year for ten years.\u00a0 But even without sequestration, that budget cannot and will not sustain the current force.\u00a0 The reason is that inbuilt cost growth for compensation, retirement, health care, weapons systems and equipment is soaring.\u00a0 Left unchecked, by decade\u2019s end, these costs will grow by about 40%.<\/p>\n
Absent a crisis, competing budget priorities will make current levels of defense spending unsustainable.\u00a0 If they were sustainable, this inbuilt cost growth will mandate substantial cuts in people and equipment by at least a fifth.\u00a0 When interest rates rise, which at some point they must, greater pressure will be generated to cut discretionary spending even further of which defense gets the lion\u2019s share.<\/p>\n
Finally, regarding people, as the nation transitions away from a military that has been at war since 2001, the mundane duties of peacetime that are far less demanding and challenging than preparing for combat will take hold.\u00a0 That will hurt morale meaning that recruiting and maintaining a highly competent and professional military will be far more difficult.<\/p>\n
What can be done?\u00a0 First, even if the fight against the Islamic State continues indefinitely, it is hard to envisage situations in which the U.S. will need to deploy or have deployed a fighting force of more than 150,000 in two regions simultaneously, totaling about 300,000 active duty personnel.<\/p>\n
Working backwards, a total active duty force, backed by reserves, of about 800-900,000 (down from today\u2019s 1.3 million) would be needed to generate this level of deployment.\u00a0 But to ensure that force is highly trained and well-equipped, escalating cost growth must still be contained.<\/p>\n
Congress will balk at trimming pay and allowances.\u00a0 One consequence of inaction will lead to the so-called \u201chollow force\u201d such as that which emerged after the Vietnam War.\u00a0 And it took two decades to rebuild that military.<\/p>\n
In current dollars, and if cost growth is contained—a big if, this size force of 800-900,000 could be maintained at about $500 billion a year.\u00a0 But, if we are serious about sustaining a professional and capable force, both Congress and the public must heed these warnings.<\/p>\n
Many will argue that growing Chinese military power must be countered.\u00a0 Since fighting a land war in Asia is, as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates alluded, \u201cmadness,\u201d we have such things as allies in the region to help. And Russia has a substantial border with China as well as thousands of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n
Since the defense industrial base will shrink, a strategy of regeneration and reconstitution is also necessary in the event new threats emerge.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the political process will resist rational and factual analysis.\u00a0 Hence, those who decry the military collapsing to pre-world war levels will be right but for the wrong reasons.\u00a0 If we do not act now, a future\u00a0 \u201chollow force\u201d is inevitable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
London: To hear the anguished cries of critics of the Obama administration\u2019s defense plans, one would think the nation is disarming.\u00a0 We are told that at a projected end strength of 450,000 active duty Army personnel, ground forces will be headed to pre-World War II levels.\u00a0 The Navy, with some 290 ships or less, will be down to the size of the pre-World War I fleet.\u00a0 Is the sky falling? Unfortunately, the first complaint is misleading.\u00a0 And the second dismisses the fighting power of today\u2019s Navy. Worse, the real dangers to the future size and capability of the U.S. military are entirely ignored. Regarding the size of ground forces, America […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,65,76,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americas","category-blog-en","category-harlan-ullman-en","category-regions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3561,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3560\/revisions\/3561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}