A Larger Military? Warm Bodies and Duty Descriptions
One of IAVA's most thoughtful members is Ray Kimball, who served in Iraq as an aviation officer for the Army. I offer to you a fantastic piece by Ray discussing all the recent hollow talk of troop numbers and increasing the size of the military. I am sure you will find it interesting.
Now that the President has officially gotten behind the idea that we need a larger Army and Marine Corps (and better late than never, I say), it's worth casting some thought to just who and what those extra warm bodies should be.
Nothing sets my teeth on edge more than reading some egghead's report calling for some half-assed troop increase with a nice, round number, and no further detail on exactly what that increase should look like. This only confirms one of Rumsfeld's worst bon mots, "people are fungible." And please don't give me the old chestnut of "we'll let our generals figure out when and where they need the troops" - that's not the way our system works, and hasn't for a long time. The last military officer who had that much autonomy in translating raw numbers into force capabilities was George Marshall, whose like is nowhere to be found today. Any troop increase authorized by Congress is going to have to be specific and detailed - below is my shot at it.
I'll put a warning up front - anyone looking for a huge increase in combat arms capability (infantry, armor, artillery) is going to be sorely disappointed. The fact of the matter is, our current capability in warfighting overmatches anyone else on the planet by a significant margin, and is likely to stay that way. It's not the strain of war that is breaking our military - it's the strain of winning the peace, and while our square peg combat arms can be forced into that round hole, the forces below are far better equipped for it.
My Troop Wish List:
1. An Africa Command (AFRICOM)
We have Unified Commands all over the world, who are responsible for the employment and operations of US forces in that part of the globe. These commands are uniquely tailored to the specific demands of their part of the world - except for Africa, which is currently an added responsibility to the European Command. This makes about as much sense as having the elected US Representatives from Massachusetts pull double duty as voting for the residents of Texas. The staffing should be comparable to PACOM's current setup, with a single staff supplemented by additional support elements. Troops required: 2100.
2. MP Brigades
Every overseas Unified Command (including the Africa Command, above) needs an Military Police (MP) brigade over and above what they've got right now. In our current structure, these are the units best suited for the three-block war currently underway in so many parts of the world. Once of many advantages of this unit is that it's designed with decentralized operations in mind, a must for future ops. Yes, I'd love to design the perfect unit, with just the right mix of linguists, vehicles, etc., but the current requirements for building a TO&E are so cumbersome that you'd finally get your units in, oh say, 2030. Exact numbers for this type of unit are not readily available on public domain websites, but 5500 troops seems to be a common estimate. Four of these brigades (one each for PACOM, SOUTHCOM, AFRICOM, and CENTCOM) would therefore need a total of 22,000 soldiers. Yes, I left out EUCOM, largely because any surge of forces needed for that part of the world should come largely from our brethren in NATO, seeing as how it's their backyard.
3. Engineer Brigades
Our current rhetoric talks a lot about "clear, hold and build" - the problem is that, while our trigger-pullers are exceptional at clearing, holding and building are two other things entirely. The MP brigades, above, are intended to be the holders - the engineer brigades are the builders. Or, more specifically, the folks who can partner with host nation capabilities to help them build the infrastructure and capabilities they need for representative institutions to flourish and take root. Again, the strength of this organization is its capability for decentralized operations. Public numbers seem to be somewhere in the vicinity of 9500 soldiers. Again, four brigades translates into a total of 38,000 soldiers.
4. Support Elements
None of the above are self-sustaining or a unit unto their own. Each has specialized equipment and vehicles with unique support and maintenance requirements. Pinning down the exact numbers is problematic - as a rough thumbnail, I'd call it 12,000 soldiers, or roughly 20% above the manning of the units above. These would not be new units, but additions or supplements to units already in place to support those Unified Commands.
5. Permanent MiTT Teams
Finally, I'd give every Unified Command a permanent MiTT structure, similar to what's operating in Iraq now. Think of this as preventive medicine - these folks could be crucial in training local militaries and police, and helping to prevent problems before they start. Each structure has about 4200 soldiers, so this translates into 16,800 troops.
So, the grand total is 90,900 additional troops---if we're really serious about this Long War. At current costs for salary and benefits, that translates to an additional $9 Billion per year in personnel costs, to say nothing of the costs of purchasing and maintaining their equipment.
If you disagree with the numbers or the picked units, well, that's to be expected. My larger point is this - anyone (and that includes the President, Senators, Representatives, DoD types and folks in uniform) who just sling around numbers with no thought as to what they represent or how they're going to implemented should be treated like the mindless dilettantes they are. When talking about troops, numbers just aren't enough.
I'm sure many feel the same suspicion I do, that having a ready-to-go force equates with eagerness to use it. Countering this unreasoned fear is the recent experience of inadequate force structure being no impediment to adventuring.
Especially if the above structure is the emphasis, there is no increase in the hair-trigger type of force, such as standoff ordinance and light SF teams.
December 21, 2006 2:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's also think about time, making a sweeping assumption that the training facilities to ramp up do exist and didn't go away under BRAC. Most professional soldiers I know -- and I'm thinking especially of NCOs -- feel it takes about 18 months from service entry to get to reasonable proficiency in combat arms. Some MOS will take longer, some less.
Of the five groups, MITTs and MPs clearly need language skills, of a high level for trainers. AFRICOM will also need language-qualified personnel. The Defense Language Institute initial course for the Category IV "hard" languages (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean) is 63 weeks. Category III, including Farsi, Pashto, and Dari is 47 weeks. They don't appear to have in-house instruction for African languages but contract this out; I'd guess most are at Category III. Arabic Swahili might be a little less as a trade language. General professional level proficiency takes about three years.
Do we have the existing cadre for the new brigades? As with training bases, that can be a limiting factor.
So, a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that filling the language-critical slots may take 2.5 to 3 years, assuming the training facilities and cadre exist.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
December 21, 2006 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another problem is that there are so many countries with so many languages. I guess we could appoint a committee to study which countries we are most likely to invade and occupy two to three years down the road.Of course we would then have to keep it a secret which languages were being emphasised to prepare for that. We could then leak which country that is so that country could start a nuclear program and be only ten years away from having a defense that might deter us. That way we would be right to invade them. That is important because every true American knows that the good guys always win.
It just gets so complicated trying to run the world.
December 21, 2006 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anybody think we need a smaller military, and we should stop trying to have stupid leaders trying to conquer the world?
Here's a novel idea - we could try to use the money saved to improve the quality of life for the middle and lower classes. Bush has already taken care of the upper class.
Tom
December 23, 2006 6:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Having a large and capable military, under wise leadership, does not imply trying to conquer the world. It can have a stabilizing role, in the sense of Mahan's fleet-in-being.
The best military is the one that wins without fighting large and expensive battles. Military operations are part of a larger and legitimate national security strategy, definitely including protecting domestic infrastructure against natural, accidental, and terrorist threats. Long-term strategic interest includes ensuring a strong national technological base, an ever-growing base of language-qualified people, and intelligent, not symbolic, multinational as well as Leviathan operations. Such things as improving the technological base coincidentally address job loss, certainly for the middle class and providing upward mobility for the lower class.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
December 23, 2006 7:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
hc, I understand what you are saying but I think having a military that could protect us could be done a lot more financially efficiently. One example, take the Star Wars money and use it to improve health care coverage in the US. I feel an awful lot of the military budget is used to feed the military-industrial complex at the trough, not to protect us. Obviously, I'm not opposed to having a large and capable military (I want us all protected). I do feel, however, that wiser policies would reduce the number of military personnel we need.
Tom
December 24, 2006 6:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that there are inefficiencies, and, as a first approximation, let me even exclude reallocation to such things as health care -- but I'll come back to that in a perhaps nonconventional way. Thinking about it, I'll probably expand this into a discussion table or blog post -- it fits into healthcare and foreign policy, as well as domestic security.
The first requirement for a military is deterrence, and then assisting the grand strategy of the nation in providing military and nonmilitary means to implement policy. Some seem to think of this as a Cold War concept, but it goes back at least to Sun Tzu, circa 400 BC:
Do I sense correctly that you equate having a large military with increasing the probability of unwise adventuring? I don't completely disagree, but I also recognize strategic concepts after Sun Tzu, again well back in history, such as Mahan's 1890-ish writings on the deterrent effect of a potent "fleet in being".
Let me broaden the scope of national security, defense, homeland security, or whatever it may be called. Just as grand strategy goes beyond military means alone, a coherent national defense strategy considers deliberate attack, but also the effects of accidents and natural disasters. It is impossible to provide sure protection against all threats deliberate or not, so there must be prioritization.
National missile defense ("star wars", NBMD) is a quite different problem than theater BMD. While the more recent TBMD systems both have passed fairly stringent operational tests, and can stabilize hot spots such as North Korean threats to Japan, NBMD is of questionable reliability and is positioned against a relatively low-priority threat from China and North Korea. At the present time, the longest-ranged North Korean missile, if it didn't blow up shortly after launch, doesn't have the range even to come into radar view of the NBMD facilities.
In contrast, there are very real vulnerabilities in critical national infrastructure, where changes in regulation and other market factors really do not provide the funding for the private sector to harden facilities. My greatest concern is the chemical industry, especially chemicals in transit. Terrorists didn't need to import chemical weapons to produce the Bhopal disaster; there are many such potential incidents, of varying risk, in the US. There's much ballyhooing of terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants, but, with some specific knowledge of both nuclear and chemical facilities, the chemical is a much, much more vulnerable target. Yes, it may cost more to reroute chemical tank cars such that they don't go through center cities. When a routine train may carry more poison gas than was used in many WWI attacks, I don't take that threat lightly.
Another infrastructure system very vulnerable to disruption from sabotage, accident, or natural disaster is electrical power. We've already seen regional problems such as the Ohio Valley in 2003, which was caused by a combination of weather, old technology, and the unfortunately coincidental occurrence of the SLAMMER computer worm. There are reasonable estimates that hardening the national electrical grid would cost about the same as NBMD. Which is the real, as opposed to the dramatic, priority?
Now, let's return to universal health care. If you go to the open literature on the threat of covert bioterrorism, it is quite likely that the best early warning may come from privacy-protected data mining of (hopefully universal) electronic health records. Without a universal healthcare system, the records won't exist. Once such systems do exist, it is quite likely that they will lower the actual cost of healthcare (including error reduction), so, after a very real issue of initial cost, they are actually financially wise.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
December 24, 2006 9:11 AM | Reply | Permalink