When it comes to reforming the military, William S. Lind says, so long as the money flow continues, nothing will change. If the money flow does dry up though, this is what Lind would propose:
First, adopt a defensive rather than an offensive grand strategy. America followed a defensive grand strategy through most of her history. We only went to war if someone attacked us. That defensive grand strategy kept defense costs down and allowed our economy to prosper. We do not have to be party to every quarrel in the world.
Second, scrap virtually all the big ticket weapons programs such as new fighter-bombers, more Aegis ships, and the Army’s Rube Goldbergian Future Combat System. They are irrelevant to where war is going.
We should not plan for conventional wars against hypothetical “peer competitors,” which can only be Russia or China. We should do our utmost to make Russia an ally, and we should make a fundamental, bi-partisan national strategic decision that we will not go to war with China. Regardless of who “won” such a war, it would destroy both countries, just as the two World Wars destroyed both Germany and Britain. The world needs China to serve as a source of order in what will be an increasingly disorderly 21st century. We should welcome the growth of Chinese power, just as Britain learned (reluctantly) to welcome the growth of American power in the 20th century. It is only a threat to us if we make it one.
Third, as we cut, preserve combat units. That means, above all, Army and Marine Corps infantry battalions. Cut the vast superstructure above those battalions, but keep the battalions. Infantry battalions are what we need most for Fourth Generation wars, which we should do our utmost to avoid but which we will sometimes be drawn into, even with a defensive grand strategy.
In the Navy, keep the submarines. Submarines are today’s and tomorrow’s capital ships, and geography dictates we must remain a maritime power. Keep the carriers, too, though there is little need to build more of them. Carriers are big, empty boxes, which can carry many things besides aircraft. Mothball most of the cruisers and destroyers. Build lots of small, cheap ships useful for controlling coastal and inland waters, and create strategically mobile and sustainable “packages” of such ships. Being able to control waters around and within stateless regions can be important in 4GW.
Fighter-bombers are largely useless in Fourth Generation wars, where their main role is to create collateral damage that benefits our enemies. Keep the air transport squadrons and the A-10s, and move them all to the Air National Guard, which flies and maintains aircraft as well as or better than the regular Air Force at a fraction of the cost. Reduce the regular Air Force to strategic nuclear forces and a training base.
In all the services, vastly reduce the baggage train: the higher headquarters, the development commands, the education bureaucracies and the armies of contractors. As Mark Twain said of the male teat, they are neither useful nor ornamental.
Finally, as we cut, undertake reforms that cost little but will make our remaining forces more effective. Reform the personnel systems to create unit cohesion, eliminate the surplus of officers above the company grades and reduce careerism by ending up-or-out. Reform tactics and doctrine by moving from the Second Generation to the Third, which is to say from French attrition warfare to German maneuver warfare. This requires a change in military culture, in education and in training. The adoption of Third Generation tactics, doctrine and culture must be real, not just words on paper as it has been in the Marine Corps.
A program of military reform along these lines could give us more effective forces for Fourth Generation wars and such minor conventional wars as we might face within a defensive grand strategy than the forces we now possess. It could do so for a defense budget half or less the size of the current budget. To the reigning Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, that potential is a threat, not a promise. When the MICC’s money runs out, it will suddenly become a necessity.
Generally sensible recommendations. But I cannot get past this guy’s idea that maneuver warfare is relevant to the US Army. Maneuver warfare is what you do when you cannot simply frontally engage the enemy and destroy him by fire. Well — we can. We don’t need fancy maneuvers to engage any conventional army except maybe some future Chinese army. Certainly in both Iraq and Afghanistan maneuver was unnecessary and in Iraq, where it was attempted probably even counterproductive.
Leonard:
Yes, it is true that the US doesn’t need maneuver warfare. The US could successfully invade Cuba with soldiers armed as Hoplites if it wanted to. That would be a silly thing to do, though — it wouldn’t be an efficient use of resources. The same is true of 2nd vs 3rd generation warfare.
Maneuver worked extremely well while we were actually fighting a non-guerrilla war (particularly in Iraq-’92). The subsequent failure of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan is directly linked to the absolutely retarded idea of setting up pet nations.
Leonard wrote “Maneuver warfare is what you do when you cannot simply frontally engage the enemy and destroy him by fire.” I’d say rather that maneuver warfare is what you want to do when your advantage in mobility is bigger than your other advantages. E.g., the US in the Pacific in 1945 had reasonably good capability to engage the enemy and destroy him by fire, but also had superb capability to simply sail around him, and therefore much of the time they didn’t need to mess around with the second-best solution. I know less about candidate extreme examples on land, but perhaps various episodes in the vicinity of Poland — Mongols, Nazis… — would qualify.
Also, even if you don’t have a huge advantage in mobility, you may well have a relative advantage on the tactical defensive. (I’d say this was the case for US vs. Iraq — US attacking Iraqi positions was a severe mismatch, but if the Iraqis had needed to try to dislodge US forces from a strong position, it would have been even more ridiculous. Similarly in Arab-Israeli wars 1967 and 1973.) Then if you are tolerably mobile (as in Iraq or ca. Israel, as opposed to something like WWI), maneuver warfare may let you set up situations where the enemy is stuck with tactical offensive problems (at least if the political clock doesn’t run out before the enemy would be forced to try to dislodge you from your militarily strong but politically untenable position).
If Lind thinks that China is going to be a “force for stability” in the 21st Century, he’s living in a dream world. Of course, this is par for the course for Lind – his BS about “Fourth Generation” warfare has always been 50% crap and 50% trite self evident stuff that our military started implementing 35 years ago. U.S. military doctrine DOES emphasizer manuever warfare – what the Hell does Lind think happened in the “End Run” during Desert Storm, or in the run to Baghdad in Iraqi Freedom? Has this guy even read FM 100-5? Lind writes like it’s 1965.
Tschafer:
“U.S. military doctrine DOES emphasizer[sic] manuever warfare”
It’s easy to see what Lind is talking about if you focus on the micro level, rather than the macro level. A good example of this is the Strategic Corporal.
The scope of autonomy afforded the corporal is qualitatively different from the way the US military works today, where almost no meaningful decisions are allowed to be made below the brigade level (absolutely nothing below the battalion level).