By Robbin Laird
We are publishing four books this year which provide detailed assessments of the question of how did we get where we find ourselves today.
In addition, we are publishing assessments as well of aspects of shaping a way ahead, which provide a partial answer to how we leverage what we have in order to achieve what Western leaders determine we need to do in response to the rise of the multi-polar authoritarian dynamic.
There is one book which we are publishing that does both, even though it is rooted in explaining how we got to where we are in terms of the U.S. force structure.
That book is entitled:
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the West believed in the ascendency of liberal democracies. The United States became the sole superpower or hyper power and Western Europe celebrated a “peace dividend” and dismantled much of their defense capability.
The focus of the West was not on the rise of the next round of great power competition, and the American leaders the focus was upon the dramatic events of September 11, 2001 and a priority on a war on global terrorism and then the George W. Bush launched an invasion of Iraq and a stepped up engagement in Afghanistan. President Obama would follow this with closing the Iraq phase and ramping up “the good war” in Afghanistan.
“Stability operations” rather than building and maintaining a force for great power competition was the order of the day and Europeans strengthened their “out of area” forces rather than direct defense forces.
But someone failed to send the memo to Beijing and Moscow that the great power completion was over. In this book, we look at the lost decade of the United States in focusing on the land wars at the expense of a focus on building an innovative new force for great power competition.
We do so by looking at the dramatic firing of the Chief of Staff of the USAF and the Secretary of the USAF in 2008 which marked a symbolic transition to shaping a military primary able to do counter-insurgency warfare.
In the book, we look at the work of Michael Wynne, the 21st Secretary of the USAF and members of his team, as they continued to highlight opportunities throughout this decade to do course correction. Fortunately, the F-35 global enterprise was woven throughout the decade, with little support from DoD or any president for that matter, and that thread has been part of the great power competition awakening and shaping of the forces needed to compete with China, Russia and the other players in the rise of multi-polar authoritarianism.
The “rules-based” order of the West is shrinking as the area influenced by mutl-polar authoritarian powers, groups and movements is expanding. “Stability operations” was an investment which only accelerated the new global order.
Now we have Trump 2.0 focused on dealing with the global shift and seeking ways to do so and moving the Western coalition as well to confront these challenges.
But Trump 2.0 faces major challenges in sorting through how to reshape how the United States shapes a force structure to work effectively in such a situation.
There are many essays in the Wynne book which both analyze how we got where we are but point to a way ahead. In fact, this is what is unique about Wynne’s work
One essay suggestive of the Wynne approach which was published on March 30, 2014 was entitled, “Existential Warfare: Preparing the USAF for the Decade Ahead” and contains thoughts on dealign with the seizure of Crimea and the need to re-focus the force.
That essay follows:
The Crimean crisis and the PRC pushing out in the Pacific are two reminders that the world is not of our own making. The defense of Europe and the Pacific requires capabilities to deter and prevail where global reach and dominance is a sine qua non of playing the game.
The Air Force of today has been shaped to reflect the requirement for more efficient conduct of the wars of the past decade, and not the next. Rather than looking at Putin’s actions as that of a romantic ideologue of the 19th century, they are part of the reality of the 21st century.
Though we all quest for the congenial society of the “global commons” which interestingly remains the quest of our State Department, others are muscling in on either territory or territorial waters desiring to restore empires of old or simply rewriting the map to their advantage. They are trying to shape a “global commons” to their advantage, not simply sending representatives to the UN to debate the subject.
The heritage of the USAF has not been to be in a holding pattern while others remake the map. The tradition has been to hold hostage any geographic location in the world to protect U.S. interests.
This was the mantra of General Curtis Lemay as he formed Strategic Air Command with its rigid rule set and later of President Ronald Reagan as he realized that weakness was what led to war, while strength underwrote deterrence.
As a nation we realized that this notion could lead to our providing an umbrella for growth around the world and under that umbrella governments would become more interested in growing their economies then growing their defenses. This was built on the ability of the U.S. to demonstrate leadership within which global military reach was a reality, not an aspiration.
The Challenge
The United States, for now, seems to have temporarily forgotten the history of the rise and fall of nations. Trips to the Mayan Villages or the Roman Ruins show that ferocity beats acquiescence in hoping for a better future.
It would appear that in the midst of the current administration’s desire to be liked around the world, it is finding that weakness is either tolerated or taken advantage of. Likes and dislikes factor into geo-politics as part of alliance structures, but for the U.S. to lead those alliances it needs to reinforce its support with effective military global reach.
First Georgia, and now Crimea, reminds us that the defense of Europe is not a done deal, but a continuing effort. If we are pivoting to the Pacific and part of the alliance structure to defend Europe, global reach by definition is crucial, not simply parking regional capabilities for wars against relatively backward militaries.
No matter what happens on the global stage, some have difficulty recognizing the reality of a brutal world.
We hear the echoes as Secretary of State Kerry calls global warming our greatest enemy and President Obama chides the Russian Government for not measuring up to his projected standards of appropriate conduct.
The question is clearly on the table for the Baltics and Poland: how will the U.S. and European nations actually move to defend them rapidly if necessary? In fact, shaping an exercise program to do so would make more sense than the U.S. subsidizing the Russian energy czars by giving Ukraine extra money to pay for the increased price of Russian imported natural gas.
Air Force Modernization to Enhance Global Reach
The Chief of Staff of the USAF, General Welsh, is seeing his modernization plan, one held on abeyance to pay in part for the Afghan war, a war we are now exiting or being tossed out of, facing significant difficulties in getting either budgets or strategic attention.
Strategic attention is in short supply in today’s Washington. The debates focus more on insider positioning than on dealing with the intrusions of global reality. It is not about playing on the chess board with pawns and no Queens.
General Welsh has called for a new strategic plan, the first in nine years, and asked that the theme be ‘Strategic Agility.’ Being one of the co-authors of the previous plan, I would suggest he focus on the ‘existential defense’ and global reach as the key themes underwriting the strategic necessity of his new strategic plan.
Having an Air Force which can operate globally and hold key adversaries at risk is not a nice to have luxury but a key underpinning of ensuring that the global commons in which we operates meets the U.S. and its allies interests, and not those of our adversaries.
As one CNO extolled, America needs to build a force prepared for the existential fight and all other wars are therefore a lesser-included case. This concept has been left fallow as we concluded that the existential case was far too low probability to fund and the weapons for the lesser-included wars far less expensive.
For the Air Force, this meant buying King Air platforms and for other services rules of engagement that promoted a fair fight and led to placing our warriors in legal limbo for decisions made under fire.
Is this the way we want to fight the existential fight?
Current events would argue for refocusing our attention on what are proper ways to modernize our military. In part it is about money, in part it is about the priorities within which money is to be spent. It is also about the opportunity to leverage what our allies are investing in and how to cross our modernization strategies with theirs.
It is not just about money, but it is about focusing on effective outcomes to force modernization.
I have written previously about the ‘Offensive Enterprise’ and the ‘Defensive Enterprise.’ We historically separated offense and defense whereby Batteries of Nike Missiles and F-106 Air Defenders served simply the defensive enterprise.
But America’s strength lies in the ‘Offensive Enterprise’ where we put our forces at risk, but the world understood the effectiveness of reprisals.
With the conjunction of the fifth generation revolution with new missile defense sensors and shooters a new approach is possible.
But first we must start with where we are. This is a position of structural weakness: in which leading from behind is confused with global leadership.
We are in a situation where the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says he doesn’t want to put our Airman, Navy in this case, at risk and demurs on providing a Syrian ‘No Fly Zone’ but days later the Israelis show this as weakness in command as they fly in and destroy a questionable weapons depot.
We had capability but didn’t want to use it. This might be seen as a difference between existential war and wars of choice. It certainly was by many of our allies causing the Administration to rush to the podiums with support for treaty allies and force allocation decisions that are still being realized but continues to leave some with questions of intent.
Now the President asks NATO to beef up its defenses; and stand with America. What does that mean in the absence of a clear strategic plan and commitment to funding that plan?
Ending wars is one thing but failing to prepare for the ones already hitting you in the face is another. This is not about the future; it is about the reality of the present being recognized as an attempt by adversaries to shape the future.
In this continuing saga, the budget shrinks the Navy, collapses the Army and now has fostered a description of ‘Pipe Dreaming’ by the principal Airman.
What are we missing when assembling a deterrent force for an existential opponent or for the next war not of our choice?
We can take some guidance from our constitution, which has in the preamble ‘We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’
Given this charge, we need to alert our Congress, as did General George Washington, of the need to fund properly the requirements and get on with the business of defense. It would appear that Gen Welsh in declaring the current defense plan a ‘Pipe Dream’ is doing his best to alert the present-day Congress of this outcome.
While he is sounding the alarm, his investment decisions are becoming evident in what funding he has asked for. Though recognizing that the out years are swelling beyond what might be allowed, he is also following some internal dictums.
These are steering the Air Force structure away from non-stealthy platforms and towards straightforward air dominant platforms shaped by a global force of fifth generation aircraft. He has asked for investment funds for the sixth generation air dominance platform and is turning more and more into disciplinary constructs that while tolerant of social needs recognize that attention to duty is a primary requirement for service in a fighting force.
Gen. Welsh has stipulated his top three investments for the future in the Air Domain as the F-35, the Long Range Strike Platform and the Range extending Tanker. There are undoubtedly corollaries in the Space and Cyber Domain but these have been expressed often.
We could add a fourth, new weapons for the air fleet. Hypersonics appears to be a crucial and breakthrough technology, which can reshape the impact of weapons, but we are flying a fifth generation aircraft with third and fourth generation weapons.
We can get to a weapons revolution by leveraging the global enterprise of the F-35 and our allies building new weapons for the global fleet as well as leveraging allied investments as well. For example, our working relationship with Australia allows us to accelerate our joint hypersonics research both more cost effectively and in terms of capability as well.
Though it is hard to surprise your competitors in this period of sharp and intrusive cyber attacks, our airmen have always surprised with their training competence and so also in the future war, as our coalition members learn about the intrinsic value of the F-35 beyond its value as a fighter and understand through exercises and realities its value as a Battle Management Platform.
Without a doubt, as we embrace the concept of coalition warfare, we have built and are distributing an interoperable battle management platform that connects available shooters with available targets and with intense training will surprise even our own leadership with our collective capabilities.