Battleland

New Defense Strategy: The Information Vacuum

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DOD Photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

Joint Chiefs chairman Dempsey, left, and Defense Secretary Panetta, right, escort President Obama to the Pentagon briefing room Thursday

On Thursday, President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta released what they called their Defense Strategic Guidance – think of it as the guardrails that guide the U.S. military down the interstate highway of war. Unfortunately, they’re not going to tell us what the cars on that highway look like until the Administration releases its proposed 2013 budget February 6 – a month away.

That’s going to lead to 30 days of yapping over the size and shape of the future U.S. military, with leaks and counter-leaks proliferating like fissile material following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It’s already begun, with Reuters reporting that the $380 billion F-35 fighter program will be slowed down for a third time to fix some of its production woes (and, incidentally, save $15 billion through 2017). But while details may be lacking, the eight pages of Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense make clear that the nation’s military is going to shrink, rely more on its Air Force and Navy, and tilt away from Europe and toward east Asia.

Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess.

Outsiders are plumbing for scraps about what programs may be cut – the F-35, V-22 tilt-rotor and Navy carriers and submarines appear vulnerable — and what will happen to military compensation. The Pentagon’s own press shop issued the most honest headline of the day several hours after Obama left the Pentagon: Specifics Still to Come as DOD Unveils New Strategy.

But there were some data points worth noting:

— Obama says his plan will keep defense spending growing, even as the Pentagon now has to cut $487 billion (up from the prior $450 billion; these numbers vary depending on what point you measure from) over the coming decade. That nearly half-trillion dollars doesn’t represent a cut; it’s a reduction in the rate of planned growth.

— Yet, despite the budget growth (assuming the $500 billion in additional cuts triggered by sequestration don’t happen), the Pentagon is scaling back its long-standing goal of being able to wage and win two major wars nearly at the same time. Instead, it proposes to be able to wage and win one major war, while being able to deny “the objectives of – or imposing unacceptable costs on – an opportunistic aggressor in a second region.”

— Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, noted that the strategic review “rebalances” missions, suggesting the military is not ready to scrap – or propose scrapping – any of its current assignments. “Wholesale divestment of the capability to conduct any mission would be unwise, based on historical and projected uses of U.S. military forces and our inability to predict the future,” the guidance reads (which leads to only one question: does this mean the Pentagon can’t jettison any of its current missions until it can predict the future?).

Like any tribal hive, the report unleashed a flurry of thumbs-ups and –downs. “In light of the budget cuts the Department of Defense must make, we are heartened to see that Secretary of Defense Panetta will continue to invest in utilizing unmanned systems to protect and work with troops in theater,” said Michael Toscano of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International – the drone lobby – in one of the few positive statements issued.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans opened fire. “The next time we have to engage in a major ground operation, we won’t have the forces we need, just as we didn’t in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the armed services committee. “We will go to war with the Army and Marine Corps we have, and our forces will assume greater risks and suffer greater casualties to get the job done.” Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, vice chairman of the panel, said the published guidance was “primarily a series of vague statements and aspirational goals,” which is certainly true (many adjectives died in the writing of the guidance: allies are stalwart, solutions are innovative and creative, and future demands are unforeseen.) “What really matters,” Thornberry said, “are the specifics on people, weapons, and budgets, and those have not yet been revealed.”

The absence of data let each side on the national-security ledger see its particular glass as half-empty or half-full. Take nuclear weapons, for example, which Obama pledged to maintain as “a safe, secure and effective…deterrent.” Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee nuclear subcommittee, charged that the U.S. is “disarming itself of nuclear weapons” while “Russia and China are modernizing and growing their forces and Iran and North Korea’s illegal programs continue to develop unchecked.”

But Stephen I. Schwartz, editor of the The Nonproliferation Review at California’s Monterey Institute of International Studies, expressed concern that the new defense strategy is hanging on to so many nukes. “It is difficult to identify any defense system more outdated and less relevant to the threats we confront today,” he said. “U.S. nuclear weapons have not deterred or defeated al Qaeda, they have not changed North Korea’s nuclear policy, and they have not had any positive effect on dissuading Iran from its nuclear ambitions.”

Battleland, of course, thinks it’s best to hold one’s fire until you can see the targets.