Thursday, February 11, 2021

Can't Believe I Used to Talk Like This - Anthony Wayne Wright

 This paper will answer the questions of what the military does, both in the GWOT and elsewhere, by citing the highest-level strategy documents: the National Security Strategy (March 2006), the National Defense Strategy (March 2005), and the National Military Strategy (2004).  This paper will use the Quadrennial Defense Review Report (February 2006) to describe the difference between what the US military is and what it needs to be, again, for both the GWOT and elsewhere.
            By citing these documents I am answering the questions of ‘Why?’ in the simplest of ways: “Because the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs say so.”  This may sound less than intellectually rigorous, but after working inside the Pentagon for three and a half years I know that these documents matter.  The Department of Defense (DoD) works very hard to shape itself along the lines described in these documents.  The success is muted for a variety of reasons ranging from Service culture clashes (each one picks words from the documents it likes best and interprets them in old familiar ways), lack of support on Capitol Hill (older, bigger, more established weapons programs have more Hill support than smaller, newer programs), and a tension between the vision for a leaner, meaner military (paying for new technology with personnel reductions) and the reality of a manpower and material intensive, two-front war.

            The three supporting military objectives described in the document are:
Protect the United States against external attacks and aggression.  This requires a forward defense, protection for our strategic approaches and creating a global anti-terrorist environment.  The task of ‘defensive actions at home’ is shifting to DHS, per the latest NSS.
Prevent Conflict and Surprise.  Again a forward defense is advocated as well as coalition operations and training of nations to deal with the terrorism threat.  This objective also supports preemptive action versus catastrophic threats.
Prevail against adversaries.  This objective requires major combat operation capabilities to ‘swiftly defeat’ and ‘win decisively’ as described in the NDS.  Additionally this objective requires the capability to conduct stability operations like we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Finally the Joint Force must be able to shift between these types of operations swiftly and conduct them simultaneously.
(This objective is at the heart of the war within the Pentagon.  The capabilities and training required for these two types of operations is forcing an explosion of requirements on an Acquisition Corps gutted by downsizing.)  
            The NMS lists the attributes of the Joint Force as: fully integrated; expeditionary; networked, decentralized; adaptable; decision superiority (sic); lethal.  It goes on to describe the 1-4-2-1 force-sizing construct for the required size of the Joint Force.

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