The Right Stuff

he military's top procurement priorities read like a Cold War wish list. Despite uncontested control of the seas and shipping lanes, the Navy is investing heavily in aircraft carriers, carrier-based tactical jets and submarines. The Air Force, undisputed ruler of the skies worldwide, will spend billions of dollars on two new tactical fighters that have no apparent opponents. The Army, untouchable in land warfare, but with such heavy weapons it has difficulty deploying them, plans to buy an even heavier artillery system.

Do military leaders believe they will face another Soviet-like nemesis? Not really. According to the services' "vision statements," they recognize a vastly changed national security environment a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The proliferation of missile technology, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the explosion in comparatively low-cost commercial technologies with military applications all have greatly altered the battlefield upon which the military services will fight.

While much about the emerging security landscape is unknown, most military leaders generally agree on a few key trends:

• In the future, the United States will not have the ready access to potential battlefields afforded by the extensive network of overseas bases it enjoyed during the Cold War. It may be increasingly difficult to obtain permission from other nations to use air space and to base troops and materiel overseas, even temporarily.
• The military must be able to respond rapidly to threats around the globe in remote locations, with little or no advance preparation. If potential enemies learned one lesson from the Persian Gulf War, it was the need to deny U.S. troops the opportunity to build up forces in theater.
• Force protection-securing troops against terrorist attack-will become more difficult and consume more resources.
• Potential adversaries increasingly will be able to exploit rapidly changing off-the-shelf technology more quickly than the service bureaucracies.

Each of the services has published extensive blueprints for how they intend to adapt to a world where the threat has changed dramatically. They envision a world where threats will be "asymmetrical"-where enemies will not confront the United States with conventional military power, but rather will exploit the vulnerabilities of a free society by resorting to terrorism and manipulating the flow of information. To varying degrees, the services all are experimenting with new weapons and organizations to combat these new threats, both jointly and independently.

But critics say there is a broad gulf between the future the services describe and that for which they are actually preparing in terms of weapons priorities and investment in research and development. By conventional military standards, the United States is without peer. But the services face serious vulnerabilities, both today and in the future, not likely to be addressed by more carriers, fighter aircraft or heavy artillery.

Investment and Innovation

The extraordinary cost of weapons and the difficulty the services have in paying for them are nowhere more apparent than in Air Force and Navy weapons programs. Despite concerns about the vulnerability of aircraft carriers to missile attack or sabotage, and the absence of a naval force with comparable carrier or submarine assets that could challenge the United States, the Navy has begun developing new lines of both carriers and submarines that look much like current models.

Navy officials maintain that carriers, with their ability to project power quickly around the globe, are ideally suited for post-Cold War missions. Because they operate in international waters, they do not require foreign landing rights and provide national leaders with a flexible diplomatic and military tool. Navy officials also maintain that the current submarine fleet-58 attack subs, which launch cruise missiles and collect electronic data, and 18 Trident subs, which carry nuclear missiles-is about 40 percent smaller since the Cold War, making it too small to handle what it says is a growing mission load.

Retired Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll, deputy director of the Center for Defense Information, disputes the Navy's position. He argues that the Navy should be developing smaller, stealthier ships, not more large aircraft carriers that could easily be disabled by missiles or mines, potentially putting thousands of lives at risk. At a cost of about $6 billion per carrier, not including the aircraft that operate off it, the investment is out of proportion to the benefit, and makes the ships particularly desirable targets for an enemy, he says.

Carroll also disputes the need for more submarines. "The fact is, we don't have to contest another navy for control of the seas or the sea lanes of communication. The Russian submarine fleet, which did present a threat to us, is essentially deteriorated to the point where it no longer represents a threat, and the submarines that are scattered around the world in such places as Iran or North Korea are so few and so limited in their capabilities they don't represent a threat."

Nonetheless, the Navy this year began construction of what is to be the first of 30 new Virginia class attack submarines, expected to cost about $2 billion each.

"I really don't see the need for even 50 attack submarines, and here we are planning to build 30 more, retiring some of the best subs in the world prematurely to make room for them," Carroll says.

Ships are not the only extraordinarily expensive legacy systems the Pentagon is investing in. Between the Navy and Air Force, the military is planning to develop and field three new fighter planes at a cost of more than $350 billion. The Navy is building the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet to replace older carrier-based fighters. The Air Force is building the F-22, an air-to-air combat fighter conceived in the early 1980s to counter a Soviet fighter that never was developed. And both services, along with the Marine Corps, are planning to build the Joint Strike Fighter to replace aging fighters in all the services early next century.

Senior leaders in the Air Force and contractor Lockheed Martin have made support for the F-22 a litmus test for patriotism. Air Force leaders have repeatedly told Congress and the press that service members who have pledged their lives to serve their country deserve the best technology the country can provide.

But that logic is faulty, critics say. Investing billions of dollars in legacy systems that look very much like those required during the Cold War precludes the innovation necessary to transform the military into a relevant force for the future, says Andrew Krepinevich, director of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent research organization that focuses on the discrepancies between defense strategy and defense budgets.

'Hell On Wheels'

Army Secretary Louis Caldera and Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki in October announced they would bridge the gulf between vision and plans in the Army by transforming the service into a more maneuverable all-wheeled force. The new vehicles would be 50 percent to 70 percent lighter than the current fleet of tanks and other heavy tracked vehicles. The Army's objective is to be able to deploy a brigade-size unit anywhere in the world in 96 hours; a division in 120 hours.

It's an ambitious goal. Last March, the Army was widely criticized for taking more than a month to deploy a task force of 24 Apache attack helicopters to Albania from Germany. Poor weather, a lack of infrastructure in Albania, a shortage of Air Force lift assets and political constraints all contributed to the slow response of the 2,500-member task force. But the fact that the helicopters needed such a large support system was seen as a liability, and critics charge that military forces should be robust enough to deploy to remote locations, regardless of the weather.

Nowhere is the Army's challenge better illustrated that at Fort Hood, Texas, home of the 1st Cavalry Division and the mechanized 4th Infantry Division. A drive along Hell On Wheels Avenue, named for the storied 2d Armored Division's stunning victories in World War II, illustrates both the great power, and the great vulnerability, of the Army today. Mile after mile of motor pools showcasing hundreds of combat vehicles-tanks, troop carriers, artillery systems, fire support systems, ammunition carriers-attest to the Army's tremendous capabilities. Yet this weaponry, designed to wreak havoc on a heavily armored enemy, is also wreaking havoc on the Army's ability to mobilize for war. As the Army upgraded systems following the Persian Gulf War, many of the weapons became heavier and harder to move to the battlefield.

Compounding the Army's trouble is that even as its airlift requirements are growing, the Air Force's capacity to meet those requirements is diminishing. Due in part to the great demands placed on airlift assets during the Kosovo crisis, the mission-capable rate of the Air Force's largest airlifter, the C-5 Galaxy, has dropped to 56 percent, according to Air Force Gen. Charles Robertson, commander in chief of U.S. Transportation Command. The rate falls well below the required 75 percent. What's more, Robertson told the House Armed Services Committee in October, under current funding levels, the rate is unlikely to improve for several years.

The Kosovo operation also demonstrated the perils of deploying troops for an unplanned ground war as they are currently equipped. The Army's light infantry forces were seen as vulnerable to Serb tanks and artillery, but its armored force was too heavy to deploy quickly enough to halt Serb atrocities. Likewise, peacekeeping operations in the Balkans have shown the limitations of the Army's heavy armored force. The Army's tanks, designed for combat on open terrain, are generally too heavy and too wide to cross bridges and travel local roads without destroying them.

Yet in 1996, on the eve of production, the Army canceled the Armored Gun System, which many believe would have given light infantry troops the very tool they need to operate effectively in an environment such as Kosovo. The system, which weighs about 20 tons, was designed to be dropped by parachute onto the battlefield. Five could be carried by the Air Force's C-5. By comparison, the Army's Abrams tank, although far more powerful than the gun system, weighs about 70 tons, and the C-5 can carry no more than two.

While the Armored Gun System ostensibly was canceled for lack of funding, some Army officers believe that ultimately it was done in by the Army's own heavy armor community. Had the armored gun system worked as advertised by its proponents, it could have shifted the balance of power within the Army away from heavy forces.

"It was absolutely the wrong decision" to kill the Armored Gun System program, says retired Col. Thomas Davis, who was chief of program development for then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer when the system was killed. "We had a whole bunch of systems that weren't funded and we had a choice of 'do we stay with the armored gun system,' or 'do we kill that and take that money and sprinkle it around to a bunch of other systems and fix them,' " Davis says. In retrospect, he says, the Army should have forgone other things to preserve the gun system.

"[The Army] had said it wanted to become more strategically agile and mobile and the Armored Gun System allowed us to do that. But I think we just kind of lost sight of that vision in an effort to try to get a budget package that was going to fix an awful lot of problems out there," Davis says.

Reimer, for his part, maintains that canceling the armored gun system was the right decision at the time. "If we end up having to buy another similar system down the road, so be it," he says.

Institutional Impediments

While the transformation goals announced by Shinseki and Caldera met with enthusiasm in some quarters of the Army, it is by no means certain those goals can be achieved. Without a serious investment of the Army's limited procurement and research and development funding, which will require canceling or scaling back some weapons already in the works, most observers doubt the transformation will be possible.

The Army's dilemma is partly of its own making, says one congressional staffer who asked not to be identified. "The Army, and I think the Navy and Air Force as well, have been backing the wrong horses, so to speak. Some of us would like to see the Army get more money for modernization, but frankly, I don't think they've used the funds they've had very well. Maybe that will turn around now. But I'm not going to hold my breath."

One test of whether the Army can turn around is what it does with the Crusader, a heavy artillery system currently in dev-
elopment. The Crusader is actually two tracked vehicles-a howitzer and a resupply vehicle, which together weigh nearly 100 tons-hardly the sort of equipment an Army aiming to be more agile should be buying, say critics. Whether or not the system will survive in the wake of Shinseki's and Caldera's announcement is yet to be seen.

Bucking the System

Investment in innovative new weapons systems has proved tremendously difficult for all of the services. The Navy, which plans to spend more than $5 billion next year to develop a new aircraft carrier, a new tactical fighter and a new class of submarines, decided last year it could not afford to spend a small fraction of that to test the concept of an "arsenal ship," a program many believe could revolutionize warfare.

The arsenal ship's demise offers a primer for why so many programs that sound promising are never fully explored. It was intended to be just what it sounds like, a floating arsenal with hundreds of long-range, precision-guided missiles for attacking land targets at ranges of up to 1,200 miles. The ships were to be manned with only a handful of crewmen and were to provide military leaders with massive firepower in the early hours of a conflict. Some planners believed the ships could be remotely controlled not just by naval commanders, but by theater commanders in any of the services.

With no enemy to challenge its control of the sea, the Navy must be able to project its power ashore and operate effectively in coastal waters. The arsenal ship was a key component of that vision.

Supporters of the ship, including former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jeremy Boorda, argued that it would give theater commanders greater flexibility than they had with bombers and carriers alone. Arsenal ships could be positioned around the world to provide a significant deterrence in unstable regions through their ability to deploy massive strikes earlier in a conflict than could be launched from a carrier or delivered from a B-2 bomber flying from the United States. Also, missiles can be launched day or night, whereas the B-2 flies only at night to avoid detection. And with such a small crew, many fewer lives would be put in jeopardy.

But the program had many institutional detractors. Advocates of the B-2 charged that the ship would duplicate the bombers' function. Within the Navy, the carrier and submarine communities saw the program as draining funds from their own programs and threatening the service's time-honored way of doing business.

Kent Kresa, chief executive officer for Northrop Grumman, a key competitor for the program, says the arsenal ship's fate was sealed with the 1996 suicide of Boorda, although the program limped along with limited funding for another year. The program "was being done over the objections of the system," Kresa says, and when Boorda died, the impetus for pursuing it died with him.

Fighting 'Separate Wars'

One of the difficulties of promoting a program like the arsenal ship is that it upset traditional service missions and boundaries. Such changes require sustained, direct involvement from key, high-level officials at DoD and in Congress if they are to have any hope of success. When programs cross traditional operational lines, as the arsenal ship would have, the cultural resistance is even more acute.

While the nation expects the services to go to war together, the extent of their cooperation in arming for war is surprisingly limited. Each service operates according to its own interpretation of the requirements needed to execute the Pentagon's overall military strategy. They budget, plan for, develop and procure weapons largely on their own, with each service controlling about one-third of the budget. While the Defense Department oversees and approves the service budgets, in practice, its control is limited.

Jacques Gansler, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, has written extensively about the problem. In his 1989 book Affording Defense, Gansler wrote, "Decisions about which weapons to buy, and how many of them, are made by the independent services-almost as if they were going to fight separate wars."

Technological advances that make dramatic shifts in military composition and strategy possible are institutionally difficult for the services to assimilate, Gansler observed. "It is often 'culturally' difficult for the armed services to accept such technology-motivated shifts. For example, in some parts of the world, perhaps the Navy could carry out its mission of denying use of the surface of the seas to an enemy by using reconnaissance satellites and land-based missiles rather than ships; but such concepts are so foreign to traditional notions of naval operations that they receive little attention. We continue to concentrate on building improved versions of traditional platforms, (ships, planes and tanks) at significantly increased costs."

While Gansler clearly understands the problem and has worked to streamline the acquisition system and improve planning among the services, his progress in changing the culture of weapons buying is less clear. He declined to be interviewed for this article, but a decade after he wrote Affording Defense, his endorsement of former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Edward Meyer's 1984 comments about military spending still resonates: "Either we are going to spend ourselves into extinction, or we have to come up with alternative strategies and new ways to allocate resources."