Branches? We don't need no stinkin' branches!

I prefer a Waltzian disaggregation of the Armed Forces over this archaic "branch" notion.

System Level - Strategic deterrence to maintain the global political and economic system. Nuclear weapons, high technology research done by DARPA, and the gradual prototype development of major weapons platforms like the DDG-1000.

State Level - Maintain an intervention force that deploys on a surge basis against a rogue state or regime. This force must be able to rapidly mobilize and deploy against states that violate the basic rules of international governance. Like committing genocide or developing WMDs. Airborne BCTs, CVNs/LHDs/LHAs, major surface combatants, Marine RCTs, etc.

Individual Level - The counter-insurgency, training, and advisory force. The force that rolls in after the Marines but before State Dept. They come in with international parters, OGAs, NGOs, etc. Primarily people based. Advising teams, infantry, civil affairs, psy ops, etc.

Special Operations - They perform tasks in all three areas but they really specialize in managing the transistions between these levels. Some, like SEALs and Rangers, mainly work between the system and state level. Others, like Special Forces, are specialized for somewhere between the State and individual level. The super secret squirrels in 1st SFOD or ST 6, work between the individual level and maintaining the overall global status quo.

There is probably room for another level of analysis for groups, especially in the context of ethnically-driven conflict. Kurds, Iraqi Sunnis, Pashtun, etc. Something else to think about it . . .

Gates announces FY10 Defense budget

It's going to be a knock-down, drag-out fight. And because he tried to ease people into it by taking a couple years to switch things up, its going to get ugly with Congress members firing his own quotes back at him from when he defended various platforms. Not many surprises, most changes have been leaked for weeks:

AF

• F-22's hold at 187
• Increase F-35 purchase
• More ISR aircraft
• Tankers getting punted to next year
• C-17 production will end at 205, I guess that's enough
  

Navy

• CVN's cut to 10
• LCS procurement gets expanded, along with JHSV
  

Army

• FCS family of vehicles is done, but the toys developed to support it remain
• The BCT shell game is being put on hold, we stay at 45 versus increasing to the theoretical 48
• Increased funding to fly and maintain helicopter support

Marines

• Delay of 11th LPD and the MLP
  
• And if FCS vehicles got the axe, it can't be healthy for EFV

Strategic

• Missle Defense Agency rightfully gets castrated, with a change in focus from strategic to theatre
• Beginning selection of a new SSBN . . . given the expense of that platform, seems a strange time to start on that
• Other programs awaiting evaluation given the President's moves to restart strategic arms limitation talks

Defense

• Taking all those independent contractors and moving them onto the regular civilian payroll, doesn't change much other than increasing accountability and transparency, which is a very good thing

Read the full announcement here. There are reactions and coverage at Danger Room, Information Dissemination, Barnett's weblog, and well, pretty much everyone has something to say about it.

House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces

That's kind of a mouthful, but basically, in the House there is a committee on the Armed Services. Within this committee is a subcommittee whose responsibility is the oversight of the US Navy, US Marine Corps, and US Coast Guard. Well they had one of this blog's favorite strategic thinkers over to testify on Thursday, and a lot of important things got said there. I wasn't there personally, but Thomas P.M. Barnett testified and has a couple blog posts about the hearing on his weblog if you want to clicky the link on the left.

Notable was the agreement that the budget will be reduced. Naturally, there were differing opinions on where the cuts should come from. This blogger supports a drastic decrease in Carrier Strike Groups. Currently the requirement is 12 Carrier Strike Groups, and 11 Expeditionary Strike Groups. The standard 1/3 operating ratio means that only 4 Carriers are deployable at any given time. That is an awful lot of power concentrated on very few platforms. And any risk to these platforms in necessarily utterly unacceptable. Expeditionary Strike Groups are divided among 3 major vessel types in addition to their surface combatant escorts:

• LHA/LHD's are like smaller aircraft carriers that bring helicopter and fixed-wing close air support.
• LPD's carry tanks, vehicles, and the hovercraft we use to put them ashore. The big ship in the center of the picture above is a San Antonio-class LPD.
  
• LSD's carry additional hovercraft and equipment. The ship in the lead of the formation in the picture is a Whidbey Island-class LSD.
  

This means that for 11 Expeditionary Strike Groups you actually get 33 major platforms that can spread US influence and operate with Global Partnership Stations, support Marines or other ground forces, hunt pirates, or look for terrorists. The only thing they can't do is carry the larger fixed-wing aircraft needed for long range air support. At the beginning of the century the battleship replaced the dreadnought. Following Pearl Harbor, the Battleship was replaced by the Aircraft Carrier as the primary means of force projection. And even though it never fired a shot, the real key to naval power projection during the Cold War was the nuclear submarine, both attack and ballistic missile types. Today, it is the Amphibious warship that most represents the means by which we project power and influence. They alone, among major naval platforms can exert influence in the littoral regions. In combination with the LCS, they provide a powerful tool for exerting control in the most important regions of the world's ocean's, the places where the people are. For this reason, I believe the number of Carriers should be reduced from 12 to 6, and the number of Amphibious warships expanded from 33 to 45, for a total of 15 Expeditionary Strike Groups.

Used Ship salesman?

An interesting idea being floated ::groan:: by the likes of Bob Work and Thomas P.M. Barnett is to sell LCS to developing navies and coast guards around the world after we use them. Not only does it help us recoup some of the procurement cost, but it helps build a truly global cooperative coast guard in the spirit of the National Maritime Strategy. I think it's is a brilliant example of how we can export security and help to stabilize the global system in a more meaningful manner than simply selling more guns.

In the Navy . . .

Amphibs are where it's at, I would support cutting the carrier force by about 4 in return for 6 ship increase in Major Amphibs (LHA/LHD), and the LPDs (pictured here) and LSDs to go along with them.

What the Amphibs are for the US is what the USS Enterprise (the spaceship, not the aircraft carrier) is for the Federation. They provide incredible capabilities for rapid intervention in conflicts and humanitarian crisis, and the most effective way to stop a conflict is to nip it in the bud. An Amphib has the engineering, medical, and just enough combat capability to deal with a brewing conflict before it goes high-intensity.

The joke goes, how many aircraft carriers do you need? Just one, but you need it every where, all the time, with better reliability, carriers operational availability is improving enough that we can certainly afford to reduce the number, especially if we add a few Apmhibs to compensate. Amphibs also have additional usage beyond military, just look at the USS Kearsarge deployment in South America, all medical-related.

This goes along with my wider idea that we should have two military forces, a small task force or Joint Strike Force that is sized to take down the military of the largest potential nation-state competitor (nuclear powers don't count, its just not worth it). This force would be mainly built on Naval and Air Force airpower, and have all the cool whiz-bang toys. Abrams go here, FCS go here, F22/F35, CVNs, Subs, etc.

The other, much larger force would be a Counterinsurgency-Stabilization force that responds to Humanitarian and Intrastate conflicts. It would be mainly designed to stop states from failing or rebuild failed ones (including post-US intervention). It would primarily be based on Army and Marine infantry/engineer/civil affairs forces, and it gets the not so sexy armored cars, language, and cultural training. Strykers go here, MRAPs go here, UAVs and COIN birds like Super Tucanos, Amphibs, LCS, etc.

The only way to protect these two capabilities is to split them apart, otherwise we'll constantly be swinging from one side to the other depending on whose in charge. We need a warrior ethos, and we need a nation-builder.

The Department of Defense and the Department of Security and Foreign Development

The Active Duty Army will have 48 Brigade Combat Teams by 2013 arrayed as such:

• 19 Heavy Brigade Combat Teams (20 if you count 3rd ACR, which is close enough for our purposes)

• 6 Stryker Brigade Combat Teams

• 13 Infantry Brigade Combat Teams

• 6 Airborne Brigade Combat Teams

• 4 Air Assault Brigade Combat Teams
  

• Additionally, the Marines have 12 Regimental Combat Teams

• Grand Total 48+12= 60 Brigades
  

I see the HBCT's optimized for high-intensity conflict, the SBCT's optimized for mid-intensity conflict, and IBCT's becoming more and more optimized for mid-to-low intensity conflict. This is the way it should be. Marine RCTs can be structured to fight in high-intensity conflicts, but the do their best work at the mid-to-low level, their organic equipment typically being more comparable to a Stryker BCT. In the future, Stryker and Infantry BCT's will have to integrate peacekeeping and nation building capabilities at the unit level, this will entail the attachment of:

1. NGO's (UN, WHO)
2. Coalition allies (UK&Friends, EU, China, India, whoever wants to come along)
3. Public sector orgs (State Dept, USAID, Peace Corps)
4. Private sector - Blackwater, KBR, Halliburton, choke on it hippies, they're here to stay.
   
5. Foreign Direct Investment - It will start with Security and Infrastructure contracts directly with the coalition, but if security improves enough, the investment starts to flow and then a Less-Developed Country becomes a Low-Cost Country, ripe for rapid economic growth that is the pre-condition for any lasting peace.

These new elements will be controversial and will blur the lines between military and civilian, overseas and posse comitatus, but they are necessary, and given the current trajectory, inevitable. I would posit that a reduction in the number of Heavy Brigade Combat Teams is necessary both from a strategic and fiscal point of view. An increase in the now proven and accepted Stryker Brigades wouldn't be a bad thing. The reduction in HBCT's will reduce the cost of FCS, and the $ saved can be used for more Strykers.

I propose developing the entire combat forces of the United States along a delineation between Forced-Entry Capable, and Follow-on units. High-End assets go with the Forced-Entry critters, Cheap and plentiful follow behind them.

Proposed Force Structure:

Forced Entry Capable Teams (23+8) Brigades Total) -

1. Stays in DoD
   
2. 6 Airborne Brigade Combat Teams and 4 Air Assault Brigade Combat Teams by Air
3. 10 Heavy Brigade Combat Teams (+ 8 National Guard HBCTs) by Land
4. 3 Marine Expeditionary Brigades and their naval support assets by Sea
   
5. Carrier Strike Groups, SSNs, SSGNs, Surface combatants DDG or larger
   
6. F-22's F-35's, B-1's, B-2's, etc
7. Kicks in the door, grabs the bad guy, Mugabe, Kim Jong-Il, etc, and then pulls out, usually in less than a month.
   

Security and Development Force (37+19) Brigades Total) -

1. Moves to a Department of Foreign Security and Development that unites diplomatic, security, public, and private development and stabilization centers under one flag in a one effort.
   
2. 12 Stryker BCTs (+ 1 National Guard Stryker BCTs)
   
3. 16 Infantry BCTs (+ 18 National Guard Infantry BCTs)
   
4. 9 (The Remaining Marine RCT's)
5. LPD's and LSD's to support the humanitarian, peacekeeping, disaster-response, etc, Littoral Combat Ships
   
6. UAV's, UAV's, UAV's, Airlift, Airlift, Airlift
7. Follows immediately behind the Forced-Entry force, even sharing command and support structures with the DoD forces, is handed off command when security reaches a threshold (enemy can no longer operate beyond the company level) on a regional basis. Stays "until the job is done." If we get good at this, it doesn't have to be 5 years later, it can be a single year-long tour.
   

This delineation allows for a better management of conflicts without cutting any single branch completely out of the DoD budget. I believe they all have something to contribute, though obviously the majority of the effort will shift over time to supporting the Security and Development Force, which is simply an extension of the fact that we are running out of plausible nation-states that could challenge us and simply shifting focus to expanding economic connectivity. As Gates pointed out, where in the world would a plausible conventional conflict occur?

Does this mean freighters can mount .50 cals now?

Galrahn over at Information Dissemination is talking about a US Navy statement saying that it can't/won't protect all civilian commerce transiting the Gulf of Aden. Which begs the question, who will? The cost to the global economy is substantial, as it is one of the most heavily trafficked straights in the world, and yet the Navy seems to feel that fighting piracy is below them. What in ze hell? The Navy seems to be in full retreat from the littoral region, even though that is the Naval equivalent of counterinsurgency warfare. Previously, they told the Marines they weren't getting any closer than 25nm to shore. So who is going to bare the cost/risk? With insurance costs on shipping skyrocketing I can't imagine it will be long before we see the rise of a "Blackwater Navy." Congressional hearings and civilian NGO outrage will be soon to follow no doubt. But that is the price you pay, if there is a demand going unfulfilled, it won't be long before the market creates a supply. Maybe I should strap on my eye patch and try to get a Letter of Marque from Congress?