January 2007
Following President George W. Bush’s announcement that he would send 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, newly appointed defense secretary Robert Gates called for an increase in the size of the Army and the Marine Corps. But while the world’s attention is focused on the additional troops, an underlying problem is festering.
In 2000, the Bush campaign promised that “help was on the way” after several years of lean defense budgets under the Bill Clinton administration. Despite a sizeable increase in defense spending to handle the War on Terror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the troop increase adequate for the wars the military is fighting and the global strategy it has adopted? What are the resource problems facing the other services? On January 17, AEI scholars Gary J. Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly, editors of the newly published Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007), and the book’s four contributors discussed these and other questions.
Gary J. Schmitt
AEI
Despite the overall growth of the defense budget, core defense spending has increased very little in the last six years. Defense spending (excluding supplementals passed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) currently sits at about 3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP)--about what it was during the Clinton administration. Overall defense spending has increased approximately 20 percent since the Clinton years, but most of that money is directed towards current personnel costs and spending on the wars, creating a “hollow buildup” in today’s military. The Clinton administration cut both the size of the military and the procurement budget.
In 2000, then-candidate Bush campaigned on the promise that “help was on the way” for an underfunded military. Yet Bush administration has fared no better than its predecessor in terms of meeting procurement targets. In fact, the Bush administration has only once reached the CBO’s recommended $90 billion procurement target; if inflation is taken into account, it has never met it. The CBO has since released a new estimate placing necessary procurement spending at about $115 to $140 billion.
President Clinton and President Bush entered office hoping for a smaller global footprint, but once in office both administrations quickly realized that such a goal was impossible. This realization did not, however, result in an increase in spending to the levels that would allow the U.S. military to both modernize and carry out the role it has been asked to play in the world.
Loren Thompson
Lexington Institute
Today the Air Force, which has been hit hard by spending shortfalls, faces some disastrous consequences. Former defense secretary and current vice president Dick Cheney was responsible for cutting many Air Force procurement programs because he believed that the United States had entered a new era of peace after the Cold War. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Air Force acquired 262 planes per year; by the 1990s this number had fallen to 60 planes per year. A generation ago, the average airframe age was 8 years; today the average airframe age is 24 years. If the Air Force receives all the planes it currently plans to procure, the average airframe age will increase to 30 years within the next decade.
Former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld’s folly was his obsession with military “transformation,” which led him to cancel a new generation of military technology development and procurement. If Rumsfeld had successfully cut all the Air Force programs he wished to, all military plane production lines in the United States would be closed within a decade. Under Rumsfeld, the F-22 Raptor was slated for early cancellation, despite the fact that the F-15 it is scheduled to replace is now 30 years old and currently flies under permanent flight restrictions. The KC-135 tanker is now 40 years old and has no scheduled replacement. Many of the bombers currently used by the Air Force were built during the Kennedy administration. No new lines have been scheduled for cargo plane production or rescue planes, and the current generation of spy planes is still based on designs from the 1950s.
Under current conditions, U.S. air superiority may not last. In 1999, Serbia shot down a first generation stealth fighter and more recently the Indian military defeated U.S. F-15s in air games. A significant portion of the U.S. Air Force now flies under flight restrictions due to airframe cracking and corrosion.
The Air Force currently takes up about 5 percent of the defense budget. Providing an increase in spending by 10 billion dollars per year would allow for continued production of the F-22 through the next decade at a rate of 20 planes per year, continued production of the C-17 and C-130 transport aircraft, production of a next-generation refueling platform, and production of a new bomber that has the speed and survivability not available in any bomber of today.
Robert O. Work
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
Since the end of the Cold War, the Navy has embarked on a broad transformation, moving from the operating concept of a Total Ship Battleforce (TSB) to the concept of a Total Force Battle Network (TFBN). TSB was based on the concept that the power of a navy was directly related to the number of ships it possessed. By this measure, at the end of the Cold War, the United States was the superior naval force, operating over 600 ships. Following the Cold War, the U.S. Navy entered a period of reduction, until the 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) determined that it could not fall below 300 ships. The 2001 QDR called for a 307-ship Navy, while Admiral Vern Clark, then chief of naval operations, called for 370 ships. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drained funds for the Navy, and it was forced to cancel or retire many of its ships, settling on a red-line figure of 280 ships.
The advances and implementation of tactical precision weapons systems had greatly increased the power of the U.S. Navy even as the number of ships shrank. Today, the Navy has a force consisting of 278 ships that make up 10,000 Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells and can strike 10,000 aim points per day. This capability dwarfs that of any naval competitor. The ships in the U.S. Navy are also relatively young, averaging about 13 years old.
The future U.S. Navy will require a minimum of 313 ships. To reach this number, the Navy can either ask for more money or make cuts and trades so as to operate within the existing budget. There are several important steps that need to be taken to ensure the United States maintains a naval lead. There should be a renewed focus on industrial capability. The Navy should build one nuclear aircraft carrier every five years, and 10 Virginia-class submarines between 2012 and 2018 rather than the 18 currently scheduled. The production of one naval ship should be cancelled and that money should be invested into further developing the TFBN. The Navy should also continue building four small ships so as to maintain industrial capacity, and it should divert money from the Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF(F)) program to continue developing an amphibious landing force. This plan would result in a cheaper but still realistic 340-ship Navy.
Francis G. Hoffman
U.S. Marine Corps Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities
The 2006 QDR reduced the size of the Marines by 5,000, despite the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq, which showed that money should be spent less on technology and more on the ground forces.
Some have questioned the relevancy of the Marine Corps in today’s modern security environment. As both an amphibious and forcible-entry force, the Marine Corps offers the U.S. four key strategic capabilities. First, the Marine Corps is the military’s primary amphibious force, a capability which will most likely be more important in the next 20 years. Second, it serves as a deterrent to potentially hostile countries that would be forced to disperse their forces to contend with the Corps’ forcible-entry capabilities. Third, the Corps’ forcible-entry capability helps ensure that the U.S. military has access to areas of the world that might otherwise be inaccessible. Finally, the Marine Corps provides for the freedom of action that the president and commanders in chief desire.
Using these capabilities, the QDR, and the current security environment as a starting point, one can set about envisioning a reinvigorated Marine Corps. One version of a re-envisioned Marine Corps would be a heavier Corps, designed for a forcible entry capability only, consisting of about 195,000 Marines and a greater number of tanks and tread vehicles. The second scenario, based on the small-wars model, would “lighten up” the Corps, getting rid of some tanks and artillery—relying on the Army to provide these resources— and increasing reconstruction and peacekeeping capabilities and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This Corps would result in a force of about 195,000.
The U.S. military needs a hybrid force that is capable of dealing with forcible-entry scenarios and small-war capabilities in the new and complex security environment we face today.
Thomas Donnelly
AEI
One of the principal goals in changing the military in general, and the Army in particular, has to be a realignment of forces for a long war, not a quick battle. After the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq it has become increasingly evident that it is possible for the U.S. military to win a battle but lose the war. A consensus has developed that there is a need for U.S. ground forces to grow in overall number.
Any consensus that exists for a larger military is likely to be unraveled during the coming budget season. War spending supplementals have further complicated the budget, and the political equation is uncertain for Democrats and Republicans. Both parties are trying to present themselves as the party of fiscal restraint, and the defense budget is one of the few areas in which Congress can realistically exercise control over spending.
While the budget process may be influential in determining the size of an Army expansion, the question remains: What is the appropriate number of troops from a strategic perspective? Defense Secretary Robert Gates has stated that the Army should be about 547,000 soldiers strong. This number is deceptive because it includes double counting, resulting in an actual net increase of only 35,000 soldiers. Estimates indicate that these new forces would require an additional $1.2-1.5 billion a year. The current total number of servicemen and women in the Army and reserves may already be as high as 625,000. These force levels are not sufficient for long-term wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, much less other conflicts that could materialize.
The Army needs to maintain a “kick down the door” regime change capability, while also being able to promote stability. A more realistic estimate of the force size necessary to execute these missions is 700,000 for the Army and 200,000 for the Marines.
Almost all of the Army’s new procurement programs were cancelled under Rumsfeld. The Future Combat System (FCS) program is one of the only procurements programs left for the Army, and is vital to its modernization.
AEI intern Charlie Murray prepared this summary.
