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Op-Ed: The QDR’s devil is not in the details |
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(Source: defense-aerospace.com; published Feb. 7, 2006)
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By Giovanni de Briganti
PARIS --- As many have already noted, the much-anticipated Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) has proved something of a damp firecracker. Even though in the weeks leading up to its early release on Feb. 3 many ranking Pentagon officials were at pains to lower expectations as much as they could, it still comes as something of an anti-climax.
The tough decisions - which programs to scrap and which to accelerate; how to make the military more cost-effective and more manpower-efficient – were sidestepped, and as a result the Pentagon will stumble along, dispensing money left and right, until a new Administration is forced by ballooning deficits to take decisive budgetary action.
The indecisiveness of the QDR is well illustrated by the paragraphs (yes, paragraphs, not chapters nor sections) covering tactical air power. It states that production of the F-22 Raptor will be “extended through FY 2010 with a multiyear acquisition contract,” without saying how many aircraft will be ultimately acquired. Surprisingly, the chapter on Joint Air Capabilities does not even mention the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, whose affordability is increasingly being questioned.
A complete overhaul of the US Air Force’s bomber component also is announced: the B-52 fleet will be cut to 56 aircraft, all of which will be substantially upgraded, as will existing B-1 and B-2 bombers.
Two new and ambitious projects are to be launched. One is a new land-based bomber to be fielded by 2018, allowing R&D spending to be pushed off a few years into the future, and the other is a new unmanned air vehicle to be derived from the J-UCAS. Capable of in-flight refueling, this new UCAV will be based on US Navy aircraft carriers to provide “naval reach and persistence.”
Strikingly, the US Air Force has been set two very ambitious goals: “increasing its long-range strike capabilities by 50%” and increasing “the penetrating component of long-range strike by a factor of five by 2025.” In addition, the QDR specifies that about “45% of the future long-range strike force will be unmanned.”
Nowhere, however, is there even a hint of where the Air Force will find the money to pay for all this.
But, beyond their affordability, do these new plans make any sense? For the bomber component, for example, what capabilities do 56 upgraded B-52s bring to the table that upgraded B-1s and B-2s cannot match? And how many long-range bombers does the Air Force need, when it has demonstrated that a single B-2 can drop 80 guided JDAMs against 80 different targets during a single sortie?
Questions also arise regarding the new naval version of J-UCAS. Does it really make sense to develop a new, carried-based UAV, with an in-flight refueling capability to boot, when the Air Force demonstrated years ago that it can fly a Global Hawk half-way across the world, from California to South Australia? And what range or payload advantage will be gained to offset the unnecessary complication of designing it to land on a carrier deck and to carry out mid-air refuelings with no pilot on board?
And it gets even better. The Pentagon plans to convert some of its Trident Sea-Launched Ballistic Missiles to a conventional role by fitting non-nuclear warheads. This will cost $2.5 billion just until 2011. But how cost-effective can it be to use such a weapon (and to deploy a submarine to fire it) to deliver a single, high-explosive warhead? Or is the plan to develop multiple independently-targeted warheads to attack several targets with a single Trident?
Specific issues aside, the QDR explains how the Pentagon sees its role and mission in the coming years. And it is here that the document, to coin a phrase, falls flat on its face.
Four priority missions are identified for the Pentagon: defending the homeland, defeating terrorist extremism, helping shape the choices of countries at strategic crossroads, and countering weapons of mass destruction. The problem is that none of these missions are military.
Military missions entail defending or conquering territory, or destroying the military capabilities of potential aggressors. Military forces are not organized, equipped or trained to “defeat terrorist extremism,” much less to “help shape the choices of countries.” Those are jobs for police, intelligence services or diplomats, and nobody in his right mind would, for example, give the Pentagon responsibility for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And, thankfully, no-one has.
Afghanistan and Iraq have amply shown how ineffective conventional military forces are in fighting a “war” on terrorism. Because this is a war without a conventional enemy to be engaged on the battlefield, the Pentagon can never win an outright victory, however much “transformation” it is subjected to.
The bottom line is that the QDR represents a hostile takeover bid launched by the Pentagon for the State Department (in the field of diplomacy) and the Department of Homeland Defense (in the field of policing and defending the homeland). There is no other possible rationale for assigning to the Department of Defense missions that lie so clearly outside the military sphere, and enshrining them in a long-term strategy document.
Since the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon has had no credible military threat to guard against, despite all its rhetoric about China’s emerging capabilities, and in the manner of bureaucracies all over the world it is scrambling to justify its existence and budget.
Congress should not stand for it. If there is no credible military threat, the US military should be downsized to maintain core capabilities, and the cash thus freed up should be shifted to other government departments whose mission really is to defend the homeland, to defeat terrorism, to help shape the choices of countries at strategic crossroads, and to counter weapons of mass destruction.
Carrier-based, in-flight refuelable UAVs or SLBMs armed with conventional warheads will not make the Pentagon more effective in prosecuting the “war” on terror, unless Donald Rumsfeld thinks the “gee-whiz” effect will knock terrorists off their feet.
-ends-
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