Fixing defense

We have, by far, the most capable, lethal, and flexible military in the world.  And we have a legitimate need to maintain a military superior to all others, into the foreseeable future.  As long a authoritarian governments with the means to do violence exist, one nation or one very small coalition is going to have to stand against them.  It is the 21st Century, and we need a military that will be highly effective in this new age, at a cost we can afford.  We need a 21st Century military with flexibility and reach and vision and lethality and we can only afford to pay about half what we pay now.  So what follows is what we need to do to restructure the Department of Defense.

First, military manpower is tremendously expensive.  And contractors can be both unreliable and expensive.  My proposal is to create a corps of non-combatant ‘excepted service’ civilians to perform all non-combatant roles.  At present, a cadre of 5000 civil service mariners (WM, ‘wage, marine’, not GS/SES) man, maintain, and operate the Navy’s fleet of 40+ auxiliary ships.  These ships operate right alongside Navy ships, they integrate with Battle Groups, they are functionally identical to the formerly Navy-manned auxiliary fleet.  But they do this for a fraction of the cost.  This concept should be further explored, developed, and then implemented in a way to replace a half million uniformed military with 150,000 or fewer ‘WD’ (‘wage, defense’) workers.

My second proposal is to consolidate all common functions into single, DoD level departments, to eliminate redundancy and make better use of resources.  For example: legal and JAG, law enforcement, procurement, logistics, training commands, IT and network operations, civil engineering, medical and hospitals (to include VA), exchanges and commissaries, housing, dependent support activities, financial and payroll, the list goes on.  Right now, these functions are fragmented and duplicated across the services.  Consolidate and centralize them, detail resources as needed.

Close most overseas bases, redeploy most overseas troops.  Establish a robust and active multilateral system of base access and deployment exercises.  Reconfigure the airline industry to serve as an auxiliary military deployment asset.  Rethink strategic sealift, consider land basing instead of sea basing.  Bolster the capabilities of the LHD-centered Marine Expeditionary Unity.

Rationalize strategic weapons and systems.

Design all weapons and systems for the 21st Century environment and threat.  Base future acquisitions on a formula that states cost as a bound constant and adjusts capability against threat to achieve the objective without increasing dollars.

Retain six aircraft carriers and associated airwings, lay up all remaining AOE support ships and substitute less costly supply ships and shore based support.  Scale Army and Air Force heavy forces similarly.  Emphasize force multipliers over brute dollar solutions.

I believe that combining these proposals, along with other worthy ideas, can lead us to retain a military capable of deterring, or if necessary defeating, any foreseeable coalition of adversaries.  At a cost of not more than half of what we spend today.

Today’s nice mess

This is worthy of Laurel and Hardy, it really is.  I don’t think the Nation has ever been in this situation before.  The financial debt we owe to China, and our reliance on both their continued willingness to buy our new debt as well as manufacture everything we need to survive, has been growing for years.  Mentioning that this is the nation that gave rise to the cry of “Free Tibet!” and gave us Tiananmen Square is almost irrelevant.  What is relevant is the new Pentagon assessment of Chinese military capabilities and intentions.

This is where Laurel and Hardy come in.  China can crash their own economy if they need to, they have a culture that can survive that hardship, and the totalitarian apparatus to ensure the survival of the regime.  If they see a sufficiently favorable exchange in doing so, then classical economic considerations are not going to guide their actions.

On the other hand, we and our allies in the West cannot survive the collapse of our economies.  This might be where Western structures, under siege since the days of Greece and Persia, finally exhausts itself.  Perhaps this is where the rising tide of individual freedom and civil rights reaches its high point.

If China continues on their present course then the military influences of China and the USA will soon overlap somewhere.  And then there will be trouble.  I heard somewhere (being journalistically irresponsible here in not checking sources) that China wants control of the South China Sea.  That would be a point of overlap, and it would certainly result in trouble.  I don’t know if the recent North Korean sinking of a South Korean destroyer provides any illumination, but we’re not that far afield here.  It could easily result in a three way, with China, the USA, and Japan all in the pond together.  Or a five way if you count in the two Koreas.

At this point, all this is conjecture.  But thoughtful conjecture is how we prepare to deal with looming eventualities.  We conjecture that a house may catch fire, so we establish a fire department.

I don’t yet have a plan for what to do about this.  But I’m thinking about it.  And if the Pentagon report didn’t scare you, then this should.  Ha!Ha!Ha!

On a related topic, since we moved home last November, we’ve had the worst mismatched assortment of pots and pans you can think of.  We’ve gone back and forth on how to outfit our kitchen, my approach was to by a piece at a time, to suit each specific cooking need.  And we wanted to avoid financing the Communist Chinese military machine as much as possible, so that source was not in contention for our business.  Then we found a 13 piece cookware set by Bialleti at Costco for the ridiculously low price of $90.  Very nicely designed pots and pans, useful sizes, it’s heavy gauge aluminum so conducts heat wonderfully, yet it is light enough for my wife to easily handle.  This is good stuff at a great price, not made in the USA, but the Italians really know their stuff when it comes to cooking and kitchen wares.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

The difficulties associated with civilian control of the military

This is a topic that’s not generally well understood.  Most folks have a slightly vague sense that the President is in charge, and the military obeys commands from the President.  Based on conversations I’ve had, after that point, things start to get a little fuzzy.  These things shouldn’t, but when people are involved, especially people who fancy themselves powerful, and thrive on power (like Secretaries, and Congressmen, and Admirals, and General) all this stuff becomes subject to negotiation, interpretation, and “presence”.

Confusing factor #1

The military maintains its own channels of presence in the debate, within and outside the civilian lines of authority through the Pentagon and on to the White House.  This works well for Congresspeople, who consider that they have a Constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight of the nation’s defense establishment.  It’s also a problematic structure in that it provides the semblance of an alternate administrative chain of command (if I can’t get what I want from my boss, I’ll go over here and pitch it to this guy who controls the money).  The overwhelming majority of military personnel are scrupulous about remaining non-political.  But every so often, information gets passed around corners, sometimes out of necessity (think in terms of Rumsfeld as SecDef) and sometimes “just because”.

Confusing factor #2

Very few elected or appointed federal officials have an intrinsic understanding of how this is supposed to work.  To really know how things should be, communications and chain of command-wise, requires having active military service, but not a full career, and active civilian government service.  Simply “being around” the military is guaranteed to provide the civilian with a wildly misleading sense of how the military actually functions.  And a military career alone will instill a highly developed style of “management by cliche and buzzword”, as well as a fantastically myopic view of the world.

Confusing factor #3

Fewer and fewer citizens are gaining firsthand experience of the military.  So the military is becoming an increasingly foreign presence within society.  This is how almost everyone wants it, except for the tiny handful of visionaries who understand that when civil society loses touch with its military, that military ceases to serve the values of the society that sustains it.  That military becomes a praetorian guard, separate and apart from society at large, at great cost to both sides.

Some words here can’t fix this, nothing really can except to re-institute the draft as a matter of national policy for the good of society and the military, career military be damned.  But I hope that everyone who reads this will see themselves in here somewhere.  Either as the credulous civilian, the career military person, or as one of those who straddles both worlds.  Sending people to Washington who are either enthralled or repulsed by the military is not a good, responsible course.

Just good for thought, as you shape your voting decisions.  G’day, all, and may God continue to bless America!