Finding the hidden strategy in yet another non-strategic "strategy"

The Defense Department today issued an eight-page document (pdf) called "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense." If you haven't read it yet, you're not missing much. I'm just going to very briefly run down a couple of things that jumped out at me; to analyze it in any greater depth is a waste of time, as the document is basically a restatement of things we've seen before in the NSS, NMS, and QDR.

[DISCLAIMER: This is long. I thought it was going to be short, but it's long. Don't say I didn't warn you.]

Here's the bottom line up front, as people like to say in the Building: the ground forces are shrinking, and the Department has determined that rapid reconstitution of massed land forces if and when necessary is the spot where we're willing to accept the most risk. This is a perfectly reasonable decision—as Ex pointed out earlier, it's easier to reconstitute trained and ready land forces than it is to produce high-tech weapon systems (like submarines and fighter aircraft) out of thin air. He didn't mention this, but it's also true that the U.S. – a geographically isolated great power under little to no threat of invasion – will also have more lead time than it might otherwise when preparing for the sort of extended and manpower-intensive operations that require significant numbers of ground combat arms formations. All of which is to say: if we're going to fight a long war, we can accept the risk of taking a few months or even years to ramp up to the required personnel numbers.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying that it's easy, quick, or inexpensive to produce exceptionally-trained land forces of the sort we've deployed abroad over the last decade. What I'm saying is that it can be done when necessary, and that it's more difficult, more expensive, and in fact often more wasteful to keep more than 800,000 active component land forces humming with readiness and competency 24/7, 365 in a strategic environment where the requirement to deploy even a quarter of that number with minimal warning time in defense of a truly vital national interest is almost inconceivable. (The defense of Korea is a troubling exception.)

Yes, the credibility of U.S. deterrence could diminish if the rapidly-deployable force is downsized, and that has the potential to be destabilizing. But how rapidly can the U.S. military deploy huge numbers of ground forces to a contested theater in case of emergency even with current troop levels? And how many aggressive regimes out there are primarily deterred by the threat of an American invasion force rather than by the overwhelming destructive power of U.S. strike assets? The real deterrent power of U.S. joint forces comes from the absolute guarantee that American air and naval forces will wreak intolerable destruction on enemy maneuver elements as they operate in the field (supplemented by the quick arrival of U.S. rapid reaction forces and forward-deployed Marines), with later-arriving heavy U.S. land forces prepared to retake the intiative, finish the enemy, and hold ground. It may be stating the obvious, but this operational concept is far more threatened by constrained access than by insufficient Army force structure.

One particular line from the document is getting a lot of attention: U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations. COIN is dead, or something like that. (Spencer writes "kiss big counterinsurgencies goodbye.") Bollocks.

Read the sentence again: U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations. Now add ...in the steady-state/under normal circumstances. Because that's what we're talking about here: force structure in the steady-state. If and when the U.S. gets involved in a major, protracted conflict – of whatever type – you can throw all the sizing constructs and operational concepts you see here out the window. If, God forbid, American troops should be sent to "liberate" Iran and American policymakers determine that extended post-invasion stability operations are necessary, then we'll see stop-loss and deployment extensions and temporary end-strength increases and all the other contortions you've seen in Iraq (and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan). What this document is saying is not that such operations will no longer be considered, but rather that the steady-state, "peacetime" U.S. military will not be manned as if we expect to engage in them next month. Manned. Sized. Structured. You know, like the U.S. military in 1938 wasn't sized to simultaneously conduct major combat operations against the world's two most capable military powers in geographically distant theaters. That doesn't mean we couldn't do it; it just means we weren't allocating our national resources as if that was a preferred or expected course of action in the near term.

It's important, too, to make note of the other half of this: the elements of COIN/stability ops capability that aren't easily and rapidly reconstituted – specialized doctrine, equipment, concepts, and so on – are not being abandoned. Stability operations will still be a part of what U.S. forces train on, part of the "range of military operations" or the "full spectrum" or whichever fashionable phrase you want to use. The lessons of recent combat will still be institutionalized in doctrine and TTPs, not to mention in the thinking of those personnel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and the policymakers who prepared them and sent them there. The U.S. military isn't throwing out COIN—it's just normalizing capabilities and operational concepts associated with COIN as just several of the many things the force may be called upon to do.

Force structure is just force structure. Political leaders decide when, why, and how to employ military power—the Department and/or the services can discard unfashionable operational concepts if they so choose, and they can even constrain the president's near-term options by training and organizing in a particular fashion (especially with the aid of Congress, which makes the resourcing decisions), but the military doesn't get to foreclose certain policy choices. Nor does the president foreclose those options when he gives strategic guidance that impacts force structure decisions; he merely accepts risk, makes tradeoffs, and prioritizes based on expectations and preferences.

For me, the most important and informative statement in the document isn't under the COIN/stability operations heading, but rather in the elaboration of the deter and defeat aggression mission. Many readers will have noticed the obvious allusion to the allegedly discarded two-war planning construct, but there's a lot more to this. (The italics are in the original; I have added emphasis by underlining.)

As a nation with important interests in multiple regions, our forces must be capable of deterring and defeating aggression by an opportunistic adversary in one region even when our forces are committed to a large-scale operation elsewhere. Our planning envisages forces that are able to fully deny a capable state's aggressive objectives in one region by conducting a combined arms campaign across all domains – land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace. This includes being able to secure territory and populations and facilitate a transition to stable government on a small scale for a limited period using standing forces and, if necessary, for an extended period with mobilized forces. Even when U.S. forces are committed to a large-scale operation in one region, they will be capable of denying the objectives of – or of imposing unacceptable costs on – an opportunistic aggressor in a second region.

(Just as a quick aside from your frustrated and fusty Clausewitzian correspondent: isn't the imposition of unacceptable costs just another way of denying the enemy his overall objectives? Isn't that the very point of imposing unacceptable costs?)

Viewed alongside the pronouncement about stability operations and force sizing, this passage tells the reader a great deal about where the Department is headed. There's a later paragraph that hints at the same theme, identifying the need to examine the appropriate balance between active and reserve components in the development of future forces and programs. But the bit I've excerpted above really does tell us something new, something that's been hinted at but that we didn't already know: the administration has determined that active component forces should be structured and maintained to serve peacetime engagement, assistance, and deterrence functions and to conduct decisive, high-intensity, short-duration combat operations. Force structure necessary to conduct protracted operations of nearly any type – offensive, defensive, or stability operations – will not be immediately available—it will need to be mobilized from the reserve component or created wholesale through temporary end-strength increases. That's what the underlined bits are telling us, what with the slightly obfuscatory and non-standard "standing forces" and "mobilized forces" terminology: we can still do this extended, large-scale stabilization stuff if we need to, we just have to dip into the reserves.

And if we're honest with ourselves, we've been doing this for the last eight to ten years anyway! The difference is that the 2003 military (or the 2007 military, or the 2009 military, or the 2011 military) told the country yep, we've got this. The DoD Instruction (pdf) for stability operations (and before that, the Joint Operating Concept for Military Support to Stabilization, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction Operations) announced to the world that the joint force understood what was required of it and could do the job. Those documents didn't say they'd need an end-strength increase or three, stop-loss, longer deployments, compression of the standard rotational cycle, and ready access to an operational reserve to pull the whole thing off, but that's just picking nits, I suppose. What this 2012 guidance does is finally admit that the country does not – cannot – maintain sufficient wartime force structure indefinitely—that a peacetime military and a wartime military are not and cannot be the same size! We've lied to ourselves about that in the spirit of the endless, un-scoped Global War on Terror or Long War or Protracted Conflict, but we're finally coming to terms with that objective fact—one that the defense industry, the congressional armed services committees, and the recently cash-swollen Pentagon haven't wanted to concede.

And so we've come full-circle back to what I was talking about above: this isn't a renunciation of manpower-intensive types of missions, but merely a recognition of the fact that we don't need all that manpower on hair-trigger in the steady-state. Which is to say that if we decide we're going to occupy a country and install military governance, or that we're going to pacify a population in support of a partner government, or that we're going to pour a lot of resources into a post-conflict stabilization mission... we're going to have a little time to work up to it.

*****

One final addendum to a post that has (perhaps unsurprisingly) ended up 500% longer than I intended: why are people saying that this document sets priorities? Spencer writes that counterinsurgency is "ninth on a list of defense priorities," while Nora Bensahel says in a CNAS press release that the strategy review "prioritizes among the missions that U.S. forces will be expected to conduct." I don't see this. What I do see is a listing of the ten "primary missions of the U.S. armed forces," pretty much stripped straight out of last year's National Military Strategy. (Counter terrorism and irregular warfare; deter and defeat aggression; project power despite anti-access/area denial challenges; counter WMD; operate effectively in cyberspace and space; maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent; defend the homeland and provide support to civil authorities; provide a stabilizing presence; conduct stability and counterinsurgency operations; and conduct humanitarian, disaster relief, and other operations.) It's true that COIN is listed ninth, but I can't find any indication that they're in priority order. And then there's this mystifying caveat tacked on to the end of the list:

The aforementioned missions will largely determine the shape of the future Joint Force. The overall capacity of U.S. forces, however, will be based on the requirements that the following subset of missions demand: [CT/IW; deter and defeat; nuclear deterrence; homeland defense].

Uh, what? The shape of the force is going to be tailored to the whole mission set, but the "overall capacity of U.S. forces" is going to be based on these four missions (presumably the most vital)? Don't they have this exactly backwards? It would make sense to me to say that the overall capacity of the U.S. military must be sufficient to conduct activities across the entire range of missions, but that the force would be tailored (in "shape," by which I mean prioritization of various capabilities, types of forces, and so on) primarily to conduct the specified subset of that range.

In any event, I don't see any prioritization here. I see "this is the stuff we should expect to be able to do all the time, including in peacetime, and here's the stuff that we're going to want to do at other times, and that we may need to surge or grow or 'reverse' or modify or whatever to be able to accomplish if things don't go as we expect." And I suppose that's a sort of prioritization, but only so much as we can say that "win the wars we're in and try to avoid other wars" is a priority over "do things that are painful but sometimes necessary in contingencies."

Army suicide stats and possible implications for future force structure* (UPDATED)

Vice Chief of Staff of the Army GEN Peter Chiarelli briefed the press this morning on last year's Army suicide statistics. The transcript isn't up yet, but according to media reports, he was expected to reveal a decrease in the total number of suicides across the force in the Active Component [ed--updated] from 2009 to 2010. Unfortunately these statistics were also expected to show a dramatic spike in the number of Guardsmen and Reservists taking their own lives.

UPDATE: The transcript of GEN Chiarelli's remarks, which include more precise statistics, is now online. The total number of suicides across all components of the Army was up around 25% from calendar year 2009. On the active/reserve issue, the Vice observed that "the reality is, we are able to more effectively influence those soldiers serving on active duty and help mitigate the stressors affecting them."

This isn't an entirely novel trend, and I've seen a number of plausible explanations for why it might be so: distance from military mental health facilities, dislocation from the support structure developed in one's (civilian) personal life, financial pressure, and so on. One of the interesting things about the way the Army reports these statistics is that members of the Guard and Reserve who commit suicide while mobilized for active duty -- that is, those who are activated for combat service or combat support -- are counted among the active duty numbers. So what these figures indicate is that there's been an uptick in the number of part-time soldiers to kill themselves essentially while living as civilians. These are people who are largely inaccessible to the government's mental health network, and whose emotional health may be impacted by the pressures of daily life outside of uniform in ways that are difficult to distinguish from the negative effects of military service. This is a troubling reality for the Army, the DoD, and the VA, because it complicates efforts to develop effective policy solutions to help these individuals.

Mental health issues are and ought to be extremely important of their own right, but I think this development can help to inform some conclusions about future force structure. The way we organize the military is, pretty evidently, a budget question as much as an operational one. In this time of budgetary austerity, a number of people who oppose cuts to the defense topline have argued both to preserve expensive weapon systems and to maintain the presently inflated personnel end-strength of U.S. ground forces. Even more craven are those who insinuate that inflated military personnel costs -- pay, benefits, health care, and the like; what they refer to disparagingly as "defense entitlements" -- have damagingly starved modernization accounts of the cash needed to effectively defend the nation. And the worst of these argue that program cuts will cost lives, while altogether ignoring the reality that underfunded personnel accounts can do the same: that's when services are denied the resources they use to provide mental-health care, among other "entitlements," to their people.

This is an oversimplification, but we can boil defense spending down to a pretty simple equation. Let's have E represent end-strength; that is, the total number of people in the military. Let P be per-capita personnel costs -- an abstracted figure that represents how much is spent per servicemember on pay, benefits, and the like. O is for operations and maintenance, or the cost of doing business in combat zones and training areas. And then M is for modernization: cash spent on new weapon systems. We'll use D to signify the defense topline -- the overall budget.

D = M + O + (E x P)

For those of you who failed algebra, I'll restate that in narrative form: defense spending equals the sum of modernization plus operations added to end-strength times personnel costs. Again, this is a simplification, and each of these variables abstracts a number of other spending decisions that are nested within it: we could make the P smaller by cutting pay and benefits, or make the O smaller by having less wars. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume the O is stable thanks to ongoing conflicts that will be resourced at a certain level free of influence from other spending concerns. Now we have this:

D = M + (E x P)

If D is to remain stable -- i.e., we can't add anything to the topline -- there are certain concrete, unavoidable consequences to playing with one of these variables. If you want to spend more money on F-22s, for example (increase M), then the other half of the equation has to go down. And for that to happen, you have to either make E smaller -- cut personnel numbers -- or make P smaller by cutting benefits and pay. If you want to have a huge land army (increase E), then you have to either dramatically slash the amount you spend on weapon systems procurement or make more moderate cuts to modernization AND some reduction in benefits and pay.

By now you're wondering what this has got to do with suicide data, I'm sure. We're getting there, but let me first get to the "future force structure" part. As may seem obvious to you, if you have two armies of exactly the same size and Army A's end-strength is composed of 80% active-duty personnel and 20% guard and reserve personnel, while Army B has the exactly reversed composition, Army B will be cheaper. Reservists and Guardsmen receive fewer benefits, are paid for much less of the year, and don't spend nearly as much time as the Active Component undergoing expensive training rotations. Recognizing this fact, some commentators have concluded that the best force structure for America in a resource-constrained environment would be one that had a small, expensive core of professional soldiers with a much larger strategic reserve of cheaper citizen-soldiers, available for activation in times of national crisis. This surely sounds sensible on the surface, as it would allow for savings across the board. Even if one rejects this dramatic rethinking of the composition of our forces, there are other, less ambitious affordability plans that encourage “greater Reserve and Guard integration” – that is, building more essential capability into the organizations and personnel that cost less to maintain.

But the suicide data released today should remind us of the negative consequences of this approach. Reservists are not so easily managed by the government as soldiers on active duty, for the simple and obvious reason that military leadership does not have 24/7 access to reserve and guard personnel. This means not only that officers and NCOs aren't around to make sure Specialist Jones stays physically fit or keeps his hair short, but that they can't monitor his emotional health. In the case of demobilization after active service in combat zones, reservist vets will often be far from mental health counselors and other mechanisms for the services to monitor social re-integration and the impact of postwar stress. Add to that the fact that reservists now face the many challenges of "regular life" in the civilian world, piled atop the trauma and stress experienced in uniform, and it's perhaps unsurprising that part-time troops are more troubled. To take a purely practical view of this, that means the Guard and Reserves will often have a lower rate of what the Army calls Comprehensive Soldier Fitness... and by extension, combat readiness.

This has been a circuitous way of saying that while a reserves-centric force would be much, much cheaper, it comes with its own problems. (This is particularly true if you plan to continue mobilizing those Guard and Reserve units at an extremely high rate, as has been done over the last eight to ten years.) Among the most significant of these is this near-epidemic of mental health issues, which pose a threat not just to combat readiness and operational effectiveness, but to the government's very moral authority – born of the pledge to care for those who serve. Ask the families of private security contractors killed and wounded in support of U.S. combat missions about the pernicious effects of a drive to reduce personnel “overhead” by outsourcing security functions; reservists represent similar “overhead” savings, but is it a good idea to consider a similar “outsourcing” of the bulk of military operations to reservists and Guardsmen?

Of course, there are other solutions. You can shrink overall end-strength without shifting more responsibility to the reserves, but that means a re-imagining of the roles and missions of the military. I suppose you could keep sending 100K+ troops to foreign lands for one-year tours, maintaining that presence for years on end, even with a smaller force… but you’d better have some damned good incentive structure to keep people from jumping out when their enlistment is up. That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that’s possible when you feel compelled to choose a few dozen more air-superiority fighters over a better enlisted compensation package, for example. Recruiting and retention may not be much trouble with ~9% unemployment, but you can’t (and wouldn’t want to) bank on that one indefinitely, either.

Military personnel costs are the third rail of defense budgeting. If you don’t have the gall and the balls to argue that soldiers and Marines are gonna die without the EFV/FCS/F-22, or if you’re unwilling to accept a choice between systems’ survivability and troops’ quality of life, then you have to figure out a way to operate with a smaller force. Focusing on the reserves might not be the right answer.

*DISCLAIMER: I meant for this post to be just a couple of sentences about the lessons we should be learning about future force structure from the Army’s suicide data. There wasn’t a whole lot of planning or thought behind it, and it’s not built on a complex understanding either of personnel issues writ large or the way the Guard and Reserves organize, train, recruit, retain, or compensate their force. I am not an expert on either of these subjects; in fact, I probably don’t know much more about them than the average guy reading the newspaper. But this exercise took me off in an unexpected direction, and rather than edit down to something tight and persuasive, I thought I’d just leave this virtual stream-of-consciousness essay up as a discussion-starter. If you know more about this than me, tell me. If you think I’m an idiot, tell me. If you think my conclusions are ludicrous, and that suicide data should be considered for the troubling message it conveys about the psychological and emotional health of our force, and not for budget implications, then I’ll mostly agree with you but quietly hope that you understand the purpose of what I’m trying to do here.