Defense Tech: Roles and Missions Review Underway


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Edited by Christian Lowe \| Contact

Roles and Missions Review Underway

800px-The_Pentagon_US_Department_of_Defense_building.jpg

It was 1994 when the Pentagon last engaged in a seminal examination of what it does, how it does it and why. In Pentagon-speak these issues are known in a neat shorthand as "roles and missions."

At a Pentagon briefing today, two senior defense officials discussed how they will approach the new roles and missions work, outlining the seven main areas of focus. The one issue Congress told the Pentagon to study is whether there are unnecessary duplications of capabilities among and between the four services and other arms of the Pentagon. In addition, the officials told reporters that unmanned aircraft systems, intra-theater lift, cyber war, irregular warfare, Pentagon governance issues, and DoD’s roles and missions in the interagency world.

Note that a senior defense official said that the analysis will be done within existing budget constraints. A senior military officer said that the combatant commanders will have a great deal of input during this effort because the department is looking at how the services and other agencies can “work better together” rather than as a food fight between services for resources and responsibilities. For example, Strategic Command will be a key player in the analysis done about cyber warfare and Special Operations Command will play a major role in the look at irregular warfare.

One of the sleeper areas may turn out to be the look at interagency roles. The senior defense official said the military has learned a great deal about how effectively it works with the other parts of the government since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, noting that the current structure was developed during the Cold War and may need changing.

Congress ordered the Pentagon to do this roles and missions analysis in its 2008 Defense Authorization Act. In addition to the long-standing Quadrennial Defense Review, Congress said that the military should analyze its roles and missions in time for the 2010 budget submission. That would bring it in about a year before the next QDR. Henceforth, the military will perform a roles and missions analysis before each QDR.

The last stab at this sort of thing was the Commission on Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces. The commission took a year to deliver its final report, “Directions for Defense,” to the nation, issuing it in May 1995.

-- Colin Clark

Comments

Test

Posted by: Cole at May 14, 2008 03:26 PM

As long as they throw out the Key West agreements of 1948, go ahead!

Posted by: Paul Zimmerli at May 14, 2008 11:40 AM

Seems like the two schools of thought that I seem to be seing are:
1)Consolidate similar missions/roles under the same service
2)Consolidate services

Taking and dismissing number 2 first, can't ever envision having one giant National Defense Force. Too much for one service to handle.

Wild outside-the-box thinking would say that all ground combat could be under the Army. All air component combat could be under the Air Force. All sea-component (not including Marines) could be under the Navy, to include the Coast Guard.

The problem with that line of thinking is that the Navy takes better care of Marine air and ground requirements when they are part of the Navy. If the Air Force was responsible for Naval aviation it would be "uncomfortable" aboard carriers just as it would be if the Air Force had control of land-based and sea-based air defense systems.

As for UAVs, there is something dead wrong about expecting to control UAVs from the United States via satellite. Aside from bandwidth shortage and satellite dependency problems if you start doing that on a large scale, an Airman flying combat missions from a stateside location is not sharing the same level of local intelligence and shared sense of urgency/risk as a UAV controller in theater or aboard a ship. There is something to be said about UAVs being owned by a local commander who can instantly shape UAV information requirements and hand them off to his UAVs more rapidly...dynamically retasking in a matter of minutes via land line in some cases.

I think the Army could take good care of the Marines in terms of budget and fighting mentality...just a different way of getting to war.

Believe you could make a strong argument that many of the 15 FCS Brigades could go on LHA-6 and the EFV and LAV-replacement could be eliminated. It seems funny that the Marines seem to accept less armor in the form of a LAV/EFV yet the Army thinks a better-protected FCS manned ground vehicles have too little armor...

But what about all the LHA-6 still under the funding control of the Navy and the carrier-based fixed wing under the newly reformed Air Force?

The idea that consolidating roles and missions solves every problem is ludicrous. Anybody in Army Aviation knows that the mentality of a CH-47 pilot differs from an Apache pilot who is a different animal than a Kiowa or UH-60 pilot. If it comes down to spending big bucks on an Apache replacement or a heavy lift rotorcraft, which one do you think would be more likely to be funded? We see that in the C-17 vs F-22 battle as well. About the same cost, yet despite clear evidence to the contrary, the USAF would argue all day long that they need 380 F-22s while a scant 200 C-17s is more than sufficient. What about light infantry vs. mechanized infantry...two totally distinct worlds. Rocket artillery vs tube artillery? I'm sure it is the same in the Navy between surface ships, subs, and carriers...not to mention carrier aviators. Different biases based on background lead to different funding priorities.

It was quite a contrast seeing Naval and Marine aviators on the USS Nimitz in the just completed min-series on PBS..."Carrier." A 6-month trip to the Gulf and not a single bomb dropped in anger....just gotta wonder what those 5,000 Sailors could have done on the ground had they been 5,000 members of an Army or Marine brigade combat team.

But at the same time, it is indisputable that Carriers are required for Pacific theater conflicts as a means of getting future F-35s into the fight from closer ranges than land-basing may offer....but could the Air Force run Naval aviation and would they accept having fewer land-based assets? I really don't believe anyone could justify the Air Force having 1760 F-35As to go along with an equally potent and closer-to-the-action Carrier fleet of F-35s.

In addition, nobody seems to acknowledge that we are running out of gas to run all these planes and fuel all these MRAP-sized vehicles. A current Armed Forces Journal article cites that aircraft represent 73% of all DoD fuel-usage with ground vehicles accounting for a scant 15%. So even in the most vivid imagination of the USAF/Naval and Marine Aviation/Army Aviation that they could win all future wars from the air...bottom line is we won't have the fuel to do it..or won't be able to afford the fuel to fly. A ground vehicle can run on a hybrid-electric engine that is part fuel cell. Try doing that with an aircraft.....

So the current trend of fewer more capable aircraft works....because that is all we will have the fuel for in the future....

Posted by: Cole at May 12, 2008 04:40 PM

The one thing that both Russia & China does that we don't seem to be doing is that they DO NOT throw away or scrap their old weapons.China wraps her old fighter aircraft up & stores them in caves & are we really sure that Russia has scrapped her old ships,submarines,fighters,& tanks? You only need a certain quantity of quality weapons & a mass quantity of "shitty" weapons,that if your "quality" weapons defeat your enemy's,your "shitty" ones will have nothing to stop them from overrunning their enemy.China,& Asia in general,has the capacity to raise 200,000,000 troops.How many of that number would actually be combat troops is unknown,but if they have a reserve number of that many troops,versus us only being able to raise maybe 2,000,000,in a weapons of mass destruction nuclear slug fest,chances are they'll out last us due to attrition.having just under 200 F-22s will still have their hands full if our enemy has say 22,000 fighter jets,with a mixture of high end Su-27,MiG-31,& MiG-29 derivatives & upgrades & lower end MiG-25,MiG-23/27,MiG-21 space fillers.Our F-22s may be great,but they are not miracle workers.
As far as the whiz bang sci-fi weapons go(Tesla Howitzers,scalar electro-magnetic weaponry,that is if you believe such weaponry exists & performs as advertised),from what I hear,Russia has them,from as far back as the 1950s,& thus can afford to have shitty conventional weapons,because their "sci-fi" weapons trumps all.We put "quality(which is questionable anyway,judging by our current acquisition problems with the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle,Littoral Combat Ship,DD-21 Zumwalt Destroyer,& Coast Guard Cutter)" before quantity.The Russians & Chinese do not need all of their weapons to be quality,just enough.
I'm reminded of a line from the movie "Zulu Dawn," where one British Soldier mentions about the difference between their "superior" weapons versus the Zulus(who greatly outnumbered them,& defeated the British,by the way).It goes,"bullets run out,spears don't." I bet,as long as they didn't have body armor,I could defeat an enemy armed with rifles & other automatic weapons,just by using multiple bows & arrows.If I had proper concealment,& the enemy didn't have whiz bang stuff like night vision,or if I had bow & arrows(I mean the good stuff,the modern bow & arrows,not prehistoric arrow heads) AND night vision,I could with the proper tactics,defeat guns.

Posted by: Roy Smith at May 11, 2008 10:21 PM

Get rid of the service secretaries along with each service department, and consolidate all civilian control to the DoD. Everyone reports to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, with no middle-man.

That's the way it should be.

Posted by: G at May 10, 2008 09:13 PM

Enough with the reviews, let get to work, first the DOD should be abolished, its too big and unwilling to change, second too many chiefs, not enough indians. Third the review should be done by Military and experts outside the beltway who don't have an interest in Military Defense companies, or functions. Finally, the Miitary has to grow up and begin to serve the interests of the Country over there individual Services. If they can't do that i propose that the USAF, USA, USN and Married be disbanded and the United States Defense Force be institued. There mission would be to defense the Constitution of the US over those of the Political master. I'm wishing without hope that would happen.

Posted by: Chuck at May 10, 2008 09:26 AM

Not implying anything here, but does it seem appropriate that the same agencies that are doing what they do now are going to examine themselves? I don't know if its realistic or practical, but wouldn't having a completely objective entity looking at these things make more sense?

Posted by: Shamus62 at May 9, 2008 11:32 PM

The Pentagon has no choice about when to do this. Congress wrote it into law. As to whether the last review accomplished anything, there are a number of articles and books that discuss this. A recent book by Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, Finding the Target, is not very complimentary about what the last review did. But three experienced Pentagon watchers I've spoken with in the last few days say this is actually a vry good time to do such a review. Defense Secretary Gates is an honest man and unlikely to try and skew the results too much to fit administration policy. Also, the next administration won't be in a fit state to launch such a review for at least six months after taking office. And there is, all three said, MUCH room for improvement.

Posted by: Colin Clark at May 9, 2008 06:05 PM

I agree; why not wait until the new administration?

Posted by: Trial Lawyer at May 9, 2008 03:25 PM

Did they accomplish anything in that 1995 review?

Posted by: TB at May 9, 2008 12:25 PM

This is long overdue but it is hard to see why it is best to do this in the waning days of a lame duck's Presidential administration, rather than at the start of the administration of a newly elected President who would then buy in while he or she has the political capital, ability and an incentive to make major changes.

Posted by: ohwilleke at May 9, 2008 11:41 AM

Roles and Missions Review Underway

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