Publications

The growth of foreign ballistic missile arsenals has received considerable attention in recent years. Less noticed has been the spread of increasingly capable cruise  missiles. The 2003 Iraq War showed that while the United States has made strides in protecting its forces against ballistic missiles, it has placed far less effort on addressing the threat posed by cruise missiles. While US and Kuwaiti Patriot theater ballistic missile defense (TBMD) batteries intercepted and destroyed all nine Iraqi ballistic missiles launched at military targets, they failed to detect or intercept any of the five HY-2/CSSC-3 Seersucker cruise missiles launched against Kuwait. One came close to hitting Camp Commando, the US Marine Corps headquarters in Kuwait, on the first day of the war. Another landed just outside a shopping mall in Kuwait City. The missiles also contributed to fratricide, causing the loss of two coalition aircraft and the death of three crewmembers.

The effectiveness of the US military depends critically on its ability to attract and retain quality military personnel. As demonstrated by its performance in recent conflicts, the quality of the US military is today very high. Maintaining such a force in the future must be a central goal of US defense planning. Attracting and retaining sufficient numbers of personnel, with the right talents, skills and levels of experience, will require providing competitive compensation packages. This means not only providing adequate levels of compensation, but providing the right mix of pay and other benefits, and providing them through a flexible and adaptive personnel management structure.

A revolution in war has been underway for nearly three decades. Beginning in the mid–1970s, in an effort to compensate for the numerical superiority of Warsaw Pact forces, the US military sought to exploit a number of asymmetric  technological advantages. Despite the demise of the threat for which these “offset”  capabilities were created, they have continued to be developed, and have been leveraged to great effect in wars ranging from Desert Storm to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The Army’s plan for “Unit-Focused Stabilization”—organizing soldiers into combat units that would remain intact for about three years at a time—will implement an approach to personnel management that has been ardently promoted for decades both by some of the Service’s most distinguished general officers and by some of its most prominent internal critics. This approach, which is generally referred to as “unit manning,” marks a sharp departure from the Army’s practice during most of the 20th century. In the past, personnel were routinely moved in and out of combat units, even during major wars in Vietnam and Korea, according to the dictates of a system focused on developing the careers of individual soldiers by moving them though a variety of assignments rather than on maximizing the organizational stability of units.

The US Air Force, like the Department of Defense (DoD) more generally, appears to face a significant mismatch between the cost of its plans and the level of funding likely to be available to pay for those plans over the long run. This mismatch is one of the central national security issues that policymakers will have to confront, manage and resolve in coming years. Fortunately, there are a range of alternative options for the Air Force that would be significantly more affordable than the current plan and might still meet US national security requirements.

A thorough review of the forces impelling current naval transformation efforts, the arguments for and against small combatants made during the Streetfighter debates, the Navy’s broader transformation plans, the potential role of small combatants in the 21st century “Assured Access Navy,” as well as the design goals for the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship leads to the following proposition: small network combatants have an important role to play in 21st century naval warfare, and the reconfigurable Littoral Combat Ship may make important warfighting contributions as part of the Navy’s 21st century “Total Force Battle Network” (TFBN).