March 8, 2004
RUMMY'S REAL WAR:
Pentagon Plans Major Weapons Trade-Offs (Pamela Hess, Mar 05, 2004, UPI)
The Pentagon is changing the way it does business, again. But this time they mean it. Senior defense officials Friday unveiled a new process for determining military strategy and investment priorities, a complicated and bureaucratic process that -- if carried out to the full extent -- could bust so-called sacred cows all over the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved the long-talked about value of "joint war fighting" -- forces from different services fighting in concert, sometimes attacking the same targets at the same time. [...]
Under the new process, each weapon system will be judged not just on its own merits but on the value it provides relative to everything else in the military's inventory, and the cost it exacts to do so. The question will no longer be whether the $250 million F/A-22 Raptor is better than its predecessor, the F-15E.
It is whether the F/A-22's ability to evade enemy air defense radar and bomb targets inside denied territory is that much more valuable than all the other weapon systems that do similar things. It could be compared to a submarine that carries cruise missiles, or an aircraft carrier with a deck full of lower-cost fighters, or even a B-2 bomber.
Amidst the details--like war in Iraq--it's easy to lose track of the big picture of what the Administration is doing to revolutionize our defense posture. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 8, 2004 8:28 AM
I'm sure glad Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz didn't take the advice of Kristol and Kagan and resign. :)
Posted by: kevin whited at March 8, 2004 8:30 AMThough one might wonder whether the time to start "bust[ing]... sacred cows all over the Pentagon and on Capital Hill" is during an election year.
There are some very, very serious vested
interests out there....
(Would be rather interesting, though, if Kerry campaigns on a platform of protecting certain vested interests....)
Barry's got a point. Cutting any government program is almost impossible and if it is defense related then even conservatives don't like it because it can be spun as weak on defense. We'll have to see how far Rummy gets.
Posted by: AWW at March 8, 2004 9:01 AMWow; are they seriously going after the F22?
The current defense technology strategy is interesting; there seems to be a decision that we have a clear lead now, and can therefore afford to skip the next generation of weapons (Comanche, Crusader, F22?), jumping ahead to the one after that before anybody else even catches up to where we are now.
Posted by: Mike Earl at March 8, 2004 10:43 AMWe need to reassess our boots on the ground capability and the tenure of our reserve, N.G. forces related to call ups for wars of choice.
I think we need force enlargemnet before, say China, recognizes our vulnerabilities in this area. Specifically, we need a greater proportion of young men to total force than we seem to have now and greater numbers overall, at least until the War on Terror has been successfully concluded.
Posted by: genecis at March 8, 2004 11:21 AMI don't think so Genecis. OJ seems to think that "shock and awe" will do it. We can depend on the French to supply infantry.
Posted by: h-man at March 8, 2004 12:27 PMoj:
Supported by the Bush admin, but thought up by professional soldiers and sailors.
Mike Earl:
The Crusader was cancelled precisely because it wasn't "next gen"... It was the penultimate Cold War, Fulda Gap type of weapon.
genecis:
The US is in no way vulnerable to China, nor really, to any country, at this point.
China can't even take Taiwan, although they could destroy it.
Russia could still initiate MAD, but that's about it.
China could initiate China Assured Destruction, and lower real estate values on the West Coast...
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 8, 2004 5:09 PM"Wow; are they seriously going after the F22?"
The feeling is that the F35 is a much better value.
The F22 was designed to provide air superiority over the next generation of Soviet fighters. When they did not appear because the Soviet Union disappeared it was repurposed as the F/A22 and got even more expensive.
The F35 was designed to meet all 3 service criteria, including VTOL, and to meet rigorus price targets. There was a teriffic Nova show about the fly off process. Like the 22 it uses stealth technology. It is enough better than every thing else, that there is no point in spending a lot of money on F22's.
Unmanned Combat Aircraft (UCAV) are just around the corner, it doesn't make sense investing in too many manned platforms at this time. The JSF may be the last major manned combat aircraft that we build.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at March 10, 2004 10:07 PMI'm with genecis. I bet Bush wishes he had about 20 more battalions of light infantry right now.
The problem isn't defense any more, Michael, it's force projection. Unmanned combat vehicles aren't going to be of any value in, say, Haiti. Or even Syria after about 10 days.
If you're going to be an empire, you're going to have to have a forward foreign policy. Although Orrin dreams about it, you can't just go along wiping one country after another off the map, like Godzilla. Then where would the Republicans export our jobs to?
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 11, 2004 1:14 AM