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Beyond the Two-MTW Posture

Dr. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr.
Executive Director

Introduction

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it is a great honor to appear before you today to discuss our future defense posture.

We face a challenge that is arguably unprecedented in the nation's history: the need to transform our armed forces into a very different kind of military from that which exists today, while at the same time sustaining the military's ability to play a very active role in supporting US near-term efforts to preserve global stability.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has enjoyed a period of military dominance that, with the exception of the brief period at the end of World War II, is unsurpassed in our country's history. This has given America an opportunity presented to few countries in the course of recorded history: to lead the way in creating the conditions for a long peace. However, the US military will not likely sustain its current advantages by a business-as-usual approach to defense planning.

We must move beyond the two-major theater war (MTW) posture and begin the process of transforming the American military to deal with the challenges of a new era. But what factors should inform our thinking about how to proceed? The following four are suggested as a guide:

·       First, why does the world's best military need to begin a process of transforming itself?

·       Second, what kind of defense transformation is required? What do we want the American military to do in support of our national security strategy? If the "Desert Storm" metric is increasingly irrelevant, for what kind of contingencies should they prepare? What potential areas of competitive advantage should be developed?

·       Third, what process is being put in place to enable such a transformation? What kind of defense program should support transformation?

·       Fourth, are we apportioning limited defense resources realistically in support of the new defense strategy?

In this period of major geopolitical and military-technical change, two strategic metrics will likely dominate-maintaining regional stability and preserving freedom of action.

The Need for Transformation

The United States must move beyond the current dominant strategic metric-the QDR's two-major theater war posture. The two-MTW posture is rooted in our Desert Storm experience-a conflict that is now more than a decade old, one that is becoming increasingly irrelevant as a means for sizing and shaping our forces and modernization efforts. We cannot expect that future adversaries will pose threats similar to those presented by the rogue states of the early 1990s, let alone the Cold War era. The two-MTW posture:

·       Orients current US force requirements far too heavily on our Gulf War force requirements, even though significant advances have been made in our force capabilities over the last decade;

·       Optimizes the US military's approach to force sizing and modernization around a single-point future that is highly unlikely to occur (let alone occur in two instances in overlapping time frames), both because competent future adversaries can be expected to avoid contingencies that resemble Desert Storm, and because they will increasingly have the means to do so;

·       Assumes that adversaries will commit blatant acts of aggression that trigger an immediate full-scale US military response, when a strong case can be made that they will pursue more ambiguous forms of aggression to avoid triggering such a response; and

·       Assumes little restraint (with the exception of the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)) on the employment of US military power, when a strong case can be made that future conflicts are likely to be limited.

Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that the principal future challenges to our security will be different in scale, location and form from those that embody the two-MTW force-sizing metric.

Scale

Future military competitions could be capable of generating military capability on a far greater scale than the rogue states of today. Similarly, stability operation requirements could be far more formidable than those called for in recent contingencies such as Haiti, Somalia and Rwanda.

The rise of great regional powers will make maintaining a favorable balance of power along the "arc of instability" that runs from the global economy's energy center in the Central Asia-Persian Gulf region, through South and Southeast Asia, and up into to East Asia a much more complex and demanding enterprise than optimizing our force posture for latter-day Desert Storms that will likely never come. Members of the international community must be encouraged to achieve their ambitions peacefully, through internationally accepted norms. They must be dissuaded from believing that the use of force can be an effective means for achieving their ambitions. This condition can best be achieved by the United States and like-minded states cooperating to maintain the current favorable military balance.

Nor can we ignore the challenges posed by the risk of large-state failure in regions of vital interest to the United States. The challenge posed by the failure of states such as Indonesia, Pakistan or Russia would dwarf in scale and complexity our current stability operations. At the same time, it would be far more difficult for us to ignore the consequences of such state failure than in the many cases where we have intervened in recent years. Moreover, only the United States has the capability to lead a military intervention to restore stability under such circumstances.

Our defense posture must take into account the potential requirement to increase the scale of our defense effort, and our ability to draw upon our defense industrial base and our human resource base to support and sustain such an increase.

Location

Relative to the Cold War era, the potential for instability and conflict is likely to be far greater along the crescent arc running from Central Asia, through the Persian Gulf and South Asia, and up through Southeast Asia to East Asia, than it is in Central Europe. Relative to the dominance exercised by Central Europe in Cold War defense planning, or its close derivatives in the form of the two-MTW posture, the new geography of instability is far more maritime in its character. Many key allied or friendly states (Japan, Australia, Taiwan) are islands[1] nations along the Asian periphery. Relative to Central Europe, the distances encompassing each of these regions are enormous. Hence, the demands placed on the range of our systems and capabilities in dealing with contingencies along this arc are likely to be much greater than was the case during the Cold War era or under the two-MTW posture.

Form

Power Projection

At its core, the two-MTW posture is about power projection. Its focal point is our Gulf War experience. Yet the Gulf War convinced any rational adversary of the United States that refighting that conflict, even in a substantially modified form, would be disastrous to them. The military revolution, with its diffusion of access to space, missiles, precision guidance, and weapons of mass destruction (and disruption), is-and will continue-to enable would-be adversaries to present threats in a range of different forms than those which were encountered by US forces in the Gulf War.

Among the challenges we are likely to encounter (indeed, we encounter most of them in nascent form today) are:

·       Deploying, operating and sustaining forces in an anti-access environment;

·       Establishing sea control over the littoral in an area-denial environment;

·       Controlling space and denying adversaries the use of space;

·       Defeating new forms of maritime blockade and commerce raiding that meld missile forces and space-based reconnaissance forces with more traditional forms of maritime power (e.g., mines, submarines, land-based aviation);

·       Controlling large urban area against irregular forces;

·       Evicting enemy forces from urban areas and other forms of complex terrain (e.g., jungles, mountains); and

·       Defending against a range of WMD and information warfare (IW) attacks on our allies and on our forward-deployed forces.

Homeland Defense

Our ability to meet these new challenges will, to a great extent, also depend upon our ability to defend effectively our homeland against a range of challenges, principal among them:

·       Ballistic and cruise missile attack employing WMD;

·       Covert employment of weapons of mass destruction; and

·       Overt and covert employment of information warfare.

Ambiguous Aggression and Limited War

The form in which the challenges to our security will come seems likely to change in still other ways from that posited by the two-MTW posture. As noted above (and discussed below), aggression will likely be more ambiguous and our response options more limited than we experienced in the Gulf War.

What Kind of Transformation?

Maintaining Regional Stability: Does the United States enjoy a favorable military balance in key regions (i.e., East and South Asia, the Middle East, Europe) and in key functional areas of the military competition (e.g., power projection, strategic (i.e., nuclear, precision and electronic) strike, space, and information warfare)? Does the current and projected (out to 2015-2020) balance enable us the US military to:

·       Dissuade would-be adversaries from engaging in military competitions with the United States?

·       Deter those adversaries who have undertaken to compete with us militarily from using coercion or force to achieve their political objectives?

·       Defeat adversary aggression in its various forms-covert, ambiguous and overt-at acceptable cost and with an acceptable war termination end state?

Dissuasion

Ideally, our defense posture would dissuade potential competitors from entering into competitions with us in key warfare areas, both existing and emerging. The benefits of avoiding such competitions are obvious. To identify requirements for dissuasion, key warfare areas would need to be evaluated across a representative range of plausible scenarios.

We would like a defense posture that created in the minds of would-be competitors the belief that attempts to prevail in the new forms of military competition would prove fruitless. We also desire a defense posture that discourages an adversary from attempting to compromise US dominance in existing key warfare areas to unacceptable levels. Among the key existing warfare areas are mechanized air-land combat; sea control of the open ocean (i.e., waters beyond straits, narrows, and the general littoral regions); air superiority against manned air forces and integrated ground air defenses; and flexible nuclear strike.

Dissuading competition in existing forms of key military competition will likely be easier than dissuading competition in emerging areas of key military competition, for two reasons:

·       First, the US lead in established key forms of military competition is such that it almost certainly cannot be overcome through symmetrical competition, even over the course of several decades

·       Second, other emerging areas of military competition are available which promise to offset US advantages in existing dominant forms of military competition and which conform more closely to competitor human and material resource limitations.

Coercion

The most attractive means for hostile future competitors to achieve their aims is likely to be through coercion, rather than through aggression. The ability to achieve victory without fighting is, in the eyes of many military cultures, the acme of strategic art. The threat of coercion is not new. During the Cold War we worried over the potential "Finlandization" of our European allies, and the Soviet Union's potential to exploit "fault lines" in the NATO alliance. Coercion may not yield overt dominance; however, for those adversaries willing to accept regional hegemony in lieu of conquest, coercion offers the prospect of achieving the better part of their objectives at a far lower cost, and at far lower risk, than does aggression.

For example, if:

·       The island states of East Asia-Japan, Korea and Taiwan-were to come to believe that China had the wherewithal to deny them access to the seas, it could lead them to modify their security policies to conform to Chinese desires.

·       Iran were to convince the Persian Gulf oil states that it could effectively close the Strait of Hormuz for a protracted period, and hold key oil and natural gas facilities at risk of destruction through missile attack, Teheran might well effect major concessions from those states as a consequence of its coercive strategy.

Ambiguous/Low-Threshold Aggression

The presumption in current (and anticipated) US military concepts of operation is that American forces will need to deploy and strike rapidly. In cases of the clear-cut aggression, as assumed in the two-MTW posture, this may be both politically and militarily feasible. However, because the US military is so dominant, enemies will almost certainly attempt to frustrate the United States' ability to operate in this manner. One path to achieve this objective is military in nature (e.g., fielding anti-access/area-denial forces, employing highly dispersed forces, etc.). Another path is political in nature-the use of ambiguous forms of aggression. Any US defense strategy needs to take both of these enemy asymmetric strategies into account.

Examples of attempts at ambiguous aggression or coercion might include, but not necessarily be limited to:

·       A blockade or quarantine by an adversary of a friendly state or of an important choke point, involving a dispute over sovereignty (e.g., Iranian use of dispersed missile forces to hold gulf state oil facilities at risk, combined with harassment of oil shipments moving through the Strait of Hormuz, while deploying antiship mines in the Gulf and at the Strait);

·       Information warfare attacks on the United States' (or an ally's) national information infrastructure that could not be definitively traced and tagged as emanating from a national command authority;

·       Chemical, biological or radiological attacks on the United States homeland (or the homeland of an ally) that cannot be unambiguously linked to a state or group;

·       A campaign to disable US satellites through means that prove difficult to trace (e.g., surreptitiously deployed space-control micro satellites); or

·       The use of commercial cargo craft in littoral waters, armed with high-speed antiship cruise missiles, to threaten US warships' ability to maintain littoral commerce during stability operations.

There is reason to believe that such forms of aggression could be successful, especially in cases of limited warfare, which seem likely to dominate future conflicts.

War Termination

Although the United States stands to remain the world's dominant military power over the foreseeable future, it does not necessarily follow that those conflicts in which it becomes engaged will be pursued to something approaching total victory. Indeed, for nearly three score years since the end of World War II, America's wars have been limited conflicts, in places like Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. This Age of Limited War seems likely to persist, for both political and military reasons:

·       Militarily, the spread of weapons of mass destruction-particularly nuclear weapons-will likely raise, perhaps dramatically, the potential costs associated with attacking an enemy's homeland or threatening the overthrow of its regime. The threat to US forces in the region and to local allied states could be such that victory will be confined to reversing the effects of aggression. Moreover, the US homeland seems likely to come under greater threat of attack, either from missiles, from the covert introduction of chemical, biological or radiological weapons, or from the employment of information warfare. If US defensive measures prove incapable of reducing the cost from such attacks to acceptable levels, the price of maintaining America's homeland sanctuary may be according the enemy homeland equivalent status.

·       Politically, ambiguous forms of aggression, to include proxy wars, could limit the support of the US public or its allies for dealing directly and decisively with the source of aggression. The conflict also may remain limited if either the United States or its allies perceive that the cost of achieving total victory (e.g., "unconditional surrender," regime removal, occupation of the aggressor state, war crimes trials of enemy leaders) exceeds the prospective benefits. This may be true especially if it is perceived that the aggressor's aims and means were limited, in which case not only would the costs appear disproportionately high, but also the degree of punishment may seem to be excessive when compared to the offense to the peace.

This raises the question of determining what metrics might be employed to establish the conditions for victory in a limited war environment. Two suggest themselves:

·       Restoration of the Status-Quo Ante: Over the last half century, this has meant reversing the gains achieved by the aggressor (e.g., reestablishing the 38^th parallel as the border between the two Koreas; evicting Iraqi forces from Kuwait).

·       Disarming the Aggressor: This objective would be more ambitious than merely restoring the status-quo ante, in that it would also seek to retard the aggressor's ability to generate the military capability necessary to again pose a significant threat to the international order for some extended period of time.

Actions taken by US forces during the war-termination phase of a conflict must take into account their long-term political implications. As we saw in Desert Storm, actions taken against what appears to be a defeated and "defenseless" enemy may risk undermining domestic public support here at home, and weakening ally cohesion. Furthermore, as the world discovered in the wake of Germany's forced disarmament in 1919, even in cases where an enemy is defeated and the existing regime overthrown, steps taken to insure that the enemy's military recovery will be protracted may actually increase the risk that he will seek to resume the conflict at a later date.

Preserving Freedom of Action

The US military has enjoyed a long history of playing "away games," thanks to our country's relative geographic insularity. This advantage still remains; however, the death of distance in the form of the proliferation of ballistic and cruise missiles, WMD and IW will likely find the United States homeland under increasing risk from a great variety of threats posed by a greater range of actors than at any time in its history. Consequently, the future effectiveness of US power-projection forces seems likely to be increasingly linked to the ability to keep the damage that can be inflicted on the US homeland within acceptable limits. Defining these limits will be an important element of any new defense strategy.

In any event, the cost of projecting power is likely to increase. This argues for exploiting our asymmetric advantages (i.e., fielding more effective military forces than those we have at present, for the same cost), increasing our defense estimates and relying more heavily on our allies.

Exploiting US Asymmetric Advantages

Just as our adversaries can be expected to exploit rapidly advancing technologies for military advantage, there are opportunities for the US military to employ these same technologies in more advanced ways to sustain their competitive advantage. Put another way, the goal is for the US military to sustain its competitive advantage in existing and emerging forms of warfare so as to preserve, along with its allies, global peace. The following are areas of prospective US asymmetric advantage.

·       Integrated and Distributed Force Deployment, Sustainment and Combat. The United States military has the potential to conduct highly distributed, yet highly networked, military operations. Such operations would move beyond combined arms operations and systems integration to truly integrated joint operations and architecture integration (the system of systems). Realizing this potential asymmetric advantage would do much to neutralize the anti-access and area-denial threats that are likely to grow more virulent over time as competitor access to space and missiles grows.

·       Extended-Range Precision Strike. All of the Services have the potential to shift the focus of their engagement to place greater emphasis on seeing deep and shooting deep. The US military is already moving in this direction. Yet, with respect to investment, relatively short-range platforms still dominate over extended-range systems, precision munitions and extended-range C4ISR. Exploiting this potential advantage could do much to neutralize the anti-access and area-denial threats.

·       Information Warfare. Like other new forms of warfare that have emerged over the last century (e.g., strategic submarine blockade; strategic aerial bombardment), information warfare is fraught with uncertainty. However, the US military cannot afford to be on the losing end of the IW competition. It needs to exploit the nation's advantage as the world's leader in information technologies and architectures to exploit any potential advantage that will come in this new warfare area.

·       Space. The United States is the world's leader in exploiting space for military purposes. The US military is also the world's only military with the mission and the capability to project power over great distances and extended time periods. As US forces become more expeditionary and as forward base access becomes more problematic, we will need to exploit our asymmetric advantage in space, both to enhance the effectiveness of US forces and also to reduce our vulnerability by denying enemy anti-access/area-denial forces in-theater targets.

·       Strategic Strike. The United States military is capable of moving beyond near-total reliance on nuclear weapons for prompt, effective, strategic strike operations. Precision munitions have a significant substitution potential with respect to nuclear weapons. Various forms of electronic attack (i.e., IW strikes, conventionally generated EMP and HPM strikes) may also possess a significant substitution potential. Such weapons are far more "useable" than nuclear weapons, and may better deter an enemy's attempts at coercion or aggression. They can enable us to reduce the size of our nuclear arsenal (while encouraging others to follow suit).

·       Diversity and Complexity. The United States has the world's largest economy, the world's largest defense budget and the world's most advanced defense and commercial industrial base. Consequently, the United States has the potential to produce a far greater range of military capabilities, and to combine these capabilities in more complex combinations, than any other military. This combination of diversity and complexity offers the US military an important hedge against an uncertain future and the potential of surprise. If pursued, such a procurement strategy also vastly complicates would-be adversaries planning problems. At present, we are not fully exploiting this advantage; rather, we are focusing on producing relatively few capabilities in relatively large quantities.

·       Time-Based Competition. The US military needs to develop an asymmetric advantage in time-based competition. Our ability to dissuade competition will reside, to a significant extent, upon our ability to convince would-be adversaries that we can offset very quickly any attempt on their part to engage in a competition that would yield a competitive advantage. Our ability to deter competitors from coercion or aggression will likely, in large part, be a function of our ability to field relatively quickly those capabilities that will negate their threat. It also will depend on our ability to quickly enhance the military capabilities of the friendly states that comprise future "coalitions of the willing."

At the operational level, a key competition will be identifying, tracking and engaging, often at extended-ranges, enemy critical mobile targets. This is very much a time-based competition. As we continue our shift away from a forward-deployed Cold War force to more of an expeditionary force, the ability to deploy rapidly to trouble spots may be a key factor in our ability to discourage coercion and blunt aggression.

Finally, effective homeland defense is likely to be very much a function of the US military's ability to compete effectively based on time. Effective intercept of ballistic missiles demands a highly compressed engagement cycle. The ability to limit the damage of covert employment of chemical, biological or radiological agents is highly dependent upon prompt identification and remediation. Similarly, prompt detection and remediation of various forms of IW is critical to damage limitation.

Allies

Relative to the Cold War, America's alliances are likely to be less durable and its allies less reliable. Yet the likely increase in the scale of competition and the need to divert more resources to homeland defense imply that we will likely need allies more in the years to come than in the decade just past. Thus two important metrics for our defense planning will likely be the extent to which we can get allies to take on a greater role in providing for our common defense (e.g., stability operations; ground defense of South Korea; ground defense of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia), and our ability to increase rapidly the military capabilities of allies under direct threat of coercion or aggression.

Basing

The United States will need to develop a new set of metrics for evaluating its global basing structure. The basing structure, as it currently stands, is an artifact of our experience in World War II and, to a lesser extent, the Cold War. As noted above, the locus of principal military competition is shifting away from Europe and toward the South-East Asia arc. Friends and allies have proven reluctant in some instances to provide base access for US military operations (e.g., Saudi Arabia and Turkey for Operation Desert Fox; Greece for Allied Force). The anti-access threat will almost certainly drive up the cost associated with use of forward bases.

The United States needs to develop a global basing strategy that takes into account these major geopolitical and military-technical developments. Among the principal metrics for our global basing structure should be its ability to support US military efforts to dissuade competition, discourage coercion and defeat aggression. Other metrics might include geographic fit and ability to function in an anti-access/area-denial environment. With respect to the latter, various basing schemes should be explored, to include sanctuary bases, distributed bases, peripheral bases, rapid-base development; mobile bases; base export (e.g., to space or long-range assets to CONUS); and combinations thereof.

Human Resources and the Industrial Base

Our defense posture should be evaluated in terms of two additional metrics. Both affect the ability to sustain warfighting capabilities.

Manning the Force: There is some doubt as to the volunteer force's ability to sustain significant losses in an extended conflict and regenerate itself so as to prevail. We need to identify the extent to which the US military may be fielding a "crystal lattice" force-beautiful to behold, but which cannot be risked, owing to structural limitations on DoD's long-term ability to recruit and retain the required human resources. To the extent that this challenge exists, progression toward unmanned/lesser manned systems (i.e., satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs), missiles vice aircraft, rocket artillery vice tanks, etc.) could take on far greater importance.

Industrial Base Transformation: To exploit the US asymmetric advantage in complexity and diversity, the industrial base will need to produce new systems/capabilities in greater quantities. Industry will also need to master the integration of systems architectures that will be required to enable distributed, time-sensitive operations (e.g., distributed fleet and ground operations; operations against critical mobile systems).

Getting from Here to There: A Strategy for Transformation

The following strategy employs a range of means to support transformation within projected resource constraints, while also incurring minimal increased risk to near-term US security interests. It is important to realize that transformation is a process, one that will take considerable time to bring about. Given that transformation is both necessary and lengthy, it is important to begin the process now. Transformation requires:

·       A future warfare vision to provide direction to transformation efforts. This vision would focus the military on key emerging challenges, such as power projection in an anti-access/area-denial environment, urban eviction and control, space and information control, and homeland defense, and would explicitly anticipate, and enable, greater future reliance on extended-range power projection, network-based forces, stealth, and unmanned systems.

·       Selection of senior leaders based on their ability to effect transformational change. An ability to lead transformation efforts should be a central criterion for selection as JCS Chairman and Vice Chairman, and as Service chief or vice chief.

·       Robust funding for leap-ahead technologies. To create a portfolio of real transformation options, several billion dollars will need to be added to the science and technology (S&T) accounts over the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). Among the technologies that should be aggressively pursued are those for distributed, micro-satellite constellations; space-based radars with moving target indicator capabilities; unmanned systems; next-generation stealth-including applications to air mobility aircraft, surface naval vessels and ground combat systems; and hypersonics and directed-energy systems.

·       Joint and Service Field Exercises and Experimentation. To identify the proper mix of new systems incorporating the above characteristics, and the number of legacy systems required to meet emerging challenges, an ongoing series of Service and Joint transformation field exercises must be conducted, oriented principally at the operational level of warfare. To this end, a Joint National Training Center should be established, oriented on the anti-access/area-denial challenge, along with a Joint Urban Warfare Training Center. The Defense Department should establish Joint standing opposing forces at these centers, under Joint Forces Command (JFCOM).

·       A procurement strategy in the near- to mid-term that emphasizes limited production runs of a wide range of new systems and service-life extensions and upgrades of existing systems. Until uncertainty is resolved concerning which new systems will be needed for future operations, and which capabilities are technologically feasible, DoD's procurement strategy should emphasize limited production runs of a wide range of systems. Where force structure concerns mandate expansion in fleet size or recapitalization, service-life extensions (e.g., Los Angeles-class attack submarines) and upgrades to existing systems (e.g., F-16 Block 60s) should be pursued to the maximum extent feasible.

·       Divestment strategies to eliminate capabilities that are a poor fit with the emerging strategic environment and to free up resources to support transformation. Transformation requires a divestment strategy, irrespective of the size of the defense top line. Divestment will be required to finance transformation, to retire or forego capabilities that are a poor fit with the emerging strategic environment and to swap legacy capabilities for transformational ones.

A range of initiatives can be undertaken to enable the US military to meet near-term security requirements, within existing and projected budget constraints, while incurring little increase in risk and also enabling transformation. These initiatives include:

·       Dealing with Rogue States. Greater reliance should be placed on South Korea to provide ground forces for its defense. Similarly, if and when the Europeans field a rapid reaction force, they should be encouraged to make it available for a Persian Gulf contingency.

·       Restructuring Forward Presence. The Navy should make use of the growing strike capability of its submarine forces and surface combatants to create innovative forward-presence force packages, to include the use of Surface Action Groups (SAGs) and cruise missile submarines (SSGNs). The four Trident ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) scheduled to come out of the nuclear deterrent force should be converted to SSGN conventional strike platforms. Air Expeditionary Forces can cover maritime force gaps, as appropriate. Those NATO allies with sizeable maritime forces should be encouraged to take on a greater role in forward-presence operations in the Mediterranean Sea, enabling US maritime forces to place greater emphasis on the Persian Gulf, South Asia and East Asia. These initiatives will reduce the stress on carrier battle groups and amphibious ready groups, while enabling the transformation of US maritime forces.

·       Enhanced Stability Operations. The Army should orient a significant part of its force structure toward peacekeeping operations in recognition that such operations are likely to represent an enduring requirement. Efforts also should be made to support the peacekeeping forces fielded by America's allies.

Doctrine, capabilities and forces must be developed that can best meet the types of emerging challenges noted above. The Army should proceed with its current transformation effort, but it should be modified to better address emerging threats, as well as existing requirements. This means earmarking one division (and associated National Guard units) to conduct field exercises oriented on solving the anti-access challenge, developing an advanced capability to conduct urban control and eviction operations, and exploiting the potential of ground forces to see deep and engage at extended ranges. Within this framework, the Army should proceed with its Future Combat System (FCS), high mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) lightweight missile launcher, and the Army tactical missile system (ATACMS) Block IIA missile, and accelerate efforts to develop unmanned combat vehicles, and other forms of robotics. The Service's mobility requirements should be supported through research and development (R&D) of an Advanced Technology Transport (ATT), Quad-Tilt Rotor (QTR) transport, stealthy air transport for use by special operations forces, and rapid, over-the-beach sealift. The Crusader artillery system does not fit the transformation force characteristic profile and should be terminated.

Navy and Marine Corps Fleet Battle Exercises should be mainstreamed into ongoing fleet training to explore the potential of new means and new forms of operation to deal with anti-access/area-denial threats. To this end, the two Services should accelerate their efforts to determine the utility of the Streetfighter concept, Network-Centric Warfare, and Operational Maneuver From the Sea. The Navy should develop and purchase a small number of Streetfighter (or Sea Lance) combatants and convert four Trident SSBNs to SSGNs, while continuing to develop the CVX and DD-21. New means of conducting strikes at extended ranges, to include the advanced gun system (AGS) and unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs), should be accelerated. To maintain an adequate undersea warfare capability, Los Angeles-Class submarines scheduled to be retired before the end of their useful lives should be refueled and retained in the fleet. A Joint Mobile Offshore Base (JMOB) prototype should be deployed to determine its utility as a blue-water alternative to increasingly vulnerable, fixed, forward bases.

Reflecting the demands of an anti-access/area-denial warfighting environment, the Marine Corps should proceed with its MV-22 buy, but only after the aircraft proves its reliability in more thorough development. The Marines should significantly reduce their purchase of the advanced amphibious assault vehicle (AAAV). Similarly, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) should be cancelled, with any near-term shortfall in aircraft production gapped by the F/A-18E/F (for the Navy and perhaps, the Marine Corps) and F-16 Block 60 (for the Air Force). Alternate means of survivable strike support-to include land- and sea-based missile forces, artillery and UCAVs-should receive increased emphasis.

The Air Force should accelerate its efforts to insure that the US military will dominate any future military competition in space and along the electromagnetic spectrum. Both challenges promise to be daunting, given the difficulty in identifying where the greatest threats may emerge, and how they might manifest themselves. The Service also needs to emphasize efforts to deal with the anti-access/area-denial challenge. The Air Force should accelerate its efforts to develop extended-range, long-endurance UAVs and UCAVs. Congress should be petitioned to restore funding for the Discoverer II prototype radar satellites. The Service's long-range, precision-strike systems will likely play an increasingly important role in future operations. At present, the B-2 bomber is the Air Force's only long-range, stealthy, penetrating strike asset and, as such, an important hedge against the growing vulnerability of forward-based aircraft. Service and joint exercises should accord high priority to assessing the B-2's considerable potential for addressing the anti-access challenge. If these exercises confirm this potential, the B-2 production line should be restarted and significant additional numbers of the aircraft procured. Failing that, the Service should accelerate development of a new bomber. Unless the Air Force can demonstrate that the F-22 is both critical and survivable in the emerging anti-access/area-denial warfighting environment, its procurement should be limited to fielding a silver-bullet force.

Will a New Defense Strategy Be Supported through Realistic Budgeting?

America's wealth, great as it is, is not unlimited. Given the Bush Administration's priorities, and those of Congress, it seems unlikely that major increases in defense spending will be realized. Even more sobering, the current defense program suffers from a plans-funding mismatch of some $120 billion over the next six years, with even greater shortfalls thereafter.

Consequently, the current defense program cannot avoid substantial trimming, even if transformation is not undertaken. Fortunately, the defense program supporting the two-MTW posture has in it significant force structure and modernization programs that offer little in the way of reducing current and future risk to the national security. There is an opportunity to make significant reductions in both areas to support defense transformation, and bring the Defense Department's program in line with anticipated budget estimates. Some will argue that a smaller force structure means taking on some near-term risk, and they are right. But pursuing the strategy outlined above would incur only a slight increase in this risk. The alternative is to accept much greater liability for America's long-term security. Sustaining the current force structure ignores the need to transform the military so that it will be able to meet the very different-and far more formidable-kinds of security challenges America will confront tomorrow. In the final analysis, strategy is about making choices-about setting priorities for how limited resources are apportioned.

The approach outlined above provides a far better, far more realistic, and far more responsible point of departure than does the two-MTW posture for achieving the overarching goal of any defense posture: to maximize the opportunity for achieving the nation's security objectives.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the United States needs both a threat-based and a capabilities-based defense posture. If the US military is not transformed, it may lack the military capabilities needed to sustain a long peace. At the same time, the US military must remain capable of preserving stability against existing threats all along its transformation path. This means America must maintain sufficient military capability in the form of forces that are ready to address today's security requirements at an acceptable level of risk.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to present my thoughts on the strategic challenges-and opportunities-we face in developing a realistic defense program to meet our security needs, in both the near- and long-term future.